be stirred by the President’s war-message, nor the red blood to itch
for the dummy bayonet-charge. Yet somehow he does not seem exactly
weak, and there is a consistency about his attitude which intrigues
me. Since he left college eight years ago, he has been through most of
the intellectual and emotional fads of the day. He has always cursed
himself for being so superficial and unrooted, and he has tried to
write a little of the thoughts that stirred him. What he got down
on paper was, of course, the usual large vague feeling of a new time
that all of us feel. With the outbreak of the Great War, most of his
socialist and pacifist theories were knocked flat. The world turned out
to be an entirely different place from what he had thought it. Progress
and uplift seemed to be indefinitely suspended, though it was a long
time before he realized how much he had been corroded by the impact of
news and the endless discussions he heard. I think he gradually worked
himself into a truly neutral indifference. The reputable people and
the comfortable classes who were having all the conventional emotions
rather disgusted him. The neurotic fury about self-defense seemed to
come from types and classes that he instinctively detested. He was
not scared, and somehow he could not get enthusiastic about defending
himself with “preparedness” unless he were badly scared. Things got
worse. All that he valued seemed frozen until the horrible mess came to
a close. He had gone to an unusually intelligent American college, and
he had gotten a feeling for a humane civilization that had not left
him. The war, it is true, bit away piece by piece every ideal that made
this feeling seem plausible. Most of the big men--intellectuals--whom
he thought he respected had had so much of their idealism hacked away
and got their nerves so frayed that they became at last, in their
panic, willing and even eager to adopt the war-technique in aid of
their government’s notions of the way to impose democracy on the world.
My poor young friend can best be understood as too naïve and too
young to effect this metamorphosis. Older men might mix a marvelous
intellectual brew of personal anger, fear, a sense of “dishonor,”
fervor for a League of Peace, and set going a machinery that crushed
everything intelligent, humane and civilized. My friend was less
flexible. War simply did not mix with anything that he had learned to
feel was desirable. Something in his mind spewed it out whenever it was
suggested as a cure for our grievous American neutrality. As I got all
this from our talks, he did not seem weak. He merely had no notion of
the patriotism that meant the springing of a nation to arms. He read
conscientiously _The New Republic’s_ feast of eloquent idealism, with
its appealing harbingers of a cosmically efficacious and well-bred
war. He would often say, This is all perfectly convincing; why, then,
are we not all convinced? He seemed to understand the argument for
American participation. We both stood in awe at the superb intellectual
structure that was built up. But my friend is one of those unfortunate
youths whose heart has to apprehend as well as his intellect, and it
was his heart that inexorably balked. So he was in no mood to feel
the worth of American participation, in spite of the infinite tact
and Fabian strategy of the Executive and his intellectualist backers.
He felt apart from it all. He had not the imagination to see a healed
world-order built out of the rotten materials of armaments, diplomacy
and “liberal” statesmanship. And he wasn’t affected by the psychic
complex of panic, hatred, rage, class-arrogance and patriotic swagger
that was creating in newspaper editors and in the “jeunesse dorée”
around us the authentic élan for war.
My friend is thus somehow in the nation but not of the nation. The
war has as yet got no conceivable clutch on his soul. He knows
that theoretically he is united with a hundred million in purpose,
sentiment and deed for an idealistic war to defend democracy and
civilization against predatory autocracy. Yet somehow, in spite of all
the excitement, nobody has as yet been able to make this real to him.
He is healthy, intelligent, idealistic. The irony is that the demand
which his country now makes on him is one to which not one single cell
or nerve of idealism or desire responds. The cheap and silly blare
of martial life leaves him cold. The easy inflation of their will to
power which is coming to so many people from their participation in
volunteer or government service, or, better still, from their urging
others to farm, enlist, invest, retrench, organize,--none of this
allures him. His life is uninteresting and unadventurous, but it is not
quite dull enough to make this activity or anything he knows about war
seem a release into lustier expression. He has ideals but he cannot see
their realization through a desperate struggle to the uttermost. He
doubts the “saving” of an America which can only be achieved through
world-suicide. He wants democracy, but he does not want the kind of
democracy we will get by this war enough to pay the suicidal cost of
getting it in the way we set about it.
_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_, sweet and becoming is it to die
for one’s country. This is the young man who is suddenly asked to die
for his country. My friend was much concerned about registration. He
felt coercive forces closing in upon him. He did not want to register
for the purposes of being liable to conscription. It would be doing
something positive when he felt only apathy. Furthermore, if he was
to resist, was it not better to take a stand now than to wait to be
drafted? On the other hand, was it not too much of a concession to
rebel at a formality? He did not really wish to be a martyr. Going
to prison for a year for merely refusing to register was rather a
grotesque and futile gesture. He did not see himself as a hero,
shedding inspiration by his example to his fellows. He did not care
what others did. His objection to prison was not so much fear perhaps
as contempt for a silly sacrifice. He could not keep up his pose of
complete aliency from the war-enterprise, now that registration
was upon him. Better submit stoically, he thought, to the physical
pressure, mentally reserving his sense of spiritual aliency from the
enterprise into which he was being remorselessly molded. Yet my friend
is no arrant prig. He does not pretend to be a “world-patriot,” or
a servant of some higher law than his country’s. Nor does he feel
blatantly patriotic. With his groping philosophy of life, patriotism
has merely died as a concept of significance for him. It is to him
merely the emotion that fills the herd when it imagines itself engaged
in massed defense or massed attack. Having no such images, he has no
feeling of patriotism. He still feels himself inextricably a part of
this blundering, wistful, crass civilization we call America. All he
asks is not to be identified with it for warlike ends. He does not feel
pro-German. He tells me there is not a drop of any but British blood in
his veins. He does not love the Kaiser. He is quite willing to believe
that it is the German government and not the German people whom he is
asked to fight, although it may be the latter whom he is obliged to
kill. But he cannot forget that it is the American government rather
than the American people who got up the animus to fight the German
government. He does not forget that the American government, having
through tragic failure slipped into the war-technique, is now trying
to manipulate him into that war-technique. And my friend’s idea of
_patria_ does not include the duty of warlike animus, even when the
government decides such animus is necessary to carry out its theories
of democracy and the future organization of the world. There are ways
in which my friend would probably be willing to die for his country.
If his death now meant the restoration of those ravaged lands and the
bringing back of the dead, that would be a cause to die for. But he
knows that the dead cannot be brought back or the brotherly currents
restored. The work of madness will not be undone. Only a desperate war
will be prolonged. Everything seems to him so mad that there is nothing
left worth dying for. _Pro patria mori_, to my friend, means something
different from lying gaunt as a conscript on a foreign battlefield,
fallen in the last desperate fling of an interminable world-war.
Does this mean that if he is drafted he will refuse to serve? I do
not know. It will not be any plea of “conscientious objection” that
keeps him back. That phrase to him has already an archaic flavor
which implies a ruling norm, a stiff familiar whom he must obey in
the matter. It implies that one would be delighted to work up one’s
blood-lust for the business, except that this unaccountable conscience,
like a godly grandmother, absolutely forbids. In the case of my friend,
it will not be any objective “conscience.” It will be something that
is woven into his whole modern philosophic feel for life. This is what
paralyzes him against taking one step toward the war-machine. If he
were merely afraid of death, he would seek some alternative service.
But he does not. He remains passive and apathetic, waiting for the
knife to fall. There is a growing cynicism in him about the brisk and
inept bustle of war-organization. His attitude suggests that if he is
worked into war-service, he will have to be coerced every step of the
way.
Yet he may not even rebel. He may go silently into the ranks in a mood
of cold contempt. His horror of useless sacrifice may make even the
bludgeoning of himself seem futile. He may go in the mood of so many
young men in the other countries, without enthusiasm, without idealism,
without hope and without belief, victims of a tragically blind force
behind them. No other government, however, has had to face from the
very start quite this appalling skepticism of youth. My friend is
significant because all the shafts of panic, patriotism and national
honor have been discharged at him without avail. All the seductions of
“liberal” idealism leave him cold. He is to be susceptible to nothing
but the use of crude, rough, indefeasible violence. Nothing could be
more awkward for a “democratic” President than to be faced with this
cold, staring skepticism of youth, in the prosecution of his war. The
attitude of my friend suggests that there is a personal and social
idealism in America which is out of reach of the most skillful and
ardent appeals of the older order, an idealism that cannot be hurt
by the taunts of cowardice and slacking or kindled by the slogans
of capitalistic democracy. This is the cardinal fact of our war--the
non-mobilization of the younger intelligentsia.
What will they do to my friend? If the war goes on they will need him.
Pressure will change skepticism into bitterness. That bitterness will
well and grow. If the country submissively pours month after month
its wealth of life and resources into the work of annihilation, that
bitterness will spread out like a stain over the younger American
generation. If the enterprise goes on endlessly, the work, so blithely
undertaken for the defense of democracy, will have crushed out the only
genuinely precious thing in a nation, the hope and ardent idealism of
its youth.
IV
THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICAN STRATEGY
(August, 1917)
In the absorbing business of organizing American participation in
the war, public opinion seems to be forgetting the logic of that
participation. It was for the purpose of realizing certain definite
international ideals that the American democracy consented to be led
into war. The meeting of aggression seemed to provide the immediate
pretext, but the sincere intellectual support of the war came from
minds that hoped ardently for an international order that would prevent
a recurrence of world-war. Our action they saw as efficacious toward
that end. It was almost wholly upon this ground that they justified
it and themselves. The strategy which they suggested was very
carefully worked out to make our participation count heavily toward the
realization of their ideals. Their justification and their strategy
alike were inseparably bound up with those ideals. It was implicit
in their position that any alteration in the ideals would affect the
strategy and would cast suspicion upon their justification. Similarly
any alteration in the strategy would make this liberal body of opinion
suspicious of the devotion of the Government to those ideals, and would
tend to deprive the American democracy of any confident morale it might
have had in entering the war. The American case hung upon the continued
perfect working partnership of ideals, strategy and morale.
In the eyes of all but the most skeptical radicals, American entrance
into the war seemed to be marked by a singularly perfect union of
these three factors. The President’s address to Congress on April
2, supported by the December Peace note and the principles of the
famous Senate address, gave the Government and American “liberalism”
an apparently unimpeachable case. A nation which had resisted for so
long a time the undertow of war, which had remained passive before
so many provocations and incitements, needed the clearest assurance
of unselfish purpose to carry it through the inevitable chaos and
disillusionment of adopting a war-technique. That moment seemed to
give this assurance. But it needed not only a clear, but a steady
and unwavering assurance. It had to see day by day, in each move of
war-policy which the Administration made, an unmistakable step toward
the realization of the ideals for which the American people had
consented to come into the war. American hesitation was overcome only
by an apparently persuasive demonstration that priceless values of
civilization were at stake. The American people could only be prevented
from relapsing into their first hesitation, and so demoralizing the
conduct of the war, by the sustained conviction that the Administration
and the Allied governments were fighting single-mindedly for the
conservation of those values. It is therefore pertinent to ask how this
conviction has been sustained and how accurately American strategy has
been held to the justifying of our participation in the war. It is
pertinent to ask whether the prevailing apathy may not be due to the
progressive weakening of the assurance that our war is being in any
way decisive in the securing of the values for which we are presumably
fighting.
It will not be forgotten that the original logic of American
participation hung primarily upon the menace of Germany’s renewed
submarine campaign. The case for America’s entrance became presumably
irresistible only when the safety of the British Commonwealth and of
the Allies and neutrals who use the Atlantic highway was at stake.
American liberal opinion had long ago decided that the logic of our
moral neutrality had passed. American isolation was discredited as it
became increasingly evident how urgent was our duty to participate
in the covenant of nations which it was hoped would come out of the
settlement. We were bound to contribute our resources and our good-will
to this enterprise. Our position made it certain that however we acted
we should be the deciding factor. But up to February first, 1917, it
was still an arguable question in the minds of “liberals” whether we
could best make that contribution through throwing in our lot with the
more pacific nations or by continuing a neutrality benevolent toward
their better cause. For this benevolent neutrality, however strained,
was still endurable, particularly when supplemented by the hope of
mediation contained in the “peace without victory” maneuvers and the
principles of the Senate speech.
This attempt to bring about a negotiated peace, while the United States
was still nominally neutral, but able to bring its colossal resources
against the side which refused to declare its terms, marked the
high-water level of American strategy.
For a negotiated peace, achieved before either side had reached
exhaustion and the moral disaster was not irremediable, would have been
the most hopeful possible basis for the covenant of nations. And the
United States, as the effective agent in such a negotiated peace and as
the most powerful neutral, might have assumed undisputed leadership in
such a covenant.
The strategy of “peace without victory” failed because of the refusal
of Germany to state her terms. The war went on from sheer lack of a
common basis upon which to work out a settlement. American strategy
then involved the persistent pressure of mediation. The submarine
menace, however, suddenly forced the issue. The safety of the seas, the
whole Allied cause, seemed suddenly in deadly peril. In the emergency
benevolent neutrality collapsed. Liberal opinion could find no other
answer to the aggression than war. In the light of the sequel those
radicals who advocated a policy of “armed neutrality” seem now to
have a better case. For American action obtained momentum from the
imminence of the peril. The need was for the immediate guarantee of
food and ships to the menaced nations and for the destruction of the
attacking submarines. “Armed neutrality” suggested a way of dealing
promptly and effectively with the situation. The providing of loans,
food, ships, convoys, could ostensibly have taken place without a
declaration of war, and without developing the country’s morale or
creating a vast military establishment. It was generally believed that
time was the decisive factor. The decision for war has therefore meant
an inevitable and perhaps fatal course of delay. It was obvious that
with our well-known unpreparedness of administrative technique, the
lack of coördination in industry, and the unreadiness of the people and
Congress for coercion, war meant the practical postponement of action
for months. In such an emergency that threatened us, our only chance
to serve was in concentrating our powers. Until the disorganization
inherent in a pacific democracy was remedied, our only hope of
effective aid would come from focusing the country’s energies on a
ship and food programme, supplemented by a naval programme devised
realistically to the direct business at hand. The war could be most
promptly ended by convincing the German government that the submarine
had no chance of prevailing against the endless American succor which
was beginning to raise the siege and clear the seas.
The decision, however, was for war, and for a “thorough” war.
This meant the immediate throwing upon the national machinery of
far more activity than it could handle. It meant attaching to a
food and ship programme a military programme, a loan programme, a
censorship programme. All these latter have involved a vast amount
of advertising, of agitation, of discussion, and dissension. The
country’s energies and attention have been drained away from the simple
exigencies of the situation and from the technique of countering the
submarine menace and ending the war. Five months have passed since
the beginning of unrestricted submarine warfare. We have done nothing
to overcome the submarine. The food and ship programmes are still
unconsolidated. The absorption of Congress and the country in the
loan and the conscript army and the censorship has meant just so much
less absorption in the vital and urgent technique to provide which we
entered the war. The country has been put to work at a vast number of
activities which are consonant to the abstract condition of war, but
which may have little relation to the particular situation in which
this country found itself and to the particular strategy required.
The immediate task was to prevent German victory in order to restore
the outlines of our strategy toward a negotiated peace. War has been
impotent in that immediate task. Paradoxically, therefore, our very
participation was a means of weakening our strategy. We have not
overcome the submarine or freed the Atlantic world. Our entrance has
apparently made not a dent in the morale of the German people. The
effect of our entrance, it was anticipated by liberals, would be the
shortening of the war. Our entrance has rather tended to prolong it.
Liberals were mistaken about the immediate collapse of the British
Commonwealth. It continued to endure the submarine challenge without
our material aid. We find ourselves, therefore, saddled with a
war-technique which has compromised rather than furthered our strategy.
This war-technique compromises the outlines of American strategy
because instead of making for a negotiated peace it has had the
entirely unexpected result of encouraging those forces in the Allied
countries who desire _la victoire intégrale_, the “knockout blow.” In
the President’s war-message the country was assured that the principles
of the negotiated peace remained quite unimpaired. The strategy that
underlay this, it will be remembered, was to appeal to the Teutonic
peoples over the heads of their rulers with terms so liberal that the
peoples would force their governments to make peace. The strategy of
the American government was, while prosecuting the war, to announce
its war-aims and to persuade the Allies to announce their war-aims in
such terms as would split the peoples of the Central Powers from their
governments, thus bringing more democratic régimes that would provide
a fruitful basis for a covenant of nations. We entered the war with
no grievances of our own. It was our peculiar rôle to continue the
initiative for peace, both by unmistakably showing our own purpose for
a just peace based on some kind of international organization and by
wielding a steady pressure on the Entente governments to ratify our
programme. If we lost this initiative for peace, or if we were unable
or unwilling to press the Entente toward an unmistakable liberalism,
our strategy broke down and our justification for entering the war
became seriously impaired. For we could then be charged with merely
aiding the Entente’s ambiguous scheme of European reorganization.