than of anything else in life that what was being slowly settled
in that grim trench--land over there did mean something to us--more,
much more than money or neutral rights or sympathetic charities. Not
that I was apprehensive of an immediate German raid on New York, the
crumbling of her sky-scrapers and the exaction of colossal indemnities.
For it looked to me that Germany might well have other occupation
after peace was made in Europe, whichever way the war should go. The
German peril did not lie, I thought, in her big guns, her ships, her
"Prussianized machine." It lay deeper, in herself, in her image of
the world. If Germany could win even a partial victory under that
monstrous creed of applied materialism, illuminated as it had been
with every sort of cynical crime, with its reasoned defiance of contract,
its principle of "indispensable severities," its "military reasons,"
_that_ must become inexorably the law of the world--the barbarians'
law. Germany would have made the morality of the world! And of all
the world's peoples to accept the victor's new reading of the
commandments, proud America would be the first. For we cannot resist
the fascination of success. The German aim, the German tyranny over
the individual, the German morality--one for you and me as individuals
and another utterly lawless one when we get together in a social
state--would be imitated more than the German lesson of thoroughness
in civil and military organization. Hypnotized by German success, we
should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much
as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans
would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who
apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers.
For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood,
there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion
of triumphant force. American "Big Business" can understand the Kaiser's
philosophy, can reverence his "old German god" when he brings victory,
more than any other people outside of Germany. For it, too, believes
in "putting things over" with a strong hand. There is not an argument
of the German militarist propaganda that would not find a sympathetic
echo somewhere in the headquarters of American corporations.
* * * * *
When the old fourteen-knot steamer finally dropped anchor off
quarantine in New York Harbor and the reporters came on board with
the dust of America on their shoes, the roar of America in their
voices, I was surer than ever that this greatest of world wars meant
a vast deal more to us than trade or charity or politics, which is
what we seem to be making of it for the most part. It means the form
which our national character is to take ultimately. The German peril,
which is held before the public in moving pictures and in alarmist
appeals for "preparedness," is already in our midst, not so much at
work blowing up our factories as insidiously at work in our hearts.
The German apologist--even of Anglo-Saxon blood--is suggesting the
reasonableness of a German verdict. "After all," one hears from his
lips, "there is much on the other side of the shield, which our
English prejudices have prevented us from seeing. Germany cannot be
the monster of barbarism that she has been painted. As for broken
treaties, the atrocities, the submarines, the murder of Edith Cavell,
and her rough work over here,--well, we must remember it is war, and
the Russian Cossacks have not been saints!... As to her military
autocracy, perhaps a little of it would not be a bad thing for
America. At any rate, Germany seems to have the power--it is useless
to think of putting her down.... The American public will forget all
about German crimes once Germany is victorious." "Nothing succeeds
like success." "There is always a reason for success," etc. Which
cynical acceptance proves that we have already "committed adultery in
our hearts."
There are many voices in the air, too many. Americans have not yet
found themselves in this crisis of world tragedy, and the Government
at Washington has not helped them to an understanding. We are vastly
relieved at not finding ourselves "involved" and accept shabby verbal
subterfuges as a triumph of American diplomacy. Meanwhile the Lusitania
incident has been conveniently forgotten, with the awkward phrase
"strictly accountable." Along the eastern seaboard the anxious and the
timid are clamoring for "defense"--against what? The talkative pacifists,
who would make a grotesque farce of the bloody sacrifice by a futile
peace, are bringing further ridicule and contempt on their country
with their impertinent if well-meant efforts. Meantime, the money-makers
have taken this occasion to stage a spectacular bull market, grumbling
on the fruits of war! And there is the "good-time" side to American life.
For a few brief months after the outbreak of the war Americans were
staggered by the awfulness of the tragedy and moved under its shadow.
Their hearts went out in sympathy, in feeding the dispossessed, and
sending aid to the wounded. We spent less on ourselves, partly because
of financial fear, partly because of our desire to give, partly because
our hearts were too heavy to play. But already that serious mood is
passing, and to-day as a people we are hard at it again, chasing a good
time. We feel once more the same old lustful urge to get and enjoy....
The other night as I looked out on the peopled sea of the New York
opera-house, with its women richly dressed and jeweled, its white-faced
men, leading the same life of easy prodigal expense, of sensual
gratification, I remembered another opera staged in the mysterious
twilight of Bayreuth where from the gloom emerged the hoarse bass of
Fafner's cry,--"I lie here possessing!" The voice of the great worm
proved to be the voice of Germany. Is it ours also?
* * * * *
Do we Americans desire to have our world Germanized? Not in art and
language and customs, though may Heaven preserve us from that fate
also! But Germanized in soul? Do we want the German image or the Latin
image of the world to prevail? And are we strong enough in our own
ideal to resist a "peaceful penetration" by triumphant Germany into
our minds and hearts? That is the urgent matter for us. No amount
spent on big guns, superdreadnoughts, submarines, and continental
guards--no amount of peace talk--can keep the German peril out of
America if we surrender our souls to her creed, now that Germany
seems to be imposing it successfully with her armies in Europe. Those
dirty _poilus_ in the front trenches are, indeed, fighting our battle
for us, if we did but know it!
II
_The Choice_
"We have all sinned, your people as well as mine, the English,
the French, the Germans, all, all of us,--but Germany has sinned
most." When M. Hanotaux spoke these words with a Hebraic fervor of
conviction, I did not have to be told what he meant. The people of
our time have sinned through their hot desire for material possession
of the earth and its riches--through commercialism, capitalism, call
it what you will. Each great nation has made its selfish race for
economic advancement at the expense of other peoples: commercial
rivalry has largely begotten this bloody war, which is essentially
a predatory raid by one barbarous tribe against the riches of its
neighbors. Whether England or Russia under similar circumstances
would have dared a similar attack on the liberties of the world is
open to speculation. To Germany alone, however, has been reserved the
distinction of elevating greed and the lust of power to the dignity
of a philosophic system, a creed with the religious sanction of that
"old German god" to smite the rivals of the Fatherland and take away
their wealth. It is because Germany has made a consistent monster out
of her materialistic interpretation of modern science that she is now
held up before the nations of the world as a spectacle and a warning.
"We have all sinned" in believing that the body is more than the
spirit, that food and pleasure and power are the primary ends of all
living; but Germany alone has had the effrontery to justify her
cynicism by conscious theory and to teach it systematically to all
her people. She has endowed with life a philosophical idea, given it
the personality of her people, created a national Frankenstein to be
feared and loathed. More, she is coming perilously nigh to imposing
her god upon the world!
We have all worshiped at the shrine of material achievement--in
America with the riot of young strength. England, like old King
Amfortas, is now bleeding from the sins of her youth and calling in
vain for some Parsifal to deliver her from their penalty. She has
built her rich civilization on a morass of exploited millions, and
her Nemesis is that in her hour of peril her sodden millions strike
and drink and feel no imperative urge to give their lives for an
England that sucked her prosperity from their veins. In the race for
commercial supremacy the Latin nations--Italy, Spain, and France--have
been deemed inferior to Germany, England, and the United States,
because they were less tainted with the lust of possession, less
materialistic in their reading of life, less powerful in their grasp
upon economic opportunity than their rivals. In the Latin countries
industry yet remains largely on the small scale, which is economically
wasteful, but which does not build up fabulous wealth at the expense
of the individual worker. The great corporation designed for the rapid
creation of wealth has not found that congenial home on Latin soil
which it has on ours, or on German soil. And this fact accounts for
the touch of handicraft lingering in the product of Latin industry,
for the strength and health individually of their working classes,
for their fervor of devotion to the national tradition. The Latin
has never forgotten the claims of the individual life: democracy to
him is more than the right to vote. Therefore, pure art, pure science,
pure literature--also the world of ideas--has a larger part in the life
of Latin peoples than with us in the eternal struggle with the
materialistic forces of life. To the Latin living is not solely the
gratification of the body. He reckons on the intelligence and the
spirit of man as well.
* * * * *
It may seem to some that throughout these pages I have spoken
paradoxically of the world war as primarily a struggle between the
Latin and the Germanic ideal, ignoring the significance of Russia
and of England. In spite of the heroic resistance of the French and
the pertinacious thrust of the Italians against the steel wall in
which Austria has bound them, the Latin forces engaged are obviously
less than half of the Allied Powers. On the sea England is virtually
alone. Nevertheless, I see the struggle as a Latin-German one, the
great decision as essentially a decision between these two types of
ideals. All else is relative and accidental. Apart from the
surprising vitality developed by the two Latin peoples, their
astonishing force in the brutal struggle for survival,--which has
disagreeably put wrong the calculations of their enemy,--it is the
mental and spiritual leadership of the world which is being fought
for rather than the physical. The ideas and the ideals under which
the Allies are fighting, which can be simply summed up however
divergent their manifestations, are French, are Latin ideas and
ideals, not English, not Russian. The spirit of the cause to which
England has lent her imperial supremacy and Russia her undeveloped
strength is Latin, and since the war began the English have widely
borne testimony to this fact.
The right of peoples, little as well as strong nations, to live their
own lives, to preserve their own political autonomy, to develop their
own traditions, is part of the Latin lesson learned in the throes of
the great Revolution. It is expressed passionately, wistfully in that
universal cry of the French people: "We must end this thing--it must
never happen again--we must win the right to live as we see fit, not
under the dictation of another!" To the Latin mind the world is
peopled by individuals who cannot and should not be pressed in the
same political or economic mould, who must win their individual
salvation by an individual struggle and evolution. This is the ideal
of liberty the world over, which prompted France to send us help in
our struggle with England. It is a wasteful, an uneconomic ideal, as
we Americans have proved in our slovenly administration of our great
inheritance. Yet we would not have a machine-made, autocratic
organization, no matter how clean and thrifty and efficient it might
make our cities. We prefer the slow process of conversion to the
machine process of coercion. And that is one source of our sympathy
with French civilization. Let us have all liberty to its possible
limit short of license: the Latin intelligence has known how to
preserve liberty from becoming license. The result in the human being
of the principle of liberty is individual intelligence and spiritual
power; those are the high ideals toward which democracy aims. The
cost of them is efficiency, organization--immediate results which
German discipline obtains. But the cost of the German ideal is the
humanity of life, and that is too big a price to pay. That there
should be found many among us who are willing to exchange the
spiritual flower of our civilization for the sake of a more efficient
social organization is evidence of the extent to which the cancer of
a materialistic commercialism has already eaten into our life.
* * * * *
The Latin vision of life includes chivalry, as has been abundantly
revealed by the spirit of the French, sorely tried in their struggle
with the new barbarian. Chivalry means beauty of conduct, an
uneconomic, a sentimental ideal, but without which the life of man on
this earth would be forlorn, lacking in dignity, in meaning. Take
from mankind the shadowy dream of himself implied in his desire for a
chivalrous world, and you leave him a naked animal from the jungle,
more despicable the more skillful he becomes in gratifying his lusts.
The Latin vision of life includes also beauty of art, man's radiation
of his inner spiritual world, and closely woven with the love of art
is respect for tradition--reverence for the past which has been
bequeathed to him by his ancestors, which is incorporated in his
blood.
We in America have striven for these beauties of chivalry, art, and
tradition. We have striven to put them into our lives often blindly,
crudely. We have borrowed and bought what we could not create;
instinctively we pay homage to what is beyond our industrial power
to make, confessing the inadequacy of our materialism to satisfy our
souls. We, too, demand a world in which beauty of conduct, beauty of
manners, and beauty of art shall be cultivated to give meaning to our
lives. The bombardment of Rheims, the murder of Edith Cavell are as
shameful to the American mind as to the French, and as incomprehensible.
These are not matters of reason, but of instinct--commands of the soul.
* * * * *
The Latin ideal is not predatory. Whatever they may have done in
their past, the Latin peoples to-day are not greedy of conquest. If
the Allies win, France will gain little territory. Both Italy and
France have limited their territorial ambitions to securing their
future safety by establishing frontiers on natural barriers. France
also expects indemnity for her huge losses and for outraged Belgium.
She must rebuild her home and be freed for generations to come from
the inhibiting fear of invasion. One does not feel so confident of
England: in the past she has had the pilfering hand. But from
prudence if not from shame England may content herself with a
reestablished prestige and a tranquil Europe. Russia has already
reconciled herself to relinquishing Poland, and except for her
natural ambition to enter the Mediterranean she seems without
predatory desires. Russia, it should not be forgotten, took up arms
to protect her own kin from the Austrians. The Slav and the Latin
have a spiritual sympathy that cannot exist between the Latin and the
Teuton, which gives their present union more than an accidental
significance.
Whatever secret ambitions may be brewing in the chancelleries of
Europe, France has put herself on record against conquest too
emphatically to countenance at the peace conference any predatory
rearrangement of the map of Europe. She has made the great war a
struggle of principle--the principle of national liberty against the
principle of military conquest. It is this great principle which
gives significance to her cause and justifies the awful slaughter and
waste of bleeding Europe. If the pretensions of physical might, no
matter with what excuses, can be thoroughly defeated, proved to be an
impossible theory of life, so that never again in the history of the
world will a nation attempt to take with the sword what does not
belong to it, the bloody sacrifice will have been well worth making.
The issues of the great conflict have been obscured, especially in
America, but to the humblest soldier of France they are as clear as
blazing sunlight. "Never again!" Never the monstrous pretension that
power alone makes right, that the will to eat gives free license to
the eater, however great his appetite or his belief in himself. That
is the cause of all the world, for which the French are willing to
give all that they have. And I know no cause more important to be
settled for the future of the human race.
* * * * *
Are we not interested in the right decision of this cause? A
peaceable people, loving our own way, jealous of interference,
we should assuredly present a lamentable spectacle were we called
upon to defend ourselves against a predatory enemy. Possibly a more
lamentable spectacle of inefficiency combined with corruption than
England has given the world the past year! And at last we are becoming
aware that our policy of selfish isolation does not mean immunity from
attack. We are realizing that those "three thousand miles of cool
sea-water" no longer make an effectual barrier against the ingenuity
of modern men.
But I would not put the matter on the selfish basis of our own
security. It is vastly larger than that. It is, vitally, what
manner of world we wish to have for ourselves and our children.
At the invasion of Belgium, America gave with splendid unanimity
the response: Americans did not want the German world! Since then,
alas, it would seem that the clear moral reaction of our people to
the demonstration of the world struggle has been gradually weakening:
we are becoming confused, permitting insidious reasoners to cloud the
issue, listening to the prompting of the beast in our own bellies,
hesitating, dividing, excusing, evading the great question--"seeing
both sides." As if there were two sides to such a plain issue stripped
of all its fallacies and subterfuges and lies! Do we wish to have
American life take on the moral and intellectual and artistic color
of German ideals? Do we prefer the "old German god" to the culture
and humanities we have inherited from the Latin tradition?... "We,
too, have sinned." In our blood is all the crude materialism of a
triumphant Germany without her discipline and her organization. We,
too, are ready to enter the fierce war of commercial rivalry with
England and Germany. We, too, believe in the good of economic expansion,
though dubious about our own imperialism. Surely no people that ever
lived stood hesitating so dangerously at the crossroads as America at
this hour. Prudence has prevented us as a nation from pronouncing
that moral verdict on the cause which might have had decisive weight
in hastening the world decision. But a selfish timidity cannot prevent
us individually from realizing the immense importance to us of the
decision that is being ground out in the tears and blood of Europe.
And no ideal of diplomatic neutrality can prevent Americans who care
for anything but their own selfish well-being from doing all in their
power to make ours a Latin rather than a Teutonic world.
Every soldier who dies in the trenches of France, who bears a maimed
and disfigured body through life, is giving himself for us, so that
we may live in a world where individual rights and liberties are
respected, where beauty of conduct and beauty of art may endure,
where life means more than the satisfaction of bodily appetites.
III
_Peace_
The real cynics of the war are the pacifists. They see nothing more
serious in the European agony than what can be disposed of easily at
any time in a peace conference--by talk and adjustment. So obsessed
are some of them by the slaughter of men, by the woe and travail of
Europe, that they would turn the immense sacrifice into a grotesque
farce by any sort of compromise--a peace that could be no peace,
merely the armistice for further war. Their eyes are so blinded by
the economic waste of the war and its suffering that they are incapable
of seeing the great underlying principle that must be decided. Americans,
having evaded the responsibility of pronouncing a decisive moral
judgment on the rape of Belgium, the sinking of the Lusitania, and
the extermination of the Armenians, play the buffoon with women's
peace conferences, peace ships, and endless impertinent peace talk.
We, who have forfeited our right to sit at the peace conference, who
are busily making money off the war, having prudently kept our own
skins out of danger, are officiously ready with proposals of peace.
What a peace! The only peace that could be made to-day would be a
dastardly treason to every one of the millions whose blood has watered
Europe, to every woman who has given a son or a father or a husband
to the settlement of the cause. The parochialism of the American
intelligence has never been more humiliatingly displayed than in
the activities of our busy peacemakers.
* * * * *
No sane person believes in war. The sordidness and the horror of war
have never been so fully revealed as during this past year. War has
been stripped of its every romantic feature. Modern war is worse than
hell--it is pure insanity. We do not need peace foundations, peace
conferences, peace ships to demonstrate the awfulness of war. But
crying peace, thinking peace, willing peace will not bring peace
unless conditions that make peace exist. Here in America we use the
word peace too loosely, as if it meant some absolute state of being
which we had achieved through our innate wisdom rather than from the
happy accident of our world position. But peace is an entirely
relative term, as any one who has given heed to the social conditions
we have created should realize. We have enjoyed a certain kind of
peace, the value of which is debatable. And now, alarmed at the
exposed condition of our eastern seaboard, we are agitatedly
preparing to arm to protect ourselves--from what? From Germany? Or is
it from England? And still we recommend an instant peace to Europe!
Awful as are the waste and suffering caused by war, hideous as modern
warfare is, there are worse evils for humanity. To my thinking the
perpetuation of the lawless, materialistic creed of the new Germany
would be infinitely worse for the world than any war could be. When
the German tide broke into Belgium and poured out over northern
France, sweeping all before it, killing, burning, raping, the
pacifists no doubt would have accepted the conqueror as the will of
God and have made peace then!... There are none more eager for peace
than the soldiers in the trenches who are giving their lives to press
back the barbarian flood. But no peace until their "work has been
done, the cause won." I have heard Americans express the fear that
European civilization is in danger of annihilation from the prolonged
conflict. Even that were preferable to submission to the wrong ideal.
But I see, rather, the possibility of a higher civilization through
the settlement of fundamental principles, the reaffirmation of
necessary laws. It is surely with this abiding faith that the
enormous sacrifices are being freely made by the allied nations. "It
is of little importance what happens to us," a Frenchman said to me
in Rheims, whose home had been destroyed that morning, whose son had
already been killed in the trenches. "There will be a better world
for the generations to come because of what we have endured." That is
what the American pacifist cannot seem to understand--the necessity
of present sacrifice for a better future, the cost in blood and agony
of ultimate principles.