E-text prepared by Al Haines
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 15770-h.htm or 15770-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/7/15770/15770-h/15770-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/7/15770/15770-h.zip)
GERMANY, THE NEXT REPUBLIC?
by
CARL W. ACKERMAN
New York
George H. Doran Company
1917
The title "GERMANY, THE NEXT REPUBLIC?" is chosen because the author
believes this must be the goal, the battlecry, of the United States and
her Allies. As long as the Kaiser, his generals and the present
leaders are in control of Germany's destinies the world will encounter
the same terrorism that it has had to bear during the war. Permanent
peace will follow the establishment of a Republic. But the German
people will not overthrow the present government until the leaders are
defeated and discredited. Today the Reichstag Constitutional
committee, headed by Herr Scheidemann, is preparing reforms in the
organic law but so far all proposals are mere makeshifts. The world
cannot afford to consider peace with Germany until the people rule.
The sooner the United States and her Allies tell this to the German
people officially the sooner we shall have peace.
[Frontispiece: A document circulated by "The League of Truth"]
PREFACE
I was at the White House on the 29th of June, 1914, when the newspapers
reported the assassination of the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria.
In August, when the first declarations of war were received, I was
assigned by the United Press Associations to "cover" the belligerent
embassies and I met daily the British, French, Belgian, Italian,
German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Japanese diplomats. When
President Wilson went to New York, to Rome, Georgia, to Philadephia and
other cities after the outbreak of the war, I accompanied him as one of
the Washington correspondents. On these journeys and in Washington I
had an opportunity to observe the President, to study his methods and
ideas, and to hear the comment of the European ambassadors.
When the von Tirpitz blockade of England was announced in February,
1915, I was asked to go to London where I remained only one month.
From March, 1915, until the break in diplomatic relations I was the war
correspondent for the United Press within the Central Powers. In
Berlin, Vienna and Budapest, I met the highest government officials,
leading business men and financiers. I knew Secretaries of State Von
Jagow and Zimmermann; General von Kluck, who drove the German first
army against Paris in August, 1914; General von Falkenhayn, former
Chief of the General Staff; Philip Scheidemann, leader of the Reichstag
Socialists; Count Stefan Tisza, Minister President of Hungary and Count
Albert Apponyi.
While my headquarters were in Berlin, I made frequent journeys to the
front in Belgium, France, Poland, Russia and Roumania. Ten times I was
on the battlefields during important military engagements. Verdun, the
Somme battlefield, General Brusiloff's offensive against Austria and
the invasion of Roumania, I saw almost as well as a soldier.
After the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the beginning of critical
relations with the United States I was in constant touch with James W.
Gerard, the American Ambassador, and the Foreign Office. I followed
closely the effects of American political intervention until February
10th, 1917. Frequent visits to Holland and Denmark gave me the
impressions of those countries regarding President Wilson and the
United States. En route to Washington with Ambassador Gerard, I met in
Berne, Paris and Madrid, officials and people who interpreted the
affairs in these countries.
So, from the beginning of the war until today, I have been at the
strategic points as our relations with Germany developed and came to a
climax. At the beginning of the war I was sympathetic with Germany,
but my sympathy changed to disgust as I watched developments in Berlin
change the German people from world citizens to narrow-minded,
deceitful tools of a ruthless government. I saw Germany outlaw
herself. I saw the effects of President Wilson's notes. I saw the
anti-American propaganda begin. I saw the Germany of 1915 disappear.
I saw the birth of lawless Germany.
In this book I shall try to take the reader from Washington to Berlin
and back again, to show the beginning and the end of our diplomatic
relations with the German government. I believe that the United States
by two years of patience and note-writing, has done more to accomplish
the destruction of militarism and to encourage freedom of thought in
Germany than the Allies did during nearly three years of fighting. The
United States helped the German people think for themselves, but being
children in international affairs, the people soon accepted the
inspired thinking of the government. Instead of forcing their opinions
upon the rulers until results were evident, they chose to follow with
blind faith their military gods.
The United States is now at war with Germany because the Imperial
Government willed it. The United States is at war to aid the movement
for democracy in Germany; to help the German people realize that they
must think for themselves. The seeds of democratic thought which
Wilson's notes sowed in Germany are growing. If the Imperial
Government had not frightened the people into a belief that too much
thinking would be dangerous for the Fatherland, the United States would
not today be at war with the Kaiser's government. Only one thing now
will make the people realize that they must think for themselves if
they wish to exist as a nation and as a race. That is a military
defeat, a defeat on the battlefields of the Kaiser, von Hindenburg and
the Rhine Valley ammunition interests. Only a decisive defeat will
shake the public confidence in the nation's leaders. Only a destroyed
German army leadership will make the people overthrow the group of men
who do Germany's political thinking to-day.
C. W. A.
New York, May, 1917.
* * * * * * * * *
"Abraham Lincoln said that this Republic could not exist half slave and
half free. Now, with similar clarity, we perceive that the world
cannot exist half German and half free. We have to put an end to the
bloody doctrine of the superior race--to that anarchy which is
expressed in the conviction that German necessity is above all law. We
have to put an end to the German idea of ruthlessness. We have to put
an end to the doctrine that it is right to make every use of power that
is possible, without regard to any restriction of justice, of honour,
of humanity."
_New York Tribune,
April 7, 1917._
* * * * * * * * *
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER
I. MOBILIZATION OF PUBLIC OPINION
II. "PIRATES SINK ANOTHER NEUTRAL SHIP"
III. THE GULF BETWEEN KIEL AND BERLIN
IV. THE HATE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AMERICA
V. THE DOWNFALL OF VON TIRPITZ AND VON FALKENHAYN
VI. THE PERIOD OF NEW ORIENTATION
VII. THE BUBBLING ECONOMIC VOLCANO
VIII. THE PEACE DRIVE OF DECEMBER 12TH
IX. THE BERNHARDI OF THE SEAS
X. THE OUTLAWED NATION
XI. THE UNITED STATES AT WAR
XII. PRESIDENT WILSON
APPENDIX
ILLUSTRATIONS
A DOCUMENT CIRCULATED BY "THE LEAGUE OF TRUTH"--THE RED BLOODY HAND ON
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE . . . Frontispiece
FIRST PAGE OF THE AUTHOR'S PASSPORT
A "BERLIN" EXTRA
BLOOD-TRAFFICKERS
FIRST PAGE OF THE MAGAZINE "LIGHT AND TRUTH"
AN ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA DOCUMENT
GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND
THIS IS THE PHOTOGRAPH OF VON HINDENBURG WHICH EVERY GERMAN HAS IN HIS
HOME
THE FOOD SITUATION AT A GLANCE
THE POPE TO PRESIDENT WILSON----"HOW CAN MY PEACE ANGEL FLY, MR.
PRESIDENT, WHEN YOU ALWAYS PUT SHELLS IN HER POCKETS?"
"GOD WILL NOT PERMIT THE GERMAN PEOPLE TO GO DOWN"
THE NEW WEATHER CAPE
CHART SHOWING TONNAGE OF SHIPS SUNK BY GERMAN SUBMARINES FROM REAR
ADMIRAL HOLLWEG'S BOOK
AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE BERLIN "DEUTSCHE TAGES-ZEITUNG" FOR THE
BOOK--"PRESIDENT BLUFF" MEANING PRESIDENT WILSON
THE KAISER'S NEW YEAR ORDER TO THE ARMY AND NAVY
SCHWAB TO MR. WILSON--"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, GREAT LITTLE LEADER, THE
WHOLE PLACE WILL BLOW UP IF YOU SMOKE HERE!"
"THE NEW OLD PRESIDENT. LONG LIVE AMERICA! LONG LIVE PEACE! LONG
LIVE THE AMMUNITION FACTORIES!"
THE WILSON WILL
THE AUTHOR'S CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE REICHSTAG ON APRIL 5TH, 1916
AMBASSADOR GERARD ARRIVING IN PARIS
A POST-CARD FROM GENERAL VON KLUCK
GERMANY, THE NEXT REPUBLIC?
CHAPTER I
MOBILIZATION OF PUBLIC OPINION
I
The Haupttelegraphenamt (the Chief Telegraph Office) in Berlin is the
centre of the entire telegraph system of Germany. It is a large, brick
building in the Franzoesischestrasse guarded, day and night, by
soldiers. The sidewalks outside the building are barricaded. Without
a pass no one can enter. Foreign correspondents in Berlin, when they
had telegrams to send to their newspapers, frequently took them from
the Foreign Office to the Chief Telegraph Office personally in order to
speed them on their way to the outside world. The censored despatches
were sealed in a Foreign Office envelope. With this credential
correspondents were permitted to enter the building and the room where
all telegrams are passed by the military authorities.
During my two years' stay in Berlin I went to the telegraph office
several times every week. Often I had to wait while the military
censor read my despatches. On a large bulletin board in this room, I
saw, and often read, documents posted for the information of the
telegraph officials. During one of my first waiting periods I read an
original document relating to the events at the beginning of the war.
This was a typewritten letter signed by the Director of the Post and
Telegraph. Because I was always watched by a soldier escort, I could
never copy it. But after reading it scores of times I soon memorised
everything, including the periods.
This document was as follows:
Office of the Imperial Post & Telegraph
August 2nd, 1914.
Announcement No. 3.
To the Chief Telegraph Office:
From to-day on, the Post and Telegraph communications between Germany
on the one hand and:
1. England,
2. France,
3. Russia,
4. Japan,
5. Belgium,
6. Italy,
7. Montenegro,
8. Servia,
9. Portugal;
on the other hand are interrupted because Germany finds herself in a
state of war.
(Signed) Director of the Post and Telegraph.
This notice, which was never published, shows that the man who directed
the Post and Telegraph Service of the Imperial Government knew on the
2nd of August, 1914, who Germany's enemies would be. Of the eleven
enemies of Germany to-day only Roumania and the United States were not
included. If the Director of the Post and Telegraph knew what to
expect, it is certain that the Imperial Government knew. This
announcement shows that Germany expected war with nine different
nations, but at the time it was posted on the bulletin board of the
Haupttelegraphenamt, neither Italy, Japan, Belgium nor Portugal had
declared war. Italy did not declare war until nearly a year and a half
afterwards, Portugal nearly two years afterward and Japan not until
December, 1914.
This document throws an interesting light upon the preparations Germany
made for a world war.
The White, Yellow, Grey and Blue Books, which all of the belligerents
published after the beginning of the war, dealt only with the attempts
of these nations to prevent the war. None of the nations has as yet
published white books to show how it prepared for war, and still, every
nation in Europe had been expecting and preparing for a European
conflagration. Winston Churchill, when he was First Lord of the
Admiralty, stated at the beginning of the war that England's fleet was
mobilised. France had contributed millions of francs to fortify the
Russian border in Poland, although Germany had made most of the guns.
Belgium had what the Kaiser called, "a contemptible little army" but
the soldiers knew how to fight when the invaders came. Germany had new
42 cm. guns and a network of railroads which operated like shuttles
between the Russian and French and Belgian frontiers. Ever since 1870
Europe had been talking war. Children were brought up and educated
into the belief that some day war would come. Most people considered
it inevitable, although not every one wanted it.
During the exciting days of August, 1914, I was calling at the
belligerent embassies and legations in Washington. Neither M.
Jusserand, the French Ambassador, nor Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the
British Ambassador, nor Count von Bernstorff, the Kaiser's
representative, were in Washington then. But it was not many weeks
until all three had hastened to this country from Europe. Almost the
first act of the belligerents was to send their envoys to Washington.
As I met these men I was in a sense an agent of public opinion who
called each day to report the opinions of the belligerents to the
readers of American newspapers. One day at the British Embassy I was
given copies of the White Book and of many other documents which Great
Britain had issued to show how she tried to avoid the war. In
conversations later with Ambassador von Bernstorff, I was given the
German viewpoint.
The thing which impressed me at the time was the desire of these
officials to get their opinions before the American people. But why
did these ambassadors want the standpoints of their governments
understood over here? Why was the United States singled out of all
other neutrals? If all the belligerents really wanted to avoid war,
why did they not begin twenty years before, to prevent it, instead of,
to prepare for it?
All the powers issued their official documents for one primary
purpose--to win public opinion. First, it was necessary for each
country to convince its own people that their country was being
attacked and that their leaders had done everything possible to avoid
war. Even in Europe people would not fight without a reason. The
German Government told the people that unless the army was mobilised
immediately Russia would invade and seize East Prussia. England,
France and Belgium explained to their people that Germany was out to
conquer the world by way of Belgium and France. But White Books were
not circulated alone in Europe; they were sent by the hundreds of
thousands into the United States and translated into every known
language so that the people of the whole world could read them.
Then the word battles between the Allies and the Central Powers began
in the United States. While the soldiers fought on the battlefields of
Belgium, France, East Prussia and Poland, an equally bitter struggle
was carried on in the United States. In Europe the object was to stop
the invaders. In America the goal was public opinion.
It was not until several months after the beginning of the war that Sir
Edward Grey and Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg began to discuss what
the two countries had done before the war, to avoid it. The only thing
either nation could refer to was the 1912 Conference between Lord
Haldane and the Chancellor. This was the only real attempt made by the
two leading belligerents to come to an understanding to avoid
inevitable bloodshed. Discussions of these conferences were soon
hushed up in Europe because of the bitterness of the people against
each other. The Hymn of Hate had stirred the German people and the
Zeppelin raids were beginning to sow the seeds of determination in the
hearts of the British. It was too late to talk about why the war was
not prevented. So each set of belligerents had to rely upon the
official documents at the beginning of the war to show what was done to
avoid it.
These White Books were written to win public opinion. But why were the
people _suddenly_ taken into the confidence of their governments? Why
had the governments of England, France, Germany and Russia not been so
frank before 1914? Why had they all been interested in making the
people speculate as to what would come, and how it would come about?
Why were all the nations encouraging suspicion? Why did they always
question the motives, as well as the acts, of each other? Is it
possible that the world progressed faster than the governments and that
the governments suddenly realised that public opinion was the biggest
factor in the world? Each one knew that a war could not be waged
without public support and each one knew that the sympathy of the
outside world depended more upon public opinion than upon business or
military relations.
II
How America Was Shocked by the War
Previous to July, 1914, the American people had thought very little
about a European war. While the war parties and financiers of Europe
had been preparing a long time for the conflict, people over here had
been thinking about peace. Americans discussed more of the
possibilities of international peace and arbitration than war.
Europeans lived through nothing except an expectancy of war. Even the
people knew who the enemies might be. The German government, as the
announcement of the Post and Telegraph Director shows, knew nine of its
possible enemies before war had been declared. So it was but natural,
when the first reports reached the United States saying that the
greatest powers of Europe were engaged in a death struggle, that people
were shocked and horrified. And it was but natural for thousands of
them to besiege President Wilson with requests for him to offer his
services as a mediator.
The war came, too, during the holiday season in Europe. Over 90,000
Americans were in the war zones. The State Department was flooded with
telegrams. Senators and Congressmen were urged to use their influence
to get money to stranded Americans to help them home. The 235 U.S.
diplomatic and consular representatives were asked to locate Americans
and see to their comfort and safety. Not until Americans realised how
closely they were related to Europe could they picture themselves as
having a direct interest in the war. Then the stock market began to
tumble. The New York Stock Exchange was closed. South America asked
New York for credit and supplies, and neutral Europe, as well as China
in the Far East, looked to the United States to keep the war within
bounds. Uncle Sam became the Atlas of the world and nearly every
belligerent requested this government to take over its diplomatic and
consular interests in enemy countries. Diplomacy, commerce, finance
and shipping suddenly became dependent upon this country. Not only the
belligerents but the neutrals sought the leadership of a nation which
could look after all the interests, except those of purely military and
naval operations. The eyes of the world centred upon Washington.
President Wilson, as the official head of the government, was signalled
out as the one man to help them in their suffering and to listen to
their appeals. The belligerent governments addressed their protests
and their notes to Wilson. Belgium sent a special commission to gain
the President's ear. The peace friends throughout the world, even
those in the belligerent countries, looked to Wilson for guidance and
help.
In August, 1914, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the President's wife, was
dangerously ill. I was at the White House every day to report the
developments there for the United Press. On the evening of the 5th of
August Secretary Tumulty called the correspondents and told them that
the President, who was deeply distressed by the war, and who was
suffering personally because of his wife's illness, had written at his
wife's bedside the following message:
"As official head of one of the powers signatory to The Hague
Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty, under Article III
of that Convention, to say to you in the spirit of most earnest
friendship that I should welcome an opportunity to act in the interests
of European peace, either now or at any other time that might be
thought more suitable, as an occasion to serve you and all concerned in
a way that would afford me lasting cause for gratitude and happiness.
"(Signed) WOODROW WILSON."
The President's Secretary cabled this to the Emperors of Germany and
Austria-Hungary; the King of England, the Czar of Russia and the
President of France. The President's brief note touched the chord of
sympathy of the whole world; but it was too late then to stop the war.
European statesmen had been preparing for a conflict. With the public
support which each nation had, each government wanted to fight until
there was a victory.
One of the first things which seemed to appeal to President Wilson was
the fact that not only public opinion of Europe, but of America, sought
a spokesman. Unlike Roosevelt, who led public opinion, unlike Taft,
who disregarded it, Wilson took the attitude that the greatest force in
the world was public opinion. He believed public opinion was greater
than the presidency. He felt that he was the man the American people
had chosen to interpret and express their opinion. Wilson's policy was
to permit public opinion to rule America. Those of us who spent two
years in Germany could see this very clearly.
The President announced the plank for his international policy when he
spoke at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, at
Washington, shortly after the war began.
[Illustration: First page of the author's passport.]
"_The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world_," he said,
"and the processes of international law are the slow processes by which
opinion works its will. What impresses me is the constant thought that
that is the tribunal at the bar of which we all sit. I would call your
attention, incidentally, to the circumstance that it does not observe
the ordinary rules of evidence; which has sometimes suggested to me
that the ordinary rules of evidence had shown some signs of growing
antique. Everything, rumour included, is heard in this court, and the
standard of judgment is not so much the character of the testimony as
the character of the witness. The motives are disclosed, the purposes
are conjectured and that opinion is finally accepted which seems to be,
not the best founded in law, perhaps, but the best founded in integrity
of character and of morals. That is the process which is slowly
working its will upon the world; and what we should be watchful of is
not so much jealous interests as sound principles of action. The
disinterested course is not alone the biggest course to pursue; but it
is in the long run the most profitable course to pursue. If you can
establish your character you can establish your credit.
"Understand me, gentlemen, I am not venturing in this presence to
impeach the law. For the present, by the force of circumstances, I am
in part the embodiment of the law and it would be very awkward to
disavow myself. But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this
time of world change, in this time when we are going to find out just
how, in what particulars, and to what extent the real facts of human
life and the real moral judgments of mankind prevail, it is worth while
looking inside our municipal law and seeing whether the judgments of
the law are made square with the moral judgments of mankind. For I
believe that we are custodians of the spirit of righteousness, of the
spirit of equal handed justice, of the spirit of hope which believes in
the perfectibility of the law with the perfectibility of human life
itself.
"Public life, like private life, would be very dull and dry if it were
not for this belief in the essential beauty of the human spirit and the
belief that the human spirit should be translated into action and into
ordinance. Not entire. You cannot go any faster than you can advance
the average moral judgment of the mass, but you can go at least as fast
as that, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average
moral judgments of the mass. I have in my life dealt with all sorts
and conditions of men, and I have found that the flame of moral
judgment burns just as bright in the man of humble life and limited
experience as in the scholar and man of affairs. And I would like his
voice always to be heard, not as a witness, not as speaking in his own
case, but as if he were the voice of men in general, in our courts of
justice, as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the law
has been. My hope is that, being stirred to the depths by the
extraordinary circumstances of the time in which we live, we may
recover from those steps something of a renewal of that vision of the
law with which men may be supposed to have started out in the old days
of the oracles, who commune with the intimations of divinity."
Before this war, very few nations paid any attention to public opinion.
France was probably the beginner. Some twenty years before 1914,
France began to extend her civilisation to Russia, Italy, the Balkans
and Syria. In Roumania, today, one hears almost as much French as
Roumanian spoken. Ninety per cent of the lawyers in Bucharest were
educated in Paris. Most of the doctors in Roumania studied in France.
France spread her influence by education.
The very fact that the belligerents tried to mobilise public opinion in
the United States in their favour shows that 1914 was a milestone in
international affairs. This was the first time any foreign power ever
attempted to fight for the good will--the public opinion--of this
nation. The governments themselves realised the value of public
opinion in their own boundaries, but when the war began they realised
that it was a power inside the realms of their neighbours, too.
When differences of opinion developed between the United States and the
belligerents the first thing President Wilson did was to publish all
the documents and papers in the possession of the American government
relating to the controversy. The publicity which the President gave
the diplomatic correspondence between this government and Great Britain
over the search and seizure of vessels emphasised in Washington this
tendency in our foreign relations. At the beginning of England's
seizure of American merchantmen carrying cargoes to neutral European
countries, the State Department lodged individual protests, but no heed
was paid to them by the London officials. Then the United States made
public the negotiations seeking to accomplish by publicity what a
previous exchange of diplomatic notes failed to do.
Discussing this action of the President in an editorial on "Diplomacy
in the Dark," the New York _World_ said:
"President Wilson's protest to the British Government is a clear,
temperate, courteous assertion of the trade rights of neutral countries
in time of war. It represents not only the established policy of the
United States but the established policy of Great Britain. It voices
the opinion of practically all the American people, and there are few
Englishmen, even in time of war, who will take issue with the
principles upheld by the President. Yet a serious misunderstanding was
risked because it is the habit of diplomacy to operate in the dark.
"Fortunately, President Wilson by making the note public prevented the
original misunderstanding from spreading. But the lesson ought not to
stop there. Our State Department, as Mr. Wickersham recently pointed
out in a letter to the _World_, has never had a settled policy of
publicity in regard to our diplomatic affairs. No Blue Books or White
Books are ever issued. What information the country obtains must be
pried out of the Department. This has been our diplomatic policy for
more than a century, and it is a policy that if continued will some day
end disastrously."
Speaking in Atlanta in 1912, President Wilson stated that this
government would never gain another foot of territory by conquest.
This dispelled whatever apprehension there was that the United States
might seek to annex Mexico. Later, in asking Congress to repeal the
Panama Tolls Act of 1912, the President said the good will of Europe
was a more valuable asset than commercial advantages gained by
discriminatory legislation.
Thus at the outset of President Wilson's first administration, foreign
powers were given to understand that Mr. Wilson believed in the power
of public opinion; that he favoured publicity as a means of
accomplishing what could not be done by confidential negotiations; that
he did not believe in annexation and that he was ready at any time to
help end the war.
III
Before the Blockade
President Wilson's policy during the first six months of the war was
one of impartiality and neutrality. The first diplomatic
representative in Washington to question the sincerity of the executive
was Dr. Constantine Dumba, the exiled Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, who
was sent to the United States because he was not a noble, and,
therefore, better able to understand and interpret American ways! He
asked me one day whether I thought Wilson was neutral. He said he had
been told the President was pro-English. He believed, he said, that
everything the President had done so far showed he sympathised with the
Entente. While we were talking I recalled what the President's
stenographer, Charles L. Swem, said one day when we were going to New
York with the President.
"I am present at every conference the President holds," he stated. "I
take all his dictation. I think he is the most neutral man in America.
I have never heard him express an opinion one way or the other, and if
he had I would surely know of it."
I told Dr. Dumba this story, which interested him, and he made no
comments.
As I was at the White House nearly every day I had an opportunity to
learn what the President would say to callers and friends, although I
was seldom privileged to use the information. Even now I do not recall
a single statement which ever gave me the impression that the President
sided with one group of belligerents.
The President's sincerity and firm desire for neutrality was emphasised
in his appeal to "My Countrymen."
"The people of the United States," he said, "are drawn from many
nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and
inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and
desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the
conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the
momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to
allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy
responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people
of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to
the government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honour and
affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in
camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war
itself in impulse and opinion, if not in action.
"My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest
wish and purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country
of ours, which is of course the first in our thoughts and in our
hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a nation fit
beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the
dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a
nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in
her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is
honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the
world."
Many Americans believed even early in the war that the United States
should have protested against the invasion of Belgium. Others thought
the government should prohibit the shipments of war supplies to the
belligerents. America _was_ divided by the great issues in Europe, but
the great majority of Americans believed with the President, that the
best service Uncle Sam could render would be to help bring about peace.
Until February, 1915, when the von Tirpitz submarine blockade of
England was proclaimed, only American interests, not American lives,
had been drawn into the war. But when the German Admiralty announced
that neutral as well as belligerent ships in British waters would be
sunk without warning, there was a new and unexpected obstacle to
neutrality. The high seas were as much American as British. The
oceans were no nation's property and they could not justly be used as
battlegrounds for ruthless warfare by either belligerent.
Germany, therefore, was the first to challenge American neutrality.
Germany was the first to threaten American lives. Germany, which was
the first to show contempt for Wilson, forced the President, as well as
the people, to alter policies and adapt American neutrality to a new
and grave danger.