SUMMING UP
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” not merely the peace lovers; for action
is what makes thought operative and valuable. Above all, the peace
prattlers are in no way blessed. On the contrary, only mischief has
sprung from the activities of the professional peace prattlers, the
ultrapacificists, who, with the shrill clamor of eunuchs, preach the
gospel of the milk and water of virtue and scream that belief in the
efficacy of diluted moral mush is essential to salvation.
It seems necessary every time I state my position to guard against
the counterwords of wilful folly by reiterating that my disagreement
with the peace-at-any-price men, the ultrapacificists, is not in the
least because they favor peace. I object to them, first, because they
have proved themselves futile and impotent in working for peace, and,
second, because they commit what is not merely the capital error but
the crime against morality of failing to uphold righteousness as the
all-important end toward which we should strive. In actual practice
they advocate the peace of unrighteousness just as fervently as they
advocate the peace of righteousness. I have as little sympathy as
they have for the men who deify mere brutal force, who insist that
power justifies wrong-doing, and who declare that there is no such
thing as international morality. But the ultrapacificists really play
into the hands of these men. To condemn equally might which backs
right and might which overthrows right is to render positive service
to wrong-doers. It is as if in private life we condemned alike both
the policeman and the dynamiter or black-hand kidnapper or white
slaver whom he has arrested. To denounce the nation that wages war in
self-defense, or from a generous desire to relieve the oppressed, in
the same terms in which we denounce war waged in a spirit of greed
or wanton folly stands on an exact par with denouncing equally a
murderer and the policeman who, at peril of his life and by force of
arms, arrests the murderer. In each case the denunciation denotes not
loftiness of soul but weakness both of mind and of morals.
In a capital book, by a German, Mr. Edmund von Mach, entitled “What
Germany Wants,” there is the following noble passage at the outset:
During the preparation of this book the writer received from his
uncle, a veteran army officer living in Dresden, a brief note
containing the following laconic record:
“1793, your great-grandfather at Kostheim.
“1815, your grandfather at Liegnitz.
“1870, myself--all severely wounded by French bullets.
“1914, my son, captain in the 6th Regiment of Dragoons.
“Four generations obliged to fight the French!”
When the writer turns to his American friends of French descent,
he finds there similar records, and often even greater sorrow,
for death has come to many of them. In Europe their families and
his have looked upon each other as enemies for generations, while
a few years in the clarifying atmosphere of America have made
friends of former Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, and Englishmen.
Jointly they pray that the present war may not be carried to
such a pass that an early and honorable peace becomes impossible
for any one of these great nations. Is it asking too much that
America may be vouchsafed in not too distant a future to do for
their respective native lands what the American institutions
have done for them individually, help them to regard each other
at their true worth, unblinded by traditional hatred or fiery
passion?
It is in the spirit of this statement that we Americans should act. We
are a people different from, but akin, to all the nations of Europe.
We should feel a real friendship for each of the contesting powers and
a real desire to work so as to secure justice for each. This cannot
be done by preserving a tame and spiritless neutrality which treats
good and evil on precisely the same basis. Such a neutrality never
has enabled and never will enable any nation to do a great work for
righteousness. Our true course should be to judge each nation on its
conduct, unhesitatingly to antagonize every nation that does ill as
regards the point on which it does ill, and equally without hesitation
to act, as cool-headed and yet generous wisdom may dictate, so as
disinterestedly to further the welfare of all.
One of the greatest of international duties ought to be the protection
of small, highly civilized, well-behaved, and self-respecting states
from oppression and conquest by their powerful military neighbors. Such
nations as Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Uruguay, Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden play a great and honorable part in the development of
civilization. The subjugation of any one of them is a crime against,
the destruction of any one of them is a loss to, mankind.
I feel in the strongest way that we should have interfered, at least
to the extent of the most emphatic diplomatic protest and at the
very outset--and then by whatever further action was necessary--in
regard to the violation of the neutrality of Belgium; for this act
was the earliest and the most important and, in its consequences, the
most ruinous of all the violations and offenses against treaties
committed by any combatant during the war. But it was not the only
one. The Japanese and English forces not long after violated Chinese
neutrality in attacking Kiao-Chau. It has been alleged and not denied
that the British ship _Highflyer_ sunk the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_
in neutral Spanish waters, this being also a violation of the Hague
conventions; and on October 10th the German government issued an
official protest about alleged violations of the Geneva convention by
the French. Furthermore, the methods employed in strewing portions of
the seas with floating mines have been such as to warrant the most
careful investigation by any neutral nations which treat neutrality
pacts and Hague conventions as other than merely dead letters. Not a
few offenses have been committed against our own people.
If, instead of observing a timid and spiritless neutrality, we had
lived up to our obligations by taking action in all of these cases
without regard to which power it was that was alleged to have done
wrong, we would have followed the only course that would both have
told for world righteousness and have served our own self-respect. The
course actually followed by Messrs. Wilson, Bryan, and Daniels has
been to permit our own power for self-defense steadily to diminish
while at the same time refusing to do what we were solemnly bound to
do in order to protest against wrong and to render some kind of aid
to weak nations that had been wronged. Inasmuch as, in the first and
greatest and the most ruinous case of violation of neutral rights and
of international morality, this nation, under the guidance of Messrs.
Wilson and Bryan, kept timid silence and dared not protest, it would
be--and is--an act of deliberate bad faith to protest only as regards
subsequent and less important violations. Of course, if, as a people,
we frankly take the ground that our actions are based upon nothing
whatever but our own selfish and short-sighted interest, it is possible
to protest only against violations of neutrality that at the moment
unfavorably affect our own interests. Inaction is often itself the most
offensive form of action; the administration has persistently refused
to live up to the solemn national obligations to strive to protect
other unoffending nations from wrong; and this conduct adds a peculiar
touch of hypocrisy to the action taken at the same time in signing a
couple of score of all-inclusive arbitration treaties pretentiously
heralded as serving world righteousness. If we had acted as we ought to
have acted regarding Belgium we could then with a clear conscience have
made effective protest regarding every other case of violation of the
rights of neutrals or of offenses committed by the belligerents against
one another or against us in violation of the Hague conventions.
Moreover, the attitude of the administration has not even placated
the powers it was desired to please. Thanks to its action, the United
States during the last five months has gained neither the good-will nor
the respect of any of the combatants. On the contrary, it has steadily
grown rather more disliked and rather less respected by all of them.
In facing a difficult and critical situation, any administration is
entitled to a free hand until it has had time to develop the action
which it considers appropriate, for often there is more than one
way in which it is possible to take efficient action. But when so
much time has passed, either without action or with only mischievous
action, as gravely to compromise both the honor and the interest of
the country, then it becomes a duty for self-respecting citizens to
whom their country is dear to speak out. From the very outset I felt
that the administration was following a wrong course. But no action of
mine could make it take the right course, and there was a possibility
that there was some object aside from political advantage in the
course followed. I kept silence as long as silence was compatible
with regard for the national honor and welfare. I spoke only when it
became imperative to speak under penalty of tame acquiescence in tame
failure to perform national duty. It has become evident that the
administration has had no plan whatever save the dexterous avoidance
of all responsibility and therefore of all duty, and the effort to
persuade our people as a whole that this inaction was for their
interest--combined with other less openly expressed and less worthy
efforts of purely political type.
There is therefore no longer any reason for failure to point out that
if the President and Secretary of State had been thoroughly acquainted
in advance, as of course they ought to have been acquainted, with
the European situation, and if they had possessed an intelligent and
resolute purpose squarely to meet their heavy responsibilities and
thereby to serve the honor of this country and the interest of mankind,
they would have taken action on July 29th, 30th, or 31st, certainly
not later than August 1st. On such occasions there is a peculiar
applicability in the old proverb: Nine tenths of wisdom consists in
being wise in time. If those responsible for the management of our
foreign affairs had been content to dwell in a world of fact instead of
a world of third-rate fiction, they would have understood that at such
a time of world crisis it was an unworthy avoidance of duty to fuss
with silly little all-inclusive arbitration treaties when the need of
the day demanded that they devote all their energies to the terrible
problems of the day. They would have known that a German invasion
of Switzerland was possible but improbable and a German invasion of
Belgium overwhelmingly probable. They would have known that vigorous
action by the United States government, taken with such entire good
faith as to make it evident that it was in the interest of Belgium
and not in the interest of France and England, and that if there was
occasion it would be taken against France and England as quickly as
against Germany, might very possibly have resulted in either putting
a stop to the war or in localizing and narrowly circumscribing its
area. It is, of course, possible that the action would have failed of
its immediate purpose. But even in that case it cannot be doubted that
it would have been efficient as a check upon the subsequent wrongs
committed.
Nor was the opportunity for action limited in time. Even if the
administration had failed thus to act at the outset of the war, the
protests officially made both by the German Emperor and by the Belgian
government to the President as to alleged misconduct in the prosecution
of the war not only gave him warrant for action but required him to
act. Meanwhile, from the moment when the war was declared, it became
inexcusable of the administration not to take immediate steps to
put the navy into efficient shape, and at least to make our military
forces on land more respectable. It is possible not to justify but to
explain the action of the administration in using the navy for the
sixteen months prior to this war in such a way as greatly to impair
its efficiency; for of course when the President selected Mr. Daniels
as Secretary of the Navy he showed, on the supposition that he was not
indifferent to its welfare, an entire ignorance of what that welfare
demanded; and therefore the failure to keep the navy efficient may have
been due at first to mere inability to exercise foresight. But with war
impending, such failure to exercise foresight became inexcusable. None
of the effective fighting craft are of any real use so far as Mexico
is concerned. The navy should at once have been assembled in northern
waters, either in the Atlantic or the Pacific, and immediate steps
taken to bring it to the highest point of efficiency.
It is because I believe our attitude should be one of sincere good-will
toward all nations that I so strongly feel that we should endeavor
to work for a league of peace among all nations rather than trust to
alliances with any particular group. Moreover, alliances are very
shifty and uncertain. Within twenty years England has regarded France
as her immediately dangerous opponent; within ten years she has felt
that Russia was the one power against which she must at all costs
guard herself; and during the same period there have been times when
Belgium has hated England with a peculiar fervor. Alliances must be
based on self-interest and must continually shift. But in such a world
league as that of which we speak and dream, the test would be conduct
and not merely selfish interest, and so there would be no shifting of
policy.
It is not yet opportune to discuss in detail the exact method by
which the nations of the world shall put the collective strength of
civilization behind the purpose of civilization to do right, using as
an instrumentality for peace such a world league. I have in the last
chapter given the bare outline of such a plan. Probably at the outset
it would be an absolute impossibility to devise a non-national or
purely international police force which would be effective in a great
crisis. The prime necessity is that all the great nations should agree
in good faith to use their combined warlike strength to coerce any
nation, whichever one it may be, that declines to abide the decision of
some competent international tribunal.
Our business is to create the beginnings of international order out of
the world of nations as these nations actually exist. We do not have to
deal with a world of pacificists and therefore we must proceed on the
assumption that treaties will never acquire sanctity until nations are
ready to seal them with their blood. We are not striving for peace in
heaven. That is not our affair. What we were bidden to strive for is
“peace on earth and good-will toward men.” To fulfil this injunction
it is necessary to treat the earth as it is and men as they are, as
an indispensable pre-requisite to making the earth a better place in
which to live and men better fit to live in it. It is inexcusable moral
culpability on our part to pretend to carry out this injunction in such
fashion as to nullify it; and this we do if we make believe that the
earth is what it is not and if our professions of bringing good-will
toward men are in actual practice shown to be empty shams. Peace
congresses, peace parades, the appointment and celebration of days
of prayer for peace, and the like, which result merely in giving the
participants the feeling that they have accomplished something and are
therefore to be excused from hard, practical work for righteousness,
are empty shams. Treaties such as the recent all-inclusive arbitration
treaties are worse than empty shams and convict us as a nation of
moral culpability when our representatives sign them at the same time
that they refuse to risk anything to make good the signatures we have
already affixed to the Hague conventions.
Moderate and sensible treaties which mean something and which can
and will be enforced mark a real advance for the human race. As has
been well said: “It is our business to make no treaties which we are
not ready to maintain with all our resources, for every such ‘scrap
of paper’ is like a forged check--an assault on our credit in the
world.” Promises that are idly given and idly broken represent profound
detriment to the morality of nations. Until no promise is idly entered
into and until promises that have once been made are kept, at no
matter what cost of risk and effort and positive loss, just so long
will distrust and suspicion and wrong-doing rack the world. No honest
lawyer will hesitate to advise his client against signing a contract
either detrimental to his interests or impossible of fulfilment;
and the individual who signs such a contract at once makes himself
either an object of suspicion to sound-headed men or else an object of
derision to all men. One of the stock jokes in the comic columns of
the newspapers refers to the man who swears off or takes the pledge,
or makes an indefinite number of good resolutions on New Year’s Day,
and fails to keep his pledge or promise or resolution; this was one of
Mark Twain’s favorite subjects for derision. The man who continually
makes new promises without living up to those he has already made, and
who takes pledges which he breaks, is rightly treated as an object for
contemptuous fun. The nation which behaves in like manner deserves no
higher consideration.
The conduct of President Wilson and Secretary Bryan in signing these
all-inclusive treaties at the same time that they have kept silent
about the breaking of the Hague conventions has represented the kind of
wrong-doing to this nation that would be represented in private life
by the conduct of the individuals who sign such contracts as those
mentioned. The administration has looked on without a protest while
the Hague conventions have been torn up and thrown to the wind. It has
watched the paper structure of good-will collapse without taking one
step to prevent it; and yet foolish pacificists, the very men who in
the past have been most vociferous about international morality, have
praised it for this position. The assertion that our neutrality carries
with it the obligation to be silent when our own Hague conventions are
destroyed represents an active step against the peace of righteousness.
The only way to show that our faith in public law was real was to
protest against the assault on international morality implied in the
invasion of Belgium.
Unless some one at some time is ready to take some chance for the
sake of internationalism, that is of international morality, it will
remain what it is to-day, an object of derision to aggressive nations.
Even if nothing more than an emphatic protest had been made against
what was done in Belgium--it is not at this time necessary for me
to state exactly what, in my judgment, ought to have been done--the
foundations would have been laid for an effective world opinion against
international cynicism. Pacificists claim that we have acted so as to
preserve the good-will of Europe and to exercise a guiding influence
in the settlement of the war. This is an idea which appeals to the
thoughtless, for it gratifies our desire to keep out of trouble and
also our vanity by the hope that we shall do great things with small
difficulty. It may or may not be that the settlement will finally be
made by a peace congress in which the President of the United States
will hold titular position of headship. But under conditions as they
are now the real importance of the President in such a peace congress
will be comparable to the real importance of the drum-major when he
walks at the head of a regiment. Small boys regard the drum-major as
much more important than the regimental commander; and the pacificist
grown-ups who applaud peace congresses sometimes show as regards the
drum-majors of these congresses the same touching lack of insight
which small boys show toward real drum-majors. As a matter of fact,
if the United States enters such a congress with nothing but a record
of comfortable neutrality or tame acquiescence in violated Hague
conventions, plus an array of vague treaties with no relation to
actual facts, it will be allowed to fill the position of international
drum-major and of nothing more; and even this position it will be
allowed to fill only so long as it suits the convenience of the men
who have done the actual fighting. The warring nations will settle
the issues in accordance with their own strength and position. Under
such conditions we shall be treated as we deserve to be treated, as a
nation of people who mean well feebly, whose words are not backed by
deeds, who like to prattle about both their own strength and their own
righteousness, but who are unwilling to run the risks without which
righteousness cannot be effectively served, and who are also unwilling
to undergo the toil of intelligent and hard-working preparation without
which strength when tested proves weakness.
In this world it is as true of nations as of individuals that the
things best worth having are rarely to be obtained in cheap fashion.
There is nothing easier than to meet in congresses and conventions and
pass resolutions in favor of virtue. There is also nothing more futile
unless those passing the resolutions are willing to make them good by
labor and endurance and active courage and self-denial. Readers of John
Hay’s poems will remember the scorn therein expressed for those who
“resoloot till the cows come home,” but do not put effort back of their
words. Those who would teach our people that service can be rendered or
greatness attained in easy, comfortable fashion, without facing risk,
hardship, and difficulty, are teaching what is false and mischievous.
Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all
essential to successful life. As a rule, the slothful ease of life is
in inverse proportion to its true success. This is true of the private
lives of farmers, business men, and mechanics. It is no less true of
the life of the nation which is made up of these farmers, business men,
and mechanics.
As yet, as events have most painfully shown, there is nothing to be
expected by any nation in a great crisis from anything except its
own strength. Under these circumstances it is criminal in the United
States not to prepare. Critics have stated that in advocating universal
military service on the Swiss plan in this country, I am advocating
militarism. I am not concerned with mere questions of terminology. The
plan I advocate would be a corrective of every evil which we associate
with the name of militarism. It would tend for order and self-respect
among our people. Not the smallest evil among the many evils that
exist in America is due to militarism. Save in the crisis of the Civil
War there has been no militarism in the United States and the only
militarist President we have ever had was Abraham Lincoln. Universal
service of the Swiss type would be educational in the highest and
best sense of the word. In Switzerland, as compared with the United
States, there are, relatively to the population, only one tenth the
number of murders and of crimes of violence. Doubtless other causes
have contributed to this, but doubtless also the intelligent collective
training of the Swiss people in habits of obedience, of self-reliance,
self-restraint and endurance, of applied patriotism and collective
action, has been a very potent factor in producing this good result.
As I have already said, I know of my own knowledge that two nations
which on certain occasions were obliged, perhaps as much by our fault
as by theirs, to take into account the question of possible war with
the United States, planned in such event to seize the Panama Canal and
to take and ransom or destroy certain of our great coast cities. They
planned this partly in the belief that our navy would intermittently
be allowed to become extremely inefficient, just as during the last
twenty months it has become inefficient, and partly in the belief
that our people are so wholly unmilitary, and so ridden to death
on the one hand by foolish pacificists and on the other by brutal
materialists whose only God is money, that we would not show ourselves
either resolutely patriotic or efficient even in what belated action
our utter lack of preparation permitted us to take. I believe that
these nations were and are wrong in their estimate of the underlying
strength of the American character. I believe that if war did really
come both the ultrapacificists, the peace-at-any-price men, and the
merely brutal materialists, who count all else as nothing compared to
the gratification of their greed for gain or their taste for ease,
for pleasure, and for vacuous excitement, would be driven before the
gale of popular feeling as leaves are driven through the fall woods.
But such aroused public feeling in the actual event would be wholly
inadequate to make good our failure to prepare.
We should in all humility imitate not a little of the spirit so much
in evidence among the Germans and the Japanese, the two nations which
in modern times have shown the most practical type of patriotism,
the greatest devotion to the common weal, the greatest success in
developing their economic resources and abilities from within, and the
greatest far-sightedness in safeguarding the country against possible
disaster from without. In the _Journal of the Military Service
Institution_ for the months of November and December of the present
year will be found a quotation from a Japanese military paper, _The
Comrades’ Magazine_, which displays an amount of practical good sense
together with patriotism and devotion to the welfare of the average
man which could well be copied by our people and which is worthy of
study by every intelligent American. Germany’s success in industrialism
has been as extraordinary and noteworthy as her success in securing
military efficiency, and fundamentally has been due to the development
of the same qualities in the nation.
At present the United States does not begin to get adequate return
in the way of efficient preparation for defense from the amount of
money appropriated every year. Both the executive and Congress are
responsible for this--and of course this means that the permanent
and ultimate responsibility rests on the people. It is really less a
question of spending more money than of knowing how to get the best
results for the money that we do spend. Most emphatically there should
be a comprehensive plan both for defense and for expenditure. The best
military and naval authorities--not merely the senior officers but the
best officers--should be required to produce comprehensive plans for
battle-ships, for submarines, for air-ships, for proper artillery,
for a more efficient regular army, and for a great popular reserve
behind the army. Every useless military post should be forthwith
abandoned; and this cannot be done save by getting Congress to accept
or reject plans for defense and expenditure in their entirety. If each
congressman or senator can put in his special plea for the erection
or retention of a military post for non-military reasons, and for
the promotion or favoring of some given officer or group of officers
also for non-military reasons, we can rest assured that good results
can never be obtained. Here, again, what is needed is not plans by
outsiders but the insistence by outsiders upon the army and navy
officers being required to produce the right plans, being backed up
when they do produce the right plans, and being held to a strict
accountability for any failure, active or passive, in their duty.
Moreover, these plans must be treated as part of the coherent policy of
the nation in international affairs. With a gentleman like Mr. Bryan
in the State Department it may be accepted as absolutely certain that
we never will have the highest grade of efficiency in the Departments
of War and of the Navy. With a gentleman like Mr. Daniels at the
head of the navy, it may be accepted as certain that the navy will
not be brought to the level of its possible powers. This means that
the people as a whole must demand of their leaders that they treat
seriously the navy and army and our foreign policy.
The waste in our navy and army is very great. This is inevitable as
long as we do not discriminate against the inefficient and as long
as we fail to put a premium upon efficiency. When I was President I
found out that a very large proportion of the old officers of the
army and even of the navy were physically incompetent to perform many
of their duties. The public was wholly indifferent on the subject.
Congress would not act. As a preliminary, and merely as a preliminary,
I established a regulation that before promotion officers should be
required to walk fifty miles or ride one hundred miles in three days.
This was in no way a sufficient test of an officer’s fitness. It
merely served to rid the service of men whose unfitness was absolutely
ludicrous. Yet in Congress and in the newspapers an extraordinary
din was raised against this test on the ground that it was unjust to
faithful elderly officers! The pacificists promptly assailed it on
the ground that to make the army efficient was a “warlike” act. All
kinds of philanthropists, including clergymen and college presidents,
wrote me that my action showed not only callousness of heart but also
a regrettable spirit of militarism. Any officer who because of failure
to come up to the test or for other reasons was put out of the service
was certain to receive ardent congressional championship; and every
kind of pressure was brought to bear on behalf of the unfit, while
hardly the slightest effective championship was given the move from
any outside source. This was because public opinion was absolutely
uneducated on the subject. In our country the men who in time of
peace speak loudest about war are usually the ultrapacificists whose
activities have been shown to be absolutely futile for peace, but who
do a little mischief by persuading a number of well-meaning persons
that preparedness for war is unnecessary.
It is not desirable that civilians, acting independently of and without
the help of military and naval advisers, shall prepare minute or
detailed plans as to what ought to be done for our national defense.
But civilians are competent to advocate plans in outline exactly as
I have here advocated them. Moreover, and most important, they are
competent to try to make public opinion effective in these matters. A
democracy must have proper leaders. But these leaders must be able to
appeal to a proper sentiment in the democracy. It is the prime duty of
every right-thinking citizen at this time to aid his fellow countrymen
to understand the need of working wisely for peace, the folly of acting
unwisely for peace, and, above all, the need of real and thorough
national preparedness against war.
Former Secretary of the Navy Bonaparte, in one of his admirable
articles, in which he discusses armaments and treaties, has spoken as
follows:
Indeed, it is so obviously impolitic, on the part of the
administration and its party friends, to avow a purpose to keep
the people in the dark as to our preparedness (or rather as to
our virtually admitted unpreparedness) to protect the national
interests, safety, and honor, that a practical avowal of such
purpose on their part would seem altogether incredible, but for
certain rather notorious facts developed by our experience during
the last year and three quarters.
It has gradually become evident, or, at least, probable that
the mind (wherever that mind may be located) which determines,
or has, as yet, determined, our foreign policy under President
Wilson, really relies upon a timid neutrality and innumerable
treaties of general arbitration as sufficient to protect us from
foreign aggression; and advisedly wishes to keep us virtually
unarmed and helpless to defend ourselves, so that a sense of
our weakness may render us sufficiently pusillanimous to pocket
all insults, to submit to any form of outrage, to resent no
provocation, and to abdicate completely and forever the dignity
and the duties of a great nation.
In the absence of actual experience, a strong effort of the
imagination would be required, at least on the part of the
writer, to conceive of anybody’s not finding such an outlook
for his country utterly intolerable; but incredulity must yield
to decisive proof. Even the votaries of this novel cult of
cowardice, however, are evidently compelled to recognize that, as
yet, they constitute a very small minority among Americans, and,
for this reason, they would keep their fellow countrymen, as far
as may be practicable, in the dark as to our national weakness
and our national dangers; they delight in gagging soldiers and
sailors and, to the extent of their power, everybody else who
may speak with any authority, and, if they could, would shut out
every ray of light which might aid public opinion to see things
as they are.
* * * * *
There is no room for difference as to the utter absurdity of
reliance on treaties, no matter how solemn or with whomsoever
made, as substitutes for proper armaments to assure the national
safety; Belgium’s fate stares in the face any one who should even
dream of this. Her neutrality was established and guaranteed, not
by one treaty but by several treaties, not by one power but by
all the powers; yet she has been completely ruined because she
relied upon these treaties, refused to violate them herself and
tried, in good faith, to fulfil the obligations they imposed on
her.
For any public man, with this really terrible object-lesson
before his eyes, to seriously ask us to believe that arbitration
treaties or Hague tribunals or anything else within that order of
ideas can be trusted to take the place of preparation impeaches
either his sincerity or his sanity, and impeaches no less
obviously the common sense of his readers or hearers.
A nation unable to protect itself may have to pay a frightful
price nowadays as a penalty for the misfortune of weakness; the
Belgians may be, in a measure, consoled for their misfortune by
the world’s respect and sympathy; in the like case, we should
be further and justly punished by the world’s unbounded and
merited contempt, for our weakness would be the fruit of our own
ignominious cowardice and incredible folly.
Secretary Garrison in his capital report says that if our outlying
possessions are even insufficiently manned our mobile home army will
consist of less than twenty-five thousand men, only about twice the
size of the police force of New York City. Yet, in the face of this,
certain newspaper editors, college presidents, pacificist bankers and,
I regret to say, certain clergymen and philanthropists enthusiastically
champion the attitude of President Wilson and Mr. Bryan in refusing
to prepare for war. As one of them put it the other day: “The way
to prevent war is not to fight.” Luxembourg did not fight! Does
this gentleman regard the position of Luxembourg at this moment as
enviable? China has not recently fought. Does the gentleman think
that China’s position is in consequence a happy one? If advisers of
this type, if these college presidents and clergymen and editors of
organs of culture and the philanthropists who give this advice spoke
only for themselves, if the humiliation and disgrace were to come
only on them, no one would have a right to object. They have servile
souls; and if they chose serfdom of the body for themselves only, it
would be of small consequence to others. But, unfortunately, their
words have a certain effect upon this country; and that effect is
intolerably evil. Doubtless it is the influence of these men which is
largely responsible for the attitude of the President. The President
attacks preparedness in the name of antimilitarism. The preparedness we
advocate is that of Switzerland, the least militaristic of countries.
Autocracy may use preparedness for the creation of an aggressive
and provocative militarism that invites and produces war; but in a
democracy preparedness means security against aggression and the best
guarantee of peace. The President in his message has in effect declared
that his theory of neutrality, which is carried to the point of a
complete abandonment of the rights of innocent small nations, and his
theory of non-preparedness, which is carried to the point of gross
national inefficiency, are both means for securing to the United States
a leading position in bringing about peace. The position he would thus
secure would be merely that of drum-major at the peace conference; and
he would do well to remember that if the peace that is brought about
should result in leaving Belgium’s wrongs unredressed and turning
Belgium over to Germany, in enthroning militarism as the chief factor
in the modern world, and in consecrating the violation of treaties,
then the United States, by taking part in such a conference, would have
rendered an evil service to mankind.
At present our navy is in wretched shape. Our army is infinitesimal.
This large, rich republic is far less efficient from a military
standpoint than Switzerland, Holland, or Denmark. In spite of the
fact that the officers and enlisted men of our navy and army offer
material on the whole better than the officers and men of any other
navy or army, these two services have for so many years been neglected
by Congress, and during the last two years have been so mishandled
by the administration, that at the present time an energetic and
powerful adversary could probably with ease drive us not only from
the Philippines but from Hawaii, and take possession of the Canal and
Alaska. If invaded by a serious army belonging to some formidable Old
World empire, we would be for many months about as helpless as China;
and, as nowadays large armies can cross the ocean, we might be crushed
beyond hope of recuperation inside of a decade. Yet those now at the
head of public affairs refuse themselves to face facts and seek to
mislead the people as to the facts.
President Wilson is, of course, fully and completely responsible for
Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan appreciates this and loyally endeavors to serve
the President and to come to his defense at all times. As soon as
President Wilson had announced that there was no need of preparations
to defend ourselves, because we loved everybody and everybody loved us
and because our mission was to spread the gospel of peace, Mr. Bryan
came to his support with hearty enthusiasm and said: “The President
knows that if this country needed a million men, and needed them in
a day, the call would go out at sunrise and the sun would go down on
a million men in arms.” One of the President’s stanchest newspaper
adherents lost its patience over this utterance and remarked: “More
foolish words than these of the Secretary of State were never spoken
by mortal man in reply to a serious argument.” However, Mr. Bryan had
a good precedent, although he probably did not know it. Pompey, when
threatened by Cæsar, and told that his side was unprepared, responded
that he had only to “stamp his foot” and legions would spring from
the ground. In the actual event, the “stamping” proved as effectual
against Cæsar as Mr. Bryan’s “call” would under like circumstances. I
once heard a Bryanite senator put Mr. Bryan’s position a little more
strongly than it occurred to Mr. Bryan himself to put it. The senator
in question announced that we needed no regular army, because in the
event of war “ten million freemen would spring to arms, the equals of
any regular soldiers in the world.” I do not question the emotional
or oratorical sincerity either of Mr. Bryan or of the senator. Mr.
Bryan is accustomed to performing in vacuo; and both he and President
Wilson, as regards foreign affairs, apparently believe they are living
in a world of two dimensions, and not in the actual workaday world,
which has three dimensions. This was equally true of the senator in
question. If the senator’s ten million men sprang to arms at this
moment, they would have at the outside some four hundred thousand
modern rifles to which to spring. Perhaps six hundred thousand more
could spring to squirrel pieces and fairly good shotguns. The remaining
nine million men would have to “spring” to axes, scythes, hand-saws,
gimlets, and similar arms. As for Mr. Bryan’s million men who would at
sunset respond under arms to a call made at sunrise, the suggestion is
such a mere rhetorical flourish that it is not worthy even of humorous
treatment; a high-school boy making such a statement in a theme would
be marked zero by any competent master. But it is an exceedingly
serious thing, it is not in the least a humorous thing, that the man
making such a statement should be the chief adviser of the President
in international matters, and should hold the highest office in the
President’s gift.
Nor is Mr. Bryan in any way out of sympathy with President Wilson in
this matter. The President, unlike Mr. Bryan, uses good English and
does not say things that are on their face ridiculous. Unfortunately,
his cleverness of style and his entire refusal to face facts apparently
make him believe that he really has dismissed and done away with ugly
realities whenever he has uttered some pretty phrase about them. This
year we are in the presence of a crisis in the history of the world.
In the terrible whirlwind of war all the great nations of the world,
save the United States and Italy, are facing the supreme test of their
history. All of the pleasant and alluring but futile theories of the
pacificists, all the theories enunciated in the peace congresses
of the past twenty years, have vanished at the first sound of the
drumming guns. The work of all the Hague conventions, and all the
arbitration treaties, neutrality treaties, and peace treaties of the
last twenty years has been swept before the gusts of war like withered
leaves before a November storm. In this great crisis the stern and
actual facts have shown that the fate of each nation depends not in
the least upon any elevated international aspirations to which it has
given expression in speech or treaty, but on practical preparation, on
intensity of patriotism, on grim endurance, and on the possession of
the fighting edge. Yet, in the face of all this, the President of the
United States sends in a message dealing with national defense, which
is filled with prettily phrased platitudes of the kind applauded at the
less important type of peace congress, and with sentences cleverly
turned to conceal from the average man the fact that the President has
no real advice to give, no real policy to propose. There is just one
point as to which he does show real purpose for a tangible end. He
dwells eagerly upon the hope that we may obtain “the opportunity to
counsel and obtain peace in the world” among the warring nations and
adjures us not to jeopardize this chance (for the President to take
part in the peace negotiations) by at this time making any preparations
for self-defense. In effect, we are asked not to put our own shores
in defensible condition lest the President may lose the chance to
be at the head of the congress which may compose the differences
of Europe. In effect, he asks us not to build up the navy, not to
provide for an efficient citizen army, not to get ammunition for our
guns and torpedoes for our torpedo-tubes, lest somehow or other this
may make the President of the United States an unacceptable mediator
between Germany and Great Britain! It is an honorable ambition for the
President to desire to be of use in bringing about peace in Europe;
but only on condition that the peace thus brought is the peace of
righteousness, and only on condition that he does not sacrifice this
country’s vital interests for a clatter of that kind of hollow applause
through which runs an undertone of sinister jeering. He must not
sacrifice to this ambition the supreme interest of the American people.
Nor must he believe that the possibility of his being umpire will have
any serious effect on the terrible war game that is now being played;
the outcome of the game will depend upon the prowess of the players.
No gain will come to our nation, or to any other nation, if President
Wilson permits himself to be deluded concerning the part the United
States may take in the promotion of European peace.
Peace in Europe will be made by the warring nations. They and they
alone will in fact determine the terms of settlement. The United States
may be used as a convenient means of getting together; but that is all.
If the nations of Europe desire peace and our assistance in securing
it, it will be because they have fought as long as they will or can. It
will not be because they regard us as having set a spiritual example to
them by sitting idle, uttering cheap platitudes, and picking up their
trade, while they have poured out their blood like water in support of
the ideals in which, with all their hearts and souls, they believe.
For us to assume superior virtue in the face of the war-worn nations
of the Old World will not make us more acceptable as mediators among
them. Such self-consciousness on our part will not impress the nations
who have sacrificed and are sacrificing all that is dearest to them in
the world, for the things that they believe to be the noblest in the
world. The storm that is raging in Europe at this moment is terrible
and evil; but it is also grand and noble. Untried men who live at ease
will do well to remember that there is a certain sublimity even in
Milton’s defeated archangel, but none whatever in the spirits who kept
neutral, who remained at peace, and dared side neither with hell nor
with heaven. They will also do well to remember that when heroes have
battled together, and have wrought good and evil, and when the time has
come out of the contest to get all the good possible and to prevent as
far as possible the evil from being made permanent, they will not be
influenced much by the theory that soft and short-sighted outsiders
have put themselves in better condition to stop war abroad by making
themselves defenseless at home.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors and occasional unbalanced quotation marks
were corrected.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.