It has been my rule, aim and effort in my newspaper career to print nothing
of a man which I would not say to his face; to print nothing of a man in
malice; to look well and think twice before consigning a suspect to the
ruin of printer's ink; to respect the old and defend the weak; and, lastly,
at work and at play, daytime and nighttime, to be good to the girls and
square with the boys, for hath it not been written of such is the kingdom
of Heaven?
There will always be in a democracy two or more sets of rival leaders to
two or more differing groups of followers. Hitherto history has classified
these as conservatives and radicals. But as society has become more and
more complex the groups have had their subdivisions. As a consequence
speculative doctrinaries and adventurous politicians are enabled to get in
their work of confusing the issues and exploiting themselves.
"'What are these fireworks for?' asks the rustic in the parable. 'To blind
the eyes of the people,' answers the cynic."
I would not say aught in a spirit of hostility to the President of the
United States. Woodrow Wilson is a clever speaker and writer. Yet the usual
trend and phrase of his observations seem to be those of a special pleader,
rather than those of a statesman. Every man, each of the nations, is for
peace as an abstract proposition. That much goes without saying. But Mr.
Wilson proposes to bind the hands of a giant and take lottery chances on
the future. This, I think, the country will contest.
He is obsessed by the idea of a League of Nations. If not his own discovery
he has yet made himself its leader. He talks flippantly about "American
ideals" that have won the war against Germany, as if there were no English
ideals and French ideals.
"In all that he does we can descry the school-master who arrived at the
front rather late in life. One needs only to go over the record and
mark how often he has reversed himself to detect a certain mental and
temperamental instability clearly indicating a lack of fixed or resolute
intellectual purpose. This is characteristic of an excess in education; of
the half baked mind overtrained. The overeducated mind fancies himself a
doctrinaire when he is in point of fact only a disciple."
Woodrow Wilson was born to the rather sophisticated culture of the too, too
solid South. Had he grown up in England a hundred years ago he would have
been a follower of the Della Cruscans. He has what is called a facile pen,
though it sometimes runs away with him. It seems to have done so in the
matter of the League of Nations. Inevitably such a scheme would catch the
fancy of one ever on the alert for the fanciful.
I cannot too often repeat that the world we inhabit is a world of sin,
disease and death. Men will fight whenever they want to fight, and no
artificial scheme or process is likely to restrain them. It is mainly the
costliness of war that makes most against it. But, as we have seen the last
four years, it will not quell the passions of men or dull national and
racial ambitions.
All that Mr. Wilson and his proposed League of Nations can do will be to
revamp, and maybe for a while to reimpress the minds of the rank and file,
until the bellowing followers of Bellona are ready to spring.
Eternal peace, universal peace, was not the purpose of the Deity in the
creation of the universe.
Nevertheless, it would seem to be the duty of men in great place, as of
us all, to proclaim the gospel of good will and cultivate the arts of
fraternity. I have no quarrel with the President on this score. What I
contest is the self-exploitation to which he is prone, so lacking in
dignity and open to animadversion.
V
Thus it was that instant upon the appearance of the proposed League of
Nations I made bold to challenge it, as but a pretty conceit having no real
value, a serious assault upon our national sovereignty.
Its argument seemed to me full of copybook maxims, easier recited than
applied. As what I wrote preceded the debates and events of the last six
months, I may not improperly make the following quotation from a screed of
mine appearing in The Courier-Journal of the 5th of March, 1919:
"The League of Nations is a fad. Politics, like society and letters, has
its fads. In society they call them fashion and in literature originality.
Politics gives the name of 'issues' to its fads. A taking issue is as a
stunning gown, or 'a best seller.' The President's mind wears a coat of
many colors, and he can change it at will, his mood being the objective
point, not always too far ahead, or clear of vision. Carl Schurz was wont
to speak of Gratz Brown as 'a man of thoughts rather than of ideas.' I
wonder if that can be justly said of the President? 'Gentlemen will please
not shoot at the pianiste,' adjured the superscription over the music stand
in the Dakota dive; 'she is doing the best that she knows how.'
"Already it is being proclaimed that Woodrow Wilson can have a third
nomination for the presidency if he wants it, and nobody seems shocked by
it, which proves that the people grow degenerate and foreshadows that one
of these nights some fool with a spyglass will break into Mars and let
loose the myriads of warlike gyascutes who inhabit that freak luminary,
thence to slide down the willing moonbeam and swallow us every one!
"In a sense the Monroe Doctrine was a fad. Oblivious to Canada, and British
Columbia and the Spanish provinces, it warned the despots of Europe off the
grass in America. We actually went to war with Mexico, having enjoyed two
wars with England, and again and again we threatened to annex the Dominion.
Everything betwixt hell and Halifax was Yankee preëmpted.
"Truth to say, your Uncle Samuel was ever a jingo. But your Cousin Woodrow,
enlarging on the original plan, would stretch our spiritual boundaries to
the ends of the earth and make of us the moral custodian of the universe.
This much, no less, he got of the school of sweetness and light in which he
grew up.
"I am a jingo myself. But a wicked material jingo, who wants facts, not
theories. If I thought it possible and that it would pay, I would annex the
North Pole and colonize the Equator. It is, after the manner of the lady in
the play, that the President 'doth protest too much,' which displeases me
and where, in point of fact, I 'get off the reservation.'
"That, being a politician and maybe a candidate, he is keenly alive to
votes goes without saying. On the surface this League of Nations having the
word 'peace' in big letters emblazoned both upon its forehead and the
seat of its trousers--or, should I say, woven into the hem of its
petticoat?--seems an appeal for votes. I do not believe it will bear
discussion. In a way, it tickles the ear without convincing the sense.
There is nothing sentimental about the actualities of Government, much
as public men seek to profit by arousing the passions of the people.
Government is a hard and fast and dry reality. At best statesmanship can
only half do the things it would. Its aims are most assured when tending a
little landward; its footing safest on its native heath. We have plenty
to do on our own continent without seeking to right things on
other continents. Too many of us--the President among the rest, I
fear--miscalculate the distance between contingency and desire.
"'We figure to ourselves
The thing we like: and then we build it up:
As chance will have it on the rock or sand--
When thought grows tired of wandering o'er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.'"
I am sorry to see the New York World fly off at a tangent about this latest
of the Wilsonian hobbies. Frank Irving Cobb, the editor of the World, is,
as I have often said, the strongest writer on the New York press since
Horace Greeley. But he can hardly be called a sentimentalist, as Greeley
was, and there is nothing but sentiment--gush and gammon--in the proposed
League of Nations.
It may be all right for England. There are certainly no flies on it for
France. But we don't need it. Its effects can only be to tie our hands, not
keep the dogs away, and even at the worst, in stress of weather, we are
strong enough to keep the dogs away ourselves.
We should say to Europe: "Shinny on your own side of the water and we will
shinny on our side." It may be that Napoleon's opinion will come true that
ultimately Europe will be "all Cossack or all republican." Part of it has
come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the United States, having
exhausted the reasonable possibilities of democracy, is beginning to turn
crank. Look at woman suffrage by Federal edict; look at prohibition by
act of Congress and constitutional amendment; tobacco next to walk on the
plank; and then!--Lord, how glad I feel that I am nearly a hundred years
old and shall not live to see it!