Republic. The average American citizen, as far as I knew him, in Europe
before the war, had an amused contempt for many institutions and social
ideas which he observed in a continental tour. He was able to regard the
hotch-potch of European nationalities and traditions from an aloof and
judicial viewpoint. They seemed to him on the whole very silly. He could
not understand why an invisible line on a road should make people on
each side of the line hate each other desperately. He watched the march
past of troops in France or Germany, the saluting of generals, the
clicking of heels, the brilliant uniforms of officers, as a pageant
which was utterly out of date in its application to life, and as a
degradation of individual dignity. He did not link up the thriftiness of
the French peasant--the desperate hoarding of his _petit sou_--with the
old fear of invasion by German legions across the frontier, when the
peasant might see his little farm in flames and his harvest trampled
down by soldiers' boots. The American visitor observed the fuss made
when one king visited another, and read the false adulation of the royal
visitor, the insincere speeches at royal banquets, the list of
decorations conferred upon court flunkies, and laughed at the whole
absurdity, not seeing that it was all part of a bid for a new alliance
or a bribe for peace, or a mask of fear, until the time came when all
bids and bribes should be of no more avail, and the only masks worn were
to be gas-masks, when the rival nations should hack at one another in a
frenzy of slaughter. The American in Europe who came to have a look
'round was astonished at the old-fashioned ways of people--their
subservience to "caste" ideas, their allegiance to the divine right of
kings, as to the "Little Father" of the Russian people, and the "shining
armor" of the German Kaiser, and their apparent contentment with the
wide gulf between underpaid labor and privileged capital. He did not
realize that his own liberty of ideas and high rate of wage-earning were
due to citizenship in a country free from militarism and its crushing
taxation, and free also from hereditary customs upheld by the power of
the sword used in civil strife as well as in international conflict, by
the imperial governments of Russia, Germany, and other powers whose
social philosophy was no different, though less tyrannical in
expression. The American said, "I like Europe as a peep-show, and it's a
good place to spend money in; but we can teach you a few things in the
United States; one of them is equality, and another is opportunity." He
was right, and it was his luck. Because of those privileges many
pilgrims of fortune went to America from all the countries of Europe, in
a great tide of emigration, adopting American citizenship in most cases
soon after sighting the Statue of Liberty--"old Lib.," as I heard her
called. The United States received these foreigners in hundreds of
thousands and became "the melting-pot" of races. The melting process,
however, was not so rapid as some people imagined, and it was something
of a shock to the States to discover a few years before the war, and
with a deeper realization at the outbreak of war, that they had within
their boundaries enormous populations of foreign-born citizens, Germans,
Poles, Slavs of all kinds, Italians, and Austrians, who had not
assimilated American ideas, but kept their speech, customs, and national
sentiment. It was the vast foreign element which had to be converted to
the American outlook upon the world tragedy which opened in August,
1914. This mass of hostile or unwilling people had to be dragged into
action when America found that her isolation was broken, that she could
no longer stand aloof from the rest of mankind, nor be indifferent to
the fate of friendly nations menaced with destruction, nor endure a
series of outrages which flouted her own power, nor risk the world
supremacy of a military autocracy which, if triumphant in Europe, would
very soon dictate to the United States. It is the miracle of the Stars
and Stripes that when the American government conscripted all
able-bodied youth and raised a vast and well-trained army, and sent it
into the battlefields of France and Flanders, there was no civil
outbreak among those foreign-born citizens, and with absolute obedience
they took their places in the ranks, Germans to fight against their own
flesh and blood, because of allegiance to a state which had given them
liberty, provided they defended the ideals which belonged to the
state--in this case the hardest test of loyalty, not without tragedy and
agony and fear.
For the first time there was no liberty in the United States--no liberty
of private judgment, no liberty of action, no liberty of speech. The
state ruled with complete despotism over the lives of its citizens, not
tolerating any infringements of its orders, because the safety of the
state would be endangered unless victory were assured. That was an
enormous shock, I am sure, to the psychology of all Americans, even to
those most loyal to the state authority, and it has caused an entire
change in the mental attitude of all American citizens toward the
conditions and relationships of life, because that sense of utter
liberty they had before the war is limited now by the knowledge that at
any time the Republic of which they are citizens may call upon them for
life itself and for all service up to that of death, and that, whatever
their ideas should be, they may not refuse. In that way they have no
longer an advantage over Frenchmen, or Germans, or Russians, or
Italians, whom they pitied as men without liberty of souls or bodies.
That is to say, they have to make surrender to the state of all things
in the last resort, which is war--a law which many European peoples
learned to their cost, many times before, and which America learned once
in her own Civil War, but thought she could forget with other painful
old things in the lumber-room of history.
The people of the United States have learned many other things during
the last few years, when all the world has changed, and they stand now
at the parting of the ways, looking back on the things they knew which
they will never see again, and looking forward to the future, which is
still doubtful to them in its destiny. I went to them on a visit during
the period between armistice and peace, when mentally, I think, they
were in a transition stage, very conscious of this place at the
crossroads, and filled with grave anxiety, in spite of exultation at the
power of their armies and the valor of their men who had helped to gain
stupendous victory.
The things that had happened within the United States before and after
its declaration of war had stirred them with passionate and complicated
emotions. From the very outset of the Great War, long before the United
States was directly involved, large numbers of Americans of the old
stock, born of English, Irish, Scottish, or Dutch ancestry, were neutral
only by order and not at all in spirit. Their sentiment toward France,
based on the Lafayette tradition and their love of Paris and of French
literature and wit, made them hate the invasion of northern France and
eager to act as champions of the French people. Their old ties with
England, the bond of speech and of blood, made them put aside any minor
antagonisms which they had felt on account of old prejudice, and they
followed with deep sympathy and anxiety the progress of the heroic
struggle of British armies in the slaughter-fields. They were impatient
for America to get into the conflict against German aggression. As the
Germans became more ruthless of humane laws, more desperate in their
attacks upon non-combatant as well as military populations by sea and
air and land, these Americans became sick and fevered at the thought of
their own neutrality, and supported Colonel Roosevelt in his driving
influence to get the United States into the war. They became more and
more embittered with President Wilson, who adopted an academic view of
the jungle scenes in Europe, dissociated the German people from the
crimes of their war lords, and expounded a Christian philosophy of world
politics which seemed like cowardice and humiliation of American pride
to people stung to fury by German insults and outrages. These thoughts
were beginning to seethe like yeast throughout masses of American
people, especially in the East, but took a long time to reach and stir
the great West and were resisted by the mentality of foreign-born
populations, including the Jewish communities and the Irish. They were
averse to war, and took a detached view of the struggle in Europe, which
seemed to them too far away to matter to America. The German populations
had a natural sympathy for their own race, much as some of them detested
its militaristic ideals. There were, I imagine, also many intellectual
men, not dragged down by the apathy of the masses, to whom "the war"
seemed of less importance to the United States than the condition of the
crops or the local baseball match. They felt that President Wilson's
hesitations, long-drawn-out notes, and exalted pacifism were on nobler
lines of thought than the loud-mouthed jingoism and bloodthirsty
howlings of low-class newspapers and speakers.
The _Lusitania_ was sunk, and a cry of agony and wrath went up from many
hearts in the world at this new phase of war; but still the United
States stayed out; and many Americans lowered their heads with shame and
had a fire of indignation in their hearts because their President still
temporized. They believed that the American people would have rallied to
him as one man had he made that outrage the signal of war. They had no
patience with his careful letter-writing, his anxiety to act as a moral
mentor instead of as a leader of great armies in a fight against world
criminals.... At last Wilson was forced to act, even his caution being
overmastered by the urgent necessity of intervention on behalf of Great
Britain and France and Belgium, panting and bleeding from every pore
after three years of struggle; even his philosophy of aloofness being
borne down by acts of war which wounded American interests and
threatened American security. So the United States declared war,
gathered its youth into great training-camps, and launched into the
world struggle with slow but ever-increasing energy which swept the
people with a mighty whirlwind of emotion.
The American people as a whole did truly enter into war in the spirit of
crusaders. They sent out their sons as rescuers of stricken peoples
fighting desperately against criminal powers. They had no selfish
interests behind their sacrifice, and they did not understand that
defeat of the nations allied against Germany would inevitably menace
them with dire perils to their sovereign power, to their commercial
prosperity, and to their ideals of civilization. Those things were true,
but it was not because of them that the people of the United States were
uplifted by a wonderful exaltation and that they put their full strength
into preparing themselves for a long and bloody war. Every little home
was turned into a Red Cross factory. Every young man of pluck and pride
was eager to get the first call for active service in the field. Girls
took on men's jobs, old ladies knitted until their eyes were dim. Hard
business men gave away their dollars in bundles, denied themselves at
meal-time so that Europe should be fed, tried by some little sacrifice
to share the spirit of those who made offer of their lives. The
materialism of which America had been accused, not unjustly, was broken
through by a spiritual idealism which touched every class, and Americans
did not shrink from sacrifice, but asked for it as a privilege, and were
regretful that as a people they suffered so little in comparison with
those who had fought and agonized so long....
All this I heard when I went to America in the spring, between armistice
and peace, and with my own eyes and ears I saw and heard the proof of
it. Down Fifth Avenue I saw the march past of troops whom I had seen
before marching along the roads of war to Ypres and Amiens, when the
British army was hard pressed and glad to see these newcomers. In New
York clubs I met young American officers who had been training with
British staffs and battalions before they fought alongside British
troops. And in American homes I met women who were still waiting for
their men whom they had sent away with brave faces, hiding the fear in
their hearts, and now knew, with thankfulness, that they were safe.
Victory had come quickly after the entry of the American troops, but it
was only the low braggart who said, "We won the war--and taught the
English how to fight." The main body of educated people whom I met in
many American cities said, rather: "We were the last straw that broke
the camel's back. We were glad to share the victory, but we did not
suffer enough. We came in too late to take our full share of sacrifice."
At that time, after the armistice and when Mr. Wilson was in Europe at
the Peace Conference, the people I met were not so much buoyed up with
the sense of victory as perplexed and anxious about the new
responsibilities which they would be asked to fulfill. A tremendous
controversy raged round the President, who baffled them by his acts and
speeches and silences. When in an article which I wrote soon after my
landing I said I was "all for Wilson" I received an immense number of
letters "putting me wise" as to the failure of the President to gain the
confidence of the American people and their grievous apprehensions that
he was, out of personal vanity and with a stubborn, autocratic spirit,
bartering away the rights and liberties of the United States, without
the knowledge or support of the people, and involving them in European
entanglements which they were not prepared to accept. This antagonism to
the President was summed up clearly enough in some such words as those
that follow:
Taft and Roosevelt quarreled; Wilson was born of it. Wilson is all
there is to the Democratic party. He has had to dominate it; the
brain of America is in the Republican camp. He refused to use this
material when offered for the war. He would not allow Roosevelt to
go to France and fight; he would not use General Wood, who was the
"Lord Bobs" of this country in regard to preparedness. For the
winning of the war we put party aside and the Congress gave Wilson
unlimited power. (Lincoln put party aside and used the best he
could get.) Now Mr. Wilson asks and gets very little advice. When
he has a difficult question he secludes himself, except for
Colonel House--and we know nothing about Colonel House. Mr. Wilson
dominated America and no one objected; the war was being won. In
the fall he saw, of course, victory, and was planning his trip
abroad. He boldly asked for a Democratic Senate, which would give
him control of the treaty-making power. He said, practically:
"Everybody shows himself bigger than party. I will, too. All
together now! But you prove it and give me a party Senate, not a
Senate picked from the best brains of this America, but a
Democratic Senate, so that I can have full power in the Peace
Conference." The laugh that went up must have hit the stars, and
we almost forgot the war to watch the election. Can you imagine
Roosevelt in New York in this crisis? He held a monster meeting
and said what he thought, through his teeth. "Unconditional
surrender for Germany, no matter what it costs" (not idle
words--Quentin's death in France had cost Roosevelt his famous
boyishness of spirit), "and a Senate that will curb autocratic
power in America." Then he told his hearers that they would not
need a key to understand his speech. Now, power goes to people's
heads. Mr. Wilson had changed. Time and again opposition in
Congress failed. You would hear, "Wilson always wins." Always a
dominating figure, he grew defiant, a trifle ruthless, heady. The
American answer to Wilson was a Republican Senate, and the
Senators were put there to balance him. When he decided to go to
Europe he simply said he was going. He did not ask our approval,
nor find out our wishes, nor even tell us what he was going to
say, but did take over the cables and put them under government
control. He made himself so inaccessible at that time that no one
could get his ear. On his flying visit to New York he said that he
returned to France to tell them that we backed him. Is that true?
We don't know what we think yet. We haven't made up our minds. We
will back him when he is frank and when we are convinced. We can't
sign our souls away, all our wonderful heritages, without knowing
all about it.... If we join a League of Nations, shall we prevent
war? Or, if we join, shall we be absorbed and make the fight a
bigger one?
This, I believe, is a fair statement of the views held by many educated
people in the United States at the time between armistice and peace. I
heard just such words in the City Club of New York, in the Union League
Club, from people in Boston and Philadelphia and Washington, and at many
dinner-tables where, after the preliminary courtesies of conversation,
there was a quick clash of opinion among the guests, husbands differing
from wives, brothers from sisters, and friends from friends, over the
personality and purpose of the President, and the practical
possibilities of a League of Nations. The defenders of the President
waived aside all personal issues and supported him ardently because they
believed that it was only by the application of his ideals, modified, no
doubt, by contact with the actual problems of European states, that a
new war more devastating to the world than the one just past could be
prevented, and that his obstinacy and singleness of purpose on behalf of
a League of Nations pointed him out as the Man of Destiny who would lead
humanity out of the jungle to a higher plane of civilized philosophy.
That was my own view of his mission and character, though now I think
he failed at the Peace Conference in carrying out the principles of his
own Fourteen Points, and weakened under the pressure of the governing
powers of France, Belgium, and England, who desired revenge as well as
reparation, and the death of German militarism under the heel of an
Allied militarism based on the old German philosophy of might. The
President failed largely because he insisted upon playing "a lone hand,"
and did not have the confidence of his country behind him, nor its
understanding of his purpose, while he himself wavered in his
principles.
America, during the time of my visit, was afraid of taking too strong a
lead in the resettlement of Europe. So far from wishing to "boss the
show," as some people suspected, most Americans had an unnatural
timidity, and one count of their charge against Wilson was his obstinacy
in his dealings with Lloyd George and Clemenceau. It was a consciousness
of ignorance about European problems which made the Americans draw back
from strong decisions, and above all it was the fear of being "dragged
in" to new wars, not of their concern, which made them deeply suspicious
of the League of Nations. In many conversations I found this fear the
dominant thought. "If you people want to fight each other again, you
will have to do without us," said American soldiers just back from the
front. "No more crusades for us!" said others. "American isolation--and
a plague on all your little nations!" said civilians as well as
soldiers. Bitter memories of French "economy" spoiled for American
soldiers the romance of the Lafayette tradition. "I lost my leg," said
one man, "for a country which charged for the trenches where we fought,
and for people who put up their prices three hundred per cent. when the
American armies came to rescue them. France can go to hell as far as I'm
concerned."... Nevertheless, it became more clear to thinking minds in
America that the days of "isolation" were gone, and that for good or
evil the United States is linked up by unbreakable bonds of interest and
responsibility with other great powers of the world. Never again can she
be indifferent to their fate. If another great convulsion happens in
Europe, American troops will again be there, quicker than before,
because her action in the last war and her share of the terms of peace
have made her responsible in honor for the safety of certain peoples
and the upholding of certain agreements. The Atlantic has shrunk in size
to a narrow strip of water and the sky is a corridor which will be
quickly traversed by aircraft before the next great war. But these
physical conditions which are changing by mechanical development,
altering the time-tables of traffic, are of no account compared with the
vast change that happened in the world when the Stars and Stripes
fluttered in the fields of France and Flanders, when the bodies of
America's heroic youth were laid to rest there under little white
crosses, and when the United States of America entered into an intimate
and enduring relationship with Great Britain and France.
The effect of this change is not yet apparent in its fullness. America
is still in a state of transition, watching, studying, thinking,
feeling, and talking herself into convictions which will alter the fate
of the world. I believe with all my heart and soul that America's closer
relationship with Europe will be all the better for Europe. I believe
that the spirit of the American people is essentially and unalterably
democratic, and that as far as their power goes it will be used against
the tyranny of military castes and attempted oppression of peoples. I
believe that the influence of this spirit, visible to me in many people
I met, will be of enormous benefit to England and France, because it
will be used as an arbitrating factor in the conflict which is bound to
come in both those countries between the old regime and the new. The
influence of America will be the determining power in the settlement of
Ireland on a basis of common sense free from the silly old fetishes of
historical enmities on both sides. It will intervene to give a chance of
life to the German race after they have paid the forfeit for their guilt
in the last war, and will, I am certain, react against the stupid
philosophy of enduring vengeance with its desire to make a slave-state
in Central Europe, which still animates bloody-minded men and women so
passionate of revenge that they are kindling the fires of another
terrible and devastating war. The United States of America is bound up
with the fate of Europe, but its people will still remain rather aloof
in mentality from the passions of European nations, and will be more
judicial in their judgment because of that. Instinctively, rather than
intellectually, Americans will act in behalf of democratic rights
against autocratic plots. They will not allow the Russian people to be
hounded back to the heels of grand dukes and under the lash of the
knout. They will give their support to the League of Nations not as a
machinery to stifle popular progress by a combination of governments,
but as a court for the reform of international laws and the safeguarding
of liberty. Europe will not be able to ignore the judgment of America.
That country is, as I said, the rich uncle whose temper they must
consult because of gratitude for favors to come--and because of wealth
and power in the world's markets.