III.

In fighting Germany we are indeed fighting an evil Will--evil because it

seeks to crush the growth of individual and national freedom. Its object

is to put the world back under the thrall of self-constituted authority.

So long as this Will can compel the bodies of soldiers to do its

bidding, these bodies must be destroyed. Until the Will behind them is

broken, the world cannot be free. Junkerism is the final expression

of reaction, organized to the highest efficiency. The war against the

Junkers marks the consummation of a long struggle for human liberty in

all lands, symbolizes the real cleavage dividing the world. As in the

French Revolution and the wars that followed it, the true significance

of this war is social. But today the Russian Revolution sounds the

keynote. Revolutions tend to express the extremes of the philosophies

of their times--human desires, discontents, and passions that cannot be

organized. The French Revolution was a struggle for political freedom;

the underlying issue of the present war is economic freedom--without

which political freedom is of no account. It will not, therefore,

suffice merely to crush the Junkers, and with them militarism and

autocracy. Unless, as the fruit of this appalling bloodshed and

suffering, the democracies achieve economic freedom, the war will

have been fought in vain. More revolutions, wastage and bloodshed will

follow, the world will be reduced to absolute chaos unless, in the more

advanced democracies, an intelligent social order tending to remove

the causes of injustice and discontent can be devised and ready for

inauguration. This new social order depends, in turn, upon a world order

of mutually helpful, free peoples, a league of Nations.--If the world

is to be made safe for democracy, this democratic plan must be ready for

the day when the German Junker is beaten and peace is declared.

The real issue of our time is industrial democracy we must face that

fact. And those in America and the Entente nations who continue to

oppose it will do so at their peril. Fortunately, as will be shown, that

element of our population which may be designated as domestic Junkers

is capable of being influenced by contemporary currents of thought,

is awakening to the realization of social conditions deplorable and

dangerous. Prosperity and power had made them blind and arrogant. Their

enthusiasm for the war was, however, genuine; the sacrifices they are

making are changing and softening them; but as yet they can scarcely be

expected, as a class, to rejoice over the revelation--just beginning

to dawn upon their minds--that victory for the Allies spells the end of

privilege. Their conception of democracy remains archaic, while wealth

is inherently conservative. Those who possess it in America have as a

rule received an education in terms of an obsolete economics, of the

thought of an age gone by. It is only within the past few years that our

colleges and universities have begun to teach modern economics,

social science and psychology--and this in the face of opposition from

trustees. Successful business men, as a rule, have had neither the time

nor the inclination to read books which they regard as visionary,

as subversive to an order by which they have profited. And that some

Americans are fools, and have been dazzled in Europe by the glamour of a

privilege not attainable at home, is a deplorable yet indubitable fact.

These have little sympathy with democracy; they have even been heard

to declare that we have no right to dictate to another nation, even an

enemy nation, what form of government it shall assume. We have no right

to demand, when peace comes, that the negotiations must be with the

representatives of the German people. These are they who deplore the

absence among us of a tradition of monarchy, since the American people

“should have something to look up to.” But this state of mind, which

needs no comment, is comparatively rare, and represents an extreme. We

are not lacking, however, in the type of conservative who, innocent of a

knowledge of psychology, insists that “human nature cannot be changed,”

and that the “survival of the fittest” is the law of life, yet these

would deny Darwin if he were a contemporary. They reject the idea that

society can be organized by intelligence, and war ended by eliminating

its causes from the social order. On the contrary they cling to the

orthodox contention that war is a necessary and salutary thing, and

proclaim that the American fibre was growing weak and flabby from luxury

and peace, curiously ignoring the fact that their own economic class,

the small percentage of our population owning sixty per cent. of the

wealth of the country, and which therefore should be most debilitated by

luxury, was most eager for war, and since war has been declared has most

amply proved its courage and fighting quality. This, however, and other

evidences of the patriotic sacrifices of those of our countrymen who

possess wealth, prove that they are still Americans, and encourages the

hope and belief that as Americans they ultimately will do their share

toward a democratic solution of the problem of society. Many of them are

capable of vision, and are beginning to see the light today.

In America we succeeded in eliminating hereditary power, in obtaining a

large measure of political liberty, only to see the rise of an economic

power, and the consequent loss of economic liberty. The industrial

development of the United States was of course a necessary and desirable

thing, but the economic doctrine which formed the basis of American

institutions proved to be unsuited to industrialism, and introduced

unforeseen evils that were a serious menace to the Republic. An

individualistic economic philosophy worked admirably while there was

ample land for the pioneer, equality of opportunity to satisfy the

individual initiative of the enterprising. But what is known as

industrialism brought in its train fear and favour, privilege and

poverty, slums, disease, and municipal vice, fostered a too rapid

immigration, established in America a tenant system alien to our

traditions. The conditions which existed before the advent of

industrialism are admirably pictured, for instance, in the autobiography

of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, when he describes his native town of

Quincy in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. In those early

communities, poverty was negligible, there was no great contrast between

rich and poor; the artisan, the farmer, the well-to-do merchant met

on terms of mutual self-respect, as man to man; economic class

consciousness was non-existent; education was so widespread that

European travellers wonderingly commented on the fact that we had no

“peasantry”; and with few exceptions every citizen owned a piece of land

and a home. Property, a refuge a man may call his own, and on which

he may express his individuality, is essential to happiness and

self-respect. Today, less than two thirds of our farmers own their land,

while vast numbers of our working men and women possess nothing but the

labour of their hands. The designation of labour as “property” by our

courts only served to tighten the bonds, by obstructing for a time the

movement to decrease the tedious and debilitating hours of contact of

the human organism with the machine,--a menace to the future of the

race, especially in the case of women and children. If labour is

“property,” wretches driven by economic necessity have indeed only the

choice of a change of masters. In addition to the manual workers, an

army of clerical workers of both sexes likewise became tenants, and

dependents who knew not the satisfaction of a real home.

Such conditions gradually brought about a profound discontent, a

grouping of classes. Among the comparatively prosperous there was set

up a social competition in luxury that was the bane of large and

small communities. Skilled labour banded itself into unions, employers

organized to oppose them, and the result was a class conflict never

contemplated by the founders of the Republic, repugnant to democracy

which by its very nature depends for its existence on the elimination of

classes. In addition to this, owing to the unprecedented immigration of

ignorant Europeans to supply the labour demand, we acquired a sinister

proletariat of unskilled economic slaves. Before the war labour

discovered its strength; since the war began, especially in the allied

nations with quasi-democratic institutions, it is aware of its power to

exert a leverage capable of paralyzing industry for a period sufficient

to destroy the chances of victory. The probability of the occurrence

of such a calamity depends wholly on whether or not the workman can

be convinced that it is his war, for he will not exert himself to

perpetuate a social order in which he has lost faith, even though he now

obtains a considerable increase in wages. Agreements entered into with

the government by union leaders will not hold him if at any time he

fails to be satisfied that the present world conflict will not result

in a greater social justice. This fact has been demonstrated by what

is known as the “shop steward” movement in England, where the workers

repudiated the leaders’ agreements and everywhere organized local

strikes. And in America, the unskilled workers are largely outside of

the unions.

The workman has a natural and laudable desire to share more fully in

the good things of life. And it is coming to be recognized that material

prosperity, up to a certain point, is the foundation of mental and

spiritual welfare: clean and comfortable surroundings, beauty, rational

amusements, opportunity for a rational satisfaction of the human

instincts are essential to contentment and progress. The individual, of

course, must be enlightened; and local labour unions, recognizing

this, are spending considerable sums all over the country on schools

to educate their members. If a workman is a profiteer, he is more to be

excused than the business profiteer, against whom his anger is directed;

if he is a spendthrift, prodigality is a natural consequence of rapid

acquisition. We have been a nation of spendthrifts.

A failure to grasp the psychology of the worker involves disastrous

consequences. A discussion as to whether or not his attitude is

unpatriotic and selfish is futile. No more profound mistake could be

made than to attribute to any element of the population motives wholly

base. Human nature is neither all black nor all white, yet is capable

of supreme sacrifices when adequately appealed to. What we must get into

our minds is the fact that a social order that insured a large measure

of democracy in the early days of the Republic is inadequate to meet

modern industrial conditions. Higher wages, material prosperity alone

will not suffice to satisfy aspirations for a fuller self-realization,

once the method by which these aspirations can be gained is glimpsed.

For it cannot be too often repeated that the unquenchable conflicts are

those waged for ideas and not dollars. These are tinged with religious

emotion.