THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR
In the last days of April, 1918, fifty men in the khaki of the army
of the United States of America landed at an Atlantic port. Their
coming, unheralded and almost unwelcomed, marked one of the most
important events in the history of our country. For they were the first
homecoming veterans of the American Expeditionary Forces, men who had
fought under Pershing on the soil of France for the principles that
inspired our nation’s entrance into the world war.
There was the man who had fired the first American gun in the battles.
There was the man who had stood beside the first man killed in action.
There was the man who had brought five German prisoners back into camp
after the rush on the trenches. Wounded, disabled, made unfit for
further immediate service, they had been sent home; and they came back
to their country, the advance-guard of the greatest army the United
States has ever assembled and one of the greatest armies the world has
ever seen, to bear witness to the fact that America has actually taken
her place in the world struggle.
They had fought under German fire. They had stood beside French
soldiers and British soldiers in the attack. They had received their
baptism of blood. They had set the flag of the United States of
America on the battle-fronts in the standard that bears the flags of
those nations which are defending the rights of democracy against the
invasion of autocracy. They are of the first division of an American
army to fight a battle for America in the fields of Europe; and they
had come home to give testimony of what America’s part in the great war
really is. For they are the first of the millions of fighters whom the
nation has gathered for the winning of the war.
Even when the United States entered the great war on the 6th of April,
1917, the part that we would take in the conflict was not clearly
defined. Would we send an army abroad? Would our navy fight? Or would
we merely defend our own shores against possible attack, and supply
the other nations at war with Germany with food, munitions, and other
supplies? The question was soon answered by American honesty which
thundered that the only way to wage war was to send soldiers to the
scene of battle. Preparations never equalled in the history of the
world went into effect for the purpose of conveying our soldiers over
the ocean, of supplying them and equipping them, and of standing back
of the troops and peoples of the Allies who were already at war with
Germany.
Not, however, until more than a year after the beginning of our part in
the war was the issue of exactly what the United States would do on the
battle-fronts settled. Then the President of the United States, Woodrow
Wilson, gave the order that General John Pershing, in command of the
American Expeditionary Forces, should place the American force at
the disposition of General Foch of France, commander-in-chief for the
armies of the Allies. The American Expeditionary Forces slipped into
place, and American soldiers began the actual fighting of America’s war.
For the war into which our nation has entered is, in spite of the fact
that it is being fought on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, as
much America’s war and a war of defense as if it were being fought
along our own Atlantic seaboard against an invading army. It is being
fought for the same principles which are the only ones great enough to
force our country to war, principles of freedom for the individual,
freedom for the free-governed nations, and of ultimate, lasting peace
for the world. It is being fought against the forces of aggression,
of greed, of injustice. It is being fought against the intention of
Germany to dominate the world.
In every war there are two great issues battling against each other.
Men fight for one or the other. Nations fight for one or the other.
There have been wars of conquest waged by strong nations against
weaker ones, wars of religion, wars of territorial aggression, wars of
defense, wars of trade, wars of high moral ideals. This is a war where
the issue is sharply set. It is a war where democracy fights against
autocracy, where liberty fights against bondage, where freemen fight to
keep their freedom against men who strive to take it away from them.
There are two kinds of nations in the world, those nations which
believe that governments derive their just powers from the consent of
the governed and those other nations which believe that power comes
from God to Kings to be used over people who have nothing to say about
its use. The first is a democracy, even though it have a monarch
nominally as its head. The other is an autocracy. And, since this is
a war of democracy against autocracy, it is really a war of the free
people of the world against the bondsmen and their masters.
There was a time when all the great nations of the world had Kings. It
was part of the evolution of the social system. Nations need leaders,
and there were men so strong that they were able to seize and hold
leadership, keeping it for their sons so that the people came to accept
one family as its rulers. But in time some nations began to emerge from
the yoke that these rulers set upon them. The people, who had been
serfs and slaves, began to demand a voice in the government. Kings
and nobles began to lose power in these nations with the awakening of
the people. The signing of the Magna Charta in England by King John
marked the transfer of power from the King. Bit by bit in those nations
tending toward liberal government the shift of power took place.
It was not until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, however,
that the theory of free government flowered and bore fruit. Then the
Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain, situated along the western Atlantic
seaboard, revolted against the imposition of a tax that the colonists
considered unjust, went to war, and won the war. They established the
United States of America, a nation which has been from that day to this
a genuine democracy, a free republic based absolutely on the doctrine
that power came from the people, and that government exists merely as
the steward of that power.
It was through the aid given to the Colonies by France, brought by
Lafayette and Rochambeau, that the War of the Revolution was won.
The French soldiers, returning home at its close, took with them
reinforcement of the spirit of desire for freedom that was already
animating France and which in time brought about the beginnings of the
French Revolution, a war which changed France from a monarchy where the
King said with truth “I am the state” to a real democracy.
The example of the United States of America inspired other nations of
Europe toward the ideal of a government in which the people should
have a voice. Our republican institutions have had a reflex upon
English institutions so that to-day Great Britain, in spite of having a
nominal King, is one of the most democratic governments in the world.
The King of Italy holds his power as a result of a war in which the
people of Italy wrested freedom from Austrian domination. And Russia,
at the time when it went into war, was moving toward a more elastic
form of government. That it failed in the experiment was due to
German intrigue, and not to lack of desire of the Russian people for
self-government.
On the other hand, the people of the Central Powers, Germany and
Austria-Hungary, have accepted--sometimes with mutterings of revolt,
but eventually with resignation--the idea that their rulers derived
authority from some divine source. Few nations in modern times have
had less voice in the government of their country than the people of
Germany. For, under the German constitution, Germany is governed by its
Emperor, with its legislative power in two bodies, the _Bundesrat_
and the _Reichstag_. Now, the United States puts its legislative
power into two bodies, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
France puts power into the Chamber of Deputies, England into the
House of Commons and the House of Lords. But England is shearing the
power of the House of Lords, and in our country the Senate and the
House of Representatives are elected by and are directly responsible
to the voters of the country. Here, as in France and in England, the
vote is not restricted by wealth or by class. In Germany the vote is
so arranged that 370 rich men have the same voting power as 22,324
poor men in one district, Cologne; while the _Bundesrat_ is merely a
diplomatic assembly, representing the kingdoms of the German Empire, an
assembly which the King of Prussia absolutely dominates, and through
which he becomes, as Emperor of Germany, absolute ruler of the empire.
For the _Reichstag_ has no power to make or unmake ministries, or to
control the Emperor in any way. The Emperor appoints the chancellor,
and the chancellor is answerable only to him. So that in the long run,
although it has a constitutional form, the government of Germany is the
Emperor of Germany and the military group known as Junkers with whom he
has surrounded himself.
The Emperor of Germany and the Junkers of his Prussia forced the
present war. They prepared for it during years while the rest of the
world was keeping peace. They justified it to their people on the
ground that Germany needed new territory, new trade, new markets.
Although she was gaining the trade and markets without war, Germany’s
leader made this their excuse to their people, and when they were ready
they went to war for the purpose of imposing their form of government
upon peoples who did not want it, of forcing their rule upon nations
opposed to their ideas. Serbia lay in their path of conquest into
Asia, and so they caused Austria, their tool, to make an excuse of the
assassination by a Serbian of an Austrian archduke, and declare war on
the small nation. Then Germany invaded Belgium, with which it was not
at war, to get to France, against which war had been declared. Belgium
resisted. England entered the conflict. The struggle was on.
Month after month the aggressions of Germany caused new nations to
break off relations with her. Italy and Japan entered the war. China,
most peaceful of nations in her relations with the outside world,
broke off relations. One after another of the South American republics
were forced to do the same. The United States, after a long period of
patient endurance of German insults, attacks on our commerce, intrigues
and plots in our own country, restriction of our maritime activities in
defiance of international law, was finally driven to announcement of
the existence of a state of war. The lines were drawn. Democracy was
making a stand for its life against autocracy, the freemen of the world
against the bondsmen.
It is right and fitting that the United States of America should take
her place in a war which is being fought for those principles for
which she has stood since her coming into nationhood. For more than a
century and a quarter she has been, like the Statue of Liberty in the
harbor of New York, a symbolic figure to the world beaconing men to
freedom. It is in line with her history that she should go to Europe
for the same cause for which she has fought all her wars--defense of
the weaker against the stronger, the right of people to determine their
own governments, the right of all to be free.
There is a story told of General Pershing’s entrance into Paris. He was
taken to the tomb of Lafayette. His hosts crowded about him, waiting
for his speech. But, like all American soldiers, Pershing is no orator.
“Well, Lafayette,” he said, “we’re here!” That was all. But France,
hearing, understood. America was there, to fight side by side with
them, to suffer with them, to die with them, that the cause of liberty
for which Lafayette had fought on two continents might live. The world
war had menaced the United States in its sacred institution of freedom,
and the United States had met the challenge, and had come to fight for
that which is dearer than life--honor, and right, and justice.