HOW THE WAR CAME TO THE UNITED STATES
The great war, beginning in 1914, brought to most Americans no idea
that our country would ever be more than a watcher of it. That we
ourselves would one day become part of it--and one of the greatest
parts of it--was something beyond the imagination of most men. America
had lived apart from other nations. For, although our government had
made treaties with foreign nations, and become part of The Hague
Conference, and been drawn to some extent into international politics,
we had none of the ambitions which draw nations into ordinary wars. We
had no desire for colonies, we had no jealousy of other nations, we had
no fear of neighboring governments. In fact, Americans believed that
wars were going out of fashion, and that western Europe, any more than
ourselves, was not likely to go to war. The coming of the conflict was
therefore a shock to us, but not one that brought us to realize that we
were likely to take part in it.
When Germany invaded Belgium with no excuse other than that progress
through that nation afforded the quickest way to France the people of
the United States awoke to their first knowledge of what militarism
may mean. Although people of German birth or parentage in America
were inclined to accept Germany’s attempted justification of military
necessity, the sympathies of most Americans went to Belgium and became
one of the important factors in determining the country’s attitude
toward the war. For the United States had always stood for principles
of justice and humanitarianism. The stories of how Germany treated the
civilian population of Belgium, stories which were verified by the
later reports of such non-partisan investigators as Brand Whitlock,
American minister to Belgium, aroused American sentiment against German
military methods.
[Illustration: _Copyright Newspaper Illustrations, Ltd._
Belgium refugees between Malines and Brussels
When Germany invaded Belgium ... the people of the United States awoke
to their first knowledge of what militarism may mean]
There were people in the United States who believed that our country
should go to war in defense of Belgium, just as we had gone to war to
free Cuba from the dominion of Spain when the rule of Spain on that
island became cruelly oppressive. But our government, believing that
the war was not a parallel instance, since it had not yet violated
those fundamental principles of our national life that had been struck
at by Spain, refused to consider such action, and the people fell back
into consideration of the causes and progress of the war abroad.
It began to be clear, as German forces crossed Belgium and plunged
into France, while at the same time German forces swept eastward, that
Germany had evolved the definite scheme of world conquest which her
later demands and movements have proven. The American people, however,
were slow to believe this intention of Germany. Bit by bit only our
country began to see that Germany was pushing forward a gigantic plan
of territorial aggression, and with all that we heard and some that
we believed, we were slow to see how this plan could affect the United
States.
Because we had lived apart from the rest of the world we would probably
have continued to feel that, terrible as the war which Germany had
begun was, it was not our war, and that all we were expected to do
was to remain genuinely neutral and to give such assistance as the
international law permitted neutral nations to give the wounded and
stricken. But Germany would not allow us to remain apart. The ruling
class of Prussia, headed by the Kaiser, grown mad with power and the
desire for more power, put into operation methods that forced us toward
war.
Germany’s progress into this war had, as we have seen, struck blows at
those principles for which America had struggled, the principles of
individual freedom, of international peace, of the freedom of the seas.
For any one of these ideals the republic might have rushed into war;
but it was only when the American people came to know that Germany was
plotting not only to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine but actually against
the American Government here in the United States that we were roused
to desire for conflict to uphold our national honor.
“It is plain enough how we were forced into war,” President Wilson
declared in his Flag Day Address of June 14, 1917. “The extraordinary
insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no
self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as
a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government. The military
masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled
our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and
sought to corrupt the opinions of our people in their own behalf.
When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently
spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from
their allegiance; and some of those agents were men connected with the
official embassy of the German Government in our own capital.
“They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our
commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us
and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her; and that, not
by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office
in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and
repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death
any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe.
“Many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their
own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment
whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not
lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up
arms? Much as we desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own
choice. The flag under which we serve would have been dishonored had we
withheld our hand.”
The President of the United States stated America’s case against
Germany mildly. Evidence of the bad faith of the government of Germany
to the government of the United States is piled in the archives of the
State Department in Washington. The honest efforts of our government
to establish honest relations with them were met by German officials
with quibbles, misrepresentations, counter-accusations, and continuing,
deliberate delays. German high officials kept us in humiliating waiting
while German official agents in this country, protected by the rules
of diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution, used their trust
to conspire against our internal peace. Agents of the German Embassy
placed spies through the length and breadth of our country. They put
their agents at work in Japan and in Latin America while they were
professing to be our friends. They bought newspapers and employed
speakers for the purpose of rousing distrust of us in those countries.
They incited insurrection in Cuba, in Haiti, and in Santo Domingo.
They did their best to arouse against us the Danish West Indies. They
spread suspicion of us and our motives in South America. They conducted
an attack upon the Monroe Doctrine such as no other nation had ever
attempted.
For a time the government of the United States tried to take the view
that this intrigue, plotting, spying, and insidious warfare was the
work of irresponsible agents, not countenanced by the Imperial German
Government; but the proof was too strong. The government finally had
to request the recall of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador and of the
German military and naval attachés, presenting proof of their criminal
violations of our hospitality. Their governments offered no reply to
us, issued no reprimands to them.
In spite of all this the temper of the American people was that we
should keep out of war as long as it was possible to maintain our
national honor without war. The President even began the preparation of
a communication to the warring nations, asking them to define their
war aims, as this would be a step toward peace. Before this note was
completed, the German Government sent out a communication, asking the
same definition. But the German Government issued this document on the
idea that the German armies had triumphed, and incorporated in it a
threat to neutral governments. From a thousand sources, official and
unofficial, word came to our government that unless the United States
used her influence to end the war on the terms dictated by Germany,
Germany and her allies would consider themselves free from obligation
to respect the rights of neutrals. The Kaiser was frankly ordering the
neutral nations of the world to force those Powers which fought him to
accept the peace he offered. If they failed to do this, Germany would
resume her submarine warfare on neutral commerce with new ruthlessness.
The President, continuing his own purpose, finished his note to both
sides, sending it on the 18th of December, 1916. Both sides replied,
the Powers who resisted Germany declaring that their principal
end in the war was the lasting restoration of peace. Germany and
her associates refused to state their terms, and merely proposed a
conference--another method of delay. The President, in an address to
the Senate on the 22d of January, 1917, outlined the terms of the peace
which the United States could honorably join in guaranteeing.
“No peace can last,” he stated, “or ought to last, which does not
recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their
just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right
anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as
if they were property....
“I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that
freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference
representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of
those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation
of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely,
not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.”
Six days earlier, on the 16th of January, the German secretary of
foreign affairs had secretly despatched a communication to the German
minister in Mexico, informing him that Germany intended to repudiate
its pledge made to the United States to discontinue submarine warfare
on neutral ships, and instructing him to offer to the Mexican
Government New Mexico and Arizona if Mexico would join with Japan in
attacking the United States.
On the last day of January, 1917, the German ambassador to the United
States, Count Bernstorff, brought to the secretary of state a note
in which Germany announced her purpose of intensifying her submarine
warfare. The German chancellor stated in Germany that the reason that
this policy had not been put into force earlier was simply because his
government had not been ready to act.
On the 3d of February, 1917, the President announced to both houses of
Congress the complete severance of our relations with Germany. Count
Bernstorff went to Berlin, and James W. Gerard, American ambassador to
Germany, was recalled to this country. Count Bernstorff had begged that
no irrevocable decision of war be made until he had the chance to make
one final plea for peace to the Kaiser. If he made the plea, he failed.
The submarine warfare began again in greater violence. And on the
twelfth day of March our government ordered the placing of armed guards
on our merchant ships.
With the Sixty-fourth Congress dissolved on the 4th of March, we had
come to the door of the greatest war in the history of the world.