By William M. Sloane.
Late Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University;
ex-President National Institute of Arts and Letters and of the
American Historical Association; was secretary of George
Bancroft, the historian, in Berlin, 1873-5; author of works on
French History.
The American public has been carefully trained to avoid entanglement
with foreign affairs. This European war was so unexpected, so entirely
unforeseen, that we were at first bewildered, and then exasperated, by
our unreadiness to meet our own emergencies.
In our effort to fix responsibility we then became partisan to the verge
of moral participation and had to be called to our senses by the wise
proclamation and warning of our Chief Magistrate.
Western Europe is a nearer neighbor than either Central or Eastern, and
what stern censors permit us to know is nicely calculated to arouse our
prejudice on one side or the other. Believing that, owing to cable
cutting and neutrality restrictions of wireless, as yet the plain truth
is not available, we ask for a suspension of judgment on both sides in
order that our Government may enjoy the undivided support of all
American citizens in its desire to secure a minimum of disturbance to
the normal course of our commercial, industrial, and agricultural life
by convulsions that are not of our making.
Fairness to ourselves means justice in the formation and expression of
opinion about not one or two but all the participants in a struggle for
European ascendency, with which we have nothing to do except as
overwhelming victory for either side might bring on a struggle for world
ascendency, with which, unhappily, we might have much to do. To
contemplate such a terrible event should sober us; the best preparation
for it is absolute neutrality in thought, speech, and conduct.
Our own history since independence is an unbroken record of expansion
and imperialism. Our contiguous territories have been acquired by
compulsion, whether of war, of purchase, of occupation, or of exchange.
We have taken advantage of others' dire necessity in the case of Great
Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Mexico.
To rectify our frontier we compelled the Gladsden Purchase within the
writer's lifetime. As to our non-contiguous possessions, we hold them by
the right of conquest or revolution, salving our consciences with such
cash indemnity as we ourselves have chosen to pay, and even now we are
considering what we choose to pay, not what a disinterested court might
consider adequate, for the good-will of the United States of Colombia, a
good-will desired solely and entirely for an additional safeguard to the
Panama Canal and a prop to the policy or doctrine substituted by the
present Administration for the moribund Monroe Doctrine.
In no single instance of virtual annexation or protectorate have we
consulted by popular vote either the desires of those inhabiting the
respective territories annexed or The Hague Tribunal. In every case we
have had one single plea and one only--self-interest.
The entire American continent south of our frontier we have closed to
all European settlement, thereby maintaining for more than a century in
a magnificent territory an imperfect civilization which makes a sorry
use of natural resources which could vastly improve the condition of all
mankind if properly used.
This is the light in which European nations see us; our identity in
this policy from the dawn of our national existence onward they consider
a proof of our national character. It differs in no respect from their
own policies except in one.
But for them this exception is basic. We are a composite folk and they
are homogeneous, their blend being approximately complete. They have one
language, one tradition, one set of institutions and laws; a unity of
literature, habits, and method in life. Some European States are
composite, but each component part claims and cultivates its own style
and its own principles; each announces itself as a nationality with a
life to be maintained and a destiny to be wrought out somehow, either in
peace or in conflict.
With perhaps a single exception, they have an overflow of population,
due to natural generation, for the comfort and happiness of which they
seek either an expansion of territory or an improvement in the
productivity of their home lands; for those who must emigrate they
passionately desire the perpetuation of their nationality, with all it
implies.
In these respects they do not differ from us, except that perhaps we are
more determined and imperious. We cannot think politically in any other
terms than those of democratic government, either direct or
representative.
At the present hour we are engaged in the very dubious experiment of
direct popular legislation and administration. We are trying to change
our Government radically, discarding its representative form for that of
delegation. The remotest cause of this is the desire to amalgamate all
our elements into homogeneity. So far this policy has resulted in a
demand, not for equality of political and civil rights, but for its
overthrow, substituting laws intended to create social and economic
equality by means of class legislation.
These facts are not to the edification of other civilized States, and
subject us to harsh and contemptuous criticism.
It is likewise very interesting that apparently the American people
believe in a monarchical democracy. One of our typical first citizens
has recently expressed his antipathy to the phrases "My monarchy," "My
loyal people," "My loyal subjects," used by one of the German monarchs
in summoning the nation to war, as implying a dynastic or personal
ownership of men.
Averse from Militarism.
The American masses dislike the sound of supreme war lord, but gladly
admit their own Chief Magistrate to be Commander in Chief of the army
and navy. To our ears the three German words are offensive, and well
they may be, for in the treacherous literal translation they are willful
perversion; but the much stronger English words are a delight to our
democracy.
The phrases of monarchy are constantly used in Great Britain by its King
and its Emperor, but give no offense to his "loyal subjects," even the
most radical, who delight in them, as apparently do our people of
British origin. Why do they give such deep offense when employed by the
German Government through its King and Emperor? The social
stratification of Germany is not as marked as that of Great Britain; its
aristocracy is far less powerful; and Edward VII. proved that an adroit
and willful English monarch could involve his "loyal people" deeper in
harmful, secret alliances than William II., whose alliances and policies
were and are unconcealed.
One of our greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the
conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its
continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an
opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion
to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to
certain of its aspects are curiously complacent.
The basic principle of our own nationality has long been the very vague
Monroe Doctrine, by the assertion of which we have prevented the
establishment on our nearest and remotest frontiers of strong military
powers, which might in certain events compel us to maintain a powerful
and numerous standing army, or even introduce the compulsory military
service of all voters, (women, of course, excepted.)
Yet we propose to fight if necessary in order to prevent fighting, and
to this end maintain the second strongest and, for its size, the most
efficient fleet in the world. This is our militarism; that of Great
Britain has been to maintain a fleet double our own or any other in
size, for it is her basic principle to maintain an unquestioned
supremacy on the highways of commerce. To this we have meekly assented,
while other nations absorb our carrying trade and our flag waves over a
fleet of perhaps a dozen respectable oceangoing trading and passenger
ships. It is under her rather patronizing protection that we fight our
foreign wars and by pressure from her that we manage the Panama Canal
with nice and honorable attention to her interpretation of a treaty
capable of quite a different one. Whether or not this be "militarism" of
the utmost efficiency by sea is not difficult to decide. But we have
never styled it infamous.
While I am writing, Germans, whose basic principle is the most efficient
"militarism" by land, are publishing all abroad that the "militarism" of
France must be forever stamped out, so that they may dwell at peace in
the lands which are their home.
Within a generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only
to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the
reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she
arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations.
The "militarism" of a republic and a democracy which retains the
essential features of Napoleonic administration has been quite as
efficient as that of a monarchical democracy like Great Britain, and may
easily prove more efficient than that of a monarchy like Germany.
Why should it be more infamous or barbarous in one case than the other?
And with what is this efficient military democracy allied in the
closest ties?
With Russia, an Oriental despotism which by the aid of French money has
developed a "militarism" by land so portentous in numbers, dimension,
and efficiency that its movements are comparable to those of Attila's
Huns. Escaped Russians in Western lands are denouncing German
"militarism" as the incubus of the world.
Which of the two should Americans regard as the greater danger?
Menaces to Our Neutrality.
It has wrung our hearts to consider the violation of Belgian neutrality,
for which both France and eventually even Great Britain have long been
prepared, but the latter has with little or no protest arranged with the
"bear that walks like a man" to disregard contemptuously the neutrality
of Persia in arranging spheres of influence, exactly as Japan, another
ally, is contemptuously disregarding the neutrality of China, the new
"republic" we were in such haste to recognize that we had to use the
cable. And what about Korea? It is a Japanese province in contravention
of the most solemn guarantees of its integrity.
Leaving aside for the moment certain considerations like these, and they
might easily be indefinitely amplified, which should compel Americans to
unbiased consideration for others and preclude a dangerous partiality,
let us ask ourselves how in the event of mediation we could be an
impartial pacificator, behaving as we have hitherto done. The attitude
of our Government has been strictly neutral, neutral to the verge of
utter self-abnegation; and, as some regard it, timidity.
But rock-fast as any democratic magistrate may be, public opinion must
and does influence him. Rightly or wrongly his agents would be even more
completely dominated, and rightly or wrongly they would be suspect in
view of our terrific partisanship on both sides since the commencement
of hostilities.
The efficiency of Government organs in "producing the goods," the
terrific power of organization on one side and mass on the other, have
been considered a menace to world equilibrium.
Whichever way the decision falls, the scrutiny of Europe will be turned
to us. Unless observation and instinct be utterly at fault, we have for
more than a decade been, after Germany, the worst-hated nation of all
that are foremost.
It is pre-eminently our affair to mind our own business, as others have
minded theirs. Without cessation of noise and fury in America this is
impossible.
Indeed, our emotional storms have already furnished proof of how we are
incapacitated from either enforcing our rights as neutrals or seizing by
the forelock the opportunity afforded to us as neutrals and from
enjoying the unquestioned privileges of neutrality.
It is not altogether edifying to think that the close of the European
struggle, be it long or short, will probably find our ocean commerce
substantially where it was at the beginning, and that conflicts which
were not of our making will have been fought out before we are able to
secure our share of the world markets. Apparently the leaders in
commerce, industry, and trade, like the lawmakers and administrators,
are paralyzed by the imperative necessity of aiding panicstricken
tourists and panicstricken stay-at-homes. Apparently, too, our people
are suffering more in purse and general comfort than the actual
combatant nations.
Clamorous for American sympathy and cash, we have on our shores
embassies from the belligerents, pleading their respective virtues and
sorrows.
Why, after all, should our chiefest concern be with them? Surely we may
be good Samaritans without a total disregard of our own interests and a
blindness to opportunity verging on impotency. There is no immorality in
the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which
creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans,"
do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting
our energies in emotions and vain babble.
At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is
endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is
altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and
creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of
a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and
absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher
civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost
the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in
alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of
Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.
In Peril of the Whirlwind.
This ought to be a very sobering spectacle, but it seems to arouse the
delighted enthusiasm of an American majority. For such an aberration
there is but a single and efficient remedy: absorption in our own
affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our
being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch
us into the vortex.
To change the metaphor, we revel in the pleasant propulsion of the
maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers,
escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions
are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess
utterly incompatible with action. And just such a paralysis seems for
six long weeks to have lamed the highest powers of America.
The proportionate increase in population among the European powers is
overwhelmingly in favor of the Slavs. Their rate of increase by natural
generation is nearly three times that of even the Germans, with the
result that by the introduction of enforced military service into
Eastern Europe, (excepting Hungary and perhaps Rumania,) the military
balance of power has been completely changed.
The wars among the Balkan States, including Turkey, have put on foot
armies of a dimension hitherto undreamed of among the South Slavs, and
the army of Russia is probably two and a half times larger than it
could have been thirty-five years ago.
The method by which Eastern Europe has succeeded in financing itself is
rather mysterious. We know, of course, that the original Franco-Russian
Alliance was based on reciprocal interests, and that large sums of
French money flowed into Russia, which partly developed the natural
resources of Russia and were partly in the shape of loans that in all
likelihood were used for war material.
Slavs in Germany.
The conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons all along the line on
which they border has therefore been in two ways intensified. In the
first place, just in proportion as Germany has become an industrial
State, the field work has been intrusted to immigrant Slavs, some of
whom come only for the season and return, but a very large number of
them--estimated at the present moment at close to a million--have
substantially settled within the borders of the German Empire. That is
to say, there is a constant injection of 1-1/2 per cent. of Slavic blood
into the territories of the German Empire.
Suppose now that Russia should succeed in establishing the protectorate
over all Slavs which she desires, and at the same time should press back
the Germans on that border line, something very closely approximating a
new migration of peoples in Europe will take place.
As far as I know the German feeling, expressed both privately and
publicly, officially and unofficially, they have hoped to maintain their
complete consanguinity, if not homogeneity, within the lands they regard
as their home; and their preparations for war, their increase of their
military strength, have been made, professedly at least, solely in the
interest of defense. Americans can simply not realize--it is impossible
for them to realize--the difference in the degree of civilization and
culture on either side of a purely artificial boundary line.
Very fortunately it has entered the minds of several people lately to
write to the newspapers about the unhappy confusion that comes from the
use of words in a meaning which at home they do not connote at all.
Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is
a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German
considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront,
it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the
composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they
therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has
always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire
necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for
example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary
enlistment and the introduction of the draft.
Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man
is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty
years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or
another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until
within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German
who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that
was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke
had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the
formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.
As a parallel we might imagine, not one troublesome neighbor, but four.
We might imagine a tremendous military power developed in Canada, and we
might imagine a hostile military power on the Atlantic side and another
one on the Pacific side, in which case we would beyond a question have
to expand our inchoate militarism, just in proportion as we came to feel
the necessity for a strong physical defensive or offensive in the way of
a great standing army, and we probably would do it without any
hesitation.
Now, Germany has not any really bitter foe on the north, although there
is no love lost between the Germans and the Scandinavians; but it has an
embittered foe on the east, and another one on the west, and what has
proved to be an embittered foe upon the water and a very lukewarm
neutral State on the south, a State which had joined in alliance with
her.
Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an
offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an
offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has
refused to participate in the struggle.
I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my
life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might
say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an
entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of
historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained
diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these
respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain
value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the
embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one
can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private
correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and
that the most important historical documents are found in the archives
of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European
policy and politics.
So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as
yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation
yet to come and perhaps for several generations. The student in almost
any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in
the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date.
That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no
case is it later than 1830.
If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be
considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not
care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining
student is. For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely
denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain--or at least excuses were
made if they were not absolutely denied--which were opened to an
Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.
The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough.
Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and
is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to
know. And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources
of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all
indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to
be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.
Attack on Sir Edward Grey.
Now, we have just had a very interesting incident. THE NEW YORK TIMES
printed recently what the British call their "White Paper," as well as
the German "White Paper." The editors of our most important journals
announced that they had read and studied those papers with care, and
that on the face of those papers, beyond any peradventure, Germany was
the aggressor. German militarism had flaunted itself as an insult in the
face of Europe. Germany had violated neutrality, Germany had committed
almost every sin known to international law, and therefore the whole
German procedure was to be reprobated.
Within a very short time a Labor member of Parliament, J. Ramsay
Macdonald, rises in his place, able and fearless, and, on the basis of
the "White Paper," as published and put in the hands of the British
public, attacks Sir Edward Grey for having so committed Great Britain in
advance to both Russia and France that, in spite of the representations
of the German Ambassador, he dared not discuss the question of
neutrality. This member of Parliament manifestly belongs to the powerful
anti-war party of Great Britain, a party two of whose members, John
Burns and Lord Morley, resigned from the Cabinet rather than condone
iniquity; a party which before the outbreak of the war made itself
heard and felt, and protested against the participation of Great
Britain, desiring localization of the struggle.
Mr. Macdonald says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of
Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is
absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium,
both by France and by Germany--in other words, the violation of its
neutrality--were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose
in his place and said he was not one of those whose opinion was that a
formal guarantee should stand so far in thwarting the natural course of
events as to commit Great Britain to war; and that has been the
announced and avowed policy of Great Britain all the way down since
1870, and that therefore talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality
is a mere pretext.
That is another instance of this secret agreement that goes on, which so
commits a man like Sir Edward Grey that in the pinch, when the German
Ambassador substantially proposed to yield everything to him and asked
him for his proposition, he cannot make any.
These facts are in the "White Paper." As far as I know, no editor in the
United States who claims to have studied thoroughly that "White Paper"
has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper
at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective
speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.
Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press
is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know
what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman
Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but
autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word
Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless
it be the Czar of Russia.
We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to
us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take
the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord."
What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas,
as a matter of fact--and this has already been pointed out both in
conversation and in public prints--the term means nothing in the world
but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different
relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which
Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to
the country. Mr. Lincoln was just as much an "Oberster Kriegsherr" at
one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact,
rather more.
Sherman's March to the Sea.
In truth, the sense of outrage which Americans feel over the horrors of
war, while most creditable to them, is very often based upon an
ignorance of the rules and regulations of so-called civilized warfare,
and upon a sentimentality, which, though also very creditable, is
unfortunately not one of the factors in the world's work. It would not
hurt Americans occasionally to recall Sherman's march to the sea, during
which every known kind of devastation occurred, or to recall Gen.
Hunter's boast that he had made the Valley of Virginia such a desert
that a crow could not find sustenance enough in it to fly from one side
to the other, and yet at that time, in what we considered the supreme
danger to our country, the conduct of those men was approved, and they
themselves were almost deified for their actions.
While parallels are dangerous and the existence of one wrong does not
make another action right, yet at the same time a very considerable
amount of open-mindedness must be exercised in a neutral country when
regarding the passionate devotions of combatant nations to their
culture, to their safety, to their interest; and it should be recalled
that in the heats and horrors of war it is extremely difficult, however
trained or disciplined troops may be, to prevent outrages, and that so
far as we have gone in accurate information the least that can be said
is that it is slowly dawning upon us that horror for horror and outrage
for outrage there has been no overwhelming balance on either side.
The Allies (this interview was received Tuesday morning) firmly believe
that the struggle on the west is so indecisive up to this time that what
will count for them is the duration of the war. Lloyd George has just
said, not in the exact language, but virtually, what Disraeli said in
1878: "We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do we have got the
ships, we have got the men, we have got the money, too." Those are the
words that brought into use the expression "jingoists."
Now, Lloyd George said the other day that it was the money which in the
long run would count and that Great Britain had that; and the meetings
that are held to induce Englishmen to enlist are addressed by speakers
who meet with lots of applause when they say: "We may not be able to put
the same number of men into the field immediately that Germany was able
to put or Russia was able to put, but in the long run, considering the
attitude of all the different parts of our empire, we will be able to
put just as many men, and therefore time is on our side both as regards
force in the field and money to sustain it." (The London Times confesses
that enlistment in Ireland is a failure.)
Lloyd George says that for a comparatively short time England's enemies
can finance themselves and be very efficient, but that as time passes
they unquestionably will exhaust not only their pecuniary means but
their resources of men as well. That is his position at this time.
Therefore, it does appear as if the long duration of the war was a thing
desired, at least in Great Britain, as being their hope of victory. Both
Great Britain and France are wealthy countries. Just how wealthy Germany
is I do not think they realize, nor do we know, nor what its ultimate
resources can be.
Now, looking at the allied line as a whole, we will suppose that the
German forces were overwhelmingly triumphant in France, and suppose,
likewise, which is by no means as strong a hypothesis, that Russia is
overwhelmingly victorious against Austria and the Eastern German Army;
then, of course, you have the situation in which that one of the Allies
which is triumphant will assert its leadership in the terms of peace
that will be reached, and would have the hegemony, as we call it, of all
Europe.
Russia's Position.
So that the defeat of the Allies in the west and their overwhelming
success in the east would compel the acceptance, in any peace that might
be made, of such terms as Russia chose to dictate. She would have to be
satisfied, otherwise there would only be one outcome of it; that is, of
course, if Great Britain and France could not accept those terms, there
would be a rupture, and stranger things have been seen than Germany,
France, and Great Britain fighting against Russia.
Stranger things than that have been seen; such changes in the alliances
between States have occurred at intervals from the seventeenth century
onward in Europe, a phase of the subject that is too lengthy to discuss
here, but which every student of history knows all about. And it is
thinkable that they might occur again.
Suppose, on the other hand, that the Germans should imitate Frederick
the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it,
because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be
able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in
the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France
would be a minor power for years to come.
Probably peace might come more quickly if neither side should be
absolutely victorious than otherwise. But for the moment I think that
the agreement among the Allies is a very portentous thing, as far as the
duration of the war is concerned.
"Do you think that any secret agreement may exist; that France even now
may have made an agreement with Germany?" Mr. Sloane was asked.
I cannot think so. I think it very evident there is no such secret
agreement. If one existed it would be much more likely to be between
Russia and Germany. You remember the development of Prussia, which is,
of course, the commanding State in the German Empire, occurred by its
careful conservation of the policy which was laid down in the political
will of Frederick the Great, that of keeping friends with Russia.
The fact of the matter is, Prussia was saved in the Napoleonic wars by
the act of Gen. Yorck at Tauroggen, when he suddenly abandoned the
French and went over to the Prussians, and while Russia has within half
a generation become intensely bitter against Germany, yet it is true
that the Baltic Provinces, in which the gentry and the burghers are
Germans, have furnished most important administrators to the Russian
Empire, a fact that causes much of the jealousy in Russia on the part of
the native-born Russians against the Germans of the Baltic Provinces.
Nevertheless, self-interest is a very important thing, and if Russia
thought for a moment that France was going to abandon her I think she
would turn to Germany right away.
As time has developed the nations of today, it has come to be understood
by hard-headed statesmen that those who conduct their respective affairs
can have no other guiding principle than the interest of their own
State, no other.
There is a persistent feeling throughout the world that there is an
analogy between the individual man and organized society. There are
books written to show that States must and do pass through the various
stages through which an individual passes, namely, infancy, childhood,
youth, middle age, old age, decay. By a perfectly natural parallel the
majority of men apply the same morality to the State which they apply to
the individual, and they insist upon it that a State must be moral in
every respect; that it must have a conscience; that it must have virtue;
that it must practice self-denial; that it must not lay its hands on
what does not belong to it. In short, that it must as a State or as a
nation be "good," in exactly the same sense in which a person is "good."
In other words, they personify the State.
I have never heard of any speaker or writer who would not approve of
that as an ideal, and who would not desire that the millennium should
come upon earth now, and that exactly the same virtues that are held up
for personal ideals should be held up for national ideals.
I think we all believe that, but, as a matter of fact, in a world
constituted as ours is, the one test of a good Government, applied by
every individual, is the material prosperity of the people who live
under it, and for that reason if the people do not at first put in power
men who can give them material prosperity they will put such failures
out and try another set of rulers, and they will go on and on that way
until necessarily the policies of statesmen must be based upon the
interest of that State whose destinies are in their hands. So that the
only hope of relations between nations similar to those that exist
between good men and good women is that the individuals of that nation,
its population, its inhabitants, should consent to exercise the
self-denying virtues; and until that point is reached there can be no
good State in the sense in which there can be a good man. We ought all
to work for it, but it is not here now, and there are no signs on the
horizon of its approach.
In a war, therefore, every statesman studies the resources of his
nation, and when the time comes that it is manifestly his duty to put an
end to warfare, it is only by the public approval that he dares do it,
by showing that it is to their advantage to give up the things for which
they went to war, in greater or less degree.
Armed Peace Not Disarmament.
And the man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is
the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations and steps
in and says:
"Now, the whole moral force of the civilized world must be brought to
bear upon you to make a peace, the terms of which, if possible, shall
not discredit any of you, but at the same time shall be as elastic and
as proportionate to your respective gains and losses as will insure at
least a considerable period of peace, not an armistice, not an armed
armistice, though it may be an armed peace."
We see no signs anywhere in Europe that disarmament has any substantial
body of advocates in any nation. The basic principle hitherto of the
German people has been to have, not the largest, but the strongest army;
the basic principle of Great Britain, which sneers at militarism, has
been not only to have the most powerful fleet, but twice the most
powerful fleet.
And what is the basic principle of the United States? The Monroe
Doctrine, to have no armed neighbor which shall compel us to violate by
its presence our dislike for compulsory military service or to expend
great sums for armament.
These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to
maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we
could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to
give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe
Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not
need to explain here.
But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican
frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent
settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle
that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army,"
and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the
strongest fleet."
I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro
this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the principal
impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be
an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisanship, in which
(throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too
strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of
the lands of their origin.