619 .C58 Copy 1 lY THE UNITED STATES F AMERICA ENTERED THE WAR By GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE Professor in the University of Tennessee HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO PRICE TWOPENCE WHYTHE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ENTERED THE WAR By GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE Professor in the University of Tennessee HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO ^''^-^ ^^ ^^ No man can be glad that such thmgs have hap- pened as we have witnessed in these last fateful years, but perhaps it may be permitted to us to be glad that we have the opportunity to show that the prijtciples we profess are living principles, ajtd to have a chance by pouring out our blood and treasure to vindicate the things which we have professed. The real fruition of life is to do the things we have said we wished to do. There are tunes when words seem empty and 07tly action seems great. Such a time has come, and in the Providence of God America will once more have an opportunity to show to the world that she is born to serve ma7tkind.^\ — President Wilson, in his Address on Memorial Day, May 30th, 19 1 7. L^ WHY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ENTERED THE WAR AMERICANS are by temperament and habit a peaceful, kindly people. They dislike a "fuss". The average American business man is cheerful, hospitable, generous, and fond of a chat and a joke. When he wants excitement, he goes to a political meeting or a baseball game, or scans the brisk headlines of his daily newspaper with an air of shrev/dly sceptical concern. He works hard and zealously for commercial success, but meets the competition of his rivals in an amiably sporting spirit. To his friends he is almost passionately loyal; through good report and bad report they are his friends, and that is enough for him. He is an indulgent husband and father, is quite sure that his home town possesses superlative merits, and calls his native land "God's country". Pacific and prosperous as he is, and uneasily sensitive to any attempt, either from within or from without, to commit the United States to a foreign policy that may involve it in difficulties, he argues that George Washington is a good man "to tie to," and that the advice of the first American President to his country to avoid entangling alliances with Europe is "good enough for him". For himself, he believes in free opportunities, a "square deal," and the democracy of liberty and fellowship, and he likes to believe that that spirit is growing every- 3 WHY THE UNITED STATES where. But he rather suspects that there are places and countries where it is not very well understood, or where its growth is checked by intolerant exploiters of the people in the guise of kings, politicians, or professional militarists. Well, Lincoln sagaciously said that you couldn't fool all of the people all of the time, and it must be that the people everywhere will sooner or later find their way to freedom. Meanwhile the good old U.S.A. can keep on setting a sound example. One prac- tical thing she can do, however — and he takes great pride in helping her to do it — she can show the world that in spite of her political isolation her heart is in the right place, by giving aid freely and generously whenever necessity requires it, to any branch of the human family that is suffering from sudden disaster or acute privation. For if freedom is our friend's first word, humanity is his second. Uncle Sam is jealously independent, no doubt, but he is also incurably benevolent. These ideals of our friend the business man find ready counterparts in the other classes and categories existing in American society — the doctor, the lawyer, the journalist, the college professor. Indeed, all American types tend to think of the Republic as a free, humane, progressive exemplar for the coming of the new social and political order in the world at large. These values have always been latent in the national consciousness of America. Since August, 19 14, however, as she has watched the course of events in Europe and the Near East there has gradually come into her mind a new conviction ; 4 ENTERED THE WAR that it is not enough to sympathise and to hope, but that in order to be true to her own truth she must lay her all upon the altar of liberty, and must accept her active share of the world's suffering and struggle, if she is to keep her national ideals un- tarnished and to secure their enlightening influence upon the still unfree. Service — in whatever form conditions may require it — service in freedom's cause, she has come to see, is the price that must constantly be paid for the maintenance of freedom. It is interesting to observe the progress of the public attitude in the United States toward the war, from the academic, pacific stage; through the stage of a steadily increasing concern; into the present stage of aggressive resistance to the. Prus- sian effort to crush the power of the free peoples. As I, write, there lie before me three letters, from, three American university men, all of them close students of history and politics. It will be worth while quoting from these three letters in the order in which they were written. The first letter repre- sents the first mood or stage mentioned above, and the salient passage in. it runs as follows : — " Personally, my heart cries out against every form of warfare except the higher warfare of the Spirit against war, and especially the cause of war. England's greatest human asset is that upon the whole the peace- and liberty-loving peoples of the earth trust her and fear Germany. In the long run the meek and the loving will inherit the earth, and all conquests where might seems to overcome right are worst of all for the 5 WHY THE UNITED STATES conquerors. But so long as nations and individuals fight instead of co-work, we can at least expect the defeat of the very worst and the success of all that will best serve to bring about in the end the verv best." The second letter contains the following vigorous words : — "You ask how I feel about the U.S.A. and the war. My thoughts and feelings have exactly paralleled those of Woodrow Wilson, and I think his have paralleled those of the majority of us. As I size us up, we are an idealistic people tempered with a good deal of prag- matism. It w^as our pragmatism that kept us out of the war when we might have entered, and now it is our idealism that has taken us into it when we might keep out. The fact is we have never really been in doubt as to the issue ; that is why we have not hastened to enter. Could we have foreseen that without our assistance the war would drag on for three years and take such a heavy toll of life and property I believe we would have entered when Belgium was invaded. You see, when the war broke like a bolt out of a clear sky we were all so surprised that we didn't know what to think or do — complete ' unpre- paredness ' for anything of the sort — and the first thing that came to mind was the thing oftenest dinned into our ears — Washington's advice to beware of entangling alliances with Europe. Of course, we thought that it would all be over in about three months, and that the Powers 6 ENTERED THE WAR would kiss and make up — in which case it would be best for us to keep out of a family quarrel. Then matters dragged along, the Germans playing a brand of international politics we knew nothing about, until finally there was no escape from the conclusion that they are modern Huns, heedless of law and virtue, inventors and practisers of new and fearful forms of vice. Prussianism has com- mitted suicide, and it is good for the world that it has. It is only a question of days before we, too, shall enter the war, and I know it will not be a half-hearted entrance." The third letter puts its seal to the irresistible American movement for the championing of inter- national liberty, in this terse but expressive manner : — " Every man here who is a man is now ready to do his utmost to help bring about the defeat of Germany and her Allies, and the political and militaristic ideas w^hich they represent.'' Still a fourth letter comes, this time from a business man in Wyoming : — " The whole West was on the tiptoe of expecta- tion for months before war was declared, and v/hen Wilson made his speech to the Congress, there was an explosion of approval and patriotism. Every house in the West was ablaze with flags, and the people came together in great meetings in every village, hamlet and cross- roads in the state. Hundreds of our young men 7 WHY THE UNITED STATES are going away to the camps. It is a most popular war. We have a large German popula- tion even here in this little town, but they all attend our war meetings with enthusiasm, and if they have any thought against the programme, we do not hear it. " The people are not taking it out in talk either, for every man, woman, and child has work to do. The women and little children are working gardens; the men of war age are pre- paring their business in order to enlist as soon as the Government gets ready for them; and the old men are working in the fields with hoe and shovel, and blessing the privilege of adding their bit to the great work before the nation." It is undoubtedly true that American neutrality toward the Entente Alliance has been benevolent from the beginning, nor could it have been other- wise, on account of the historical ties of reciprocal understanding and helpfulness which have for so long bound the United States to France, and on account also of the sometimes unrecognised but always silently strong sense of kinship that the national consciousnesses of Great Britain and America have cherished and maintained. When one considers how closely tied England and America are by their possession of a common language, a common literary and religious heritage, a common fundamental law, similar social and political ideals (constantly tending toward greater likeness), and by a common necessity for reaching just, wise, and effective solutions of the problems ENTERED THE WAR which must be faced in the working out of these ideals, one cannot fail to be impressed with the conviction that it is the "manifest destiny" of these two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race to co- operate more and more definitely and sympathetic- ally in their future international undertakings. Although the American soul was deeply stirred by the invasion of Belgium, by the German atroci- ties that followed, by the sinking of the hapless Litsitmua and many other vessels under circum- stances of calculated heartlessness and violation of international law; although the American imagina- tion responded with enthusiasm to the magnificent gallantry of the Allied forces on land and sea ; yet the American mind, precisely because of its rela- tive isolation and of its composite character, moved slowly toward the thought of active participation in the war. It is important to recognise that the cosmopolitan population of the United States includes many millions of people who are not of Anglo-Saxon origin. The thirteenth official census of the United States, taken in 19 lo, shows a total population of 91,972,266. Of this number 13,515,886 (or 14.7 per cent.) are recorded as being of foreign birth; 12,916,311 (or 14 per cent.) were native whites of foreign parents; and 5,981,526 (or 6.5 per cent.) were native whites of mixed (native and foreign) parentage. Of the total foreign-born population of 13,515,886, the highest percentage (18.5 per cent.) came from Germany, while 12.4 per cent, came from Austria. Of the total foreign white stock in the United 9 WHY THE UNITED STATES States in 19 lo, numbering 32,243,382, there were 8,282,618 (or 25.7 per cent.) persons in the United States having Germany as their country of origin. This number comprised 2,501,181 born in Ger- many, 3,911,841 native born of German parents, and 1,869,590 native born of one German parent and one American. This reckoning excludes per- sons of "mixed foreign parentage, "by which is meant persons whose parents are of different nationalities but neither of whom is a native American. There were 2,001,559 (6.2 per cent.) white persons in the United States having Austria as their country of origin. This number compiised 1,174,924 born in Austria, 709,070 native born of Austrian parents, and 117,565 native born of one Austrian parent and one American. In addition to the foregoing there were in 19 10 9,827,763 negroes and 412,546 persons of other coloured races in the United States, making a grand total of persons not Anglo-Saxon in their immediate origin of 42,654,032 (or 45.6 per cent.). It is inter- esting and important to note also that the proportion of foreign-born white persons, together^ with native whites of foreign or mixed parentage, is more than 50 per cent, of the total population in the States of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- necticut, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Utah, and North and South Dakota. In all of the Western States save those named above, and New Mexico and Kansas, the proportion varies from 35 to 50 per cent. In the Southern States it is less than 5 per cent. The following urban statistics strikingly illus- 10 ENTERED THE WAR trate the social and political values arising out of the situation suggested above, when it becomes intensified in some of the largest cities in the United oiares . Kativ^ Total popula- Native whites f Foreig^n. Foreign. tion according wliites of ^ ■ '^ born whiles born whites to the Census native oregi natives of natives of New York °'""' P"""""^"^"- p°/r"nt'age. Geanany. Austria. City 4,766,883 921,318 1,820,141 278,114 190,237 Chicago, Illinois .... 2,185,283 445,139 912,701 182,281 132,059 Philadelphia, Pa 1,549,008 584,008 496,785 61,467 19,857 Milwaukee, Wisconsin .. 373^857 78,823 182,530 64,816 11,553 Cincinnati, Ohio ........ 363^591 154,937 132,190 28,425 1,638 In view of this manifest variety in the origin and psychology of the American individual, we may well ask ourselves what precisely were the considerations that solidified popular sentiment in the United States to such an extent that eventually American participation in the war became to Americans not only desirable but unescapable. In answering this question we shall do well to recognise the distinction between cause and occasion. A cause, if it remain active and persistent, must sooner or later bring about its necessary result, but that result is often hastened and assisted by the existence of what may be called quickening occasions. There is no doubt in the writer's mind that the United States of America entered the world war primarily on account of her devotion to the cause of human free- dom, and that, should the war last long enough, America was predestined to enter it from the first. True, a recent American writer insists that "passive inspiration is her role, as it is conceived by her II WHY THE UNITED STATES citizens, and as her Government has again and again interpreted it. Pressed, she will insist upon rights, will even declare herself the champion of other nations' rights. But so long as she is left to her own devices, she will stand apart and offer herself as a golden example to a bitter world." But while this has not been wholly untrue of the United State's in the past, it is apparent that it was less than true in 1898, when the national spirit demanded action for the emancipation of Cuba. No doubt this determination was partly due to the feeling that the opportunity might be conscientiously seized for further conserving the interests of the Monroe Doctrine, beside satisfying the dictates of humanity, but those who know America and con- sider the course she took with her "conquests" on that occasion believe that her guiding principle — ■ the service of humanity — perhaps never before so strikingly controlled her morals and her decisions. That brief flash of war, however, was merely symptomatic of the widening ideals of the maturing Republic. Despite her relative unfamiliarity with European conditions and despite her traditional aversion to assuming an active partnership in the proceedings of European nations, she has now actually made what Kipling rightly calls " the eternal choice . Of good or ill . . . . " In the Gates of Death rejoice ! • We see and hold the good — Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice For Freedom's brotherhood." 12 ENTERED THE WAR The United States would have made her choice even earlier had she not been faced with the problem of overcoming her own rather superstitious but easily understandable devotion to the idea of a self- sufficient and geographically aloof isolation. "We are thoroughly aroused," comes now the message of a deeply patriotic American, " and as determined as we have been patient All during the war I have been much depressed, but now there is a wonderful lightness of heart and an almost pas- sionate yearning for suffering. We have no right to be exempt." It is quite clear, then, that the American national consciousness, although it had come to feel that the time was nearly ripe for the co-operation of the country with the Entente Alliance, was stirred into a remarkable and almost unanimous determination that America should do her part, on account of several occasions, or contributory causes, likely to induce war, some of which had existed from the beginning, while others appeared more or less simul- taneously with the final ripening of the moment which has been spoken of above. These several occasions may be briefly set down as follows : — First, the faithless invasion of Belgium by the Germans, the atrocities that followed, and the callous and brutal oppression of the civil popula- tion. Second, the traditional fellowship between the United States and France. Third, the growing feeling of kinsman-like .sym- pathy with the British Empire as it suffered and 13 WHY THE UNITED STATES sacrificed itself for the cause of liberty; especially, perhaps, the inspiring object-lesson shown by the liberal despatch of Canadian troops and supplies to Europe, together with the remarkable quickening of the Canadian national life that followed, and that was observed by thoughtful Americans with interest and admiration, perhaps even with something of envy. Immediate zeal and enthusiasm for the cause of the Allies was shown by thousands of Americans who personally enlisted in the Canadian contingent, the Foreign Legion in France, or elsewhere, for active service. As Lord Northcliffe has written in the Times, " If you take a map of the United States and go up and down the American lines in France you will find no city, great or small, which has not sent a flying man, a bomber, an artilleryman, a sniper, or a dispatch rider to help to destroy Prus- sian despotism. I put one question to a score of those whose mothers were not ashamed to raise them to be soldiers. I asked them why they had come. The reply of the American in France is the same every time, whether you meet him with the Canadian Army, the British Army, or the French Army. They all say words to this effect : ' The sort of thing that has been going on in Europe as the result of the horrible organised savagery of the Prussians has got to be stopped. We want to stop it before it reaches our own country. We have come over here to do it, and thank God, we know that we are helping to do it, and that it is to be thoroughly done.'" Many of the letters sent back home by these young soldiers, and since published, have been full 14 ENTERED THE WAR of similar fervour and enthusiasm, and have had no small influence in affecting the American public mind. The unusually inspiring poems of Alan Seeger, a young American who was killed in France in July, 19 1 6, might well be mentioned also in this connection. It is worth while noting that according to the latest reports from Washington the total number of Americans participating in the Great War as infantrymen, artillerymen, aviators. Red Cross workers, nurses, etc., will probably reach the number of one hundred thousand during the present summer. Fourth, the German propaganda in the United States, which pursued a course so increasingly blatant and mischievous as to disgust and alienate many minds towards whose conversion it was espe- cially directed. Fifth, the intricate system of German espionage in the United States, and the grave outrages com- mitted by agents of the German Government in con- nection with plots against public and private works of military importance. These proceedings became cumulatively sinister, until they, too, defeated their own ends. Sixth, the recklessly inhuman and illegal use of the submarine by the German Government and the eventual decision of that Government, despite the warnings and protests of America, to enter upon the course officially described as "unrestricted'' submarine warfare. Seventh, the culminating exposure of under- handed and indefensible German political methods, in the overtures discovered to have been made by 15 WHY THE UNITED STATES the German Government to Mexico, suggesting that in the event of war breaking out between Germany and the United States Mexico should receive finan- cial aid from the German Government, and should undertake the invasion of the United States, with the understanding also that Japan should be invited to break her faith with the Entente Allies and to declare war against the United States. Eighth, the wicked and wholesale attempt by the Turkish authorities to exterminate the Armenian people, Germany being a consenting partner. Ninth, the redemption of Russia from her deadening autocratic regime and her hopeful entrance upon her great experiment in democracy, which came at precisely the moment when the United States Government was making up its mind to participate in the war. It is important to note that the existence of the old governmental condi- tions in Russia had been a serious obstacle to American popular acceptance of the cause of the Allies. As James D. Whelpley has pointed out in The Fortnightly Review for May, 19 17, much of the German propaganda in the United ^tates took the form of anti-Russianism. "Tales of the vast resources of Russia and predictions as to the future economic greatness of that country fell upon deaf or prejudiced ears in America until the revolution swept away the autocratic form of government. Too much importance can hardly be given to this Rus- sian factor in determining the degree of support now given by America to the Allied cause, for recent events in Petrograd have made a tremendous appeal to cherished traditions and principles, and in a day 16 ENTERED THE WAR the formerly antagonistic Jewish forces have become reconciled to the idea of the United States of America as an Ally of a democratised Russian Empire." These contributory causes have been of varying degrees of importance, but each of them has served as a definite lesson, so to speak, in the national educational programme planned and fostered by the most sagacious American statesmen and publicists, from the President down. These lessons eventually transformed the perplexed and cautious America of 19 14 into the one-minded, one-souled America of 19 1 7. "At last," wrote the late Joseph H. Choate to Earl Grey on April 17th, 191 7, "at last Ameri- cans at home and abroad can hold up their heads with infinite pride. The whole nation is now lined up behind the President, and I think that you will hear no more about doubt or hesitation or dissent among us. I think that we may now forget all the past, and let bygones be bygones, and accept the President as our great leader for the war; and we must give him credit for one signal result of his watchful waiting, and that is, that he was waiting to see when the whole nation would be wrought up to the point which has now been reached, so that he could safely announce to the world our alliance with France and Great Britain without any practical dis- sent. I say alliance, because that is justified by his noble utterances. We must stand together now until victory is won, and I think that victory will be greatly hastened by the entrance of the United States into the conflict. As you know, I have thought from the beginning that, while for the time 17 WHY THE UNITED STATES being we might better serve the cause of the Allies by remaining neutral and supplying all that we could in the way of arms and munitions, and, I am happy to say, some men, as our neutral right was; that nevertheless v/hen, by entering into the war with all our might and with the aid of all our boundless resources, we could help to bring it to an end in the right way by the complete suppression of Prus- sian militarism, and the triumph of civilisation, it would be our duty to do so. That time has now come, and I am happy to think that our great nation has acted upon the same thought, and has been really true to all its great traditions." The American people "came into this gigantic strife," said the United States Ambassador, Walter H. Page, at an immense demonstration of the British Workers' League, held in Hyde Park, London, on May 27th, 191 7, "not because they were bound by any treaties, or even any undertakings, or had any- thing to gain from it except to come as the sup- port of liberty itself." The declaration of the state of war with Germany was passed in the United States Senate by a vote of 82 to 6, and in the House of Representa- tives by a vote of ^"j^, to 50. It was an impressive and conclusive vote. But the great process of national education which had prepared for it could never have been conceived or completed were it not for the steady operation of the fundamental cause which brought America into the war,, namely, her devoted attachment to the belief that all humanity is entitled to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- piness." ' In his Proclamation of April 15th, 19 17, 18 ENTERED THE WAR addressed to the American people, President Wilson asserts that so far as he can see "there is not a single selfish element in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind, and for the future peace and security of the world. To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage, and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realise to the full how great the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice, it involves." "There are those in the United States," says the American journalist, Gilbert V. Seldes, in his book entitled The United States and the War, " who do not see the goal of all good endeavours in economic penetrations and increased productions, nor the happy life in the meaningless labours of scientific management. They are careless of any supremacy in trade which does not bring the free play of human activity, and they refuse to have freedom given or withheld as an incentive to labour." And again he writes : "We have been told, with an insistence we resented a little, that the Entente had our safety in its keeping, because a German victory would leave us Germany's victim in the next war. But our safety is not the most precious thing which England guards for us. She is, in every serious sense, the guardian of our faith. That the good American knows, and that he is trying to teach his country to understand. It is simply the faith that a democratic people can fully and finally dedicate and organise itself to meet 19 WHY THE UNITED STATES the power of undemocratic discipline. The critical impatience with which the United States watched the long, terrible process by which Great Britain gathered her strength was not wholly kind ; but for the good American it was more than generous. He knew that if the process was long, the result must be good, or there would be neither safety nor security for his country except in immediate prepara- tion to lead the life of Prussians, lest Prussia over- come the country by force. It is from this change of life, more than from invasion of arms, that England saved the United States. She has justified the faith of democracy." It is fitting that this effort to review the condi- tions that have led the United States into an active partnership with the Entente Alliance should con- clude with the quotation in its entirety of the Pre- sident's memorable address to Congress. President Wilson is an educator in temper and training alike, and he has sought, sometimes apparently with less firmness and vigour than the "stalwarts'' could have desired, but always with a persistent belief in those root qualities of the American character that make for justice, honour and liberty, to imbue his country- men with confidence in the sobriety of his official judgment, and to lead them into a self -consistent national attitude in relation to the war. He has hoped, with the pacificists, that the United States could manage to avoid war, but he has not ruled war. out, like the pacificists, as something to be avoided at all hazards. Indeed, he saw clearly, long before the majority of his countrymen saw it, that if America were to remain America, she must 20 ENTERED THE WAR eventually enter the war. When the time came to realise and announce that necessity publicly, the country was ready for the great crisis-moment, and accepted it not merely with equanimity but with positive relief and enthusiasm. It is obvious that none of President Wilson's State papers touching- the war can be properly or even intelligently interpreted hereafter save in the light of the gravely considered and gravely delivered address made before the assembled Congress on the night of April 2nd, 19 17, and of the mental processes and changes which led to the framing of that address. It is an eloquent and effective summary of the Ameri- can position in the world and in the war, and a complete vindication, not, perhaps, neces- sarily of America's long forbearance and delay, but of the virile, unselfish, and idealistic qualities of the American character. 21 WHY THE UNITED STATES ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Delivered at a Joint Session of the Two Houses of Congress, April 2. 1917. Gentlemen of the Congress : — I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally per- missible that I should assume the responsibility of making. On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its sub- marines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports con- trolled by the enemies of Germany within the Medi- terranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its under- sea craft in conformity with itr promise then given to us that passenger boats shou/d not be sunk, and that due warning would be given to all other vessels 22 ENTERED THE WAR which its submarines might seek to destroy when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and hap- hazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and un- manly business; but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct through the prescribed areas by the German Govern- ment itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any Government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilised nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of domination and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after 23 WHY THE UNITED STATES all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except those w^hich it is impossible to employ, as it is employing them, without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that are supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children, en- gaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and- legitimate. Property can be paid for : the lives of peaceful and innocent people can- not be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships haA^e been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives 24 ENTERED THE WAR as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are a single champion. When I addressed the Congress on the twenty- sixth of February last I thought it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend them- selves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defence of rights which no modern publicist has ever questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our mer- chant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pre- tensions it is worse than ineffectual ; it is likely only 25 WHY TEE UNITED STATES to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is vir- tually certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making : we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs ; they cut to the very roots of human life. With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in un- hesitating obedience to what I deem my constitu- tional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediately steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defence, but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the -Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war. What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable co-operation in counsel and action with the Governments now at war with Ger- many, and, as incident to that, the extension to those Governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may, so far as possible, be added to theirs. It will involve the organisation and mobilisation of all the material resources of the country to supply the material of war and serve 26 ENTERED THE WAR the incidental needs of the nation in the most abun- dant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supply- ing it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war, of at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorisation of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation. I say sustained so far as may be equitably by taxation because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans. In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep con- stantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty — for it will be a very practical duty — of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials 27 WHY THE UNITED STATES which they can obtain only from us by our assist- ance. They are in the field, and we should help them in every way to be effective there. I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments of the Govern- ment, for the consideration of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the Government upon which the responsibility of con- ducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall. While we do these things— these deeply momentous things— let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world, what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the^Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the prin- ciples of peace and justice in the life of the world against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and action as will henceforth insure the observance of those prin- ciples. 28 ENTERED THE WAR Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its people, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organised force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong-doing shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilised States. We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sym- pathy and friendship. It vvas not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour States- with spies, or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make con- quest, i. Such designs can be successfully worked 2Q WHY THE UNITED STATES out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidence of a narrow, privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs. A steadfast concert for peace can never be main- tained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partner- ship of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plotting of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who know her best to have been always in fact democratic at heart in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood, and terrible 30 ENTERED THE WAR as was the reality of its power, was not, in fact, Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Rus- sian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour. One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting com- munities and even our offices of Government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity and counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our com- merce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began ; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government ac- credited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them, we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them, because we know that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a 31 WHY THE V NIT ED STATES Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at least that that Govern- ment entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its con- venience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted Note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. We are accepting this challenge of hostile pur- pose because we know that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a friend ; and that in the presence of its organised power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security of the democratic Governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pre- tence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacri- fices we shall freely make. We are but one of the 32 ENTERED THE WAR champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nations can make them. Just because we fight without rancour and with- out selfish object/seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion, and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro- Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reck- less and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Govern- ment, and it has, therefore, not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria- liungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights. It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness 33 WHY THE UNITED STATES because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposi- tion to an irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate rela- tions of mutual advantage between us, however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present Government through all these bitter months because of that friendship, exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and action toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live among us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different m.ind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but if it lifts its head at all it will lift it only here and there, and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few. 34 ENTERED THE WAR It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentle- men of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war — into the most terrible and disastrous of all Vv^ars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. 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