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 The Great War: From Spectator 
 
 to Participant 
 
 By PROFESSOR ANDREW C. McLAUGHLIN 
 Of the University of Chicago 
 
 Reprinted for 
 
 THE NATIONAL BOARD FOR HISTORICAL SERVICE 
 
 FROM THE HISTORY TEACHERS MAGAZINE 
 
 Volume VIU, Page 183 lo 187 
 
OCT 18 1921 
 
Tib© &@nft Wm?°a FiroiM Sp@©(tsi(l@ir d® Fgur&npsiiBift 
 
 When the war broke out in 191-1 everyone in 
 America was astonished, and almost everyone was 
 quite unable to understand the fundamental causes 
 of it. Many of us were more than astonished ; we 
 were thoroughly out of patience and without imme- 
 diate and deep sympathies for cither side in the 
 struggle. America had lived in isolation. Though 
 our government had been to some extent drawn into 
 the swirl of world politics, we had no deep laid 
 scheme for exploitation of inferior races, no colonial 
 ambitions, no determination to force our products 
 on other nations, and no fear of neighboring govern- 
 ments. We did not know that we were being jeal- 
 ously watched and that spies recorded our temper and 
 our frailties. We did not see that we had anything 
 to do with a European war. Of the ever vexed 
 Balkans we knew little or nothing, though we had 
 heard of the " sick man of Europe," who seemed to 
 be an unconscionable time in shuffling off this mortal 
 coil. We had read of Hague conferences and peace 
 societies and peace palaces, and believed that war 
 was too absurd to be really possible between the 
 nations of Western Europe. 
 
 With the invasion of Belgium we began to rub our 
 eyes. We found that a region which had been known 
 as the " cockpit " of Europe was once more to be 
 beaten down by the tramp of alien armies. And then 
 came the stories of atrocities in Belgium. At first we 
 read with doubt, and only after the publication of the 
 " Bryce Report" with the supporting documents did 
 we see the realities and believe the unbelievable. 
 We discovered what militarism meant in its final 
 qualities, militarism which included devastation and 
 horrors as portions of military policy. Belgium set- 
 Lled our sympathies, for, we saw that the whole thing 
 was premeditated; we realized that methods of 
 mobilization, not to speak of strategic railroads, are 
 not mapped out in a moment. Machtpolitik was shat- 
 tered when it shocked the conscience of the world. 
 John Bright, I believe it was, said that the only value 
 of war is to teach geography; but this war has taught 
 language; everybody knows what Schrecklichkeit 
 means, and everybody knows too that it is involved 
 in the philosophy of war when it is carried out with 
 relentless thoroughness and with absolute disregard 
 of the ordinary promptings of humanity. 
 
 The attempts of German propagandists, to justify 
 the invasion, showed an astonishing inability or un- 
 willingness to make frank use of public documentary 
 material. Documents found in the Belgium archives 
 showed that some years ago an English military 
 officer and a Belgium official had consulted together 
 as to what steps England should take in ease Ger- 
 many invaded Belgium. After Germany had done 
 the very thing which England and Belgium had 
 feared, German propagandists tried to justify her by 
 declaring that Belgium was considering means of pre- 
 venting it. The use made of the documents actually 
 affronted our intelligence and added to our distrust. 
 
 At that time we began to study deliberately the 
 
 problem as to which nation was responsible for the 
 war. It is now unnecessary to enter into the details 
 of this question. None of the nations of Europe had 
 been free, the world had not been free, from a species 
 of intrusive, aggressive nationalism and from jealous 
 rivalry in trade which made the maintenance of 
 peace exceedingly difficult; colonial ambitions and 
 dollar diplomacy had long daily threatened the peace 
 of the world. This we knew ; but even if no one 
 nation was solely responsible for a condition which 
 made the maintenance of peace difficult, we were com- 
 pelled to conclude that the outbreak of hostilities was 
 primarily chargeable to Germany; and, as we realized 
 this, we became certain that America would hope for 
 the defeat of the German armies. As we studied the 
 situation it became plain that war was due either to 
 a psychological explosion or to premeditated deter- 
 mination to gain territory and power by immediate 
 action. The whole psychological condition of Ger- 
 many was prepared for it; war and armies, engines 
 of destruction, the jealous enmity ascribed to foreign 
 nations, the loudly proclaimed perils of the Father- 
 land — those things kept constantly in men's minds 
 for years — laid the train for the conflagration. That 
 the Teutonic powers deliberately planned a war in 
 1914 is indicated by considerable evidence. Though 
 to-day we may think this evidence not entirely final 
 and conclusive, it doubtless had its effect on every- 
 body acquainted with the history of the last decade. 
 This at least appeared certain: the military author- 
 ities in Germany, directly and with amazing fore- 
 thought, planned for a war which must come soon, 
 and they were determined to win for the country a 
 "place in the sun" and establish its power. If 
 authorities are convinced that a war is inevitable and 
 approve what they confidently believe will be its out- 
 come, are they not likely to grasp the favorable 
 moment for beginning hostilities? 
 
 It is sometimes said that Germany intended to 
 dominate the world. We had great difficulty in be- 
 lieving in the existence of such fantastic ambitions, 
 but we came slowly to see (1) that Germany believed 
 in the superiority of German efficiency and of Ger- 
 man culture, and thought they must be made triumph- 
 ant; (2) that at least the ruling classes had a curious 
 incapacity to understand that political control was 
 not necessary to the extension of influence, to per- 
 meation of thought, and even to the development of 
 trade; (3) that these persons were determined that 
 the world should live in awe of Germany, and if 
 rivals threatened to prosper they must be beaten into 
 becoming humility. 1 Although all this is probably be- 
 low the truth it is so preposterous that we still have 
 moments of doubt; and yet a person who has had 
 unusual opportunities for knowing the situation, and 
 has but recentlj returned, after some years of resi- 
 
 i If any one disbelieves the understatement above, he 
 ought to read " Hurrah and Hallelujah," a book largely 
 made up of documents collected by a Dane, Professor J. P. 
 Bang, of Copenhagen. 
 
dence in Germany, tells us, " The Battle of the Marne 
 not only saved the Allies — it saved Germany." That 
 is the opinion even of a large part of the people of 
 Germany. In the defeat at the Marne the hope of 
 a world dominion was shattered. The lunacy of the 
 war lords then in control was changed. 
 
 Still, as we began to realize all these things, we 
 did not yet feel that it was our business to enter the 
 conflict, not even when we came to see that America 
 herself was in actual danger, certainly in actual and 
 immediate danger if Germany was not defeated by 
 the Allies. We were loath to credit what appears to 
 be the truth, that, to attribute to the Kaiser the offen- 
 sive words of Napoleon — America was within the 
 scope of his policy. Possibly it was shameful in us 
 to wait and to rely on the allied powers when we be- 
 gan to feel that this defeat imperiled our own safety. 
 But something more than fear was needed to force 
 us into the fight; not until the issues were clear to 
 the nations of the world, not until there was hope 
 for a constructive peace, not till we heard the call 
 oi humanity, were we prepared to fling in our power 
 and resources. 
 
 Doubtless our final entrance into the conflict was 
 brought about by cumulative irritation at German 
 methods and policies. Our conviction of their un- 
 worthiness grew gradually day by day. This con- 
 viction was the result of experience of having act- 
 ually lived through a great crisis. Among these irri- 
 tations, which opened our eyes and hardened our 
 hearts, none was more powerful than the machina- 
 tions of the German spies. We were more than irri- 
 tated, we were enlightened; we discovered what 
 Weltpolitik and Realpolitik really were; German 
 espionage in this country helped us to grasp the na- 
 ture of a principle which is essentially criminal and 
 which, if it continues, must make decent international 
 relationships quite impossible. And so this fact began 
 to stand out strongly: democracy cannot survive in 
 an atmosphere of indecent intrigue; the government 
 at Washington was forced to conclude that we cannot 
 act in friendliness or co-operate with a government 
 whose ways are devious, ungenerous, purely selfish 
 and unreliable. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to speak of Zeppelin 
 raids, poisonous gases, and deportation of men and 
 women from the occupied portions of France and Bel- 
 gium, although we have no right to forget these facts ; 
 they are natural products, once more, of militaristic 
 doctrine. We must remember that, if war means 
 these horrors, all our efforts may well be directed 
 against the prolongation of war and the success of 
 militarism. Civilization is actually at stake unless 
 something can be done to establish a decent work- 
 ing order among the nations of the world. 2 
 
 About the beginning of 1915 Admiral Tirpitz was 
 
 2 Those that are still troubled about our entrance into 
 the war should remember what was said by our commis- 
 sioners who had been carrying on relief work in Belgium: 
 " We wish to tell you," they said to President Wilson, 
 " that there is no word in your historic statement that does 
 not find a response in all our hearts. . . . Although we 
 break with great regret our association with many (ierman 
 
 reported to have made a statement about the use of 
 submarines for destroying merchantmen, and about 
 the beginning of February an effort was made to 
 establish a war zone about the British Isles. Almost 
 exactly the same time England put food for Germany 
 on the contraband list, her technical excuse being that 
 Germany had taken government charge of all food 
 in the empire and thus could use all of her food as 
 a basis of war. The diplomatic controversy that arose 
 over the questions of contraband and blockade and 
 war zones cannot be entered upon here in any detail. 
 It is apparent to my mind that Germany cannot ex- 
 cuse her attacks upon merchant vessels on the ground 
 that she was merely retaliating against the British 
 policy of starvation, though it is not unlikely that 
 Britain would have attempted to use her fleet for that 
 purpose even if Germany had not brought her sub- 
 mersibles into play — just as Germany starved Paris 
 in 1870. And especially is retaliation not tolerable 
 when it is exercised without any reference to the 
 rights and lives of neutrals. If Great Britain broke 
 the rules of international law or violently extended 
 them for her purposes, there is a very marked 
 " difference between a prize court and a torpedo." 
 Moreover, the British despatches to this government 
 attempting to justify her procedure are certainly able 
 and rest in no small degree on our own acts during 
 the Civil War. 
 
 Britain guarded and guided our trade even with 
 neutral countries through which goods could be sent 
 to Germany; but we could hardly be asked to do more 
 than register complaint in the hope of reserving 
 grounds for reparation or maintaining the technical 
 rules of law. Did we have ground for claiming dam 
 ages ? Perhaps ; but our trade prospered tremend- 
 ously and increased greatly even with the neutral 
 countries adjacent to Germany. 3 
 
 With the sinking of the Lusitania, May, 1915, — a 
 shameful and premeditated crime — President Wilson 
 wrote sharply to the German government asserting 
 that we should defend our rights upon the high seas. 
 It seemed at that time our evident duly to maintain 
 as much as possible of I lit- shattered fabric' of inter- 
 national law. Although some persons thought we 
 ought to enter the war at once, the President was not 
 at that time prepared to advise such action. He still 
 clung to the belief or the hope that, by reiterated 
 declaration of the fundamental principles of justice 
 and humanity, Germany might be brought to a reason- 
 able course of conduct and that some of the prin- 
 ciples wrought out by past centuries might be pre- 
 served. What is the value of international law if it 
 is to be cast to the winds when observance is incon- 
 
 individuals, . . . there is no hope for democracy or liberal- 
 ism unless the system which brought the world into this 
 unfathomable misery can be stamped out once for all." 
 
 sWliile, in my judgment, Britain in some respects broke 
 away from the restraints of international law or unduly 
 extended precedents that appeared to justify her, the ques- 
 tion is by no means an easy one, and I have heard an able 
 international lawyer say that, if the subject were sub- 
 mitted to an impartial tribunal, he would be by no means 
 certain of a decision in our behalf. 
 
venient? After the Sussex affair in the summer of 
 1916 our relations with the German government were 
 again greatly strained, but President Wilson suc- 
 ceeded in getting a promise that merchantmen should 
 not be sunk without warning and without saving lives 
 unless the vessel should resist or attempt escape. 
 This promise was coupled with a condition that we 
 should coin pel Great Britain to surrender what Berlin 
 asserted to be an illegal blockade. Remembering, 
 possibly, the net into which Napoleon enticed James 
 Madison about 107 years ago, our government did not 
 accept the condition, but warned Germany that her 
 obligations were " individual not joint, absolute and 
 not relative." We rested easier; but we now realize 
 th.it this willingness to forego the sinking of peaceful 
 vessels and the taking of lives can be accounted for 
 by the fact that the old U-boats were being destroyed 
 and the Teutonic powers did not then have in read- 
 iness the large and improved monsters of the deep 
 witli which to carry on the work of destruction. This 
 work broke out with some violence late in 1916, and, 
 with the announcement that no warning would be 
 given when ships were sunk within a war zone, cut- 
 ting off nearly the whole coast of Western Europe, 
 President Wilson sent the German ambassador home 
 and war seemed inevitable. One of the astounding 
 revelations of the political methods of the German 
 foreign office was the announcement made by the 
 Chancellor to the Reichstag and the German people, 
 that President Wilson had broken off diplomatic rela- 
 tions abruptly, although the step was taken eighteen 
 months or more after the exchange of despatches on 
 the Lusitania crime, and half a year after the ex- 
 ( liangc of notes about the Sussex. 
 
 So far we have given only a meagre outline of the 
 story and told it ineffectively, for not even in many 
 words can one sketcli the growing uneasiness and dis- 
 trust, the sense of despair, or the conflict between 
 despair and hope. Was the world falling? Was 
 civilization being wrecked in the whirlwind of bar- 
 baric passion? Had Germany already destroyed 
 civilization by bringing the world to see that there 
 could be no faith between nations, and that at any 
 juncture, on the spurious plea of necessity, frightful 
 wrong could be committed? If this war ended in 
 German victory, a victory won by years of devoted 
 preparation, a victory won by submarines and Zeppe- 
 lins and poisonous gases and deportation of men, 
 women, and children to work in the fields and fac- 
 tories of the conquering country, what was before the 
 world? German victory appeared to mean the suc- 
 < i ss of ruthlessness, of conquest by military prepara- 
 tion ; it meant the enthronement of might; and it 
 meant that we must henceforward live in a world of 
 struggle — we and our children after us. 
 
 Why did President Wilson, after long effort to 
 maintain neutrality and even hasten the coming of 
 peace, finally advocate war? Before attempting to an- 
 swer this question, let us recall the President's efforts 
 to tiring the conflicting nations to a statement of their 
 terms, and to hold out to the world the conception 
 ol I In' establishment of permanent peace. The Presi- 
 
 dent's message on this subject came out almost simul- 
 taneously with Germany's proposal in which she sug- 
 gested peace on the basis of an assumed victory for 
 her army. Such a peace the allied nations could not 
 accept without accepting militarism, without losing 
 the all important objects for which millions of men 
 had already given their lives, and probably most of us 
 here in America believe that such proposals were put 
 forth chiefly to make the German people believe that 
 the Allies were the aggressors and must bear the odium 
 of further conflict. When the President called on the 
 warring nations to state their terms of peace, possi- 
 bly he still cherished the hope that, if terms were 
 frankly stated, negotiations might actually be begun; 
 almost certainly he desired sucli open statement as 
 would show to the world at large the real essence of 
 the conflict and also show that we were not ready to 
 enter the struggle until we had made every possible 
 effort to bring peace. The President's appeal pro- 
 duced no very tangible results, although the Allied 
 Powers stated their desires and purposes with con- 
 siderable definiteness, and these terms did not on the 
 whole appear to us unreasonable or unworthy. 
 
 All through this time the President and all think- 
 ing Americans were interested chiefly in the main- 
 tenance of civilization, and they looked forward not 
 merely to victory or to acquisition of territory by 
 one or another nation, but to the foundation of a last- 
 ing peace by the establishment of principles of justice 
 and reason. We found that we could not paint in too 
 dark colors the future of the world if we are all to 
 remain under the ' pall of fear and suspicion and 
 under the overwhelming burden of armament; and 
 thus we came to see that without America's entrance 
 into this war there was little hope for relief from the 
 crushing weight of war and the almost equally bur- 
 densome weight of ever-increasing armed preparation. 
 Never, it appeared, in the long history of mankind, 
 was there such a fearful alternative; never a louder 
 eall for duty. America, without hope of profit, with 
 no mean or subterranean purpose, must herself fight 
 to maintain the principles of civilization and for the 
 hope of lasting peace and propriety between nations. 
 This growing belief that we must fight for peace, only 
 gradually conquered most of us; for we had long be- 
 lieved that American influence for peace was to come 
 from remaining peaceful; and for this principle, we 
 may still maintain, there is much to be said. The 
 creative forces of the world, we may still remind our- 
 selves, have sprung from character. America, by her 
 successes in popular government, by a reasonable 
 amount of respect for herself, lias helped to build up 
 the democratic spirit and the democratic power from 
 Peking to Petrograd and from London to Quebec and 
 Melbourne. 
 
 This, I say, we believe. But several tilings showed 
 us that this just idealism is for the present imprac- 
 ticable. (1) German philosophy scouts and flouts the 
 notion that a state must not use its power to dasli 
 down opposition. (2) German success would mean 
 the victory of Machtpolitik -a victory for the very 
 forces which pacific idealism decries. (3) If we ex- 
 
pected to bring into the world an appreciation of 
 rights and duties, if we hoped for influence in the 
 adjustment of world affairs, if we wished to see a 
 world we could live in, it was necessary in time of 
 trouble to do our part. The President had striven 
 not only for our rights, but for the maintenance of 
 law. Under much harsh criticism at home he went to 
 the very limits of proposals; he offered his assistance; 
 he announced that there was such a thing as being 
 "too proud to fight;" he spoke of "peace without 
 victory;" he hoped that the war could be settled in 
 such a way that the nations after the war could live 
 without hatred; he insisted that the world must be 
 based on an organization, not for war, but for peace 
 and good neighborhood. But strive or struggle as he 
 might, it became daily more apparent that we should 
 have little or nothing to say after the war, if we, un- 
 willing to act now, called upon the nations to enter 
 into a league of peace or summoned them to the estab- 
 lishment of a new world order. If we held back, con- 
 tenting ourselves with verbal threats and feline coax- 
 ings, we should not have a single friend in the wide 
 world unsuspicious of our motives. 
 
 Thus far I have said little about t lie actual attacks 
 on American rights and property. It is not necessary 
 to say much, though they reached into the intolerable. 
 Nor do I wish to dwell on affronts to American honor, 
 for I do not highly value the code of the duelist. We 
 can well remember, even in international affairs, that 
 no one but one's self can stain one's honor, and that 
 no nation can smirch another nation's spirit. We 
 were, as I have said, confronted by a world situation 
 in which we must play a strong, manly and honorable 
 part. We despaired of a world in which millions of 
 people could be thrown into war ; millions of young 
 men could be buried in trenches on the battlefield or 
 left to rot under the festering sun of France or 
 Poland; millions of children could be beggared or 
 stricken by disease, because an emperor and secret 
 government had willed it so, or because nations could 
 not learn the simple lessons of decent intercourse. 
 What untold anguish might have been saved, had the 
 impetuous, sword-proud William consented to dis- 
 cussion as Britain pleadingly asked him to do during 
 the last days of July, 1914! 
 
 In his war message, April 2, President Wilson an- 
 nounced that the American people felt no hostility to 
 the German people, but that we could deal no longer 
 with an ambitious, autocratic government which cast 
 a nation into war with no apparent hesitation and 
 without discussing their wishes. We are told, even in 
 these days, that there is no distinction between the 
 people and the government of Germany and that to 
 assert such dualism is to disregard the most evident 
 fact. Certainly the great masses of the people have 
 sacrificed their lives for the Fatherland, and yet one 
 of the most whimsical products of this war is that 
 some men here in America should be asserting the 
 unqualified serenity of the political atmosphere of 
 Berlin just when William announced that this war 
 had taught him the faithfulness and reliability of the 
 common people and that political changes must come, 
 
 and when Hollweg told the junkers that their day of 
 domination is nearing its end. William has been 
 taught something by the war ! Did he have to see a 
 million Germans slaughtered, did he have to hear the 
 cries of the widows and the fatherless, did he have to 
 see blinded men learning their letters and crippled 
 boys creeping along the streets of Berlin, before he 
 could learn that the people could be trusted? Every 
 incident in Germany in the last six weeks has demon- 
 strated the weakness, not to say the criminality, of 
 the imperial political regime. It now seems almost 
 inevitable that if militarism is discredited by defeat, 
 ministerial responsibility will be established in the 
 empire, and William before long will be occupying 
 that position of innocuous desuetude known as the 
 kingship of a constitutional monarchy. 
 
 " Still," some person will say, " Germany is not 
 what Russia was. To class Russia with its cruel, 
 cheap, mercenary bureaucracy and Germany to- 
 gether as autocracies is to do violence to patent 
 facts." I shall not seek to show how nearly the 
 governmental system of the empire approaches in 
 reality the autocratic type and how largely the re- 
 sponsibility for all imperial acts rests in the hands 
 of the Prussian king and a body of irreconcilable 
 aristocrats. Of this much could be said, but we can 
 omit all discussion of the quasi-representative insti- 
 tutions of the empire. The trouble is deeper than 
 mere forms of government; for the circle that shaped 
 the policy of the state lived — this at least must be 
 said — within a wall of psychological superiority and 
 inculcated obedience as the great end of being. 
 Every effort was made even to convince the German 
 people of their exclusive and seclusive superiority, 
 and William himself, a " king by the grace of God," 
 was not able to see what a tragic, pathetic and humor- 
 ous figure he made in the modern world of modern 
 men. The whole psychological situation produced a 
 dislocation of realities and a distortion of living 
 truths. 
 
 The present war throws us into actual, if not for- 
 mal alliance with Great Britain and France. We 
 have, I think, no real or fancied interest in mere 
 territorial readjustment which would add to the power 
 of either of these nations, but we are justified in 
 having confidence in the democracy of France and 
 the liberal forces of Great Britain. Our sympathy 
 for France ought to teach us a great lesson. It shows 
 us that republics are not ungrateful and that, after 
 the lapse of one hundred and forty years, despite 
 quarrels and disputes with the French government, 
 we are still bound down by sentimental ties of grati- 
 tude to France. We have come to see the undying 
 strength of friendship between the masses of men and 
 are given new hope that democracies, if they are will- 
 ing to think, cannot make war upon one another im- 
 petuously and in hatred. For England we still cher- 
 ish, unfortunately, some of the old grievances that 
 have been carried down, decade by decade, and taught 
 through our school books to each succeeding genera- 
 tion. We have not been properly taught to see that our 
 own revolution was an English revolution, in which 
 
Englishmen of this side of tlir ocean were striving for 
 the development and maintenance of liberty, and that 
 that war, too, was a war against an arrogant leaden- 
 headed aristocracy. Misunderstanding of Britain 
 comes from the failure to appreciate the development 
 of liberalism in her government, until she stands forth 
 to-day as a great representative of democracy and of 
 belief in the power and will of the common people. 
 
 To lose sight of England's transformation, in which 
 we have had a great part, is to lose sight of one of 
 the most momentous developments of the last hundred 
 years. Can we not forget crazy old George III and 
 Lord North and the rest of his tribe, and remember 
 the men of the middle century, the creators of modern 
 British liberalism — Cobden, Bright and Gladstone, 
 and a myriad of bold commoners — who battled suc- 
 cessfully to destroy "the fortress of feudalism"? 
 Can we not learn how deeply we are involved in the 
 mighty structure of the British Empire as we find 
 the lessons of our own Revolution and of our later 
 history wrought into the policy of world-wide do- 
 minion? Can we not see that the greatest empire of 
 all history lias been built on the lessons of liberty 
 which Britain learned from George Washington and 
 Abraham Lincoln? Can we not see the tremendous 
 force of democracy and individual liberty when we 
 know that thousands upon thousands of colonials gave 
 their lives ungrudgingly at Gallipoli and Yprcs? 
 Surely we must come to see that a democracy like 
 France or a democratic empire like Great Britain runs 
 our own risks, faces our own dangers, is subject to 
 the faults and blunders which we know so well, and 
 that we arc not misled if the result of our efforts is 
 to uphold a structure of imperial order based on the 
 principles of justice, the strength of which has been 
 to dramatically shown in the past three years. Some- 
 times one is asked ironically when, forsooth, England 
 became the friend of America. The answer can be 
 quickly given, and given with absolute historical ac- 
 curacy. It was when the British Parliament in 1867 
 passed the second Reform Bill and England became a 
 democracy — about two years and a half after the 
 English aristocrats had fully seen their mistakes dur- 
 ing our Civil War and had come to see that the great- 
 est statesman the nineteenth century had as yet pro- 
 duced was not born in a manor house on an English 
 countryside, but in a log-cabin in Kentucky. Like- 
 wise it can probably be safely said that France be- 
 came our real friend, a nation with which we could 
 work with open friendliness, when, with the down- 
 fall of Napoleon III, the republican institutions of 
 France were finally and firmly established. 
 
 In the conduct of this war we must constantly re- 
 member that we have had hopes of rendering the 
 world safe for democracy. With all our frailties, 
 which we must openly confess, with all our wasteful- 
 ness and with all our follies, this war has taught us, 
 as nothing else could, that there is nothing upon which 
 we can more safely rely than the plain sense of the 
 plain people. Perhaps nothing shows this more con-. 
 clusively than our reluctance and distaste for military 
 conquest and our hesitation in making up our minds 
 to fight. We may continually remember the words of 
 Lord John Russell — and no one better than he had 
 reason to know the truth: "All experience of 
 human nature teaches us the fact, that men who pos- 
 sess a superiority, real or imaginary, over their 
 fellow creatures, will abuse the advantages they en- 
 joy." We must remember that we entered the war 
 for peace, and we are offering a great sacrifice for a 
 new world order. We believed that we could not get 
 it by chiding Europe and refusing to do our part 
 now, for Europe needed the assistance of an external 
 power, disinterested and high-hearted. We may re- 
 member that we have covered a continent almost as 
 large as the whole of Europe with self-governing com- 
 monwealths. We may remember the unselfish side of 
 the Monroe Doctrine which we try to live up to as 
 embodying a belief that nations may live their own 
 lives; and with a mirthless smile we can call attention 
 to Mexico, which we have allowed to wallow in revo- 
 lutions and destroy American lives and property be- 
 cause we believe that only by trial can nations rise 
 and that every nation is entitled to its own undis- 
 turbed revolution if there is hope for the struggling 
 masses. And withal we must strive to save our own 
 real selves, our own essential character ; for what 
 would it profit us if we fought the whole world and 
 lost ourselves? We now know, if never before, that 
 war is horrible and demoniacally ridiculous; that 
 peaceful relations between nations have been en- 
 dangered by intrigue, greed, false pride, covetousness 
 and suspicion; that big armies do not make for peace, 
 but beget arrogance; that human misconduct and dis- 
 courtesy may make enemies, and that nothing is more 
 vitiating than unmanly envy or fear of a prosperous 
 neighbor ; that democracy must be the basis of a sound 
 political system, but it must be real, conscientious, in- 
 telligent, and open-minded, or we may plunge into 
 cataclysmic anarchy. We. may all take courage in 
 remembering that the President of the United States 
 has led us reluctantly and with unwilling feet into a 
 war which we believe will help to establish democracy, 
 humanity, and a sense of national duty without profit. 
 
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