0^ »•■•♦ *0. /v. »♦ ^0 ^^^^. ^ *©»o« -^ Ay .♦J^i^*^ '*' - . V . > o,*»it;-'.o^ **.'*;?^ *..i:L'. > .^ :m^', \/ .*^^", \/ rm^'-^ *. / .♦^"^. • 6^' ^^^^'-^.. - ^ ^j^. ^ ? .^^°- • o > '8> 0" .^*S»i^'. v> ,J* »> ** .^y«iPN*. ^■^. ,*^ 'Jv^j* .', -ft* ,** y^itm^'. '^*. >o* .•••.. ""oJ > 'V^^^'o^ V^^*>'' V*^''*/! :. -^-.Z /^ "-^^■^^ " • • • .-v* 4,0- . v- • . ^> . ^_ •• WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD'S PEACE BY GEORGE D. HERRON THE MENACE OF PEACE WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD'S PEACE BY GEORGE D. HERRON NEW YORK MITCHELL KENNERLEY 1917 COPYRIGHT 19 1 7 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY i^n PRINTED IN AMERICA EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION EXCEPTING the first, these chapters were written for Continental European readers ; I have indicated, on the title-page pre- ceding each paper, the time and the occasion of its publication, and the journal wherein it first appeared. I do not now gather them into this little book because I imagine them to be an im- portant or permanent contribution to the sub- ject of the war, or of the peace that shall finally ensue. I bring them together in the hope that they may have a passing and inspirational value to such as think and feel profoundly about the meaning of these days, and who see, or seem to see, that the world's political and social redemption is the possible, even prob- able, ultimation of the war. Each paper has had two or more translations into other languages, other countries, than VI EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION that in which it was originally published. The opening paper, which gives the book its name and which was first printed in The New Age of London, has since been put into German for Die Freie Zeitung of Bern — the organ of the earnest and able German intellectuals who are working for a new and democratic Germany, and who include among their number such men as Professor Foerster, Dr. Schlieben, and the author of "J'Accuse." Monsieur Paul Des- jardins, co-operating with the French Minis- ter of Public Instruction, has honored the con- eluding paper, "Pro- America," by publishing it as a preface to a classic edition of President Wilson's message of April 2. Chronologically, the opening paper should have come third in the book. I have placed it first because it seems to me to afford, more fully than the papers which follow it, a per- spective of the President's prodigious purpose. The five succeeding papers are offered in the order in which they appeared. To connect them a little more closely, I have EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION VU somewhat developed the papers since their publication in the reviews and journals indi- cated; but, in the main, they stand substanti- ally as originally written. I have not tried to eliminate the minor repetitions which are in- evitable when one is presenting the same gen- eral subject under different phases and to dif- ferent peoples. Nor have I thought best to modify their form or appeal, even though they necessarily must prove retrospective, in some of their aspects, in the light of subsequent events and decisions. I think such American readers as I may have will prefer that my words retain their first impulse and order. Monsieur Louis Ferriere, Geneva's beloved and consecrated citizen, and long a pastor of her National Church, has graciously consented to accept the dedication of these pages. He has blessed me with his friendship since the days when I was a student in his city ; and it is due to my fellowship with him, and to the spir- itual compulsion I have received from that fellowship, that such halting powers as I have Vlll EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION are all mobilized in the service of the Cause which this book so dis jointly and inadequately advocates. George D. Hereon. Le Retour, 26 Chemin des Cottages, Geneva. Switzerland. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I WooDRow Wilson and the World's Peace 3 II The Man and the President 49 III His Initial Effort 81 IV The Pro-German Morality op the Pacifist 99 V Pro-America 135 VI Appendix: An Apologia 155 WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD'S PEACE First published in London, the New Age, June T, IQIT, as an interpretation of President Wilson s address to the American Senate, January 2y. WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD'S PEACE ALREADY, spoken as they were on the 22nd of January, the words of Wood- row Wilson concerning the world's future peace seem remotely in the past — so swift, so unpredictable, so immeasurable and amazing, are the strides of history in these tremendous days. Yet it is not too late — it is rather too early — to consider the interrogation, as unes- capable as it is momentous, which these words upstand athwart the human climb. They were addressed to the American Senate; but that body was merely the necessary medium of a message intended for the ears of all the earth. Not many have barkened to the message in its 4 WOODROW WILSON entirety ; fewer still have laid hold of its mean- ing. It remains yet to be rightly read, and it will be pertinent so Jong as the ancient yet perennial predicament of the world continues. So long as our national egoisms prevail; so long as diplomacy flounders amidst predacious follies and futilities ; so long as political power pursues its belief in material might and re- mains skeptic and cynic towards the justice of love and its liberating correlatives; — just so long will the summons of the American Presi- dent stand across the course of the nations, de- manding an answer that shall accord with the mind of God as it was revealed in Christ, and weighted with judgment and doom if the an- swer be not faithfully forthcoming. Not that I wish to overstate Mr. Wilson's seership and statesmanship. There were errors of judgment in his earlier deahngs with Ger- many. In the pursuit of his American pro- gram, he has more than once had to retrace his way and start anew — and who among the pio- neers has not had to feel and to plot his path AND THE world's PEACE 5 through inevitable mistakes and misgivings? But whatever his retraeements or turnings, he has proceeded with a spiritual discernment and audacity which have no political parallel. And by his address to the Senate — whereby he has undertaken to assemble the nations unto the Sermon on the Mount — he has challenged them to a mutual adventure that would, if suc- cessful, release the pent soul of the world at last, and change the competitive struggle and sorrow into co-operate creation and joy. There are mockers, of course, enough and to spare. To speak of the brotherhood of na- tions as the solvent of the problems of the pres- ent war is to invite the distrust if not the de- rision of both political and academic intellects. Our institutional ongoings are still grooved in the notion that principles and actions which are individually desirable are collectively wild and unworkable. The centers of authority, when you examine their procedure honestly, are found pursuing the efficiencies which all re- ligions alike attribute to diabolic agency: in 6 WOODROW WILSON the mortal efficiency of the Power we variously call God, in the literal applicability or prac- ticability of the Messianic programs, authority has neither a jot nor a tittle of faith. And the peoples whom authority perverts and exploits ■ — these have had so little experience in interna- tional truth or trust or fidelity, so little experi- ence in fraternity and freedom within the na- tional frontiers, that to them a world that shall be everywhere accordant and kindly seems pos- sible only in the dreams of the dreamers. It is true that the unrealizable woe of the hour — that man's total history indeed — is the repudiation of this dualistic devilry. And anointed teachers have taught us, again and again, that life is not divided ; that whatever is law anywhere, whatever is good or true any- where, is righteous and truth and law every- where. We also discern, in rare moments of moral lucidity, the planetary failure of ma- terial might dissevered from spiritual compul- sion and pity; it has always been treacherous and incompetent, leading the race from abyss AND THE WORLD S PEACE 7 to abyss — from the ruin of Egypt and Israel to the ruin of Athens and Rome ; from the dark and the terror of medieval Europe to the whole unintelligible horror of the Europe of today. But the lessons of history seem largely un- learned. The shepherds still huddle the sheep — their own impoverished souls also — in the old barren pastures, the out-worn folds. Statesmanship seems well-nigh extinct, and the prophets lived long ago. Policies and plottings survive that are little else, in their essence, than the devil-worship of primitive man. For it is fear not faith that bounds our national horizons — or rather it is fear of the good and faith in the evil. The conception that power belongs to material and unmoral might; the notion that an ideal good affords neither order nor competency — it is this that is basic in politics and commerce, shaping na- tional ambitions and social constitutions; it is this that has been the law of economic expan- sion and international relations. And the Eu- rope of today is the result of this law's long and depraving sovereignty. II BUT it is to deliver the nations from this diabolic dualism that Woodrow Wilson has come. By his address to the Senate, he hath summoned the world to political and in- dustrial repentance. He calls not only Ger- many and Europe, but America and Asia and the ultimate islands, to a matchless experiment in the eiBciency of the good. He proceeds upon the expectation that he will find in the earth a faith that shall be equal to this experi- ment. And according to its faith will it be with the world, at last. We shall nationally and in- ternationally be what we believe we can be. If we believe in the best, we shall become and achieve the best. If we believe only a frag- mentary good is attainable, we shall have but the fragments our little belief apprehends. If AND THE world's PEACE 9 we believe in the sole efficiency of the worst, even worse than the worst we shall have. The world as a whole, is always the expression of its common belief or unbelief about itself — just as each individual, in the end, becomes the living record of his innermost and perhaps un- recognized thought of life. Faith indeed has not to do with something vague or invisible or unrealizable. Faith is life's fundamental heroism, the mode of God's being, the method whereby the universe be- comes, and is always creating according to its image. As the faith of man has invented the steam-engine and the telegraph, or has sounded its high notes in Isaiah or Socrates, in Jeanne d'Arc or Mazzini, so the faith of God has ut- tered the stars and dared the more perilous ex- periment of man. Faith is always the reac- tion upon self of the man, of society, of the atom, of the universal whole. Thus what we believe or disbelieve is stupendously, infinitely important Our faith that the highest is prac- ticable is the very force that makes it prac- 10 WOODROW WILSON ticable; and our unbelief in the practicability of the ideal is the precise preventative of its realization. Woodrow Wilson has dared to believe di- vinely; and his faith that a federate world is possible^ and the challenge of that faith to the nations, is the most creative collective act since the French Revolution, By his faith he has set a goal from which mankind can never take its eyes; he has sent forth the word that can never return. If the continuation of man upon the earth is inevitable, the final fulfillment of this word is inevitable. By the projection of one man's faith, humanity has been made to turn an unexpected corner, and there to depart irrevoc- ably from the paths of its past ongoing. The horizon of history had highly shifted, the whole prospect of mankind had resplendently changed, and the rostrum of the American:. Senate had become as God's burning altar, when, the address of the President concluded, the reverent wonder of the hour went abroad, encircling the world as a divine visitation^ Ill T)UT turning now to the address, let us -■^ first consider its effect upon international procedure. By his declaration of the rights of nations — even more pivotal and immortal than the doctrine of individual rights which motived the French Revolution — Mr. Wilson has laid beneath the international idea its first substan- tial and truthful foundation. For a true in- ternationalism can exist only as the shepherd of virile and determined nationalisms. Until now, the internationalism of propagandas which have claimed such distinction has been but a doctrinal fiction, a pretentious and sterile abstraction. It has always been an interna- tionalism based upon a fatuous and fatal denial of nationality. One of the several causes of the Socialist debacle, at the beginning of the war, was this 11 12 WOODROW WILSON inhuman and unimaginative confusion of anti- nationalism with m/^r-nationalism — ^this mis- taking the former for the latter. The Social- ist movement has never been m^^rnational : it has been only anti-nsitionsil. The notion that national entities are unreal, that the nation is an arbitrary economic creation, is not interna- tionalism: it is the exact negation of all that gives internationalism its name or reason for being. For the nation does eooist; and it is probably as permanent as the world itself. None of the nations of old are wholly dead: the most an- cient and forgotten peoples have their living national remnants upon the earth. And it is upon the recognition of each particular ethni- cal variety, it is through calhng each group unto the fulfillment of its being, that an in- telligent and compelling internationalism will manifest itself. It will rise, this true inter- nationalism, not from the obliteration of na- tional lines, but from their vivid and fraternal definition. Its mission will be, first, to pro- AND THE world's PEACE 13 cure for each people, however small, an ade- quate opportunity for self -discovery and self- affirmation, and then to coordinate all peoples in one resolute and irradiant progress, one sat- isfied universal family. It is this our President has proposed ; and I believe that the future — perhaps ransomed from our terrible present by his initiative — will hold Woodrow Wilson to have been the world's first international statesman. There is already forming, as a result of his insist- ence, and for the first time in history, a body of international public opinion. There is al- ready building, out of the spiritual materials his hands have furnished, the foundations whereupon a world-citizenry may rise and in- form itself and take its decisions. If the plan he proposed before the American Senate is followed, it will result in the end of both war and imperialism, and finally issue in a world- republic. IV BUT the immediate and fundamental de- mand of the President is this: that the states of Europe are asked to reorganize them- selves on the basis of government by the con- sent of the governed. No longer must it be that the right of the smallest people to its own free and unhindered being, to its own special unfoldment and contribution, shall be subor- dinated, in thought or in fact, to mere might and size — to any imperial purpose or interest. The brutish and commercial state, the mate- rialistic fetish of dominion, must give place to the knowledge of the nation as an inviolable spiritual being. Other propositions are laid down, it is true; but they are based upon the principle I have stated; and it is this principle which I shall particularly discuss. I need not refer to the 14 AND THE world's PEACE 15 *'peace without victory" which the pacifists have placed upon their banners, and which pan-German apostles have adopted as a mask for their Middle-Europe program. It is pos- sible that the exploited phrase was meant espe- cially for Germany rather than for the Allies, even though it is Germany and the pacifists who have pressed it into their service. It may well have been intended as an answer to Ger- many's request for a negotiated peace; for this request was based upon an impudent as- sumption of victory — ^which victory the Allies were bidden to take knowledge of and to make terms with. A similar misconception may have attended the emphasis which was laid upon the freedom of the seas. This emphasis has also been mo- bilized by Germany, and thus presented as a protest against British navalism. It is likely that something else was in the President's mind. He probably was thinking of the ac- cess of Russia and Roumania, and of the smaller nations of Europe, to the open seas 16 WOODROW WILSON and their highways; and this, not navalism, was the import of his emphasis. If the right of each people to its own political and economic development is granted, the necessity that each have a door upon the seas must also be ac- knowledged and fulfilled. But, as I say, this and all other concerns of the address are cor- relates of the fundamental principle of self- government. V LET us see what this principle, so quietly- stated, would mean if accepted by the belligerents. Its first result would be the rel- egation of the present map of the greater part of Europe to the waste-basket; and with it would go most of existing European govern- ments. There would be a complete geo- graphical redistribution in all the countries East of the Rhine and the Adriatic, and each would follow Russia in a profound political and social revolution. Two ancient empires would go out of existence; several new states would come into being. Forgotten folk-cul- tures, beautiful and abundant, would revive and grow and gladden the heart of the world. Many varieties of industrial concentration and individualization, many new special political forms and social experiments, would be given 17 18 WOODROW WILSON free place and encouragement. Old and sup- pressed literatures, splendid but buried civilizations, would rise in a common and re- joicing resurrection. Compared with what it now is, Europe would become a different and well-nigh Edenic continent. VI T) UT before generalizing further, let us be- -*^ gin at the Rhine, there applying the self- governing principle to Germany. First of all, of course, Alsace-Lorraine must be given back to France — for such is the ardent desire of that subject and unhappy province — and much of Prussia must become part of reunited Poland. But the geographical and ethnical problem is only preliminary. It is after the Alsatians and the Poles have been joined to their own, it is after the Germans have been confined within their rightful frontiers, that the real problem of Germany begins — that is, if the principle which Mr. Wilson proposed is adopted as the basis of peace. The German Empire itself must go back into the melting- pot, and the German peoples be invited to de- cide upon the forms and methods by which they 19 20 WOODROW WILSON shall govern themselves. For, be it remem- bered, Germany is not a self-governing coun- try; nor the Germans, in any real sense, a po- litical people. They did not have a political origin; they have had no essential political ex- perience ; and their Empire is not a political but a military state. The German Empire, im- posed upon the German peoples by Prussian arms, is now maintained as an organization for universal Germanic industrial and cultural do- minion. The only part the German peoples have had in the construction of their Empire is that of docile acceptance. They had, intel- lectually and politically, nothing to do with the making of it, and they have nothing to do with the actual governing of it. Unlike France and England, which have a thousand years of political evolution behind them, the course of German history has been run under pressure from the top — has been guided by princes, often grotesque as well as brutish and ty- rannical, whom the peoples have obeyed with little or no resentment or self-affirmation. AND THE world's PEACE 21 Political Germany, non-existent till now, must come into being and receive its primary les- sons: the German peoples must teach them- selves the alphabet of self-government. They will have to begin, if they are to be a political nation, with the rudiments which the English makers of the Magna Charta^ wrested from King John, or with the impulse by which the Revolution prevailed in France. Some of the German leaders have been quick to discern this : they have seen that a first result of Mr. Wilson's address, if appHed in principle, would be the dismemberment of Prussia and the fundamental reconstruction of German nationality. They confess, too, that a psychological revolution must also fol- low; for the national mentations of the Ger- man are as tribal now, and his collective mor- ality is as certainly barbaric, as in the days of Tacitus. VII PASSING southward with the self-gov- erning principle, we find the Austrian and Turkish Empires coming to their overdue end. Bohemia becomes a delivered and inde- pendent nation. The dismembered Serbs are united in one national family, according to their centuried yearnings and struggles. Three million Roumanians are released from the malific Magyar oppression and gathered into the fold of their own people. The Aus- trian Poles, as well as the rest of the Slavs, are joined unto their kindred. Of the Austrian Empire, some six or seven million Austrians are left, with a like number of Hungarians, to go on together or separately, according as they mutually decide. Russia has already renounced her traditional governmental modes. Nationality must be re- 22 AND THE world's PEACE 23 stored to the Fins; Russian Poland must be surrendered; the Letts, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians, and all the diverse peoples under former Russian rule, even unto far and fair Bokhara, must each be bidden to the festal board of the Great Freedom — must each be released and resourced to pursue its own in- digenous cultural system. And for her own immediate people, for those who are primarily Muscovite or Russian, must Russia provide the forms of a just and democratic political procedure. Nor must the Turk be only expelled from Europe, and securely sequestered in some cor- ner of Asia Minor : not this is enough, nor the partition of his territories enough. The dis- persed Armenians must be summoned to their high and ancient habitation, and there be en- abled to re-integrate their once vigorous and valorous nationality. And from Persia must England as well as Russia take predatory hands; for the Persia of today is replete with political and spiritual potencies that ask for 24i WOODROW WILSON naught but opportunity. Egypt must be trained to self-government also, even if re- maining a member of the British Empire. Then the Arab — he who built resplendent Bagdad and the divine Alhambra, who gave mathematics and medicine and philosophy to Europe, and whose marvellous cities the Turk and the Tartar and the Mongol destroyed — he, too, must be invited to make his pecuhar and bounteous contribution to the more beneficient world. Nor let us forget, even along the coasts of Asia Minor, to call the Greeks to- gether under a government of their choice, with no alien prince imposed upon them by the dy- nasts. The Syrians also must have the desire of their hearts — the re-establishment of the kingdom of the French Crusaders. And then may Israel return to Jerusalem, and the lands of the Jordan blossom according to the words of their ancient prophets. Nor these wonders only: if there should be a common and sincere acceptance of the pro- AND THE world's PEACE 25 gram of President Wilson, other and many re- demptions would ensue, making the world at last the harmonious home of an adequate race. VIII IT might well be that the extension and adaptation of the Swiss governmental sys- tem to the ethnic groups of Eastern Europe would be the wisest solution of the racial in- terests that now seem so conflicting. These conflicts of interests are superficial and unreal : it is the unity and mutuality of interests that is real. Nothing can be disadvantageous to one people without being harmful to all peo- ples: nothing can be truly good for one with- out that good accruing to all. It is in the unity and orchestration of interests that the well-being of the peoples lies; for, at bottom, there is only one all-embracing good, one in- clusive and pervasive common health. The Swiss Confederation is the convincing demonstration that divergent races and re- ligions may find a common and beloved na- 26 AND THE world's PEACE 27 tional home. I am prone to think of Switzer- land as the microcosm of the Europe of the future — the microcosm, perhaps, of the world- republic. Switzerland is indeed, not to me only, but to wiser dreamers than myself, the fore-type of the federate humanity. Of course, democracy has yet farther to go: Switzerland has by no means reached the democratic goal. But she is in the path that leads thereto; and if the eyes of the peace- makers be fixed upon the peace that is per- manent and pure, in some such path as the Swiss Cantons have taken will they start the smaller states and national remnants of East- ern Europe. Three federal groups might thus be formed: the first consisting of Poland united with Lith- uania, the Letts and other suppressed and unhappy Slavic peoples. Then the contend- ing members of the present Austrian Empire, ransomed and cleansed from centuries of Hapsburg dominion, might co-operate in a greater Switzerland, nor thence desire sepa- 28 WOODROW WILSON rate political existence. The Balkan Con- federation — betrayed by the charlatanic Co- burg Judas — ^might again be reconstituted. And once the process were prehended, once the peoples were permitted to discover them- selves in each other, it would be a marvellous and manful Europe which would thence fulfill the pattern received from the Alps. IX THE Allies have been fighting for noth- ing else than this — for nothing else than a peace that shall, in faith and in fact, com- pletely accord with the President's funda- mental proposition. It is no secret that Eng- land is struggling, even during the war, to give a true and final home-rule to Ireland: she only waits for the Irish to agree among themselves. Nor is it any secret that she is planning for India what the Hindoos have never been able to achieve for themselves — a unified and co- herent national being. Again and again, and sincerely I beheve, have France and England pledged themselves to the principle of self- governing nationalities, and thence to the en- actment of one public law, one increasing com- mon justice, throughout the world. Nor is the German adoption of the demo- 30 WOODEOW WILSON cratic program impossible. It is indeed the most probable final result of a German defeat. .^'"^o one proposes or desires the German peo- 1 pies should be crushed; it is only desired that they be redeemed from their own Prussian methods and masters. I am not among those who despair, I am rather among those who hope, that the victory of the Allies will result, not only in the dispersion of the Prussian night from the German mind, but in a new and spir- itualized Germany — a Germany in which all the sheer might, the occult material discern- ment, which has gone into Prussian dominion shall be transmuted into the forces of spiritual and democratic development. A repentant Germany, divinely restored and commissioned by a great common impulse from within, is precisely what they who stand most steadily against her foresee. It is for the fulfillment of this vision that they desire her military over- throw. Her own nobler being, her own mis- sion to humanity, depends upon her retributive defeat. AND THE world's PEACE 31 Already, even while their voices are yet un- heard amidst the tumult, are Germany's truest teachers calling her to come forth from her Prussian and predacious today into the prom- ise of a renunciant and ministrant tomorrow. Already, is the heart of the German people appealing to the world for patient opportunity and encouragement when the war is done. It may he that then again will revive, and in a new envisioned modernity, that devout and romantic life, that wedded domesticity and adventure, so common to the Germany of old. We may then look again for apostles like Herder and Oberlin, and mayhap the greater Beethoven will be born, and the efficiency of the German become so chivalric, so consecrate and contributory, that the nations, each bring- ing its own especial gift, will rejoice in the service which that efficiency offers. PRESIDENT WILSON'S program is also the repudiation of the performance of hate. He is not deterred by the fact that the Hterature of hatred holds the day. Do you doubt that it does? Upon my table are recent numbers of representative reviews of different countries. I go through them at random, to behold writer after writer, teacher after teacher, bowing down in the House of Hate. Let me take a typical instance. I find Pro- fessor Kuno Francke, in the Atlantic Monthly for February, reporting the social and re- ligious virtues of the changed Germany he foresees. He informs us that this spiritual- ized Germany is the ardent and absorbing con- cern of the Emperor, whom he considers as "the man who in this war has been to all his subjects a shining example of real greatness AND THE world's PEACE 33 of character." Even so, he declares that the war, regardless of its outcome, ''will leave for many years to come such a vast accumulation of hatred, jealousy and mutual fear among all European nations that any grouping of pow- ers for the maintenance of peace will have to depend upon the full military strength of each of its members." Thus speaks the trained observer, thus speak the outward facts. And if we try to count the dead, if we consider what unremit- ting blunders and how little brains go into the present government of the world, we must con- cede that the conclusion is logically correct. But now, as always, is mere logic a liar; now, as always, the trained observer fails to observe — fails to penetrate the facts before his eyes. This is the case with even a teacher so com- pletely equipped, so sympathetic and sincere, as Professor Francke. This noble and gifted German knows not the heart of his Germany; nor apprehends he the purpose that is forming in the midst of Europe — yea, and that shall 34 WOODROW WILSON soon become enactive and creative in the reso- lute soul of the world. Despite the world's red testimony to the contrary, the days of the institutions and the mobilizations of hatred are numbered; and numbered also are the laws and customs that belong to economic and social re- venge. Hate does not reside in the heart of the peo- ples: it is not there except as it is kindled hy the political and journalistic mercenaries of the owners and the rulers. The hate which now seems to he filling and consuming the peoples is not real; it is artificial and shallow and tran- sient. They are blijid who think this war will leave generations and organizations of hatred behind it. It will do nothing of the kind. The result will rather be this — that the war will burn up the hatreds of both the present and the past. There will be a purification of the world from hatred before long. The foolish- ness of hate is already apparent to the soldiers in the trenches, and to their fathers and moth- ers and wives at home, I have seen it — and I AND THE world's PEACE 35 dare to declare it — that there was never so lit- tle of hate in the world as now. Hate was never so near to extinction as it is at this most embattled moment of man's planetary career. And it is because of its repudiation of hate that President Wilson's immortal appeal becomes perceptive and prophetic beyond anything coming from the lips of a leader for many gen- erations. XI IT is easy to babble of Utopia in reply. It is the custom of cowards and cynics, of spir- itual indolence and social selfishness, to deride as Utopian whatever requires high risk and bold sacrifice. But what else than the effort for our life's perfectability has yet proved prac- ticable ? Do we call the present way of carry- ing on our planet a success? Could the mind of an insane god conceive a madder world than the one the practical man is now furnishing us ? Is this universal tragic fiasco the kind of com- pliment the world's wise and prudent desire? It is time to ask and to answer — time to take knowledge of the unfailing imbecility, of the ebbless confusion and woe, the unreckonable wreckage and waste, that forever course what we purblindly regard as the practical adminis- tration of our mortal affairs. Thus we shall 36 AND THE world's PEACE 37 one day conclude, I perceive, that only Utopia is practicable. We shall see that no peace is procurable, either by a world or by nations or by individuals, save in the realization of the ideal: we shall never get on with less than the best. It is Utopia or perdition that awaits the human race in the end: it is the kingdom of heaven or yet deeper hells than the one through which the world is now wading. XII WHO knows if, after all, the war be not a preparation of the peoples for a gen- eral society which shall at last comprehend and harmonize all the facts and forces of the world's indivisible life? It may be that the cannons are God's voices, that the armies are harrowing the fields for God's planting. In- deed, there has been an abundant divine sowing since the challenge to civilization resounded from the imperial palace at Berlin. And the first harvest is already ripe for such as are wise for the reaping. Even whilst the armies march on, the soldiers are asking questions that have never been asked before in this world ; and the same questions are on the lips of the women and the fathers at home, and even awed children are whispering them. And all these are charged with a wiser wonderment than has 38 AND THE world's PEACE 39 hitherto drawn the human family together. They perceive — ^the majority of men and women today perceive — ^that war must be made anachronistic and senseless and cowardly. There is forming a great resolution, linking up the nations and the legions into an invisible freemasonry, that this shall be the last such catastrophe which man inflicts upon himself. A world-citizenry is suddenly springing into being; and it may not be long till it takes pos- session of its own, gathering not only all peo- ples into its concord, including every sentient being and excluding none, but also our whole planetary life, the whole procession of nature. There are many signs that the peoples may soon open their eyes, beholding each other as members of one eternal family, never divided in reality but only in appearance, nor made enemies by else than the perennial exploitage of parasitic systems and sovereignties. XIII THE continuance of man upon the earth has the nature of a perpetual miracle. Our usual collective ways are downward, de- scending anon into hadean delirium and de- struction; and whenever the race or the na- tion is lifted and started anew, it is by spiritual precipitation. Great religious reformations, reconstructive national revolutions, like historic individual conversions, have come as comes the thief in the night : even if envisioned eyes have foreseen them, even if prophetic voices have foretold them, at an unexpected hour they ap- pear. A tremendous and transcending crisis, sudden as the dawn in the East, swift as the lightning in the West, seizes strong Saul of Tarsus and nevermore lets him go; or seizes the France of the Revolution, thereby anew creating the world. 40 AND THE world's PEACE 41 May it not be that the supreme miracle, the most encompassing and conclusive of conver- sions, is about to happen now? May it not be that the world, threatening and breathing out slaughter, is unknowingly on its way to Da- mascus, soon to be seized by an enlightenment that shall pitch the race upon an entirely new plane of experience? I believe this to be the most probable ultimation of the war. It is probable that this deepening human night, sphering the earth in sorrow and terror and tragedy unthinkable, will end in the break of an amazing and ineffable day ; in the wonder of men finding each other out for the first time, and from London to Ultima Thule, from the earth's rims and edges to the soul's receding frontiers. It is probable that, despairing of help in teachers and governors, discovering that society has built upon the worst, the na- tions will together resolve to make trial of the best, and so take up their procession toward the communal world. It is probable that we shall thus at last believe the report of Him we 42 WOODROW WILSON have so long rejected, having finally seen through the folly and falsity of every other re- port of life. It is probable that the Christ will so come again, not merely or at all as a single unique individual, but in the radiant and robust self -leadership of the peoples — this un- folding of the manful mind of God, of the om- nipotent will to love, in a mutual-membered humanity. XIV EARTH'S present condition, I know, would seem to discredit such promise, to disprove such probabihty. I am not ignorant of the human fact : I have seen what is happen- ing: what seemed social order is disintegrating forever: on the crumbhng walls I have watched, amid the moral and material ruin I have worked, and the sorrow I have searched. Standing now at one of the teeming crossways of Europe, I look out upon a world ablaze and bemazed, even well-nigh demented, by a war that is slipping from mortal control; a world submerged and benumbed, a world almost be- sotted, by a woe beyond mortal sounding or surcease. It is a world, too, compelled to this table of anguish, this orgy of death, by the oc- cult power, by the malign and mysterious me- taphysics, of a monstrous finance, encoiling 43 M WOODROW WILSON and conscripting the nations, and outmeasur- ing existing political imagination or mastery: and this finance, appropriating the pan-Ger- man imperial purpose, is also allied with a power that is blacker and still more occult — a power concerned with the conscription and exploitage of the soul. All this I see, and more. But even so, despite the triune Satan to whom we thus seem awhile delivered, de- spite the despairs and delusions of these blood- drunken days, I also see that the world is in- stinct with an unwonted expectancy, with a sense of some near Messianic intervention and pervasion, and that a change of upward and universal scope is preparing. At any hour, in the twinkling of an eye, the change may come, and an indwelling Divine Social Pres- ence enfold and unite the aware and glad peo- ples. It is thus that the peoples, while the accosted rulers stand astonished or derisive, have given ear to the wistful but commanding summons of President Woodrow Wilson. His speech AND THE world's PEACE 45 seemeth strange indeed, for one having au- thority so great, and his voice hath the sound of one coming from afar. He has startled the nations with news — with a news whose signifi- cance is yet unguessed by the herald or his harkeners. Unknown to them, unknown to himself, he has announced that Return which is to be at once the conclusion and the true be- ginning of history. His words are the sign that there are sons of men who are about to be- come manifest sons of God, perceptive and virile with His love, unfearing and audacious in His freedom, His alert and inventive fel- low-workers in an eternity of creative adven- ture. And these words the world will remem- ber, this news the ages will confirm, when the war shall have paled into a dusty incident of humanity's home-coming. II THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT First published, under the title of "President Woodrow Wilson/* in La Semaine Litteraire, Geneva, Decem- ber iQj 1916, on the occasion of Mr. JVilsons re-election to the presidency. THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT MORE than any other man now living, Woodrow Wilson is likely to receive and to hold the world's attention. Deeply, and with broad and shrewdest kindness, he broods the human problem. He sees far into the future, and he has clear ideas as to some of the things to be done. He knows, too, how to dispense with banners, and how to accord his most revolutionary measures to the "still small voice." His largest intentions are hid within himself; he tells as little as possible be- forehand ; he prefers to let his mind be revealed by results rather than promises. He knows that, in some crises, men are too slow and doubtful, too double-minded, to respond to 49 50 WOODROW WILSON the great appeal. They must be started in the new direction with a kind of divine stealth, and without being told whither they go. It is only after they enter the better condition, the larger freedom and the fairer faith, that they discover they have been led more wisely than they knew, and are able to perceive the nobler prospect. Such is the quality of Wilson's leadership. It is this spiritual adroitness, this union of ex- traordinary political idealism with an equal de- gree of political cunning, that is his chief char- acteristic ; and it is this that persuades the peo- ple to trust him, even if it be somewhat blindly. It is thus, too, that his stature is constantly en- larging, even unto the proportions of Wash- ington and Lincoln. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected to the presidency despite the opposition of the most powerful interests ever allied against an American presidential candidate. He defied the world's boldest financial organizations, now centered in New York, and equipped for com- AND THE world's PEACE 51 mand or for massacre. The whole German race, from Potsdam to San Francisco, worked tirelessly and malignly for his defeat. With equal industry and intrigue, the Roman Cath- olic hierarchy also labored to prevent his re- election. And yet, notwithstanding the ven- omed and united efforts of his opponents, he was the choice of the American people. Now that he is elected, even many who decried him are relieved by the sense of some new safety which his presence offers to civilization — to a civilization, indeed, that seems about to de- stroy itself. I know his European critics assert that Mr. Wilson stands for the material interests of America. But he could not be more com- pletely misread: the great material interests, the materialist philosophers also, are straight against him, are his bitterest foes. So far from being a materialist, his advocacy of a world-democracy is in order that there may be a sphere for the true spiritual unfoldment of both the collectivity and the individual. It 52 WOODROW WILSON is for this he has set before the single soul, and before each citizenry, the goal of a just and joyous society of nations. II AMONG European peoples, especially on the Continent, there is a curious and in- credible ignorance regarding the relation of Mr. Wilson to Germanism. I have just read the astounding information, given by a sup- posedly authoritative writer on American af- fairs, that the pro-Germans of America voted for the President's re-election. It would be difficult to make a statement more contrary to the truth. Mr. Hughes, the opponent of Mr. Wilson, undoubtedly owed his nomination to German influence. In America, the fact is scarcely disputed. The German- American Alliance, claiming the political control of three million citizens, officially instructed them to vote for Hughes. The German Catholics of America, by their congress in New York City, likewise demanded Wilson's condemnation and 63 54 WOODROW WILSON rejection. The German newspapers of the United States, with hardly an exception, vin- dictively strove for the same result. Then, on October 9th, before a vast au- dience in Philadelphia, Mr. Hughes publicly committed himself to a course of action that could have come to nothing else than obedience to the behest of Germany that America should break, or try to break, the British blockade. If Mr. Hughes had been elected, and if his words meant anything at all, his administration inevitably would have brought him into conflict with the Allies, thus ranging America on the side of Germany. As the Herold (German) of New York said: *'0f all the declarations which the Republican candidate has thus far made, that of Monday in Philadelphia is by far the most important. . . . He did not actually mention England by name, but his words left no room for doubt about his meaning. . . . Every citizen of German origin should cast his vote for Hughes." Mr. Norman Hapgood, in the Independent AND THE world's PEACE 55 (New York) of November 6th, and Mr. Frank Percy Olds, in the Atlantic Monthly of Sep- tember, have well and carefully summarized the German attitude toward Mr. Wilson. To such as would like to look further into the sub- ject, I would suggest a perusal of these sum- maries. I can only quote briefly, but the ex- amples I give are representative and typical. Said the Staatz-Zeitung, the organ of the most powerful German-American financial inter- ests : "German- Americans, who, as citizens of the United States, were received by Mr. Hughes, to whom he as an American declared that the interests of America stand before all others, are thereby firmly convinced that Charles E. Hughes is worthy of the confidence of all American citizens and that his election to the presidency of the United States will be a blessing." The Chicago A bendpost, which bit- terly opposed the re-election of Wilson and favored the election of Hughes, made the fol- lowing pronouncement: "For many years back, the German- Americans have been flatter- 56 WOODROW WILSON ing themselves with the hope that the founding of the National German- American Alliance might become the point of departure for a healthy political activity. That was at least one reason for founding the National Alliance for a great number of Germans who took a greater interest than usual in the public affairs of the country. It is better to say right out. Yes, we favor a policy which will be advan- tageous to Germany." Consonant with this, the press-bureau of the German- American Al- liance issued the following declaration: "In unity is power, and the power of American citi- zens of German descent and their political sig- nificance is centered in the preservation of their unity, which is the goal of the German- Ameri- can Alliance. Every attempt to break it up and to destroy it amounts to treason to the cul- tural mission of the German race in the United States of America." The St. Paul Volkszei- tung declared that President Wilson's foreign policy had resulted in uniting all German- Americans at last, and in uniting them against AND THE world's PEACE 57 his administration. The Deutscher Corre- pondent, of Baltimore, considered that, in op- posing. President Wilson, Germans were pre- venting the Anglicizing of the American peo- ple. The Milwaukee Germania Herold urged that Lutherans and Catholics, and "all citi- zens in whose veins German blood flowed," should unite in opposition to Wilson and in favor of Hughes. The German leaders in America expressed their hatred of Wilson as one who had never known "Kultur"; as one who had always been an Anglo-maniac and an agitator for the return of the United States to the English colonial system. Any good Re- publican could win against Wilson, thought the Cleveland Waecliter und Anzeiger, and the Germania Herold proclaimed that the Ger- man-American displeasure with Wilson was shown by the remarkable circumstance that not one German paper of America, even of his own Democratic party, supported him. The Ex- celsior^ organ of the German Catholics, con- demned the supporters of Wilson as pseudo- 58 WOODROW WILSON patriots — "patriots for revenue only" — ^their patriotism being imported from London. An- other influential German paper, in an Inde- pendence Day editorial, asserted that America had again become, under President Wilson's administration, a British vassal state. Said the St. Louis Westliclie Post: "Because of his one-sidedness, nothing which Democratic leaders can say or do will make German- Amer- icans friends of Mr. Wilson again." "The great mass of the German- Americans," said Amerika, another German Catholic organ, "are through with him and only circumstances now quite unforeseen could bring about a reconciliation. They cannot be talked down." And again the Excelsior^ speaking of the American pro- Allies, had this to say: "They are only Anglo-Saxons working on Cecil Rhodes's testament, to the end that the proud, independent United States may again be brought under the yoke of Old England. And at their head — intentionally or not — stands Woodrow Wilson, who still calls him- AND THE world's PEACE 59 self President of the United States, but who really is nothing more than a British colonial director." Still more hateful were the words of another German- American organ, which de- nounced President Wilson as a lackey in Brit- ain's livery, "kissing the hand of his Britannic majesty" while the latter, "kicks him like a dog." The Waechter und Anzeiger pro- claimed that *'to speak of a crime on the part of Germany in the Lusitania case is the most foolish cant conceivable. Our munition ex- ports, America's wallowing in blood-money, America's self-deception — these are crimes also on the conscience of our own people." The criticism concludes with the statement that President Wilson ought to have been Czar. Nor only in America, but in Germany as well, was the defeat of Wilson and the elec- tion of Hughes urged upon German-Ameri- can citizens. By all the German official press was America declared to be, under the admini- stration of President Wilson, an ally of France and England. A cartoon in Jugend repre- 60 WOODROW WILSON sents England as piously distributing thou- sand-pound notes wherewith to convince Amer- ican voters of the need of Wilson's election. Mr. Hughes was the avowed candidate of Berlin for nomination at the Republican Con- vention in Chicago, and for election to the presidency after the nomination had been made. Notwithstanding his fervent Ameri- canism, his administrative policy, had he been elected, would have been qualified, inevitably if unconsciously, by the fact he was the choice of Germany; and to say, as has been said by European journals, that Mr. Wilson received the pro-German vote is much the same as if some historian should announce that Martin Luther received his chief support from the Pope of Rome. Ill MY interpretation of President Wilson may seem to be contradicted by his de- lay in joining final issue with Germany, I think, however, if all the facts and forces with which he has had to work were considered, the contradiction would prove unreal. I could wish, it is true, that he had protested against the violation of Belgium. I could also wish that he had broken with Germany at the time of the sinking of the JLusitania. I would re- joice if America were now battling for the democratic principle, for the spiritual exist- ence of the race, in fellowship with England and Italy and France. I conceive our en- forced neutrality to be both a spiritual and a political failure of our national being. If it continues throughout the war, the moral and 61 62 WOODROW WILSON intellectual disaster to America will be greater than the like disaster to Europe. But this neutrality is not to be charged to President Wilson. There has been no time when either his cabinet, the House of Con- gress, or the people, would have supported him in a declaration of war against Germany. We know, now, how unsupported he was by his ministers in the affair of the Lusitania; how reluctantly the House of Congress consented to his Sussex message. We must remember, too, how many of its members are of German birth or descent. We must also consider that war with Germany meant, in all probability, civil war with America — possibly a state of un- exampled national anarchy, savagely inspired by the omnipresent apostles of Germanism. Mr. Wilson is not the government ; he is not the people; and he could only do the best the national circumstances would allow. We must not think that the protest of elect souls of New York and New England represents the national mind. These do not articulate the AND THE world's PEACE 63 feeling or will, numerically speaking, of even a large minority. The great body of the na- tion — especially of Middle America — is sohdly opposed to participation in the war. It was left to Mr. Wilson to interpret, as radically and effectually as he could, the people who had chosen him to be their spokesman and the executive of their will. IV 1 SUSPECT that, if the truth were dis- cerned or revealed, we should find Mr. Wilson has taken, after all, the course most contributory to the cause of the Allies — and this he has had to do quietly and covertly. The world-war has staged for him many theatric opportunities, but he has avoided the dramatic in order to accomplish the essential. Between his well-nigh exasperating patience and instant war there was no middle-ground. To have protested against the violation of Belgium would have meant war, and that shortly. The same was true in the case of the Lusitania, And war between America and Germany meant cutting off the supplies upon which the success of the Allies depends. Submarines would have blocked the American coasts; the shipments of munitions to Europe would have 64 AND THE world's PEACE 65 ceased; America's resources would have been absorbed in her own military and naval prepa- rations. Thus Mr. Wilson could not have kept open the door — as he certainly has — for England and France to obtain munitions and money from America. And the European war would probably have ended before Amer- ica could render effectual military aid. Finally, President Wilson's refusal to break the British blockade is one of the great strate- gic facts of the war — perhaps the most decisive fact, when all is said, in holding open the gates of advantage for the Allies. Without his action in this regard, the Allies could not win the war; and in her understanding of this, Ger- many is correct. Indeed, at this moment, it is Germany that would be altogether the gainer, so far as the European conflict is concerned, by war with America. At the same time, and in everything that practically counts, the Allies would be the losers. Ger- many knows this so well that she persists in trying to force the hand of President Wilson ; 66 WOODROW WILSON and President Wilson knows it so well that he persists in his nominal neutrality — and per- sists in spite of the fact that he can make no explanation, nor speak the words that would expose the hypocrisies and brutalities of his most relentless and unscrupulous opponents. Mr. Wilson has also, in each crisis that Ger- many has precipitated, looked beyond the pres- ent war's immediate issues. Longingly and hopefully, he peers into a future wherein ques- tions between nations are settled without war. If America should now take up arms, with the whole world thus involved, soon every sem- blance of international law would end. Mr. Wilson has felt it to be the mission of America, at this time of diplomatic anarchy, to stand for a general public law and justice based upon agreement. He has tried to make every crisis an opportunity for the enunciation and devel- opment of a new international righteousness. Wisely or unwisely, he used the case of the Lusitania to try to wrest from Germany some confession of public sin, some acknowledg- AND THE world's PEACE 67 merit of international principle. We should also remember, in our discussion of Mr. Wil- son's administrative conduct, that his message to Congress, at the time of the sinking of the Sussex, was the completest arraignment of Germany that has yet been made by diplom- acy. The condemnations of English writers and diplomats weigh lightly in comparison with the words of judgment passed upon Ger- many by that message. Never in the history of the world, so far as I know, has the ruler of one nation held up another to such final and universal reprobation. Only by an unex- ampled national repentance, can Germany erase the record thus written so deeply against her. ITIT'OODROW WILSON does not be- ^ ^ lieve in war as a rational method of civilization. He does not believe in mili- tary might as a continuing mode of justice or progress. He does not believe that things are finally settled by war. He sees war rather as a means of confusing old problems, and of precipitating needless problems new. He con- cedes to the strong nations no right to impose their will upon the weak. He stands for a universal politic so new, so revolutionary, so creative of a different world than ours, that few have begun to glimpse his vision or to ap- prehend his purpose. His eyes are fixed upon a goal that is far beyond the present faith of nations. His inaugural address before the League to Enforce Peace is perhaps the most pregnant utterance of a national chief in two 68 AND THE world's PEACE 69 thousand years. I know of no man so re- sponsibly placed as Mr. Wilson who has spoken words so weighted with the world's des- tiny. He proposes a literal and working brotherhood of nations, issuing in an ultimately co-operative and concordant mankind. He announces the use of force to prevent instead of to create war. He declares that it is the business of strong nations to be the saviours and not the exploiters of the nations which are weak or small. He overthrows the whole evil conception upon which imperialism is based. Thus the use of governments by the dealers in national debts, by the great concessionaires, must, according to Mr. Wilson's pronounce- ment, come to an end. Acting by this inter- national ethic, would Europe and America co- operate in assisting China to develop her own resources, her own institutions, her own free- dom and social redemption; England would pour such resources and service into India as to enable India to become a vast and self-gov- erning nation in herself; America would help 70 WOODROW WILSON Mexico to free herself from both Mexican landlords and American concessionaires. The ethic has been well expressed by President Wil- son himself in explaining to Miss Tarbell his actions toward Mexico. "Do you remember," he asked, "the angry crowd that was worked up in Ephesus by a silversmith who told his work- men that Paul would surely spoil their trade of making shrines for Diana, if they did not stop his talk of there being no gods made by hands? The men filled the streets, crying, *Great is Diana of the Ephesians,' until the town clerk came out and said : * You idiots, no- body is hurting Diana. If you have a com- plaint against any man, take it to the courts, but stop this uproar or you'll get into trouble.' The episode in Ephesus is very like what is go- ing on today in the country in regard to Mexico. A few men who have property down there have worked up a claque to cry: * Great is order in Mexico.' But it is order not for the Mexicans, but for some of the foreign in- vestors, . . . Never, in all of their appeals to AND THE world's PEACE 71 me, has one of them mentioned the fifteen mil- lion Mexicans. It is always our investments." Speaking of the same subject on another occa- sion, the President said: "I am more inter- ested in the fortunes of oppressed men and piti- ful women and children than in any property rights whatever. Mistakes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business, but not in purpose or object. More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico and the rela- tions of the United States with a distressed and distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now being made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not, and are indeed to be trusted to respect national sov- ereignty among our weaker neighbors." VI 1 OUGHT to say — perhaps ought to have said at the beginning — that I have no shadow of authority for interpreting Wood- row Wilson. There has never been speech between us, nor have I looked upon his face. And were he choosing an interpreter, I am sure it would not be such a one as my- self. Besides, I belong not to his political party: I am, and shall be till I die, a Socialist — even though I know of no Socialist party, at the present time, that has more than a legend- ary and misrepresentative relation to Social- ism. But ought not all this to give value to my appreciation of America's Chief Servant? Whether it be so or not, my understanding of the man I must proclaim. For I perceive — or certainly seem to perceive — that Woodrow 72 AND THE world's PEACE 73 Wilson is not only the greatest statesman that has appeared in the world for many years — great indeed beyond comparison with any save Lincoln : he is also a determined and tremend- ous radical: he is a redeemer of democracy. He is revolutionary beyond anything his words reveal, beyond anything his contemporaries have discerned. He has accomplished a com- plete change of direction in the course of Amer- ican political development — in the course of the world's ongoing as well. He has indeed been extraordinarily shifty in the accomplish- ment of the things he believes basic and right ; but the shifts he has made have been linked to- gether in a divinely democratic processional. Consequently, whenever and wherever the issue between property and the people has been clear, in not a single instance has he stood for property, but in every instance for the peo- ple. In the Federal Reserve Banks, as well as in other legislative achievements, he has know- ingly undermined certain of the foundations upon which our capitalist society rests; at the 74 WOODROW WILSON same time, he has been preparing foundations for a truly co-operative society. Without proclamation, with none of the jargon common to radicals, he has shown himself more pro- foundly conscious of the working-class than many of the working-class leaders; and this notwithstanding his previous academic career and associations. As compared with Wood- row Wilson, there are Socialist spokesmen who are bourbon in their understanding and sym- pathy. As contrasted with America's Presi- dent, the parliamentary leaders of German So- cialism are medieval reactionaries. VII Tyi700DR0W WILSO]>^ believes in the ^ ^ whole length and logic of democracy — democracy in political relations, democ- racy in industry, democracy in things in- tellectual and spiritual. If we could look deep into this man's soul, I think we should find there the ideal of a world at last arriving at a universal communism of production and dis- tribution, with a common and unfettered free- dom as regards the right of each individual to choose the way in which he shall go, and grow, and give himself. Has he not well hinted this ideal in words spoken at his dedication of Lin- coln's birthplace? "Is not this," he asks, "an altar upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes must constantly be rekindled? And only those who hve can rekindle them. The 76 76 WOODROW WILSON only stuff that can retain the Hf e-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right and codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to transmute these into the life and action of so- ciety, the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and women willing to make their lives an embodiment of right and service and enlight- ened purpose. The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and oppor- tunities are wide and generous. Its compul- sion is upon us. It will be great and lift a great light for the guidance of the nations only if we are great and carry that light high for the guidance of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of the great nation which shelters and nurtures us." Woodrow Wilson beholds this vision, he f ol- AND THE world's PEACE 77 lows this faith, because he is both sturdily and mystically Christian in his view of our com- mon life's collective possibilities. The utter- most democracy, the democracy that scales the whole human octave, is to him the certain issue of the idea for which Jesus lived and died. This man conceives, with John Milton and Al- fred the Great, with John Stuart Mill and Joseph Mazzini, that the mind of mutual serv- ice, the literal and general application of the law of love, is the only practicable social basis, the only national security, the only foundation for international peace. He believes that the Sermon on the Mount is the ultimate consti- tution of mankind ; and he intends, by hook or crook if you will, by the wisdom of the serpent and the secrecy of the priest, to get this founda- tion underneath the unaware American nation. He cunningly hopes, he divinely schemes, to bring it about that America, awake at last to her national selfhood and calling, shall become as a colossal Christian apostle, shepherding the world into the kingdom of God. 1 Ill HIS INITIAL EFFORT First published, under the title of ''The Note of President JVilsonf in the Journal de Geneve, December Jl, igi6, on the occasion of President Wilson s note, addressed to all the belligerent nations, of December i8. i HIS INITIAL EFFORT THE European state of mind regarding President Wilson's note seems to be one of bewilderment — of bewilderment mingled with tepid hope. There have been attempts at criticism, and many discussions; but they have been aimless, on the whole, and extraor- dinarily tame and ineffectual. Journalists and statesmen feel compelled to speak, but what to say appears beyond their powers of compre- hension. They seem unable to conceive or even guess what the President means; and, rather than the confused contributions they have prof- fered their respective publics, it would have been better if they had frankly confessed their inability. Nor does one of the Western Powers know precisely how the note is taken 81 82 WOODROW WILSON by another; and the Central Powers approach a like predicament. Curiously enough, how- ever, it is England that has misconstrued the note most completely, while it is Germany that somewhat perceives the President's purpose. And the perception is tremendously disturbing to Germany's masters. Probably this is what Mr. Wilson expected; for his note was written for Germany, and it is through diplomatic necessity that he addressed it to the belligerents in common. It is this diplomatic necessity that has masked his mean- ing in what seems an unemotional and repre- hensible impartiality, and that has brought such stupefaction to Europe. Yet the note is, in effect, nothing else than an ultimatum to Germany. It is an ultimatum that may bring either peace or war ; but surely it is war rather than peace it portends. For Mr. Wilson knows that, if the war continues, his country cannot much longer remain apart. The world cannot go on burning, and so big a house as the United States of America escape AND THE world's PEACE 83 the flames. In one way or another, America must try to put out the fire, try to bring the conflict to a righteous conclusion — first decid- ing, however, on which side she conceives the tents of righteousness to stand, and then align herself with that side. It is to this end that each of the two groups of belligerents is asked to state what it is fighting for, and what terms of peace will satisfy it; for only so may the American States intelligently decide with which group to throw their probably conclusive resources. II TJUT, it will be asked, why does he appar- -■-^ ently place the belligerents all upon the same moral level? This is indeed a pertinent and momentous question. If he actually means to treat the assassins of Belgian and Serbian nationalities, the murderers of the Armenian people, the breakers of treaties, the slayers of children, the violators of women, the destroyers of churches, as entitled to equal con- sideration with the defenders of France and Belgium and Serbia, then indeed has President Wilson intolerably offended that remnant of mankind which still hath power to discriminate between atrocious wrong and trampled right. But let us not be hasty in saying this is what he has done. He only says that the belhger- ents claim to be fighting for the same ends, and to be asking for the same terms of peace. He 84 AND THE world's PEACE 85 would like to know if this is true. Will each belligerent state its terms, so that America and the other neutral nations may judge? And by this simple request, Mr. Wilson may be plac- ing Germany in the worst possible position: he may be taking the very course that will ex- pose her moral nakedness to the world. Indeed, more than any other method he could have devised, will Mr. Wilson's demand dis- close the responsibility for the war; and, fur- thermore, it will reveal that the issue of Amer- ica is substantially with Germany alone. For the terms of the Allies are well enough known : they have been repeatedly and frankly stated. England seeks nothing in Europe for herself; but she requires complete restitution for Bel- gium, and the same for France, coupled with the return of Alsace-Lorraine. She also in- sists upon the restoration and reunion of the Servian peoples in a greater Servian kingdom. She demands, in fine, the freedom of each peo- ple to choose its own national affiliations and social development. The requirements of 86 WOODROW WILSON France are identical with those of England. Italy asks for herself that part of the Italian nation which is still under the dominion of Austria; for the rest of Europe, Italy's wishes are identical with those of England and France. The problem of Russia and Con- stantinople is more complicated, and has been carefully avoided ; but it would be best that the Allies frankly state their engagement with Russia. For America will be the last to be disturbed by the political transfer of Constan- tinople. No country is so desirous as America of ridding both Europe and Asia Minor of Turkish dominion. Probably America would ask for an independent Armenian state, as she has always had a special interest in the Ar- menian people. Germany, on the other hand, has not the slightest intention of stating her terms, now or at any time. She will deal only in vague and bemazing generalities, plausibly and patheti- cally expressed. Her proposed negotiations for peace have no other end than the decep- AND THE world's PEACE 87 tion of the world and the gaining of time and sympathy — no other motive than the prolonga- tion of her power to keep and to conquer. If she can compel or seduce the Allies to a con- ference, she will propose terms befitting a con- queror, even though foreknowing their rejec- tion. During the continuance of such a con- ference, perhaps not less than a year, she could greatly renew her resources, while France and Russia would be but the more depleted. The end of the conference would be that Germany would gain by trickery and treachery much of what she failed to obtain by war. Germany dreams not of peace upon any other terms — upon any other terms than such as will leave her the overlordship of Middle Europe and of Asia Minor ; leave her, in fact, in possession of an empire stretching from Hamburg to Bagdad, with India and China in the horizon. After having fought the foulest war, all things considered, that history affords, she now seeks to fasten upon the world a still fouler peace — ^both the war and the peace hav- 88 WOODROW WILSON ing this pan-Germany empery for their goal. If she succeeds, then for a long time to come there will be small breathing-room for the soul of man upon this planet, and less of freedom for his mind. In the accomplishment of this empery, Ger- many can well dissemble — well afford to make, for the moment, what seem to be generous con- cessions. But her largest concessions would be trifling in comparison with her vast imperial gains in the South and the East. Besides, she knows well enough that, if she is allowed to keep the Balkans and Turkey, it will be but a few years till France and Belgium are help- lessly hers. This, nor aught else, is the real purpose of the German peace propositions. It is to bring the German purpose into the open that President Wilson has made his re- quest. He has undertaken to compel Ger- many to show her hand, in order that, in case of refusal, the American people will support him in the course he must consequently take. Either Germany must place all her terms upon AND THE world's PEACE 89 the table, and prove them such as to satisfy the new international conscience Mr. Wilson has called into being, or she must add America to the number of her enemies. And it is thus that the first point of our President's note is not peace but war. Ill BUT the note has also a more amazing im- port than the psychological preparation of the American people; and that is, the op- portunity it affords the German Empire to end not only the present war, but all war, and to give a common and upbuilding peace to the family of nations. Never, in the whole unin- telligible and wasteful histoiy of man, have the rulers of a nation had a chance so replete with redemptive possibility as that which our President has presented to the rulers of Ger- many. Let her — if I may redeem a term from the gambler — call the President's divine bluff: let her stake her existence and destiny upon one throw of faith, one inclusive and irrevocable renunciation, one challenging and creative af- firmation of man's basic and inviolable brother- hood. Let her transmute her incredible cap- 90 AND THE world's PEACE 91 acity for deception and intrigue into one celes- tial trick upon the human race. Let her in- stantly and specifically, without qualification or reservation, give an answer that shall ac- cord with Mr. Wilson's invitation. Let her place upon the table such conditions of peace as shall win the sympathy and applause of even her foes. Let her volunteer the complete res- toration of Belgium and France, of the Bal- kans as well, with compensation for all that these invaded countries have suffered. Let her propose the full and true rehabihtation of Poland, including the provinces attached to Prussia. Let her require the integration of all the Serbs, and the union of all the Italians. Let her demand that the Dardanelles be con- sidered an integral part of the Mediterranean, neutral and open to all nations equally. Let her ask that Constantinople be set apart as the seat of an International Tribunal — ^the conse- crated capitol of a renascent and resolute Christendom. If this she will but do — if she will but see and 92 WOODEOW WILSON seize her prodigious opportunity ; if she will but realize this new kind of national integrity, this new order of national being, then may Ger- many, even now and at once, step into a place of stupendous spiritual leadership, her sons becoming the first born of that superhumanity which the prophets of all times and races fore- tell. She cannot bring back the dead, of course, nor restore the desolate or vanished homes. She cannot evoke armies of eager workers and lovers, of fathers and brothers, from the miles and millions of graves which are the seal she has now set upon the earth. But she can make even these, by her own repentance and rebirth, fruitful with new life for the world. It is possible for Germany to speak now the apocalyptic word — to take now the apocalyptic step. It is possible that there are among the German tribes men sane and saintly enough, men of requisite faith and courage, to sound the trumpet that shall waken these tribes, once and for all, from the loathsome hypnosis which AND THE world's PEACE 93 none other than some sort of Satan could have laid upon them. It is possible for Germany to rise from her deep spiritual night, from the orgy of murder and lying and madness she has therein precipitated, and to invite then the na- tions to unite with her in a peace that shall be both social and international. It is even pos- sible that Germany might suddenly beseek Woodrow Wilson to lead the world in the pur- suit of this ineffable goal. IV THE Allies are not without responsibility here. They say, and sincerely I believe, they have no intention of crushing Germany. But why not make this clear to the German peoples — why not now appeal to them, plainly and unreservedly, even over or under the thrones of their rulers? Are there no states- men in England or France of such stature and strength as to rend the veil of an antique and subterranean diplomacy — to step forth from its enmeshments and address the German na- tion in terms that shall be human and familiar? It may be that it is the German head that has gone wrong — not the heart; and that if the real heart of Germany were authentically and wisely invoked, it would repent and respond — even to the extent of disencumbering itself of its Prussian rulers and teachers. 94 AND THE world's PEACE 95 For the moment, we can only wait — ^wait with wonder and anguish — to see whether the present hmnan night will darken and deepen, or if some unforeseen day of deliverance will break. It is the world's most breathless mo- ment. The human race trembles in the bal- ance. The war, if it continues, may slip from the control of its makers and masters. A turn of some irresponsible hand, even an idle word, may start the race on its new and tremendous upward or downward way. Either we shall soon be plunging into chaos, and the creation of the world begin over again, with perhaps but a human remnant in the Creator's hand, or the nations must come to some swift resolution, some divine determination, taking the course of evolution in hand and definitely shaping our common future according to a deliberate so- cial and spiritual choice. Yet now, as at the beginning of the war, the lead is with Germany. Through some mys- terious dispensation of destiny, it is Germany that still holds the scales of decision. We are 96 WOODROW WILSON far from snatching the scales from her hands. But it is possible that, through an unprece- dented and Pentecostal revolution, she may yet humbly entreat the nations to join her in hold- ing the mystic balance of a harmonized world. IV THE PRO-GERMAN MORALITY OF THE PACIFIST This paper, written in reply to pacifist perversions of President Wilson s unfortunate phrase, "peace without victory!* was originally published in two parts — the first in II Giornale d* Italia, Rome, March 4, IQIT ; the second, in the April number of La Revue Mensuelle, Geneva, THE PRO-GERMAN MORALITY OF THE PACIFIST RECENTLY and severely, an eminent Continental critic rebuked the writer of this paper for declaring that the European war is in reality between two religions, two op- posing principles of life — one of these being embodied in the Germanism that seeks world- dominion by the might of its will and its weapons, the other being the continuing pur- pose and presence of him we call the Christ. To the mind of the critic, Christ is neutral as regards the war, holding with neither the one nor the other group of belligerents, nor con- cerned as to which shall be triumphant. Or rather, Christ is in equal opposition to all the 99 100 WOODROW WILSON fighters: he is the Prince of Peace only, hav- ing part with none but the pacifist. Practi- cally, if the critic's conception be true, Christ is the Divine Absentee, detachedly awaiting the termination of the battles, and to be called upon as the last resort of mankind. Of the Christ who avowed that he came not to bring peace but a sword, who declared that he had kindled a fire in the earth which none could put out till the justice of love prevailed — of him the critic seems never to have heard. Yet it is the militant Christ who is real, who accords with both history and the gospels: the Christ of the critic hath no reality. He is but an artifice indeed — the pale and nearly puerile contrivance of men who would escape the risks of the real Christ's robust adventure. It is a curious trinity that finds refuge from faith in this contrivance: there is first an emasculate pacifism, busy and fretful and often ferocious, and claiming Jesus for its founder and Tolstoy for its prophet; then follows a decadent intel- lectualism, an erotic and exhausted modem- AND THE world's PEACE 101 ity, lounging and voluminously lisping, and resorting to religion for a last sensation; and third in order comes the fashionable reformer and social worker — his aesthetics and his sta- tistics deranged, his sensibilities insufferably shocked, his popularity altogether impaired, by the sudden gross arrival of the day of judg- ment. And it is these who, — annoyed with God's unexpected way of doing, resentful at having the strife between light and darkness dragged definitely into the open, affecting a superior world-sorrow and languishing in regions of pietistic fatigue "above the battle," — it is these who are now the choicest servants of an anointing Germanism. I do not mean that Christ is other than the Prince of Peace : he stands for a peace so pro- found, so determined and delectable, that it surpasses any experience or understanding of our mortal commonalty. But it is a peace proceeding from the conquest of life, and not from evasion or compromise. It is a peace that will be reached, if ever it possess the 102 WOODROW WILSON earth, through spiritual assault and assimila- tion — through the capture and orchestration of all material and mechanic facts, all the nat- ural and social forces, with which man has to do. Christ needs no invitation to the thick of the human struggle : he has never been absent from it. It was there he spoke, there he did his work; and it was there that, because of the things he said and did, he was haled to an out- law's death. And afterward, in the wondrous Christian springtune, when to follow Christ was the most romantic thing a man could do, his disciples were ecstatic warriors. Even when they defended not their individual names or persons, they were never neutral as regards conflicts or principles or institutions. The Revelation of St. John — which is a philosophy of history as well as the greatest of all sym- bolical literature — is a book of war. The only ones with whom the apostle and his Master seemed altogether impatient were the neutrals ; and these John represents as being so disgust- AND THE world's PEACE 103 ing that his Lord spewed them out of his mouth. The soul that refused to take sides, that was destitute of conviction and passion and color, was repulsive and intolerable. The neutralism that decried decision, the pacifism that disestablished judgment — these furnished the last and most loathsome immorality. And it is no less than a blasphemy, no less than a besmirchment of his name, which places the Christ apart from the battles of the day. The world-war and its woes, and the whole tragic pilgrimage of man, the total track and tramp of history, are across and within his inclusive heart. Nor does the writer of the Apocalypse dif- fer, in his opinion of the neutralist, from the apostles and law-givers who came before and after him. Isaiah viewed the lukewarm and the neutral with especial horror. Solon con- sidered that the state might forgive its outward enemies and its inward rebels; but he thought the neutrals should straightway be put to death. And to Mazzini these were the black- 104 WOODROW WILSON est of abominations : the worst of the pro-Aus- trians were intelligible and pardonable, but neutrality was such a particular profanation of man's essential divinity, was such a mean perversion of man's reason for being, that it was fit only to be despised — fit only to be de- nied moral consideration, and to be cast from the midst of the spiritual decencies. Yet behold now this neutrality, wedded to a pacifism without intelligence or moral content, making its widening and devitalizing way, and producing an increasing helplessness to appre- hend the meaning of the hour ! II WE here come upon the dreadest evil that has issued from the fall of our fabled civilization. To those of us who per- ceive, or think we perceive, that mankind is one living and continuing organism, one eter- nal mutual-membered family, it is not the number of the dead that scores most heavily against the war. Not the millions of its man- gled and slain, not the material ruin it has wrought, not the wide desolate districts wherein none but the aged and the widowed and the orphaned now dwell — not this, not this is the war's worst result. Rather is it the moral bhght, the spiritual paralysis, which cer- tain forces within and around the war are in- flicting upon the soul of the world. And it is this which so ten^ifies, today, such as have set their hopes upon a changed world — upon an uprisen and radiant humanity. 105 Ill THUS it is the habit of the neutralist, the purpose of the pacifist — a habit, a pur- pose, pursued with a well-nigh sottish persist- ence — to compel a regard for the contending nations as equals in national morality. And how can we reason with such — how can we rea- son with men who repeat that there is no differ- ence between the German occupation of Bel- gium and the Franco-English occupation of Greece? Germany invaded Belgium in viola- tion of her own signed treaty, and with no provocation except the lust for Paris. Beau- tiful Belgian cities. Christian and Gothic treasures which Philip of Spain respected, an- cient shrines which survived even the raid of Attila, scores of villages and farmsteads and factories, are now rubbish and ashes. Un- numbered thousands of Belgium's people are 106 AND THE world's PEACE 107 dead from murder and cold and hunger. Her women have been violated, her children tor- tured and slain, her families dismembered, and well-nigh half a million men and women have been carried into slavery. Three million Bel- gians are refugees and exiles. All Belgium is now a land of mental sorrow and physical mis- ery — a nation in chains, a people scourged be- yond modern comparison or belief. And Greece? Not a man or a woman or a child has been harmed, not a house destroyed. The Greeks have been protected from the treachery of their Germanophile king by the two countries, France and England, to which Greece owes her liberty; and the Allies will doubtless leave Greece in a far better moral and material condition than that in which they found her. Even granting the violation of neutrality, there is no similarity between the Allied occupation of Greece and the German destruction of Belgium; and it is only the hard- iest distortion of facts that presents the two cases as similar. 108 WOODROW WILSON And what shall we do with pacifists so brazen as to place the Turkish rule of Armenia beside the English occupation of Egypt? I am among those who have declared, again and again, for Egyptian autonomy; and there are many Englishmen who today are pledged to the self-government of both Egypt and India. But we would preserve, when we speak of these things, some decent sense of moral pro- portion. However blundering and unsym- pathetic it be in some of its methods and as- pects, we would not place the English govern- ment of alien peoples upon a level with the Turkish system of government by plunder and murder. A Germanized Turkey, under the protec- tion and patronage of an ostensibly Christian Kaiser, has practically exterminated the Ar- menian nation. Horrors have been perpe- trated upon the Armenians that have no parallel — not even in the persecution of the early Christians. Put Egypt beside Armenia. Before the AND THE world's PEACE 109 English occupation, the Egyptian people were the helpless prey of their Turkish pashas. They were a nation of plundered serfs, gov- erned by rapine and without law, steeped in hopeless poverty, living in unlighted despair. Egypt has indeed been a land of unbroken night for two thousand years, except for the one glorious epoch of Neoplatonic and early Christian Alexandria. England has given order, education, cleanliness, hope and com- parative happiness. It is true, she has ex- ploited the Egyptians ; she has delayed giving them self-government; but it is also true she has given them the light of day, and probably the first security they have had in the course of their history. I have myself talked with farmers along a thousand miles of the Nile, and I know it is not they who clamor for an end of the English occupation. It is the de- scendants of the Turkish masters, looking with covetous eyes upon the wealth which England has developed. And they who have the hardi- hood to put upon the same moral level the Eng- 110 WOODROW WILSON lish occupation of Egypt and the Turkish con- trol of Armenia, as has been done by French pacifists and German pubhcists, — these are beyond the reach of moral argument. IV NOR matters how obvious or odious it be, to each decoy which Germany sends forth the pacifist responds with his daft indorsement, his inane applause. Decoy after decoy, deceit after deceit, is borne from Berhn upon pacifist banners or by neutral messengers. It was by these the plan for peace without victory was proclaimed, and by these the Belgian atrocities have been explained away. One such pacifist, an American educator of high standing, writes me an indignant letter about the injustice with which Germany has been treated in regard to Belgium. She had not carried the Belgians into slavery; she had only expatriated them out of regard for their welfare; she had marched them across the Rhine in order to keep them from starvation and deterioration; — such is the expressed opinion of my friend. Ill 112 WOODROW WILSON Nor does he differ in this from Dr. Krebs, the eminent German- Catholic historian. Ac- cording to Dr. Krebs, the Germans have be- haved with "the patience of angels"; and the deeds done against them by the German soldiery were the fault of the obdurate Bel- gians themselves. And recently his state- ment has been approved by an authoritative American pacifist — a member of the Stock- holm Conference. But let us take the reception of the Ger- man imposture of Polish independence as a special instance of the pacifist's moral inca- pacity. The so-called reconstruction of Po- land, as planned and announced by Germany, was a fraud so obvious and brazen, that it seemed impossible for the most stolid pacifist to misapprehend it. It was not at all a plan for Polish rehabilitation, but for a final Polish dissolution. It was a scheme to annex Poland to Prussia — that and nothing else; and, in the meanwhile, the Poles might be seduced or con- scripted into the German army, there to fight AND THE world's PEACE 113 for their own destruction. Representative Poles of London and Paris warned the world against the deception. Yet the warnings counted for nothing so far as the pacifists were concerned. The tragic fraud, transparent and exposed though it was, became the basis of a serious propaganda for Poland, and the German deception was acclaimed, — in Amer- ica and Switzerland and even France, — as a Polish realization. OR again, consider how successful has been the pacifist propaganda against Brit- ish navalism — British navalism thus placed upon one moral level with Prussian militarism, and presented as an equal international men- ace. It is easy to agree that the seas should not be imder the dominion or protection of any one power; about that there need be no debate. But so long as there is no interna- tional agreement or arrangement, it is difficult to see how naval supremacy could have been exercised more justly and generously than England has exercised hers. No nation has been hurt or hindered by the existence of the British navy; on the contrary, it is the British navy that has protected the world from the German menace. On two occasions, the ships of England stood between America and a Ger- 114 AND THE world's PEACE 115 man intervention. But this was to limit or prevent war: so far as commerce is concerned, the merchant fleets of Germany have gone where they would, into all the ports of the British dominions, unhindered and unmolested by the British navy. And there is not the smallest merchant ship of the smallest nation that has not had utter freedom to spread its sails wherever the British flag symbolized the presence of British power. Great Britain has policed the seas of the world, and the world has reaped the benefit of the protection. And the hardiest pacifist is not so unintelligent as not to know that he is both arbitrary and base in his attempt to equalize the good and the evil of Prussian militarism and British navalism. VI MEANWHILE, under the cover of the confusion which her pacifist mission- aries create, German marshals anew her mahgn forces; anew she prepares her march against the spiritual being of humanity. For more than forty years, this German menace has been productive of an increasing political and spiritual derangement of the na- tions. For more than forty years, this tramp- ling terror and threat in the heart of Europe has prevented the world from settling down to social and political reconstruction. As little as the city may live normally if mad dogs are loose in the streets, so the world is unable to pursue its normal and nobler development with the Prussian loose in its midst. Nor is it only the Prussian sword — it is the whole mind of Prussia that is deranging and 116 AND THE world's PEACE 117 debauching the nations. Like the progress of a mysterious plague, this German mentahty goes forth, foreboding the psychic subjection of the world. One by one, often group by group, intellectuals and internationahsts go down before its devices. Peace conferences, Socialist parties, Roman Catholic organiza- tions, the men of letters who feel themselves superior to the strife, the men of money who fear the escape of the nations from their con- trol — these all unite in the German agendum. And unless this German mental penetration be discerned for what it is, unless it be transmuted and its present and former works destroyed, the world itself will be subdued and destroyed. For verily, Germany is even now overcom- ing the world — overcoming it secretly and psychically — overcoming it despite her crimes, her infidelities, her losses, and the addition of strong nations to her enemies. The pestilen- tial pervasiveness of her intrigues, her alliance with the elemental earth-forces that would drag man back to his primordial pit — by these 118 WOODKOW WILSON is she infecting the conscience and well-nigh destroying the moral reason of mankind. We face the possible and appalling prospect of a world with a Germanized mind and morality. And to the monstrously renascent black magic of Germany's unyielding past, to her staged and histrionic national whines, are not only eminent litterateurs and revolutionists surren- dering, but also empowered politicians and statesmen. Whence a peace more predacious than war, and pregnant with ages of iron dark- ness, now Cometh apace upon the peoples. It is as if the mind of the race were seized by the torpor of some returning prehistoric night. Wotan and Thor, and the earth's primeval creatures, confederate and modernized in the German national soul, are in the way of estab- lishing a dominion of death over a world that has lost the sense of moral reality. 1 VII SAY not that I speak against peace. There need be no debate with me about that. A condition of universal peace is my supreme desire; for incalculable are the reach and the rapidity of the progress which man- kind might thereby make. But you cannot build the House of Peace upon the sands of evasion and cowardice. You cannot procure an enduring and honorable international amity apart from the causes and consequences of the conflict in which Europe is now engaged. The whole spiritual question of the present war must be faced and settled before there can be a peace that will be other than a tragic fraud, and the breeding bosom of vaster catastrophes to come. You cannot put into the same moral category the desire for dominion which inspired the German initiative and the self -existence for X19 120 WOODROW WILSON which France and Belgium and Servia are fighting. You cannot unify the autocratic principle which is basic in the Central Empires with the democratic principle which is the mov- ing force of French and English political evolution. You cannot, for the sake of short- ening the war, wipe the horrors of Belgium from the German slate ; nor the destruction of Servia; nor the Armenian massacres and the submarine assassinations. A peace bought with a price so vile would announce nothing less than the moral suicide of the nations. The mere proposal for such a peace, based as it is upon abysmal lies and the world's dis- honor, is a sign of the intellectual insincerity, the spiritual shabbiness, of the generation that is now so violently passing away. Besides, such a peace would he, in every es- sential effect, an overwhelming victory for Germany, Make no mistake about the fact that, as the European situation now stands, Germany has won the war; and the peace that the pacifists propose, apparently granting AND THE world's PEACE 121 victory to neither side, would leave her in pos- session of territories and spoils unequaled, in some respects, by the greatest of ancient em- pires. Germany has achieved an extraordi- nary triumph that she herself probably did not anticipate at the beginning of the war: she has conquered her own allies, and is practically in possession of their lands. The Austrian and Turkish Empires, as well as Bulgaria, are sub- stantially annexed to Germany, to say nothing of Roumania, Servia and Montenegro. A compact and continuous German Empire stretches from Antwerp and Hamburg to Bag- dad, Not even Rome had an empire so con- crete and well-rounded, so potential with world-dominion. With Germany's unexam- pled material and technical efficiency, with the Pan-German religion as the soul of this ef- ficiency, the Kaiser's Empire constitutes the very heart of both Europe and Asia, and, if perpetuated, will in a very few years have both continents completely under control, Ger- many can well afford a great display of gen- 122 WOODROW WILSON erous renunciation. She can evacuate Bel- gium, return Alsace-Lorraine to France and give the Trentino and Gorizia to Italy, and still have made the greatest conquest that has been made since Rome's greatest days. The program of the pacifists and the financiers, if it be adopted, according so marvellously as it does with Germany's designs, will be the great- est historic imposture that has been perpe- trated since Constantine blazoned the name of Christ upon his polluted and polluting ban- ners. It is a peace that leaves the apparently non-victorious German as the shrewdest and completest conqueror of recorded history. VIII THUS if we would save the soul of the world from its dreadest danger, from per- haps its saddest delay, there must be no com- promise with the German, no halting by the way nor turning back in the purpose of the Allies. We must not forbear to cry that peace with an undefeated and umrepentant Germany is black with the world's disgrace; that it is a peace pregnant with the doom of freedom's faith. No matter upon whose hps it comes, nor what immediate nobility of pur- pose inspires it, it is a peace whose propelhng power is of Prussian generation. It can have no place in the councils of justice, no reception on the part of the compassion that is prophetic and comprehensive. The nations cannot sit together at a table of peace on any such terms, for it would indeed be no table of peace: rather 123 124 WOODROW WILSON would it be the table of a eonvenant by which humanity would turn traitor to itself. There can be no treaty of peace — ^unless indeed hu- manity thus betray itself — short of the com- plete destruction of that Prussian militarism which, for now these many years, has blocked all the wheels of the progress that makes for democracy and fraternity among the nations. Nor is that enough. The Allies must have the spiritual strength to say that they intend to destroy — not the German people — but the Prussian state and system. There can be no true civil order, no sane progress, no faithful in- ternational comity or community, until Prussia is dismembered and rendered impotent. As the Romans of old resolved, for material and Roman reasons, that Carthage must be de- stroyed, so must England and Italy and France resolve, for reasons of humanity and, the soul, and in order that a decent and fra- ternal civilization may come into being, that the Prussian Kingdom shall come to an end, and no more lay its malific influence upon the AND THE world's PEACE 125 family of nations. And if the Allies of West- ern Europe have not faith to affirm this; if they have not the courage to persist until this he accomplished; if they do not prefer even a noble national extinction to any peace short of this, then they themselves are recreant to the pitiful divine judgment now relentlessly en- wrapping them, consuming the old and di- vided world and making way for a world that shall be united and new. IX THE soul of the world is sick of war — ^this I know — sick of the encircling and in- creasing slaughter, seemingly so ineffectual of decision or finality. Our present thoughts are all upon its early end — upon when, rather than what, the peace shall be. We have neither time nor patience, it seems, for the search for principles, for vision or prophecy or profound comprehension. We want im- mediate ways and means; we ask for speedy and facile formulse, for instant and practical solutions, no matter how transient they are, no matter how shallow or sordid. But we shall not get the things we want : we shall have to want and to welcome things im- measurably better. We cannot make peace because we are tired. We cannot build a wiser world-order on the basis of disgust and 126 AND THE world's PEACE 127 weariness with the irrational and deathful dis- order that now is. We have come upon a time when perhaps the world may perish, and the story of man prove a cosmic fiasco, if we do not achieve some collective decision regarding our life's common course and meaning. It is to just such decision this incredible war is driving us. It is summoning us to a veritable seat of judgment; and there the appealing past fore- gathers, and the insurgent and overflowing fu- ture, and the interpenetrative spheres — ^be- likely more aware than we of the hour. X NOR Cometh peace nearer — it is rather re- tarded — by the mere proclamation of the pacifist ideal, no matter how lofty it be. For an ideal must not only transcend existing reality; it must go down underneath the con- ditions it would change, becoming their new substructure. It must embrace and account for the whole, nor evade a single hard ques- tion, a single ugly fact. It must, if it stands any righteous chance of realization, throw the entire problem with which it is concerned into solution. Your ideal may reach as high as it places, but it must be rooted deep and firm in the blood and the dust of the human struggle. Your prophet may peer as far into the human future as he can, but his hands must grasp the present — ^yea, and the past also: for the past, 128 AND THE world's PEACE 129 too, is changed whenever we change the pres- ent, the things that were as well as the things that are being appointed anew by each regen- erative process. The pacifist fails — he fails morally and intel- lectually — because of his dissociation with real- ity. He has let himself be seduced by an ideal that stands essentially unrelated to the terrible and transmutative facts of the hour. The fault is not in his ideal, but in its detachment from both the desires and the deeds that divide into contending groups the nations to whom it is addressed. The peace for which pacifists now clamor uprears itself on a basis of ignorance and in- justice. By their studied determination to consider not the causes of the war, by their re- fusal to face the methods by which the war has been carried on by the Central Powers, the most of the programs for peace destroy their own validity. Besides, peace is not abstinence from war, is not mere non-resistance of evil ; and with the in- 130 WOODROW WILSON f antile fancy that it is, and with all pacifist im- moralities as well, let us at once and forever have done. If we would have peace we must earn it, we must win it ; nor else than by battle may peace be ours. The peace that is living, the peace that is upbuilding, is the achievement of spiritual valor, of embattled love, and waits at the heart of life's conquered elements. XI NOT flesh and blood only now contend; our real weapons are other than those of mor- tal fashioning; nor is it merely a war between nations that engages us. It is a war fought with weapons of the spirit; it is a war between principles rather than nations — between the so- cial principle proclaimed at Jerusalem, two thousand years gone, and the doctrine of power announced and exercised by Germany. Shall it be the religion of democracy — ^which, if it be real, is none other than the acceptance and practice of the Christ? Or shall it be the re- ligion of Germanism — ^the modernization and enthronement of Wotan and Thor? The issue of the war will be the world's answer. Be it early or late, we shall give due divine account of ourselves, I am sure. Through these mazes of murder and madness, humanity will yet make its way. Deeply and vastly, 131 132 WOODROW WILSON more consciously and conclusively than before, more thoughtfully and threateningly, are the forces of freedom astir. They will be up and afoot ere long; and they will be winged and wise and unhalting too, brooking nor let nor hindrance from rulers, from bankers, from par- liaments. And these forces of freedom's re- nascent faith, fleet and effectual, will not only turn back the Germanism which is their pres- ent great enemy: they will then destroy, utterly and forever, that materialist faith which so long has been the seducer and false builder of civilization, and which has furnished the Ger- man Empire its reason for being. V PRO-AMERICA First published in La Setnaine Litteraire, Geneva, May 5j 1917, upon the occasion of President Wilson s address in declaration of war, April 2, i PRO-AMERICA IT is a curious but divine irony that most of the great pacifists of history — ^the men who loathed war and sought to end it — have been placed in positions that morally compelled them to fight. They have had to enter the wars of their times in order to consecrate and conclude them, making them the violent openers of free- dom's doors, the procurers of a closer approach to mutualized man and his wedded world. Such is the destiny decreed to the last and the greatest of political pacifists — President Woodrow Wilson. And by his action, a new kind of war has appeared in the world — a war for which there is no adequate antecedent. We should have to go back to the Crusades for even a partial 135 136 WOODROW WILSON analogy. Although the campaigns of the Crusaders finally degenerated into expeditions for feudal plunder and dominion, at their in- ception they were inspired, just as America is now inspired, by a lofty and extra-national mo- tive. Yet even so, their attention was fixed upon the past rather than the future: they naively thought the Christian religion was to be saved by the recovery of its local birth- places. But the war which America is about to wage will have the future and not the past in view; and it will be universal in its scope and motivity. America is but incidentally at war with Ger- many. It is upon a new and vaster Crusade, rather than against Germany, that President Wilson is leading his people. "The world must be safe for democracy," he declares. "The menace to peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will and not by the will of their peo- ple"; and "a steadfast concert for peace can AND THE world's PEACE 13T never be maintained except by the partnership of democratic nations." Thus America will be fighting for a free and federate world. The inspiration of her armies and efforts will be the release of the nations, once and forever, from the autocratic princi- ple, from ruling-class institutions, from every feudal form and remnant. Her aim will be to set the invocations and opportunities of free- dom before them — to compel and rejoice them with a human prospect that is wholly demo- cratic and mutualistic. It is for this that Pres- ident Wilson has labored so patiently, so pru- dently, so prophetically, and amidst such en- thralling difficulties and pervading complex- ities. Not yet may we appreciate the marvel of his achievement : we are too near the culmination, too eager to reap its first results. But ere long we shall perceive that there is not in all his- tory a case of a nation being so adroitly and sublimely led out of one state of mind into an- other, and led with such psychological percep- 138 WOODROW WILSON tion and mastery. If the nation, like the in- dividual, has a subconscious mind, apparently it was this man alone who entered into it, so far as America is concerned — nor entered only, but brought its deep-hid desires to the thresh- old of practical politics, and translated them into conscious democratic purpose. In order to measure the magnitude of this conversion, we must remember that the great Middle West of America seemed so per- manently pro-German, a few months ago, that the German government counted upon Amer- ica as an eventual ally. Many influences were working to this end. The first was the Ger- man-American Alliance, which had its baptism and initiation at the hands of the Kaiser's brother. Prince Henry, who went to America for this purpose fifteen years ago. He was re- ceived with a popular enthusiasm so inordinate that it became repulsive to self-respecting men and women. He was feasted and honored by President Roosevelt, who was then at the height of his prestige and power. The result AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 139 was an immense popularization of everything German in America, and all things English were discredited. Then there were large academic influences at work for Germany's dominance in science and scholarship; for the university culture in America was essentially German in its tend- encies and sympathies. This has been well stated by the editor of a great national journal, Collier's Weekly. "Before the war," he said, "there was excessive admiration for the intel- lectual vigor and orderliness of the German search for the kind of knowledge that some day may civilize the world. Germany was the great post-graduate schoolhouse for America. Every young man who wanted a precise under- standing of his profession, or wanted to pre- tend to have it, went to Germany if he could afford to. The fact that he had attended lec- tures over there was a better recommendation for him than a diploma from an American technical school. In former years the ambi- tious American student traveled to London or 140 WOODROW WILSON Edinburgh to round out the semblance of an education. In recent years it seemed neces- sary for him to go to BerUn or Vienna. It was so in ahnost every branch of scientific training. Germans were, for Americans, the authority on everything from measles to Chi- nese pottery." There was also a chain of powerful news- papers, owned by William Randolph Hearst, and reaching twenty million daily readers. For years, his numerous journals have advo- cated an alliance between the United States and Germany against England and Japan. The same idea has dominated influential poli- ticians — dominates them even now. Many congressmen are still as pro-German as ever. They have merely submitted to an aroused and ennobled people, persuaded to their present high plane of action by the superb moral per- sistence of their President. Nor is the world even now aware of the ex- traordinary duel that has gone on, for nearly three years, between the intrigues of the Ger- AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 141 man government and the wit and wisdom of Mr. Wilson, standing resolute and solitary amidst issues and conspiracies of which he only knew. And although Germany has lost and humanity has won, it is through the miraculous tact, the international statesmanship, that held sway over this one man's onward and unchang- ing purpose. There is a passage in Plato's "Repubhc" which well applies to Mr. Wilson's patience during this momentous struggle. "The peevish temper," says Plato, "furnishes an infinite variety of materials for imitation; whereas the temper which is wise and calm is so constantly uniform and unchanging that it is not easily imitated: and when imitated it is not easily understood, especially by a general gathering of all sorts of persons." To "the peevish temper" of many of his countrymen, and especially to the attacks of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Wilson gave neither heed nor answer. He kept on his way until his hour had come: he could not have acted an hour sooner than he did. And now his patience has been re- 142 WOODROW WILSON warded, his purpose fulfilled, in the war which America will wage for a free and mutual- membered family of nations. We may now rest assured that no peace will be made with the Hapsburgs or the Hohenzol- lerns. America will not sheathe her sword so long as a Kaiser sits upon a throne. She recognizes in England and Italy fellow-repub- lics even more democratic in many respects than herself, and whose kings are merely sym- bols of a national unity; but over the Central Empires she sees the rule of that Oriental and anachronistic absolutism which has so long per- verted mankind — so long prevented the true progress and self-expression of the people. But this purging of the world of its feudal and autocratic past, of its governing classes, is only the beginning. From now on, the war will take on new and wide spiritual aspects — will become more and more religious, more and more apocalyptic. To the American mind and motive, it will become a crusade for a democracy whose application shall at last com- AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 143 prehend all the facts and forces of life — all moral and social and economic relations; a democracy, in fine, which shall be an approach to the early Christian idea of the kingdom of heaven. It is precisely this idea which President Wil- son has brought into the sphere of practical politics. He has based the rights and rela- tions of nations upon it, and the permanent peace of the world, as well as the freedom and fulfillment of individuality. It is the end to- ward which he means to shape the war, and which he means to make the motive and the goal of American participation in it. There are few that yet realize the significance of what he has done, and of what America will yet do ; but the divine appointment of this participa- tion will become manifest in a series of world- changes, in a world-union and an ultimate world-happiness, that are quite beyond the present understanding or beHef of either re- ligions or nations. II To Americans such as myself — who have been counted inconsistent in defending the delays of the President while pleading for the cause of the Allies — to us the present ac- tion of America brings a joy and an exaltation which cannot well be expressed; for now we are delivered from what was indeed a tragic dilemma. From its beginnings, we have be- lieved the war to be the supreme crisis of his- tory. We have perceived, or have thought we perceived that upon the war's results, upon the general decision as to its causes and conse- quences, would depend the fate of mankind for centuries to come. We have even thought the choice would be final, sealing once and for all the course and the issue of man's planetary career. And holding thus to the apocalyptic and definitive nature of these days, conceiv- 144 AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 145 ing the true value of man's past history and ex- perience to be wrapped up in the victory of the Alhes, we have placed the achievement of that victory before all else that concerned us — be- fore native land, before labors in which our lives have been spent, before friends, before every personal plan or desire. As ardent Americans, we naturally wished our nation to share in the sacrifice and glory of the defence of humanity against the German destroyer. But we knew that America, as a whole, was either pro-German or pacifist, and that only an intellectual minority favored the cause of the Allies. President Wilson knew this, and Germany knew, but the Allies knew it not. We foresaw that if the German govern- ment could force America prematurely into the war, the step would be to Germany's ad- vantage. She could prevent the shipment of munitions and supplies to the Allies, and count upon the pro- German sympathy of the popu- lation, even to the extent of creating civil war. President Wilson was determined to postpone 146 WOODROW WILSON his decision until the nation should begin to understand the German menace, and to discern that the Allies were the champions of democ- racy. Even three months ago, Germany would have been the gainer if America had then joined the AlHes. We seemed therefore — those of us who were Americans and under- stood the dangers of a too early intervention — to be guilty of advocating the cause of the Al- lies and yet of desiring the non-participation of America on their behalf. Nor did the sorrow and the perplexity of our position end there: we knew that Amer- ica was lost if she did not make war against the Central Empires — not otherwise, we have re- peatedly said, could she save or create her own national soul. Yet knowing even this, we had to protest against participation at the time Germany desired it — the time when she could still count upon not only a measure of Amer- ican sympathy, but upon the intervention of American politicians on her behalf. We had AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 147 to plead for confidence in the President's judg- ment, and to show the danger besetting the AlHes through a premature American action. Ill BUT all that is changed, and the whole world is changed as a consequence. For our President, acting now with such creative comprehension, is able so to act because he awaited the precise psychological moment. He studied the dial of the world's destiny ; he watched the hands on the clock of God. With a patience as wise as it is magnanimous, with a spiritual shrewdness that reveals his kin- ship with Moses and Cavour and Lincoln, with a prescience that appears nearly supernatural, he held broocjingly and bravely to his appointed times. Amidst the murmurs of the unknow- ing Allies, amidst the complaining voices of their anxious and unilluminated American friends, amidst the howls of mob-minded lead- ers as well, he let the inadequate occasions go by, yielding not to their clamors or seductions; 148 AND THE world's PEACE 149 for he knew they were fraught with the fail- ure of his final purpose. But the stupendous hour came at last, and the man filled the measure of the hour; and now it is not only America, but an eager fel- lowship of expectant nations — of nations en- visioned and empowered with a new and won- drous world-purpose — that follows this first of world-statesmen into who knows what fields of war ere the days of battles be done. For now it is indeed a war between light and darkness — a war between a white and a black governing principle, each striving for possession of the world. Shall authority become the candid and chosen servant of the peoples, based upon their free and federate will, proceeding from their mutual mind, their social spirit, their common affection? Or shall authority be imposed upon the peoples from without, proceeding from the will of a possessing and governing class, and administered by the sheer might of a state that is an end in itself? It is to decide 150 WOODROW WILSON as to which of these two principles shall prevail — as to which shall possess and shape the world — that the war from now on will be waged. I know that, as against the interpretation I have presented, the pacifist critics proclaim the action of America to be the triumph of a schem- ing and monied militarist propaganda: but precisely the opposite is profoundly the truth. America has become practically and exultantly anti-militarist. She has mobilized her will and her faith, her sons and her cities and her prai- ries, her natural and industrial and inventive resources, for the purpose of bringing militar- ism to its full and final end. She has taken up arms in order to destroy the need of arms. She has made herself the militant exponent of the millennial peace of the Apocalypse. And there is no contradiction between America's traditional opposition to militarism and her radiant resolution to fight. Her de- termination to clean up the world, to make it the dwelling-place of only democratic peoples and societies, is the perfect sequence of her AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 151 historic hostility to standing armies and to war as a method of progress. And, furthermore, she has probably though unconsciously sounded the doom of the destructive economic system, the profiteering mode of production and distri- bution, upon which the prevalence of war de- pends, and which depends upon war for its own perpetuity. This new faith of America, unforeseen nor fully furnished yet, will finally and fully pre- vail. The end is not in doubt — even though the human race wade through woes yet un- known and immeasurable. Already, in the hour when America decided to fight for the freedom of humanity and the peace of the world — in that instant, the old heaven and the old earth began gathering themselves together for departure; and it is beneath a new and more intimate heaven, it is amidst the sudden vast resources of a collective spiritual precipi- tation, and into the tremendous morning of an earth newly -born and transfigured, that Wood- row Wilson leads now the enleagued and de- termined democratic peoples. APPENDIX AN APOLOGIA Published partly in La Tribune de Geneve, July l, iQlft and partly in a previous number of II Giornale d'ltaliaj Rome. AN APOLOGIA FOR some months now, I have been vari- ously criticised, even verbally executed, by the far from peaceful group of pacifists that gathers about M. Romain Rolland, and that, with or without his consent, enjoys the advan- tage of his pre-eminent prestige. And this at- tack upon my written words and their seeming inconsistencies is so extended as to include the whole American nation, and especially Presi- dent Wilson. I naturally count myself miser- ably unworthy of the honor these critics thus bestow upon me; for I am indeed one of the least representative of Americans, and our great President could scarcely claim a more negligible supporter. Despite my irrelevance, however, I feel that the critics have at last laid 155 156 WOODROW WILSON upon me a measure of defensive responsi- bility. Particularly am I called to account for hav- ing supported, nearly two years ago, an Amer- ican anti-militarist propaganda, while at the same time supporting the cause of the Allies: the critics most triumphantly contrast certain words I then wrote with words that are more recent. But I have not changed my mind about what I then said : I am not less but more anti-mili- tarist than I was before Germany essentially challenged the Christ of the Apocalypse, and the ongoing issues of the French Revolution, to a mortal and mayhap final combat. And this nowise contradicts my position as a pro- Ally and as profoundly an enthusiast regard- ing America's participation in the war. I was then writing against a pernicious propaganda to make America a military nation — shaping herself upon the European pattern instead of creating for and of herself a pattern wholly new. The propaganda had begun long before AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 157 the world-war, and had no logical relation thereto ; there was then no prospect that Amer- ica would join the Allies in the defence of the human against the German. There was the possibility, however, of America's entrance upon a career of imperialistic expansion. Such was the clamorous program of certain politicians, supported by powerful capitalist over-lords, seeking an ultimate subjection of the world's markets to their international banks. Mexico and China were the first ob- jectives of this program, carrying with it, also, the early domination of North and South America. It was to this I was opposed : I did not wish to see our country become a second Rome, according to the prophecy of Guglielmo Ferrero and the much earlier De Tocqueville. Nor was it my humble opposition which was to be reckoned with; that would have been a small and futile matter. President Wilson — who is today the world's greatest pacifist — was steadfastly opposed to this militarist program from the first, as he is steadfastly opposed to it 158 WOODROW WILSON now. Eminent educators of America were and still are opposed to it — even while fer- vently supporting the participation of Amer- ica in the war between Germanism and the spiritual being of humanity. I II NOR has there been any conversion in my position as regards the particular war in which the world is now engaged. From its be- ginning till now, I have been both pro- Ally and pacifist. It is precisely because I am a pacifist that I am profoundly pro- Ally, He is the true pacifist, I believe, who now identifies himself with the men and the nations that lay the axe at the Prussian root of the world's pres- ent overwhelming military evil. And this I have believed and avowed from the first — from this position I have never deviated. I did not become pro-Ally on coming to French Switzerland, as the critics declare. Eight years ago, I wrote a long paper, pub- lished in England and America, and after- ward translated into French and German, urging the German peril upon the attention of 159 160 WOODEOW WILSON international socialists. 1 declared, then, that Pf'ussian Germany did not belong to the cate- gory of civilized nations, but stood for a mili- tarist and military barbarism which would over- whelm Europe, and afterwards America, if the nations did not unite to compel Germany's dis- armament. Surely, — and alas! — ^has Ger- many fulfilled my prophecy. And but fourteen months before the war, I again wrote at length and vehemently upon the subject, pointing out the catastrophe that was near unless a prepared civilization should prevent German action. I outlined the Ber- lin-to-Bagdad program as the pivot of the war I saw surely approaching. This appeal was widely published in England and America, read by many thousands of people, and dis- missed as fantastic. In fourteen months, and almost according to my presumptuous sched- ule, the catastrophe came. Then immediately, and variously and at length, I wrote in condemnation of the action of German Social-Democrats: at the same AND THE world's PEACE 161 time, I called upon all other Socialists to rally- to the support of the AUies, in view of the fact that they were fighting, consciously or uncon- sciously, for that world-democracy which af- fords the only sphere wherein social recon- struction can take place. I am on record, messieurs les pacifists, for the past ten years, in my opposition to Ger- manism — to Germanism as a world-politic, to Germanism as a religion. I have spoken and written so much upon the issue between Ger- manism and humanity, — ^between Germanism and democracy, — between Germanism and essential socialism, — between Germanism and the real religion of Christ, — that I have thereby become, so far as I am read at all, a nuisance among the nations. Ill As to my country, there is no contradiction or inconsistency in the.present American procedure; rather is our national action threaded with the highest consistency and unity. It is true, as the Sociahst pacifists contend, and as I have just now admitted, that power- ful capitalists did plan, in the past, the con- version of America into a military nation ; but the capitalists have not accomplished their purpose by the present action of America. On the contrary, America has taken the course that involves — doubt it not — the ultimate doom of the system by which the capitalist be- comes. It is for this reason some of the most powerful financiers did their utmost to bring about a premature peace, and to prevent American co-operation with the Allies. For 162 AND THE world's PEACE 163 this reason, also, some of them even now secretly support the pseudo-pacifism that is everywhere working for Germany — working to compose a peace that shall leave her relatively as powerful as she was before the war. IV T3UT the chief point of pacifist criticism is '*-^ the seeming change that came over our President. I have akeady answered their criticism in different journals and upon divers occasions. But, at the cost of repetition, I feel I must explain the American situation more fully — or rather enlarge upon the ex- planation I have already given. The change has not been in Mr. Wilson, but in the nation of which he is the chief servant. If American feeling, up till the beginning of the present year, had been weighed or meas- ured, it would have been found to bulk largely on the side of Germany. It is true that there is an intellectual minority, chiefly along the Atlantic fringe, which, from the beginning of the war, has both intelligently and ardently supported the cause of the Allies, and from 164 AND THE world's PEACE 165 which some of the best expositions of the issue between Germany and civiHzation have come. But this New York and N'ew England mi- nority neither represents nor knows actual America: it has always been ignorant of the nation as a whole, influencing the national mind but little at any time, and now scarcely at all. The real America is embodied, both geographically and temperamentally, by those states which lie between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains, and which we loosely call the Middle West. And this great Middle West, increasingly unmindful or disdainful of the Atlantic fringe, was not deeply concerned with the embattled hopes and despairs of Eu- rope. So far as it had sympathies, they were largely pro-German — although, as I have said, the Middle West American had little or no knowledge of what the war was about, nor did he trouble himself to learn. In so far as he gave it his attention, the war seemed to him without sense or meaning, and none of his af- fair. He regarded it as an Old World de- 166 WOODEOW WILSON lirium, a needless universal annoyance, inter- fering with earth's comfortable ongoing. No less, his pro- German sympathies were there, even though of an origin that was either cal- culative or careless. The former pro-Germanism of the Middle West American is easy to understand. He has had Germany for a neighbor all his life. The adjoining village door-yard, or the next farmyard, enclose the home of a German- American. Or he may have been born in Germany himself; or if not himself, his par- ents are German-born. If he is of substance and ambition sufficient to send his sons and daughters to college, they pass under the teaching of professors the most of whom have studied in German universities ; for a German diploma has been practically the pre-requisite of a professorship in an American college or unversity. There are indeed large sections of the Mid- dle West, large towns and agricultural com- AND THE WORLD S PEACE 167 munities, in which German is the prevailing language, and where little or no English is heard; and also where, as a consequence, the German mentality has been subtly displacing the mentality of the early Anglo-Saxon and still earlier French settlers. And aside from ancestry and language, there is the economic condition and social influence of the average German-American. He is usually frugal, substantial, often jovial, sometimes religious. He has the habits of what we are fondly and fatuously accustomed to regard as "a good citizen." It is true, if the original American had been discerning, he would have noted that his German-American neighbor tacitly as- sumed some sort of superiority, and that he re- mained a member of some German tribe. A closer analysis would have revealed, too, that America was not assimilating the German citizenry so much as the German citizenry was assimilating America. But the average Ameri- can is not discerning, and is only annoyed 168 WOODROW WILSON when he is asked to make intellectual discrimi- nations; and in this he does not differ from the average citizen of another country. With England and France, on the contrary, the Middle West American has not been inti- mate. He does not know that the enforce- ment of the Monroe Doctrine, — that the pro- tection of his country's political interests in South America, — has depended chiefly upon the British navy and the somewhat generous consent of the British government. He does not much remember Lafayette — it is the At- lantic fringe which does that. His knowledge of English history, so far as it relates to Amer- ica, is confined to the highly-colored tyranny, exercised by Lord North and George IV, which hampered the West India trade of the Puritan merchants and brought on the Ameri- can Revolution. And all his conceptions of France are derived from school-book or Sun- day School tales of the Reign of Terror, and from the usual traditions of French frivolity and atheism — tales that have been accen- i AND THE WOELD's PEACE 169 tuated, these recent years, by the growth of the poHtical power of the CathoHc Church along- side that of the German citizenry. He has heard of France and England from afar, and with poisoned or provincial ears, while he has had the industrious and assertive Germany in his daily midst. It is only when we keep this whole Ameri- can situation in mind, and remember that prob- ably President Wilson knew it as no other man knew it, that we can understand the difficulties with which he has had to deal, and the adroit and dramatic patience he has had to exercise. Neither his verbal nor his factual movements are academic or theoretic, mysterious or in- decisive, or inconsistent with one another in their progress, to one who knows the mentality of the American people and the perilous com- plexity of the American national problem. On the contrary, the course of our President has been one of extraordinary consistency and perception. It has been with a leadership un- equaled in history, with a wisdom and continu- 170 WOODROW WILSON ity that seem almost omniscient, that Wood- row Wilson has guided the nation into an un- derstanding of the meaning of the war, and into an acceptance of world-responsibility. ' V THUS America traveled the road to Da- mascus and saw a great light. She en- ters now upon the war with a purpose and in a spirit that perhaps never hitherto inspii^ed a warring nation. To her it is indeed a holy war. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the nation is possessed by the purpose to "make the world safe for democracy" — to create, in fact, a world-state embracing all nations. There is but one thing that can possibly ren- der vain America's masterful and majestic con- secration — and that is, the procurement of a premature peace by the pacifist emissaries of Germany. It is these, as President Wilson himself now perceives, who are America's and democracy's worst enemy. And it is these we must fight without surcease — against these we must lift all the weapons which freedom's 171 172 WOODROW WILSON former revolutions have placed in our hands — lest the dream of the fraternal world-state, lest America's crusade for the fulfillment of that dream, die away in treason and compro- mise, and thus the whole present sacrifice of humanity prove vain. Yet even as I sound this warning, I am moved to say that such futihty of faith, such baffling of sacrifice, cannot be. For we are not alone — we are not alone in the struggle and the hope for which America has drawn the consecrated sword. Cooperate with us, un- witnessed except by the few seeing eyes, are they who are stronger than the schemes and the swords that are against us. Invisibly but appreciably proceeding m our midst, white- horsed and well-weaponed there, dead to egoism from the world's foundation and there- fore predestined to victory, are the hosts and the Leadership no planetary powers or crea- tures can withstand. They hold in their hearts the meaning of these days, and upon AND THE world's PEACE 173 them are the war's last issues, the earth's in- effable ends. And because the world is theirs, it is also ours; hence our hearts need not be troubled, neither need they be afraid. The divine man- hood whereof our history has so far been the continual crucifier, — ^this manhood will sur- vive, will arise and grow in stature and prevail. The peace that proceedeth from a worlded good- will, the justice that inhereth in mutual love only, the freedom that is naught other than obedience to that love, — these are ap- proaching, are inevitable. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. H 94 89 * ,>^ "^^ •.'^ °* •••• A? 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