,. J HE WORLD WAR BY MEMBERS OF The American Academy OF Arts and Letters lass. J J o ^ )(U)K Ti THE WORLD WAR UTTERANCES CONCERNING ITS ISSUES AND CONDUCT | BY MEMBERS OF j THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS ! PRINTED FOR ITS ARCHIVES AND FOR FREE CIRCULATION Published by the Academy 347 Madison Avenue, New York 1919 .Ar Copyright, 19 19, by The American Academy of Arts and Letters Gilt Institution M 2: m CONTENTS PAGE Henry Mills Alden 5 The Background of the Catastrophe Paul \V. Bartlett 9 Greetings to France John Burroughs lo Can Peace Make Us Forget? A Plea for the Ostracism of All Things German Nicholas Murray Butler 12 The Road to Durable Peace George W. Cable 15 The Tocsin George Whitefield Chadwick 15 The War of the Musician William Gillette 16 America's Great Opportunity Robert Grant 17 A Hymn Arthur T. Hadley 18 A Conflict of Ideals Thomas Hastings 19 The Glory that was Rheims William Dean Howells 20 The Incredible Cruelty of the Teutons Robert Underwood Johnson 22 The New Slavery Edith Cavell The Sword of Lafayette Henry Cabot Lodge 25 Speech in the United States Senate on the Declaration of War A. Lawrence Lowell 28 What Are We Fighting For? Hamilton Wright Mabie 31 Our Share Frederick MacMonnies 32 The World Crisis Brander Matthews 33 Benefits of the War Horatio Parker 40 A Note on German Music and German Ideas James Ford Rhodes 41 Germany's Shame Theodore Roosevelt 42 Extracts from the Speech at Portland, Maine His Last Public Message Elihu Root 45 I. Issues of the War II. Our Interest in the Violation of Belgium William M. 'Sloane 52 I. Extracts from a History of Peace II. Extracts from a History of Democracy William Roscoe Thayer 57 The Shipwreck of Kultur CONTENTS PAGE Abbott H. Thayer 62 Henry van Dyke 63 The Crime of the "Lusitania" Mare Liberum The Name of France Barrett Wendell 66 A Conflict of Ideals Brand Whitlock 70 Lafayette, Apostle of Liberty WooDRow Wilson 74 On the Threshold of War Our Purpose in the War The Program of the World's Peace After a Year of War Speech at Mount Vernon Owen Wister 86 From "The Pentecost of Calamity" George Edward Woodberry 87 Edith Cavell A Song of Sunrise On the Italian Front John Hay 89 When the Boys Come Home Julia Ward Howe 90 Battle Hymn of the Republic THE WORLD WAR UTTERANCES CONCERNING ITS ISSUES AND CONDUCT BY MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS HENRY MILLS ALDEN THE BACKGROUND OF THE CATASTROPHE In the Editor's Study, Harper s Magazine, February, 1918 It may seem to some readers of the Study that we entertain too exalted expectations of the war and what is to come from it. The terms we have used in our expression of these have, perhaps, suggested to many a premature anticipa- tion of the millennium as the inevitable epilogue of what is so conspicuously an Armageddon. Frankly, we indulge in no such exag- gerated optimism. When we use the phrase, " the salvation of all men, includ- ing our enemies," we have not meant to ignore its spiritual significance, believing, as we firmly do, that there is no real ad- vance of humanity which does not include the whole man. But also we have not meant to identify salvation with sanctity, but rather with sanity both of vision and action. Nor do we look for the complete renovation of our human nature or even for the complete political emancipation of all the peoples of the earth as the immedi- ate result of the present world conflict. The great hope we entertain for hu- manity, fortunately, does not rest upon any brilliant and overwhelmingly deci- sive particular event, anticipated or un- expected, in the near future. Man, as mentally constituted and developed, is by necessity a planner; but the success of his most deeply laid plans is very far from being the realization of an evolu- tional purpose, while, on the other hand a fortuitous happening that seems most auspicious may prove his ruin — or, one of foreboding aspect rriay veil a happy issue. Visible actualities— events or ca- reers — await their interpretation through what comes after them. So dramatic a career as Napoleon's does not, within the compass of the spectacle, explain itself — its significance for the world is shown by the Europe he left behind him, become what it was by reaction to his ambitious adventure. Only hidden spiritual characteristics have the power to show forth for what they really are, baleful or glorious, im- mediately and forever transparent and, so, indelibly fixed in human remem- brance. As acts unworthy of humanity are never forgotten, so sublime sacrifice and heroic endurance for the right against the might that slays the body, but cannot slay the soul, are immortal. »lt is these things, not accidental or relative, but of our eternity, that count in the grand cycle of history and are glorified by the creative imagination. No terms can be too ex- alted for the expression of these or of the hope that rests upon them. If the children of the world are wiser in their kind than the children of light, it is because they seize upon every visible means and let no opportunity escape them for the accomplishment of their worldly ends. They need no inspiration from a higher motive; the greed for material success is ever present, prompt- ing to the most efficient methods which human progress in science and education HENRY MILLS ALDEN has made possible. The humanist, with all his larger vision and finer sensibility, and even the most eager reformer or hu- manitarian, is not often, or generally, thus zestful in practical activity. Thus those whose aims are mainly external gain headway and set their seal upon public enterprise and opinion. L. P. Hobhouse, in "Democracy and Reaction" — published a decade before the opening of this war — shows how during the last third of the nineteenth century England and those other nations of Eu- rope, which, in the earlier part of the century, had cherished the love of lib- erty and great projects of political and humanitarian reform, were swept by a wave of reaction that, indeed, "spread over the civilized world and invaded one department after another of thought and action." The externalization of life, based on material aims, on the new theory of evolution, as initiated by Darwin and interpreted by Herbert Spencer, and on a perverted idealism, nationally took the form of extended dominion. The plea in defense of British imperial expansion and covering the appearance of self-aggrand- izement was that this acquisition of terri- tory — amounting, since 1870, to "one- third of the present territory of the em- pire and one-quarter of its population" — ^was for the sake of civilization. This plea was plausible on the con- sideration that "it was the older liberal- ism which made the colonial empire what it was, and it was to that empire as liberalism had made it that imperialist sentiment in the first instance appealed." Mr. Hobhouse, however, justly depre- cates this recrudescence of imperial aspi- ration, involving, as it did, all the great powers of Europe in a reckless competi- tion for the exploitation of the weaker as well as of backward peoples, constant warfare, and vast expenditures for the increase of armies and navies. Secret diplomacy and secret treaties throve upon intense envies and rivalries. The United States of America was saved from this species of international mad- ness by the fact that she had land enough — an empire in extent, which, true to her traditions, she was proud of as a free republic and as still the asylum for the oppressed of all nations. The war with Spain was fresh in her memory, fought not for aggression but for the emancipa- tion of a neighboring island, which, tempting as it would have been for ex- ploitation by any European power, she left inviolate in the full possession of independence. The successful issue of the war for the Union had, by the ex- tinction of slavery, suppressed the chief motive for the acquisition by war of new territory. Peacefully, or incidentally to a just war, the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands became territories of the United States late in the century and were held, as her share in Samoa was, for naval reasons chiefly — bulwarks against for- eign aggression, and, at the same time, points of vulnerability. The extraordinary momentum of ma- terial progress in the nineteenth century had its efi"ect upon all classes of citizens in the American republic as in the rest of the civilized world. It was shown in the excess of plutocratic greed, the aspects of which were far more demoralizing than those of the aristocratic pride of power and hereditary privilege that wealth had displaced. This invited the revolt of the laboring class through the labor unions, which, unhappily though legiti- mately, had only material advantage in view. Self-seeking politicians sought alle- giance with whichever class was the more dominant, and especially with labor, as yielding more votes. Partisan- ship, demagogy, and the more sordid forms of socialism advanced hand in hand. We think that, in dealing with demo- cratic countries, like England, Mr. Hob- house lays undue stress upon a material- istic philosophy as responsible for ma- terialistic greed as well as for the growth of imperialistic sentiment. Human na- ture is capable of enough perversion to be a quite sufficient basis and needs no support from philosophy. Certainly this is true of the materialistic reaction in HENRY MILLS ALDEN America, where it was not associated with any imperiaHst tendency, not even at the close of the century, when, as events proved, the general progress of world economies, political and social as well as mechanical, had put an end to the boasted isolation and immunity of the western hemisphere. We also believe that, in the natural course of peaceful and unrestricted de- velopment, among the liberty-loving peo- ples of Europe as well as of America a spiritual culture would have inevitably supervened upon material and scientific progress, making use of this for the full realization of democracy, the establish- ment of social justice, and the universal expansion of human sympathy. Self- hood in its eager possession and assimi- lation of the material justifies itself as normal only as it becomes altruism. The twentieth century dawned upon a Christendom the peoples of which, in the vital currents of their lives, in so far as life was permitted spontaneous devel- opment, were not hardened by materi- alism, but were more open than ever before to the tides of human sympathy. The humanist movement was gaining fresh momentum, and the most zealous devotees of science had disinterested aims. It was in the more mechanical and superficial movements of industrial and political, and so-called society life, that reactionary perversity chiefly per- sisted — that is, in the channels most de- tached from the vital sources of the popular life. Even here the atmosphere of freedom and peace would have kept alive reformatory forces, of which al- ready there were visible signs, as in the relations between classes, the growth of cooperation in industrial activities, and the increase of publicity in all political affairs — until one reached the border of a nation, when the brightness of the out- look vanished. Especially in Europe the international prospect was full of sinister foreboding. Everywhere national patriotism was a self-centered sentiment, as naturally it had always been, but not always facing so peculiar a complication of conflicting interests. Instead of the hopeful oppor- tunity offered to a league of European powers for fruitful cooperation in the interests of civilization, we behold, early in the century, two powerful but most incongruous alliances, bound to come into collision for each other's political and economic destruction^ whatever the consequences to the world, including their own peoples. Only some miracu- lous spiritual or social world revolution could, by anticipation, avert the im- pending storm. Some future philosophical historian will trace, in the course of civilization itself, the actions and reactions which for centuries had been constituting the background for the catastrophe. His readers will doubtless see so clearly the inevitableness of issues arising from per- verse human systems that they will not concern themselves with any attempt to distribute responsibility among actors so arbitrary and irresponsible as those to whom the government of states has usually been committed. Moreover, in that long view which history gives, the evolutionary course of human destiny so contradicts casual appearances that one is convinced of "the goodness in things evil.'* The evolutionary interpreter of his- tory is, by conviction, an optimist, though he indulges in no millennial forecasts nor expects in any generation, this or an- other, the complete regeneration of hu- man society. He hopefully regards the recrudescence with every new generation of our so perverse human nature, knowing that it is never a repetition but always a renewal, and confident that, even if it happens here and there to exaggerate perversity, "things at their worst climb upward" or are helped to by the main currents of human movement. In his vision ruin, vast as it may be, is invisibly the beginning of a new order of archi- tecture. This most ruinous of all wars was pre- cipitated by the exaggerated perversity of an absolutism that; schooled in prac- 8 HENRY MILLS ALDEN tical efficiency and in that philosophy of the state which Hegel speculatively dreamed and Bismarck realized, after half a century of elaborate preparation, under cover of a peace it boasted to have maintained, saw what in its blind mad- ness seemed its supreme opportunity for world conquest. Instead, as the war went on, it promised to be the world's opportunity for the establishment of hu- man liberty on a firmer basis, in states devoted to the realization of true democ- racy — the reverse of Hegel's dream. The magnitude of the menace to the world's liberties from an absolutism based upon armed might had so fully illustrated itself as not merely aggressive, but basely fraudulent and intriguant in all its proced- ure, before America entered the war, that it brought into bright relief the contrast- ing possibilities of freedom and peace for all. The only war aim the western repub- lic could have was the destruction of Prus- sian militarism — but that involved every- thing: a guaranteed permanent peace, the determination by every people of its own form of government, and such a rec- onciliation as would insure a cooperative reconstruction of Europe. The menace overcome, the result, as by an automatic imperative, would be, if not the imme- diate accomplishment of the world's de- sire, at least the opening of a highway to that realization. All incidental ques- tions, like those as to territorial adjust- ment and national disarmament, will fmd their solution by the same automatic imperative. PAUL W. BARTLETT GREETINGS TO FRANCE Early in September, 19 14, Mr. Bart- lett addressed to the Institut de France the following cablegram : 'Indignation contre les actes aUemands augmente journellement. Opinion devient unanime pour la cause frangaise. Vive la France!' On the 28th of October he wrote the following letter to Monsieur Jose Belon, who had acknowledged receipt of the cablegram: Washington, le 28 octobre 1914. Je vous remercie, mon cher ami, de vos bonnes paroles concernant mon tele- gramme a ITnstitut de France. Vos commentaires sont exacts. Non seule- ment, en effet, la sympathie de I'elite in- tellectuelle du pays est pour la France, mais vous pouvez etre assure que votre nation possede aussi celle du peuple americain; j'ajouterai meme que cette sympathie, dans les milieux populaires, s'est encore developpee depuis quelque temps, et cela malgre les tentatives de propagande en faveur des AUemands, lesquels disposent, vous le savez, aux Etats-Unis, de moyens d'action nom- breux, puisque la quantite d'immigres Teutons est considerable. Toutefois leurs efforts restent vains et I'opinion generale se range de plus en plus du cote du droit et de la verite. L'on commence a comprendre ici que les nationalites liberales vivent un des mo- ments les plus grandioses de I'Histoire, luttent pour un ideal de liberte, et que si vos adversaires triomphaient, e'en serait fait de la justice et du droit des gens. La Revolution americaine, la Revolution frangaise et la "Magna Charta" anglaise auraient ete des efforts en pure perte. Vous pouvez etre certain aussi que cette sollicitude americaine n'est pas simplement passive. On travaille de tous cotes a vous aider. Nul n'ignore, en efTet, que la philanthropic, meme chez les neutres, a le droit de s'exercer. Tout le monde salt egalement que la guerre sera longue: aussi je vous envoie une circulaire qui vous donnera une idee de ce que les artistes americains veulent et pensent faire. Nous avons prepare un programme de travail productif pour une annee d'avance. Bien cordialement a vous. On receipt of the news of the signing of the armistice, Mr. Bartlett sent the following cablegram : Widor, Institut de France, Paris. Le cri de Vive la France est aujourd'hui un cri de Victoire. La France va revivre ainsi que le monde civilise et civilisable. Vive la France! JOHN BURROUGHS CAN PEACE MAKE US FORGET? A PLEA FOR THE OSTRACISM OF ALL THINGS GERMAN If this war was largely caused by com- mercial and economic pressure and rivalry as so many persons think it was, are the pressure and rivalry to continue after the war is over? Will it not be hard for us to resume our old economic and social and business relations with the arch enemy of mankind as if nothing had happened, swap goods and exchange pro- fessors, condone Gerrnany's sins, and help refill her coffers? Shall we at once get busy in trying to reimburse her for the losses she has sustained in running amuck upon the civilization of the world, help build up her commerce for her des- perate efforts to destroy our own? Can we forgive and forget and aid her in re- storing her shipping, and enable her to get ready for the " next war,'' about which she has talked so much, and reward her for having paved the bottom of the seas with thousands of the ships and cargoes and thousands of the bodies of innocent non-combatants of the neutral and Allied nations, for her sending women and children and unarmed sailors to the bot- tom, or abandoning them in open boats in the midst of the stormy seas at all seasons? When one has run over in his mind the things Germany has been guilty of — the long list of her unspeakable atrocities and robberies, the deportation of non-com- batants, the wanton destruction of prop- erty in Belgium and Northern France, the demolition of centuries-old architec- ture and art treasures, the judicial mur- der of Captain Fryatt, the shooting of Edith Cavell, the bombarding of defence- less towns, the bombing of hospitals and the torpedoing of hospital ships, the fiend- ish drowning of the crew of the Belgian Prince, her sinkings, her ravishings, her burnings, her stealings, her l^ing, her studied cruelties, her campaign of fright- fulness — when one remembers all these things and more, does he feel like saying, "Never mind; let it all pass; business is business, and it will all be the same in a hundred years"? For my own part I will never again use an article made in modern Germany if 1 know it. I will never look into a modern German book. I will favor the exclusion of the German language and literature from our schools and colleges. I would drive every unnaturalized German from this country. We do not want their ideas or their methods. Their ideas are subversive of our democratic ideals, and their methods enslave the mind and lead to efficiency chiefly in the field of organized robbery. They are efficient as Krupp guns and asphyxiating gas and liquid fire are effi- cient. They invent nothing, but they add a Satanic touch to the inventions of others and turn them to infernal uses. They are without sentiment or imagina- tion. They have broken completely with the old Germany of Goethe, of Kant and Lessing, to whom we all owe a debt. They are learned in the roots of things, but their learning is dusty and musty with underground conditions. They know the "Tree of Knowledge'' at the bottom, but not at the top in the air and sun, where are its leaves and flowers and fruit. They run to erudition, but not to inspiration. They are a heavy, mate-, rialistic, grasping race, forceful but not creative, military but not humanistic, aggressive but not heroic,- religious but not spiritual; brave it may be, but not chivalrous, utterly selfish, thoroughly scientific and efficient on a low plane, as organized force is always efficient. Kant was a great philosopher, but he had a Scottish mother. None of the great musicians were Prussians. Luther threw his ink bottle at the devil, but the devil got even with him and made the Christian outlook blacker than it was before. From current reports which, knowing lO JOHN BURROUGHS II the Germans, one readily credits, they are at this moment taking means to increase their birth rate by methods identical with those of stock men and dog breeders. That the German women do not defend themselves with liquid fire and asphyxi- ating gas shows that their morals are as low as those of the men, and that they are the victims of the same civic slavery. The Germans have not fought this war like brave, chivalrous men; they have fought it like sneaks and cutthroats; they have respected nothing human or divine. So far as they could make it so it has been an orgy of lust and destructiveness. When their armies are forced to retreat, so far as they can do it,, they destroy the very earth behind them. They have done their utmost to make the reconquered territory of Northern France uninhabi- table for generations. If they could poison all the water, all the air, all the food of their enemies, is there any doubt that they would quickly do so? If they could have scuttled or torpedoed the British Isles and sunk them like a ship, would they not have done it long ago? Of course they would have wanted to plunder the treasures and violate the women before doing so, and then the Kaiser, piously lifting his eyes before his people, would have again thanked God for His ''faithful cooperation,'' and again would have prated how he would continue to carry on the war with "hu- mility and chivalry"! A few evenings ago 1 sat down before my open fire in hopes for an hour or two to throw off the nightmare of the war and forget the Germans. I took up Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal. And this is what I struck in the account of the days she spent at Hamburg, in Septem- ber, 1798: "Called at a baker's shop. Put two shillings into the baker's hands, for which 1 was to have had four small rolls. He gave me two. 1 let him understand that I was to have four, and with this view I took one shilling from him, pointing to it and to two loaves, and at the same time offering it to him. Again 1 took up two others. In a savage manner he half knocked the rolls out of my hand, and when I asked him for the other shilling he refused to return it, and would neither suffer me to take bread nor give me back my money, and on these terms 1 quitted the shop. I am informed that it is the boast and glory of these people to cheat strangers, that when a feat of this kind is successfully performed the man goes from the shop into his house, and triumphantly relates it to his wife and family. The Hamburger shopkeepers have three sorts of weights, and a great part of their skill as shopkeepers consists in calculating upon the knowledge of the bu}-er, and suiting him with scales accordingly." Here, more than a hundred years ago, we see the same grasping, insolent, un- scrupulous bully that we know today. The indictment of the wretches could be made much stronger and longer. But enough. Individually they are below the Turks; collectively they are on a par with their ancestral Huns. " Blood will tell." It is time they were barred out of the family of decent, self-respecting nations; at least that the doors were closed against them for two generations. We have got along three }'ears and more without their goods or their markets, why can we not continue to go on without them? We are an inventive people; they are not. We shall soon find ways to supply ourselves with all needful things that have heretofore come from that country. Under pressure we shall improve on them all. One of our greatest practical chemists says he has found a way to extract potash from the feldspar of granite rocks on a scale and at a cost easily to compete with German konite. Let the government see to it that it is done. If we cannot yet make chemicals and d}estuffs to compete with the Germans, let us go in sackcloth and ashes until we can. At any rate, let us not fraternize with nations who, in character and conduct, are on a par with those desperadoes of whom in civic life we rid ourselves by the aid of the sheriff and the hangman. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER THE ROAD TO DURABLE PEACE An Address Delivered before the Chamber of Commerce, St. Louis, Missouri, February i, 1918 The war which now involves the whole world is on the part of the Allies avow- edly a war not for conquest, for revenge, or for economic advantage, but a war to restore the rule of law and to establish durable peace. No other war has ever been fought for a like motive. This explains the fact that it has been entered upon by the several allied peoples not with shouting, with excitement, or with wild demonstration, but with restraint, with firm conviction, and with stern resolve. The aim of the war is to stop war so far as this is humanly possible. If in the past, war has seemed to be a biological necessity, an essential part of the struggle for existence, it is only be- cause the world had not risen to the plane of substituting moral cooperation for physical competition. A materialistic world, bent only on profits and on accum- ulation, is likely always to be a world that plans and invites war. On the other hand, a world that is built on a foundation of moral and spiritual insight and conviction, will be a world from which war is excluded by every means that man can devise. In order to tread the road to a durable peace, we must grasp not only the exact facts as they relate to the origin and prose- cution of the war on the part of the Central Empires, but also the underlying causes which conspired to bring the war about. To say that the war sprang from the desire of Austria-Hungary to oppress Serbia, or from the conflicting ambitions of Russia and Germany in Southeastern Europe, or from commercial rivalry between Germany and Great Britain, is simply to delude oneself with superficial appearances. It is a case of camouflage. The cause of the war and the reason that the war was inevitable (as we can now see) is a conflict of ideals in the life of the world. It is clear now that the old notion of a world-dominating power was not dead. This was the notion which sent Alexander the Great and his army into Asia. This was the notion which built up the legions and inspired the policy of ancient Rome. This was the notion which took possession of the mind of Charlemagne. This was the notion which harnessed to its service the dynamic energy and the military genius of Napo- leon Bonaparte. This notion was not, as men generally thought in 191 4, dead and gone and a matter for the historian alone. It was first slumbering and then taking active form in the minds of the ruling caste of the German Empire. With them it was based upon a phi- losophy of history and of life which made the German people, like the Hebrews of old, the chosen partners of God himself in the subjection and civilization of the world. When this notion took possession of so powerful, so active-minded, and so highly disciplined a people as the Germans, it became only a question of time when it must find itself in a life-and-death strug- gle with the opposing principle. This is the dominating fact which stands out above and beyond all particular explana- tions of the origin of the war. The war is at bottom a final struggle between the principle of world-domination and the principle of a group of friendly, cooper- ating nations, all equal in sovereignty and in dignity in the eye of the world's law, however varied they may be in resources and in power. That with which we are at war, there- 12 NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 13 fore, is not a people or a race, but an idea. We should have had to be at war with that idea no matter what people or what race had acted as its agents. If this idea of world-domination had been adopted by Italy, and if Italy had at- tacked the world in its interest, we should be at war with Italy. If this idea of world-domination had been adopted by Japan, and if Japan had attacked the world in its interest, we should be at war with Japan. If this idea of world-dom- ination had been adopted by Russia, and if Russia had attacked the world in its interest, we should be at war with Russia. But as a matter of fact this idea was adopted by Germany, and it was Ger- many which attacked the world in its in- terest; therefore we are at war with Germany. The road to durable peace begins at the point where this false notion of world- domination is given up once for all. Commercial interpenetration, financial control, and military dominance are the three forms in which the lust for world- power manifests itself. A free world made up of independent, liberty-loving nations must combine to prevent any one of these. The liberty-loving nations have almost with unanimity now com- bined in this war for that very purpose. A false idea is not really conquered until it is overthrown in the minds of those who have entertained it. What we must reach, therefore, is the mind, the conscience, and the heart of the German people. We must by military defeat compel them to leave off looking for new worlds to conquer, and turn their thought inward to prepare the way for those same ideas of cooperation between nations, of the sacredness of treaty obligations, of the rights of small nations, and of the duties of great powers toward submerged nationalities, which are now part of the mental furniture of liberal-minded men and women throughout the world. If in 1848 the aspirations of so large a portion of the German people had not been disap- pointed and crushed, the history of the past fifty years might have been written in letters of gold instead of in letters of so much blood. It has been plain, since the battle of the Marne, that Germany and her allies could not win this war. The history of the conflict from September 6, 1914, has been one of varying fortunes, but, viewed in the largest possible way, it is a history of slow but sure German defeat. The amazing exhibition of military power made by France and by the citizen- soldiers of Great Britain has been ade- quate to hold in check the enormous and highly trained armies of the Central Empires. Distress, unhappiness, and grave doubt as to the outcome and issues of the war are now widespread in Ger- many and in Austria-Hungary. All these facts contribute to the breaking down of the zeal for world-domination and in- crease the chance of a durable peace to follow the war. The terms of that peace have been stated at intervals for three and one-half years past by some of the leading respon- sible statesmen of the world. The early declarations of Mr. Asquith and of M. Briand could hardly be improved. The later ones of the Prime Minister of England and of the President of the United States have awakened resound- ing echoes throughout the world and have been listened to even by the peoples with whom we are at war. It is quite idle, however, to talk of a negotiated peace if by that we mean a peace that shall leave the vital issues of the war unsettled. The result would be not a peace but an armis- tice. This would last until our children, or our children's children, armed to the teeth and bearing meanwhile the crushing burden of huge military establishments, took up again the task that we laid down without having carried it to accomplish- ment. That would not be a fortunate or an honorable legacy for this generation to leave to its successors. We must persist with steadfastness and with all possible speed until the war is defini- tively won, and until our enemies admit that they have lost in the combat which they forced upon the world. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER When that end has been accompHshed, the world will have traveled a long way on the road toward a durable peace. While it is true that the coming inter- national organization and the coming international economic relationships will powerfully aid in establishing and in maintaining peace, yet after all, the main thing is to remove from the world a notion and a purpose that compel armaments and that eventually force war. That notion and that purpose are those of world-domination. The cry, WeltmacU oder Niedergang, comes from a shallow mind and from a hardened heart. The alternative to Weltmacht is not Nieder- gang. It is rather membership in a fam- ily of nations, each one of which is pos- sessed of what I have described as the international mind. This is nothing else than that habit of thinking of foreign relations and business, and that habit of dealing with them, which regard the several nations of the civilized world as friendly and cooperating equals in aiding the progress of civilization, in developing commerce and industry, and in spreading enlightenment and culture throughout the world. Given this, and it will be easy to establish and maintain an international organization to keep the peace of the world, as well as to establish and main- tain international economic relationships that shall promote human happiness and human satisfaction. Without this con- dition, all schemes for international organization and international coopera- tion are futile and will not long ward off a disaster which takes its origin in wrong and false ideas planted in the hearts of men and nations. GEORGE W. CABLE THE TOCSIN From "The Outlook" From a night of calm security I rose, as did thousands about me, to the day*s work. But before I could leave my room the steam-whistles of all the great industries in the great city and of all the steam-craft in its great harbor began to blow, to bel- low and scream, and roar and wail, in unnumbered voices that presently fused into one and rolled down through hun- dreds of miles of streets, into the open country and out to sea. I wondered but a moment and then I knew! I knew the same uproar was sounding in every ear from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Niagara to the Gulf, and that it proclaimed the first rounded twelvemonth of our nation's share in the war for civilization. I knew it was our notice to the round world that all we have done in this thrice-busiest year of our nation's life is but a beginning of what we shall do. It was Paul Jones's cry from the deck of the blazing Bon- homme Richard, magnified by steam and a million trumpets of brass, — " 1 have just begun to fight!" Wild, discordant, terrible, it was — it is, for it will ring in my ears henceforth — our Tocsin! the tocsin of a hundred mil- lion people speaking one wrath and one purpose. It was, it is, our answer to the great gun in the wood of St. Gobain shelling the churches of Paris on Good Friday. It stoops to no further mockery of argument or negotiation, yet says as definitely as human voice ever spoke, " In the name of God and humanity, and of a just and permanent peace to a free world, no treaties made this side the Rhine," GEORGE WHITEFIELD CHADWICK THE WAR OF THE MUSICIAN Addressed to the Sinfonian (Musical) Fraternity of America We are bound together by our mutual interest in and love for the art of music. And now we are united by a stronger and more important bond, namely, our love for our native country and the sacrifices of our members to protect her liberties and her Constitution. No gifts are too great and no genius is too precious to be devoted to such a cause. Some of the best composers as well as other artists and poets of France and England have laid down their lives for the cause of human liberty. It is greatly to the credit of the musical profession that our brothers are so willingly found in the ranks of those who are serving their country. We should see to it that all of our broth- ers who have dedicated themselves to the service of the country are made to feel that we are behind them; that we are proud of them; and that if they are called upon to sacrifice themselves for the cause, their names will be forever held in rever- ence and honor by all Sinfonians. Theirs is a difficult and perilous task, and what- ever of aid and comfort we can give to encourage and cheer them it should be our first duty to provide. Let us not forget that every effort we make in this direction is not for our brothers alone, but for the whole country, for liberty, and for eventual peace. 15 BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE In the early years of the great war there were many Americans who felt the drawing of kindred, of friendship, of fel- lowship with those who are now our enemies. But all that has been over for many months. There is henceforth for us nothing but war to the end, war for Right against Wrong, war for Freedom against Serfdom. WILLIAM GILLETTE AMERICA'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY We Americans today should prostrate ourselves in gratitude before the inscru- table force or chance that places us here at this climacteric when humanity is in a life-and-death grapple with a hideous and bestial recrudescence of barbarism — a time when something vital and glorious is to be done, and when we have the privilege and honor of bearing our share in the doing of it. That something is to throw our little weight, our little eflFort, our little might, each one of us, into the gigantic scales by which the human race is being weighed. This we can do, knowing that in this vast emergency every atom of our weight, no matter what it is, counts, — that every particle of our effort is needed. In aiding to swing the scales the way they should go we help to rescue humanity from a wretched fate. Could anything more wonderful have been contrived for a people inhabiting this earth! Fortunate, indeed, are those who can do the greater things. But not a whit less fortunate are those who can do the lesser things, if they are the best they can do. And that good fortune is for every one of us. 16 ROBERT GRANT A HYMN O Spirit of Creation To whom our fathers pra\'ed, Look do'^Ti upon this nation Whose sons go unafraid Across the mine-strewn water To grapple with a foe That makes relentless slaughter And agonizes woe. Protect them, oh, protect them. Our darlings blithe and brave. But should some fate elect them To fill a soldiers grave. Give us the grace to borrow The gladness the>' express To dignif>' our sorrow. Redeem our loneliness. We thank Thee for the vision Enabling us to see That peace which brought derision Was ruin to the free. At last our bonds are broken. At last the drum-beats roll; Ay! by this myriad token Our countr}' finds her soul. For now the heathen rages, And vaunting in his pride Would blot Thee from his pages To rule b>- fratricide. Oh, give them might to slay him. Oh, give us faith to ^in. And utterly repay him With knowledge of his sin. Our flag will wear new glor>' Before our bo\s return. Its crimson stripes be gorv', Its stars like planets bum. And many will be sleeping Upon a foreign shore; Vet still \vithin thy keeping, Jehovah ! God of \\'ar. 17 ARTHUR T. HADLEY A CONFLICT OF IDEALS From an Address on the Price of National Liberty^ Providence, March 15, 1917 There are two types of university: the English and the German. The English type has aimed to promote culture — physical, mental, and moral. It has developed clean-living gentlemen, inter- ested to a greater or less extent in books and studies, and with high ideals of public service. It has not attempted to train them directly for the struggles of life. Whatever they have learned in this re- spect they have learned elsewhere. The German type of university has had other ends. It has aimed to promote efficiency. It has trained physicians and lawyers, engineers, and technologists, to the practice of their several professions; it has done little for the general culture of the students, except as thorough stud>' of any one subject gives a man an idea of what scholarship means on ever\' line. But it has fitted the graduate to apply his abilities to the problems of life, whether at home or abroad, and to do modern work by modern methods in the particu- lar field to which he has devoted himself. Our American universities were first founded on English lines. They were originally colleges resembling the col- leges of Oxford and Cambridge in purpose and in course of study. During the last century, and particularly during its latter half, German ideas of university educa- tion were introduced and German aims were given increasing measure of weight. A group of graduate and professional schools, whose object was technical train- ing rather than general training, grew up about the colleges, and sometimes threat- ened to overshadow them. It has been the hope of our educational leaders that we might somehow combine the two ideals of university life — that we might in some way develop side by side the general culture of the Englishman and the specific efficiency of the German. The present war has brought out the fact that these diflFerences of universit)' organization reflected a difference of national ideals. The Englishman's ideal is character; the German's ideal is per- formance. The Englishman desires to be a man among men, governed as far as possible by public opinion. The German desires to be an efficient part of an effective organization, helping it to do its work better than any other organization ever did it before. The war is in fact a contest between these two types; and the underlying lesson of these awful years is that somehow the virtues of the two types must be conjoined instead of separated. The English type, left to itself, tends to go ahead gallantly and loyally but unintelligently. The Ger- man type, left to itself, tends to gain its immediate objects, at the sacrifice of those habits of courtesy and morality which are the very basis of civilization. It is sometimes said that wars are waged for commercial reasons. This may be true of little wars, but it is not true of great ones. Every great war establishes some principle. The wars of the French Revolution established the principles of civil liberty. The wars in the middle of the last century established the principle of nationality. I believe that this war will establish the principle that character and performance must go hand in hand; that morals and brains must be conjoined; and that a civilization which attempts to base itself on either to the exclusion of the other is fundamentally incomplete. 18 THOMAS HASTINGS THE GLORY THAT WAS RHEIMS From an Interview in the New York Evening Post, September 21, 1914 The ruin of a rare and beautiful mon- ument that belonged to the world, that belonged to Germany as much as to France, that belonged to us, to all na- tions that revere and worship beauty, is vandalism gone insane. The Cathedral of Notre Dame at Rheims had stood for seven hundred years, through all the wars that raged about it, and had been re- spected and spared by the soldiers of the Middle Ages, so-called barbarians. It remained for German army officers, men supposed to be cultivated, to have high appreciation of the beauties of art and of all the fme things civilization has wrought, to do this ruthless deed. Men are killed in war, yes, but others are born : there is no lack of men to people the world; but the Cathedral at Rheims can- not be replaced. It stood in the after- glow of its hundreds of years, seeing generations pass away, bidding welcome to new generations. It stood a source of inspiration to the world. It breathed a spirit, something hardly seen, something felt. It is to lovers of the beautiful as though bome one had forever eliminated the colors of the sunset. I say it rever- ently, the killing of the Rheims Cathedral is like the killing of a god. We pride ourselves upon our enlight- enment and advancement; we have pointed with derision to the unenlight- ened Dark Ages; yet this destruction has been compassed by representatives of a race that vaunts its culture. This makes the deed all the more terrible. Had it been done by ignorant men, by soldiers of a backward, undeveloped nation, there would be some excuse. Had the barbarians of the thirteenth century committed this thing history would have stamped them with the seal of undying reproach. Yet Germany's culture, Germany's progress, Germany's civilization places this capstone on her accomplishments. 19 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS THE INCREDIBLE CRUELTY OF THE TEUTONS In the " Easy Chair" Harper's Magazine, August, 1918. One cannot, without folly, ask one's self if peace will never come, because peace has always come in turn with war, or without treason to the cause which has consecrated this war as no war was ever consecrated before, and which must tri- umph. Yet the fact of war has become so habitual that we can as well imagine the lifting of the atmospheric pressure as the removal of that weight from the spirit. The fact of it wraps us like the casing air; it has become so effectively our being that we can scarcely recall the different events or aspects in which it has superseded peace. Can any one say just where and when he first saw a man in khaki? One can as easily date the preparedness pa- rades, now that it seems the exceptional man who is in civil dress. How distin- guishable in time is the lunge of the Ger- mans through Belgium from the assassina- tion of our own people in the Lusitania? Did two years separate those events, and by what successive processes did the American mind evolve the purpose of do- ing justice upon the murderer-nation in our stupefaction from that horror? Was there once really a question with many of us whether there was not some right on the side of the enemy who was as much against us at the beginning as now? How long is it since the mother who now self -devotedly gives her son to the country was singing " I did not raise my boy to be a soldier"? The change which we cannot dare is no more questionable than the fact that the last election turned in favor of the Presi- dent who " kept us out of war,*' and whom we have now eagerly followed into it and whole-heartedly trust to guide us through it. Was there once actually a mood of their madness when the Germans imag- ined that we could be taught that their barbarity was the ultimate form of civili- zation? Just when did the doctrine of the German apostolate turn to the insult of German diplomacy? Perhaps it is the essential incredibility of its cruelty which disables the mind from separably accepting the events of any war and leaves this worst of wars a mass of wickedness which no chemistry is capa- ble of reducing to its components. Can any one say what the worst wickedness of the Germans has been? If you choose one there are always other crimes which contest your choice. We used at first to fix the guilt of them upon the Kaiser, but event by event we have come to realize that no man or order of men can pervert a whole people without their complicity. There was a moment when we thought that this or that sort of German was in- capable of the things which they have all shown themselves capable of, or so nearly all that the exceptions have not appeared. There have been rumors of dissent from the faith which is always seeking and find- ing precipitation in some atrocity, but these rumors never harden into fact. It seems the doom of a whole people to go from bad to worse, and to mislead the peoples whom they have perverted by their friendship or spared by their cruel mercies. The Turk is a worse Turk with their favor than he would be without it, and it is doubtful if the followers of Mohammed would not be better Chris- tians than the worshippers of the Old German God whom the Teutonic theolo- gians have latterly discovered, if they were not partakers of the Germans' crimes. In their static nature these crimes seem to have occurred in mass-for- mation and not separately; there is still the apparent simultaneity in them which there was from the beginning, and the continual purpose of evil forbids a dis- WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS tinctive cognizance of them. The be- wildered observance fails to time the first crimes in their due priority. Were the air raids of London with their slaughter of women and children in their homes earlier or later than the long-distance bombard- ment of Paris with its butchery of women and children in their churches? What is to change the nature of the Kultur which binds its victims in the de- lusion of an inhuman patriotism so that they cannot change with the passing of the days and years? Are they hopelessly forbidden to learn from the experience of all other mankind that the greatest good of life is charity, and with it modesty, so that they cannot learn from kindness to them- selves that kindness to others is of like preciousness? What is the fell magic which holds them liege to their oppression in a dream of ruthless dominion, and makes them as eager to shed their own blood as the blood of their fellow-men? What has so possessed their souls with the love of their own slavery that they should wish to die in the endeavor to make it universal, and so holds them to it that they cannot wish to break from it? ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON THE NEW SLAVERY (On the Expatriation by Germany of Civil Populations of Belgium) Men of Freedom, for whose ease, Man for man, some hero died: Hear ye, over shuddering seas, What the winds have sobbed and cried? In the mirror of the moon Have ye read the shame of noon? Men of Freedom, hear! Have ye heard the savage creed Of the War Lord's iron hand: Though the world's last drop shall bleed, Over all, the Fatherland — Over honor, over truth. Over love and over ruth? Men of Freedom, hear! Not the Germany we knew — Lessing s heart and Goethe's mind, Schiller's vision, far and true. And the peace that Kant divined; But a land of lords and braves — Half of masters, half of slaves. Men of Freedom, see! Of another world are these — Lords of war with hearts of lead; Boasting of new cruelties, — Brine for water, stones for bread. Ye with grief and pity wrung. These have never learned your tongue. Men of Freedom, see! Now the latest horror cries Unto heaven — and unto earth ! Trebly ravaged Belgium lies Tortured for the Teuton mirth. Was there of the Belgian heart Left enough to tear apart? Men of Freedom, see! By the silent harps that hung On the banks of Babylon, — By the saints that Milton sung, — By the crowns of martyrs won, — 22 December, 191 6. ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON 23 By all human tragedies, — By the death that exile is. Men of Freedom, speak! By the weakness of our great Who bequeathed a nation's sin To their sons to expiate. With a soul, to lose or win; By his strength who overthrew That despair and held us true, Men of Freedom, speak! By the red of Serbia's sod; Poland, paved with little bones; Lone Armenia's wail to God; Widowed Europe's haunting moans; By the million ills that flow From one king's choice of war and woe, Men of Freedom, speak! By the things ye hold most fair. Love of home and love of breath; , By the child's faith in his prayer; • . By things more great than Life and' Death, ' Lest your grave be shamed of ye. Speak! — and ... if the need shall be, '■ Men of Freedom, strike! j EDITH CAVELL Room 'mid the martyrs for a deathless name ! Till yesterday in her how few could know Black War's white angel, succoring friend and foe— Whose pure heart harbored neither hate nor blame When Need or Pity made its sovereign claim. To-day she is the world's! Its poignant woe, We thought had been outwept, again doth flow In tenderest tears that multiply her fame. Oh, something there is in us yet, more bright Than Rouen's hungry flames — that could consume Jeanne's slender limbs but not her spirit's might. Fate still has noble colors in her loom. One lonely woman's courage in the night Has sealed the savage Hohenzollerns' doom! October, 191 5. 24 ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON THE SWORD OF LAFAYETTE (Inscribed to Raymond Poincare, President of the French Republic) It was the time of our despair, When lion-hearted Washington — That man of patience and of prayer — Looked sadly at each rising sun. In all the freedom-breeding air, Of hope and rescue there was none. When, lo! as down from Heaven let, There came — the sword of Lafayette! Our harbors — how they danced with light ! Our tireless bells — how they did ring! Again we girded up to fight Not England, but her German king. For here was succor, and the might Of one great soul's imagining. What wonder if our eyes be wet To see the sword of Lafayette! Upon the walls where Justice keeps The 'swords she doth most gladly save. Not one of all so deeply sleeps Within the scabbard's honored grave But, listening for her call, it leaps. To live again among the brave. Thank Heaven our naked blade is set Beside the sword of Lafayette! Not his, not ours, the brutal strife. The vulgar greed of soil or dross; The feet that follow drum and fife Shall tread to nobler gain or loss. T is for the holiness of life The Spirit calls us to the Cross Forget us, God, if we forget The sacred sword of Lafayette. 1917. HENRY CABOT LODGE SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, APRIL 4, 1917, ON THE DECLARATION OF WAR No one is more aware than I that this is a moment for action and not for debate. But, as a member of the Com- mittee on Foreign Relations, and having taken part in framing this resolution, I wish briefly to state why I support it with the greatest earnestness of which 1 am capable. The most momentous power entrusted to Congress by the Constitution is the authority to declare war, and never has Congress been called to a more solemn exercise of this great function than at this moment. We have submitted to wrongs and outrages from the Central Powers of Europe — wrongs which involve not only injury to property, but the destruction of American lives — with a long patience. We have borne and forborne to the ver\' limit of endurance. Now the inevitable end is here and we are about to declare war against German}". Speaking for m}-self and, I hope, for my associates generally on this side of the Chamber, I desire to say that in this crisis, and when the country is at war, party lines will disappear, and this dis- appearance of the party line will, I am confident, not be confined to the minority. Both Democrats and Republicans must forget part}- in the presence of the com- mon danger. This is not, and cannot be, a part}' war. It is a war in which all Americans must be united, and no one must ask a lo}-al citizen^ high or low, who seeks to serve his country in the field or in civil life to what party he belongs, an}' more than it would be possible to ask his religion or his race. As Americans we shall all, I am sure, be prepared to give to the Executive money, men, and all the necessary powers for waging war with energy and driving it forward to a success- ful conclusion. The President has made recommendations as to the action which he hopes Congress will take, with which 1 for one am in most thorough accord. W'e have only a ver}' small arm}- and we must proceed at once and as rapidl}' as possible to build up a large one fit to defend the countr}' in an}- emergenc}'. We must provide for the future and for the suppl}- of men for the Army by a system of universal militar}' training. 1 agree with the President that this new arm}' should be chosen upon the "prin- ciple of universal liabilit}- to service." Our Navy is strong in certain branches and very weak in others. It must be our business to supply the deficiencies as rapidly as possible. Fortunateh' those deficiencies are, as a rule, of the kind which can be most quickh' supplied. It is our duty to see to it that all the mone}- and all the legislation necessary for both the Army and the Nav}' are given at once. The President has said that war will involve the utmost practicable coopera- tion in counsel and action with the Govern- ments now at war with Germany and, as incident to that, the extension to those Gov- ernments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources ma\" so far as possible be added to theirs. I am not onh" in full agreement with this policy advised b}- the President, but it seems to me that nothing is more im- portant than to follow it out. 1 am as thorough a believer as ever in the general policy laid down b}- Washington when he advised the people of the United States not to enter into permanent alliances; but the man who won the American Rev- olution through the alliance with France would have been the last to lay down a hard-and-fast rule that under no circum- stances and for no purposes were we ever to ally ourselves with other nations. He 25 26 HENRY CABOT LODGE covers this point completely in the Fare- well Address, where he says: — Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emer- gencies. Far-seeing and wise, he knew very well that dangers might come which would make a temporary alliance or agreement with foreign nations imperative. That time has arrived. It would be madness for us to attempt to make war alone upon Germany, and find ourselves, perhaps, at the end left isolated, at war with that power, when all the other nations had made peace, because we had not asso- ciated ourselves with them. The Allies of the Entente, as they are called, are fighting a common foe, and their foe is now ours. We cannot send a great army across the ocean, for we have no army to send. Yet 1 should be glad for one if we could send ten thousand men of our regular troops, so that the flag of the United States might at least be unfurled in the fields of France. I believe that the mere sight of our flag in that region made so desolate by war would stimulate the courage and help the success of those who have the same aim that we have and who seek the same victory. We can also help the Allies, as the President recommends, with large credits and with those supphes which we can furnish and which they lack. We cannot do more in any direction to bring this war to a speedy end than to give those credits and furnish those sup- plies. The President has told us that Ger- man spies were here even before the war began, and It is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved In our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official agents of the Imperial German Government accredited to the Government of the United States. I believe myself that the overwhelming mass of our citizens of German descent are just as loyal to the United States as any citizens could possibly be. But there is this class of agents of the Impe- rial German Government who are ready to engage in plots and crimes to the injury of the people of this country. " Disloy- alty,'' if I may again borrow the words of the President, "must be put down with a firm hand." The purpose of the German submarine campaign is the absolute destruction of the world's mercantile tonnage, something wholly new in warfare. In the old days, in previous wars, the ships of warring nations were captured, frequently in large numbers, as was the case when our priva- teers ranged the English Channel in the War of 1 812. But it must not be for- gotten that, with few exceptions, these vessels, when captured, were sent into port, condemned as prizes, and again put afloat. The total tonnage of the world was not materially reduced. But the German submarine war, ruthlessly car- ried on, is directed toward the complete destruction of the tonnage of the whole world. Forced into war, as we now are, our first action should be to repair in some measure this loss to our own tonnage and to that of the world by seizing the ships of Germany now in our ports and putting that additional tonnage into the world's service. Mr. President, we have never been a military nation; we are not prepared for war in the modern sense; but we have vast resources and unbounded energies, and the day when war is declared we should devote ourselves to calling out those resources and organizing those energies so that they can be used with the utmost effect in hastening the complete victory. The worst of all wars is a feeble war. War is too awful to be entered upon half-heartedly. If we fight at all, we must fight for all we are worth. It must be no weak, hesitating war. The most merciful war is that which is most vig- orously waged and which comes most quickly to an end. HENRY CABOT LODGE 27 Mr. President, no one feels the horrors of war more than I. It is with no light heart, but with profound sadness, al- though with hope and courage, that 1 see my country compelled to enter the great field of conflict. But there are, in my opinion, some things worse for a nation than war. National degeneracy is worse; national cowardice is worse. The divi- sion of our people into race groups, striving to direct the course of the United States in the interest of some other country when we should have but one allegiance, one hope, and one tradition, is far worse. All these dangers have been gathering about us and darkening the horizon dur- ing the last three years. Whatever suf- fering and misery war may bring, it will at least sweep these foul things away. Instead of division into race groups, it will unify us into one nation, and national degeneracy and national cowardice will slink back into the darkness from which they should never have emerged. I also believe that on our entrance into this war, under the conditions which it has assumed, our future peace, our inde- pendence as a proud and high-spirited nation, our very security, are at stake. There is no other way, as I see it, except by war, to save these things without which national existence is a mockery and a sham. But there is a still higher pur- pose here as I look upon it. The Presi- dent has said with great justice that Germany is making war upon all nations. We do not enter upon this war to secure victory for one nation as against another. We enter this war to unite with those who are fighting the common foe in order to preserve human freedom, democracy, and modern civilization. They are all in grievous peril; they are -all threatened. This war is a war, as 1 see it, against barbarism; not the anarchical barbarism of what are known as the Dark Ages, but organized barbarism panoplied in all the devices for the destruction of human life which science, beneficent science, can bring forth. We are resisting an effort to thrust mankind back to forms of gov- ernment, to political creeds and methods of conquest which we had hoped had disappeared forever from the world. We are fighting against a nation which, in the fashion of centuries ago, drags the inhabitants of conquered lands into slavery; which carries off women and girls for even worse purposes; which in its mad desire to conquer mankind and tram- ple them under foot has stopped at no wrong, has regarded no treaty. The work that we are called upon to do when we enter this war is to preserve the prin- ciples of human liberty, the principles of democracy, and the light of modern civi- lization; all that we most love, all that we hold dearer than life itself, is at stake. In such a battle we cannot fail to win. 1 am glad that my country is to share in this preservation of human freedom. 1 wish to see my country gathered with the other nations who are fighting for the same end when the time for peace comes. We seek no conquests, we desire no terri- tory and no new dominions. We wish simply to preserve our own peace and our own security, to uphold the great doctrine which guards the American hemisphere, and to see the disappearance of all wars or rumors of wars from the East, if any dangers there exist. What we want most of all by this victory which we* shall help to win is to secure the world's peace, broad-based on freedom and democracy, a world not controlled b>' a Prussian military autocracy, by Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs, but by the will of the free people of the earth. We shall achieve this result, and when we achieve it, we shall be able to say that we have helped to confer great blessings upon mankind, and that we have not fought in vain. A. LAWRENCE LOWELL WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? Article in The Independent, March ii, 1918 The United States entered the war because one of the chief objects of every government must be to protect the Hves and property of its citizens from destruc- tion, in violation of the rules of interna- tional law and the principles of humane civilization. After the renewal of sub- marine warfare, conducted in disregard of law and humanity, a great nation that did not protect its citizens would have been an object of scorn whose rights could be disregarded in future. We should have been a certain mark for aggression by any power whose desires might conflict with ours; and especially by Germany as soon as she had recovered her strength, and found her ambitions blocked in Africa and Asia. Nor should we have had a claim to expect aid or sympathy from any nation in resisting an attack upon our shores, or upon Central or South America. The aims of the United States in de- claring war were strictly defensive. We did not take part with the Allies to ob- tain any benefit, territorial, economic or financial, for ourselves or for any other country. But if so, why does our Presi- dent, together with Mr. Lloyd George, tell the world that the terms of peace must include changes of territory among the belligerents? There are two reasons for this, not unconnected, although rest- ing on distinct principles. The first is that having been drawn into the war in defense of our own citi- zens we do not propose to stop, if we can help it, until justice has been done to the peoples who have now become our allies. When a man takes part in a fight he inevitably makes, to some extent, common cause with the other men who are fighting on his side, and he cannot honorably leave them in the lurch. If a robber has picked my pocket of ten dol- 28 lars, and 1 find that another man from whom he has stolen one thousand dollars is pursuing him, if I join in the pursuit, and after the other man becomes ex- hausted, or gets a knock-out blow, the robber turns on me, can I say to him, "Give me back my ten dollars and you may keep the money of the other man?" We have now made common cause in arms with the Allies, and we cannot desert them by backing out and leaving them to suffer from injuries unredressed. If Ger- many had, either before or during the war, taken part of our territory, or ravaged it, we should have a mean opinion of our allies if they made peace with her without insisting on restoration and reparation for us; and we cannot do to others what we should blame and despise them for doing to us. This apphes to our demand for restitution and indemnity in the cases of Belgium, Serbia and France. It covers also the case of Alsace-Lorraine, taken by force, or under the duress of force, in 1870. Moreover, this war, in whatever way it ends, will certainly be followed by some reorganization of Europe, apart from the restitution of the territory of our allies. Being a party to the war, we cannot shirk the responsibility of seeing that the peace which concludes it is right and just. We cannot say that whether the changes made involve op- pression and injustice or not is of no interest to us, and no affair of ours. As a civilized and free nation we must throw our weight into the scale for the libera- tion of oppressed peoples and the fair treatment of all peoples, and it is well that we should say so now. The second reason for including ter- ritorial adjustments among the terms of peace comes from the fact that we are not fighting for terms at all. If Ger- A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 29 many were to offer to abandon her sub- marine warfare during the remainder of the conflict we could not now with- draw, because it would mean merely a desperate attempt to detach another bel- ligerent, not a recognition of neutral rights or a renunciation of the menace of aggressive militarism. Even if she were to offer any terms the Allies pleased, purely in order to recover her strength and begin war again under more favorable conditions, they could not be accepted, because we are in fact fighting to pre- vent the recurrence to ourselves and to mankind of such a calamity as this war. We are not fighting for the sake of war, but to prevent war. We are fighting that such things as have happened within the last three years shall, if we can help it, never occur again. In any peace, therefore, we must seek to remove the causes of future wars. Now among the chief causes of recent wars have been the aspirations of people of the same race, or rather who speak the same language, to unite as a nation and be free from the domination of another race. It is interesting to consider the influence of this motive in the great strug- gles that have occurred in Europe, let us say since the Crimean War. In the period immediately succeeding, a number of wars arose from the efforts to create a united Italy and a united Germany. The first of these conflicts was that between France and Austria in 1859. The osten- sible cause of that war, and to a great extent the underlying motive that pro- voked it, was the desire to free the Italians in Lombardy and Venice from the Aus- trian yoke. Five years later came the war of Prussia and Austria against Den- mark. It was only a prelude to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 which had as its occasion a quarrel over the admin- istration of the duchies wrung from Den- mark, but which was really carefully planned to drive Austria out of the loose Germanic Confederation and unite Ger- many in a single federal body under the hegemony of Prussia. The last of this series of wars, was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, where the quarrel arose nominally over a candidate for the throne of Spain, but which was in fact provoked by Bismarck in order to complete the union of the German states in what is now the German Empire. Before a decade had passed, began the first of the wars caused by the efforts of the Christian Slavs in the Balkans to rid themselves of the rule of the Turk. In 1876 there began the attempt to free Bulgaria, which was followed by the war between Russia and Turkey. From that time there was no war between European nations on any large scale until the first of the late Balkan wars in 19 12. This was, of course, an attempt to carry far- ther, and indeed to complete, the process of liberating the Balkans from the control of the Turk; and it was succeeded by the second Balkan war, a quarrel between the victors over the spoils, turning in part on the question whether the people of Macedonia were essentially Bulgarian or not. Finally the occasion and the pretext, though not the real underlying cause, of the present war was the condi- tion of the Serbian peoples, part of whom lived in Serbia and part under the rule of Austria-Hungary. If the question of race has been a source of war in Europe for two gen- erations we cannot expect it to disappear in the future unless racial aspirations are reasonably satisfied; for it has grown up with democracy and the spread of popu- lar education. So long as government was conducted exclusively by a throne and aristocracy, the ruling class was con- strained to speak one language, that of the court and of polite society. All cul- tivated people in the land were educated in the same literary tongue, which was naturally used in official transactions. The uneducated classes talked their own dialects and cared little what their rulers spoke. They have not always objected even when these men affected a foreign culture. Frederick the Great thought himself a French litterateur and spelled his name like a Frenchman. But when popular elections were introduced, and 30 A. LAWRENCE LOWELL still more when primary schools became universal, the question of language as- sumed a far greater importance. Then the matter of race was brought to the forefront. The Czechs in Austria, for example, must insist that their children shall be taught in Czech, and that their language shall not be excluded from public affairs, or their people will inevitably be Germanized. The sentiment has, no doubt, in some cases been exaggerated until men of letters have raised a dialect into a language, and local patriotism has inspired a small branch of a great race with a feeling of distinct nationality. Yet the sentiment is real, and if it is not given political expression, and the people who hold it are not allowed the means of economic development, it is certain to remain a source of agitation and a prob- able cause of war. A prudent man does not keep in his house combustible ob- jects where they are liable to be set on fire. We are not fighting this war to prepare materials for another, or to leave in the world explosive elements, if it is possible to avoid doing so. A great war may start from the discontent of a small people; and if the condition of the large European countries should remain un- changed after peace is concluded, it night well be, for example, that a future revolt of the Czechs or the Croats would, from sympathy or policy provoke the interference of some great power, as the ultimatum to Serbia provoked the inter- vention of Russia in July, 1914. Europe might be set ablaze by race questions in Austria-Hungary, as she has been by troubles in the Balkans; and such a source of war ought to be foreseen and prevented. The President's statements about ter- ritorial changes have, therefore, the same object as his declarations about a league of nations. Neither of them has the slightest punitive intent. Both are designed to prevent future wars, by re- moving causes of strife, by allowing free play to national development on the part of peoples great and small, and by restraining war until every other means of settlement has been exhausted. Three years ago it was necessary to argue that the United States could no longer maintain a position of complete isolation, that she must assume the du- ties and responsibilities which her growth and the increasing rapidity of transporta- tion across the ocean had cast upon her; and the burden of proof was upon him who asserted that our traditional policy had been outgrown. But we have not been able to preserve our isolation in this war, and it has become our obvious interest and duty to see that another preventable war does not break out, into which we shall again be drawn. To do this we must insist upon terms of peace that will remove as many of the causes of war as possible; and we must form with other countries having the same object in view, a league of nations which will secure the submission of international controversies to a tribunal or a body of conciliators, and which will provide a deliberative body for the formulation of international law and the public discus- sion of international problems. We must be prepared to join with the other great nations of the earth in compelling, by force if necessary, a resort to these peace- ful methods for the settlement of dis- putes, before a recourse to violence. The object in stating our terms is not an immediate, but a permanent, peace, and while we can maintain a force in the field we can demand nothing less. HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE* OUR SHARE Editorial Article in The Outlook, June i6, 191 5 It has been said that when the sun went down on the 3 1 st of July last it set for the last time on the world that was familiar; on the first day of August it rose on a new world. The changes wrought by war are already incalculable, and they have only begun. Whatever forms they may take — political, social, industrial — they are certain to be fundamental, perhaps rev- olutionary. The readjustments, when they come, will not be mere diplomatic compromises; they will be vital, radical, and far-reaching. Society will not count its losses, gird up its loins, and go on again in the old way. It is passing through one of the deepest, perhaps the deepest, experience in its history, and it will come out of that experience not only greatly impoverished but changed in spirit. The iron is entering into its soul. Such experiences never leave nations as they fmd them; nor do they leave indi- viduals as they fmd them; some deep- going change always registers such vast catastrophic events in history. So far the field of military operations has been on the far side of one or other of the friendly oceans which separate us from Europe and Asia, but the tragic experience is part of the life of every thoughtful man and woman in America. We do not hear the thunder of cannon, but the flash of the guns below the horizon reflected in the sky above us makes us aware that a great tempest is sweeping over the earth, and that possessions that belong to the whole world are in peril, if not already destroyed. If this stupendous experi- ence does not touch us, it is because we are mentally insensitive or spiritually dead. There are those who would take refuge in the cabaret if the bells were tolling continuously for the dead in a plague-smitten city; but the vast majority of men and women live with their fellows and share their fortunes. Whether we consciously share them or not, those for- tunes are our fortunes; we may shut our eyes, but we cannot shut our souls to the pain, sorrow, and tremendous disturb- ances which are agitating the world as a storm that sweeps from continent to con- tinent, breaks up the fountains of the deep and sends the universal ocean foam- ing and thundering half around the globe. Those Americans are to be pitied whose chief anxiety is that we may be kept out of the struggle and find in it a golden opportunity to push forward the pros- perity of the Nation. That we may be spared the duty of entering the field of war with arms in our hands is the prayer of the whole Nation, but that we should be spared participation in the sorrow and loss of our fellow-nations in order that we may profit by their misfortunes would be the prayer of a base and blind selfishness. The intense preoccupation of our neigh- bors beyond the sea may give a great impulse to American industry and enter- prise, but we can safely accept prosperity from the misfortunes of others only when our hearts are clean of every desire to shape our National policy to an end so selfish and so hateful to the spirit of democracy. To be able to keep out of the war with- out sacrificing the higher interests of humanity is the eager desire of many anxious people, but to escape the sorrow, pain, and renovating power of a great human experience would be to miss one of the greatest lessons ever set for men to learn. Whether we will or not, we are sharing the fortunes of this world- * Mr. Mabie died December 31, 19 16. 31 32 FREDERICK MACMONNIES shaking conflict, and it will not leave us as it found us; at the end we shall be a nobler or a meaner Nation. We are being tested as truly as if our armies were in the field. Every man is being tested as truly as if his individual fortunes were involved in the issue. Shall we think primarily of our own safety and comfort, or shall we think first and always of the interests of humanity? Shall we cling to prosperity and the ease and luxury that come with it as the ends of life, or shall we learn from the appalling destruc- tion of material values that these are as dust in the scales when the soul of a nation or of an individual is being weighed? FREDERICK MACMONNIES THE WORLD CRISIS It would not have occurred to any one strolling in Piccadilly or on a Paris boule- vard in 191 3, wrapped in the sense of security afforded by well-ordered streets, that a year later the main preoccupation of three-quarters of the inhabitants of the globe w^ould be to prevent a horde of savages from destroying the world, mor- ally and physically. To the mind accustomed to modernity, it all seemed so settled. The few liv- ing savages had been attended to by missionaries and were supplied with phonographs and the blessings of civil- ization. Sitting Bull was dead. Tamer- lane, the Huns, the destruction of Rome, Zulus, scalpings, disembowelings, poison- ings and piracies were mere details of a glorious and bloody past. A few recal- citrant specimens of the savage could perhaps be dislodged on the Zambesi or possibly in Cochin China. Who could suspect that under the grey tunic topped by the pompous gilded helmet was a bloodthirsty pitiless Hun, more dangerous than his half-clad ances- tors, for he was equipped with science and armed with modern miracles invented by civilization for her own beneficent purposes. These his mediaeval soul with savage cunning has turned to barbaric usage. Filled with false philosophy and fatuous egotism, he has organized to turn back the dial of progress five hundred years. We have waked up late to our danger, and for our tardy rising we must make amends or do the bidding of a conqueror. Graft, ambition, greed, sloth, words must be put aside, if we would save the world for anything, let alone for democracy. But win we must, and when once more we feel the security of order and justice, then every bright life extinguished, every spark of unseen heroism, every brave achievement, each precious relic of a devout past relentlessly shot to pieces will be a sacrifice not made in vain, for that vast funeral pyre of hopes, loves and ambitions will be a beacon to light forever the highroad of progress toward permanent Peace and Liberty. BRANDER MATTHEWS BENEFITS OF THE WAR Article in Munsey's Magapne for February, 191 8 There is a French proverb which de- clares that every man has the defects of his quaUties and the quahties of his defects. That is to sa>-, if he has a gentle spirit, he is quite possibly of a yielding nature; and if he is reputed to be ob- stinate, he is not likely to be infirm of purpose. A similar maxim might have been minted in regard to events. The}' are rarely either wholly good or wholly evil — or, at least, if the\- are good, the>' m.a}' have remote and unexpected conse- quences which are not altogether satis- factory; and if they are evil, the>' ma>' none the less bring about unforeseen re- sults which ultimately prove to be ad- vantageous. In the present world war it is difficult for us to discover anything but hideous horrors, rapine and ruin, mutilation, death, and that moral suffering which is even worse than death. Over against all the diabolical misdeeds which have brought these malignant terrors is the sublime spectacle of human heroism, of duty done nobly and simply, of selfish- ness conquered, and of self-sacrifice made the law of life. It is an appalling price that humanity has had to pay for this encouraging disclosure of its finer and sterner possibilities; and yet the dis- closure itself is beyond price. Perhaps in the future it may prove to be worth all it has cost. This uncovering of the soul of man in all its elevation and all its power is the first and the most obvious of the benef- icent by-products of the world war. It is unquestionably the most important, but it does not stand alone. It is onl\- the first and foremost of a host of things brought to light as direct or indirect con- sequences of this protracted battle be- 3 33 tween democratic civilization and auto- cratic barbarism. Some of these things are obvious enough; and some ma\- be obscure, need- ing to be elucidated in detail. Some of them are physical, some are moral, and some are mental. Some of them soar aloft in the world of ideas and of ideals, and some of them linger below on the level of the m.ereh" material and economic necessities. And they are so man>' and so manifold and so diverse that the\- can- not be catalogued, even if they could all be perceived at the present time. What it is possible to do now is to single out a few of the beneficent results of this war which have most significance for us here in America, separated b\' a thousand leagues of water from the devastation and the desolation of the actual battle-field. First of all, this sudden outbreak of the conflict between the t^vo Kaisers and the self-governing peoples allied against Kaiserism, the continuation of the com- bat \ear after year ^^^th the resulting adherence of nation after nation to the one side or to the other, until it is now far easier to count the few peoples ^^■ho insist upon remaining neutral than it is to call the roll of those who have joined themselves together resolved to make an end of the menace of militarism — all this has made plain as never before the ex- traordinar}* interdependence of ever\- nation upon almost every other nation. The races which are in the possession of fertile soil for agriculture need the foreign markets where their corn can be sold. The nations best equipped for manu- facturing need peaceful freedom to bring in this com as food for their toilers. They also need it to import the raw ma- terials without which their factories must stand idle. 34 BRANDER MATTHEWS Switzerland, for example, is at peace with the whole world, and is resolute to defend its neutrality to the end; but Switzerland is entirely surrounded by nations at war, and therefore the Swiss find it difficult to get the food and the fuel they require, and almost impossible to export the few wares that they are still able to manufacture. Through no fault of its own, Switzerland has been made to suffer almost as severely as if it had been one of the sharers in the fighting. Germany, until it chose to begin its struggle for supremacy, was glad to supply other nations with potash, which is an essential in modern scientific agri- culture. On the other hand, Germany was glad to import the nitrates which are also an essential in modern scientific agriculture, and which were imperatively demanded by her relatively infertile soil. Her defeat may be brought about finally, not by the destruction or surrender of her armies, but by her failure to feed her millions of soldiers because of her inability to get the nitrates without which the intensive culture of her fields is impossible. Because her merchant marine has been swept from the seas, Germany may be deprived, not only of the tea and the coffee her ships used to bring from distant lands, but even of the potatoes she was accustomed to raise abundantly on her own farms. Long before we entered into the war ourselves, we were made to appreciate how dependent we were upon other na- tions, in spite of our immensely varied territory, our diversified population, and our inventive ingenuity. We could im- port nitrates, but we were deprived of potash. We had been wont to vaunt our- selves as a self-sufficing nation, able to produce within our own borders all that we might need; but within a month after the outbreak of hostilities we discovered the disadvantages of having allowed Germany to manufacture many of our chemicals for us — chemicals needed for medicinal purposes, for dyeing, and for the making of explosives. It was well that we should be awakened by this un- welcome disclosure, for it has made us eager to establish industries which will render us as independent of the foreigner as we had fondly believed ourselves to be. Nor are these the only factories which the war has forced us to erect. We have had to build countless plants for the mak- ing of munitions and explosives, small arms and artillery. The European na- tions with whom we are now in alliance were better prepared for war than we should have been if we had been brought into the conflict at the beginning; but no one had foreseen the decisive impor- tance of an indisputable superiority of shells and shrapnel, bombs and hand- grenades. As the Allies could not manu- facture these things for themselves fast enough, they came to us; and the ex- pansion of our munition-making in- dustry was so rapid and so elaborate that when at last the United States did join the forces fighting to make the world safe for democracy, we were in a position to equip our new armies speedily and satisfactorily. Not only have we now adequate means for preparing ourselves for defense, but we have seen the danger of not having at all times the factories, the machines, and the organizations needed for self -protection. We are not likely hereafter to leave our- selves defenseless against the treacherous attack of an unscrupulous foe. We must hereafter keep ourselves fit for service, since we now know that we can find no security in the treaties which seemed to protect the peace of the world. If the foe is treacherous and unscrupu- lous, he will not be restrained by " scraps of paper.'' He will not be governed by a decent respect for the opinions of man- kind. He will break every convention of civilization which may fetter his purpose. Indeed, the conduct of Prussia has re- vealed to us that the veneer of civiliza- tion is thinner and more brittle than we had believed. We have seen it crack, and we have beheld beneath it the in- human characteristics which we hoped the centuries had bred out of civilized man — the many long centuries which BRANDER MATTHEWS 35 stretch back to our probably arboreal ancestor, akin to the gorilla in the sav- agery of his lusts. It may be only a material benefit that we are now better prepared to defend ourselves than ever before; but it is a moral benefit that we have had our eyes opened to the necessity of self-defense against a nation which boasts of its civilization while it is reverting to prac- tises abhorrent even to barbarians. It is a moral benefit, also, that we have been compelled to consider anew the future relation of the United States to the rest of the world. Our superb isolation, possible in the past, will be impossible in the future. Our interests are bound up with those of the rest of the world. We cannot hereafter shrink away from the discussion of international questions, or shirk out of the duties imposed on us by our position in the brotherhood of nations. We may keep out of the entangling alliances that Washington warned us against, but we cannot get out of bearing our share of the burden. We shall be forced to hold fellowship with the other peoples to take part in their deliberations, and to aid in the execution of their and our decisions. And the war has revealed these other peoples to us in new aspects, compelling us to reconsider our former judgments. What we now believe the Germans to be, and the French, and the British, is not at all what we believed them to be five years ago. The picture of a typical German or Frenchman or Britisher which we had in our mind has been modified in many ways. The portraits we had then were often hazy in outline, because of our ignorance and our want of interest. The portraits we have now are sharply defined as we have had our attention focused. Our knowledge has been multiplied and cor- rected as our interest has been quickened. It is instructive for us to compare our opinion of the Germans as it is now and as it was before they started the war. Most of us held the Germans to be a gentle folk, sentimental, slow-moving, hard- working, beer-drinking, lacking in ini- tiative. We acknowledged willingly their leadership in the musical arts, but we had not had impressed upon us the names of German painters, German sculptors, or German architects. We knew that a few of the more significant discoveries in science were to be credited to them, and also a few, but only a few, of the num- berless inventions of the past century. Their contribution to scientific advance seemed to us the result of plodding in- dustry rather than of brilliant inspiration. We were without intimate acquaintance with later German literature, perhaps because the writers who were popular in Germany between Heine and Haupt- mann did not exert the large appeal which would carry their works beyond the borders of their own language. We had not had occasion to familiarize our- selves with the books in which the doc- trine of Pan-Germanism was arrogantly proclaimed; and we were far from sus- pecting that generation after generation the Germans had been taught, in school and in university, to believe that they were a race apart, so superior to all others that it was not only their right but their duty to impose their ideas, their ideals, and their organization upon all other races. Then suddenly their rulers dropped the mask, and the scales fell from our eyes. The nation which had invited our admira- tion for its Gemtlthlichkeit instantly aroused our abhorrence for its Schrecklichkeit. Its leaders shocked the moral sense of the world both by words and by deeds; and they were innocently surprised that what seemed natural and necessary to them should arouse indignant protest and hostile contempt. Strange is it that a nation with a superabundance of professors of psychology should suffer from a penury of knowledge of human nature! Strange is it, also, that the leaders of this nation are intellectual without being intelligent! Perhaps we knew a little more about France than about Germany, and yet we 36 BRANDER MATTHEWS were as much in error as regards the one country as the other. We had more translations from the French than from the German; and as most of these were novels of Parisian life, fast and fash- ionable, we derived from them the false impression that the French were friv- olous and immoral. We failed to under- stand their frankness in regard to their own defects, their detestation of hy- pocrisy, their more natural simplicity. In our comic papers and in our comic plays a Frenchman was likely to be a figure of fun; and there were not want- ing Americans who seemed to suppose that France was inhabited mainl}' by milliners and by cooks. Nor did we get any more accurate vision of French character from our newspaper discussion of French politics than from our own reading of French novels. We recalled the Panama swindle, the Dreyfus affair, and the Caillaux scandal; and not a few Americans in- clined to the opinion that the virtue had gone out of the French, and that France was steadily deteriorating from lack of courage and of strength. Then millions of armed invaders swept almost up to the gates of Paris, and the French exhibited at once the courage and the strength we had been ready to deny them. In that hour of imminent peril the immortal soul of France stood naked before the world in all its sublime no- bility. Outnumbered and almost over- whelmed, the French displayed their tra- ditional gallantry, and also a serious steadfastness, a grim determination, which enabled them to retreat day after day and yet to be ready to advance at once and to attack with unbroken energy when the order came to face the other way. And the temper of the French was as significant as their sturdiness. They did not whine and they did not boast. The braggart was as infrequent as the coward. They did not plead for applause, and they asked for no sympathy. They had no time to think of the opinion of other countries; they had to defend their own. Of course, they were glad to get help when it came. They welcomed the British troops as they have since wel- comed the American advance-guard; but in the defense of their own soil they were ready to bear the brunt of the battle, as the fighting about Verdun testified. The British we ought to have known better than we knew either the Germans or the French, if only because of our pos- session of the same language and of our inheritance of the same literature. They w^ere our kin across the sea — a little more than kin and often less than kind. They had been our foes in two wars, as every American schoolboy knew; and in the second of these wars they had burned the Capitol at Washington. They had often annoyed us b}^ the exhibition of insular arrogance; and only of late had they shown any desire or any abil- ity to understand us. Our attitude to them was not hostile, of course; it was not even unfriendly; but it could hardly be called friendly. We could not but mark symptoms of relaxing energy in the British Isles. In almost every department of life we beheld what seemed to be a lazy unwill- ingless to make the resolute effort re- quired if Great Britain was to keep abreast of the march of events. We wondered if the complacency born of former supremacy in discovery and in- vention, in manufacture, commerce, and finance, might not be bringing about an enfeebling of the fiber of the British. Instead of girding up their loins and set- ting their house in order, they were will- ing to waste their time in the bitter and futile debates of petty partizan politics. The invasion of Belgium awakened the British from their lethargy; and they made it obvious at once that they were neither weak nor lazy when they had to fight for their lives. At the call of the bugle the national will stiffened, and every one of the doubtful symptoms of in- difference and incapacity disappeared. It seemed as if John Bull had sweated off his fat and stood erect, lean and BRANDER MATTHEWS 37 sinewy, as young as if he had been his own grandson. The navy was ready; and army after army was made ready. Every activity of the nation was re- organized, speeded up, and coordinated harmoniously. Loan after loan was over- subscribed, and crushing taxation was borne without a murmur. More significant than any other sign of strength was the fact that Great Britain made no demand upon her col- onies — made, indeed, no appeal to them for help in the hour of need. More sig- nificant still is the fact that the oversea dominions sprang to arms at once and voluntarily did their utmost to succor and to support the mother country. Every- body knew that the bond which tied these distant dominions to the island kingdom was loose; but nobody knew that it was unbreakable. The British Empire sud- denly became a fact and not a figure of speech. Its ties have now been sealed by blood. It has today a unity and a solidarity more cohesive than any had dared to hope. And this is because it is not truly an empire, ruled by an emperor wielding undisputed authority; it is a commonwealth of free and self-governing states, with a central administration which exercises no coercion and seeks no service upon compulsion. It came into being haphazard, as the inevitable result of a series of happy accidents; and in the future it will have a consciousness of it- self, due to the proud memory of sacri- fices in common. Perhaps no one of the by-products of the war is more immediately important than the regeneration and reinvigoration of the United Kingdom, and than the unification of the scattered territories which constitute the British common- wealth. Yet it may prove that there is another consequence of our taking up arms to fight in alliance with France and England and Italy which will bulk still more largely in history. We Americans had the tradition of friendship with the French, but we had a tradition of enmity with the English. The battles of the Revolution and of the War of 1 812 occupy much space in our school histories. We remembered only too well the seven years' struggle with the British; but we did not remind our- selves that the King of England we were really fighting was a German who could scarcely speak English, and who was able to hire Hessians from his fellow German rulers. We did not give weight enough to what we knew — that the best men in England were on our side against their German king. We never allowed our- selves to forget that we had had two wars with Great Britain, and that we had been on the brink of a third war more than once in the dark years between Bull Run and Gettysburg. But this third war had been averted, and we had lived in peace with England for more than a hundred years, with an unguarded frontier of three thousand miles between us and British territory. The English king is not now a German; and the institutions of England have been liberaHzed decade after decade until now the' control of the people over the government in Great Britain is as in- disputable as it is in the United States. The inhabitants of the American Union and of the British Empire possess the same language, the same literature, the same law. They are possessed by the same ideals of conduct. They are in- spired by the same hopes for the future. As Mr. Balfour said last year in response to an address by the American ambas- sador at a meeting in London on the Fourth of July: These hopes and these ideals we have not learned from each other. We have them in common from a common history and from a common ancestry. We have not learned freedom from you nor you from us. We both sprang from the same root, and we both cultivate the same great aims. . . . Will not our descendants, when they come to look back upon this unique episode in the history of the world, say that among the incalcuable circumstances which it produced, the most beneficent and the most permanent is that we are brought together and united for one com- 38 BRANDER MATTHEWS mon purpose in one common understanding — the two great branches of the English- speaking race? Just as the war forced us in America to revise our opinions of the British, the French, and the Germans, so our own entry into it revealed us to ourselves, it proved that we had not degenerated since 1776 and 1861. It showed that the stock was as sturdy as ever, not lacking "iron in the blood to edge resolve with." It was at once made manifest that superabundant prosperity and long-pro- tracted peace had not combined to breed sloth and corruption. Maeterlinck had expressed a belief, not uncommon before this conflict began, that "courage, moral and physical en- durance, if not forgetfulness of self, re- nunciation of all comfort, the faculty of sacrifice, the power to face death, belong exclusively to the most primitive, the least happy, the least intelUgent of peo- ples, those who are least capable of rea- soning, of taking danger into account.'' On the very first day of the war his fellow Belgians proved the falsity of Maeter- linck's opinion; and it was promptly con- tradicted by the conduct of the French and of the British. The men capable of reasoning and of taking danger into account were found to have a higher courage than that which we find in the most primitive and the least intelligent of peoples. They have physical courage stiffened by moral cour- age. Their imagination may give them a keener sense of the perils which lie before them, but it does not inhibit them from fronting these perils at the call of duty. War does not create the manly and martial virtues; it merely re- veals them and affords immediate oc- casion for their exercise. We are naturally inclined to credit the men of 1776 and the men of 1861 with triumphant heroism, but they were not all of heroic temper. The Revolution was won by the Continentals; and on more than one occasion the militia be- haved as badly as they did in the War of 181 2. In the Civil War, too, there were thousands of coffee-coolers and bounty-jumpers. The spirit of the American people is at least as good today as it was in those distant yesterdays; and in one respect it seems to be better — it is less emotional and more sternly moral. Our men are not volunteering with hurrahing hysteria. They have no glamour of glory, no de- ceptive vision of themselves on horse- back waving swords and leading head- long charges. After three years of war it is stripped and bare of all its romantic allurements. It is recognized to be what the British soldier called it — "damn dull, damn dirty, and damn dangerous." Even the hot and adventurous ardor of \outh cannot blind men to its perils. It is with eyes open to what is before them that more than a million men have entered our mihtary services since the United States broke with Germany. Most of them were moved not by the zest of adventure, not by the ardor of youth, not by the stimulus of enthusiasm, but by a resolute sense of duty. They knew that a hard job had to be done, and they felt that it was up to them so see it through. There was no sudden heat in their action, but rather a cold determina- tion, characteristic of men capable of reasoning and of taking danger into ac- count. And perhaps in this respect the temper of the men of 191 7 is even finer than the spirit of the men of 1861, who could not know so well what was before them. Even if this may seem a little fanciful, there is no doubt as to the superiority of 1 91 7 over 1 86 1 in another field — in the making of the whole nation ready for war, in the conserving of its supplies, in the utilization of its energies, and in the coordination of its endeavors. Never before in the history of the United States has there been a volunteer- ing of the captains of industry, of the men who make things and who do things, of " big business" on the one side and of the labor-unions on the other. Never before have the inventors been mobilized, BRANDER MATTHEWS 39 as they have been in the Naval Consulting Board, on which the}' serve without pa>' and meet all their own expenses. Never before has there ever come into existence a Council of National Defense, made up of men of the highest repute, read\' to abandon their own private tasks to work for the public good, giving the nation the benefit of their skill, their experience, and their resourcefulness, without thought of any other reward than their satisfac- tion in their ability to be of use in the hour of need. The Council of National Defense and its many subsidiaries, the Committee on Transportation — which has unified all the railroads — the Aircraft Production Board, the General Munitions Board, the General Medical Board, and the Com- mercial Economy Board, have repeated!)' called for the aid of busy men; and these men have instantly abandoned their own business to give their whole time to the service of the nation. Competitors have been willing to cooperate for the public good. No doubt there have been exceptions to this patriotic proffering of personal service; there have been not a few selfish and greedy profiteers; but when at last the war is at an end, and when the time comes for its m\riad activities to be seen in perspective, its historians will need to devote an ample share of their records to the setting forth of the deeds of men who did not fight, but w^ho made it possible for the exported army to do the fighting, and who organized the civilian popula- tion to avoid waste, to undergo dis- cipline, and to bear its share of the bur- den. And it is one of the undeniable benefits of the war that we have had dis- closed to us the presence in the body politic of citizens of this high t\'pe. We might well have hoped that such men existed, even if the}' were onl}' a few; and now we know that they exist and that the}' are many. HORATIO PARKER A NOTE ON GERMAN MUSIC AND GERMAN IDEAS Many years of life in Germany have given me opportunity to form opinions at first hand, and frequent travehng between Germany and England a chance to com- pare the two nations. Not all Germans have horns, hoofs and tails, nor have all the English sunny wings and symmetrical halos, but both races are well represented by prominent personalities. My earliest impressions of the Kaiser have been constantly maintained and strengthened by successive reactions to his words and acts. He seems to typify the general aesthetic changes for the worse which we have seen in his race. 1 be- lieve his great popularity at home rested largely upon the fact that he embodied personally the weaknesses of his nation, in fact all those qualities which Anglo- Saxons most frequently deplore among Germans. The episode of the tenant of Cadinen is most characteristic. He has an infallible, instinctive preference for the spectacular and commonplace in art and music — Roland of Berlin, the Sang an Aegir — the Siegesallee. The reticence of English personalities in this regard is gratifying by comparison. Some German characteristics are ad- mirable, their social system is in many ways excellent for them and, dissociated from military ideals and practices, much of it would be good for us all, but there is no room in it for neighboring people. The Germans are bad neighbors and they expect the same of others. There is however no escape for musi- cians from their music. There is no more valid substitute for Bach than for work. Although we do not always fmd in Ger- man music the consistent clarity and trans- parence which so endear French music to us, other qualities equally indispensable are there. The art grew to maturity, to dignity and to worth among Germans although of late years it shows a devel- opment of aims and practices similar to what one finds in their other activities. The deliberately announced and practised renunciation of "absolute music,'' the lurid, literal, muddy extravagance of re- cent products suggests, to quote President Nichols' fine phrase, "the ideal of effi- ciency rather than the efficiency of the ideal." They are passionate devotees of their beliefs or convictions and their objects of devotion have gradually become lower. Instead of the ethereal heights of Bach we find concrete, detailed specifications of human affairs, often weaknesses or ugli- nesses. Austerity of thought has given way to luxuriance. The work of Richard Strauss gives us the bulk of modern German music. Max Reger ought to be considered, but 1 search vainly for a third name. No composer was ever technically better equipped than Strauss, yet we find in the Alpine Sym- phony, his latest large work, a succession of trivial details, a beautiful waterfall, charming musically but rather childish aesthetically, real sheep-bells, twelve hunt- ers with horns in the coat room, et cetera. The veil of mist at the beginning of the work is genial and impressive, a really new idea in music, but the sunrise has been done quite as well by Mendelssohn, and the whole work is altogether uncon- vincing as to its greatness. It is only fair to say that this is not his best work. Prejudice of the public and of officials in this country against modern German music is perhaps justifiable, but against the classics it is rather hysterical and quite harmful, for they can neither be spared nor replaced. More than other arts music is in a tran- sition state for it is the youngest of them. What effect upon it the war will have can- 40 JAMES FORD RHODES 4» not be foretold, but we can hope for bet- ter results than have shown themselves as yet. It is as useless to deny the beauty and greatness of classical masterpieces by Germans as to deny the same qualities in their mountains, but it is safe to expect that extravagances and weaknesses, trace- able rather to their ideals than their workmanship, will disappear, leaving the music of the world purer and stronger. JAMES FORD RHODES GERMANY'S SHAME Germany will be beaten, as she is war- ring against the ideas of the civilized world, and such a conflict can have but one end. Her ruthless submarine war- fare is "highway robbery and murder/' She carries on war by terror. " The most pathetic victim, of this terrible wrong," wrote van Loon, "will be the hale and hearty German of fifty years hence, a lonely figure, shunned by all because of the barbarities of his fathers — a lasting sacrifice to the injured decency of the human race.'' He cannot similarly re- flect, as the Southerner does when his mind reverts to the Lost Cause, of Sidney Johnston sending on the battlefield his surgeon to care for wounded Union sol- diers and of Robert E. Lee enjoining during his invasion into Pennsylvania a scrupulous respect for private property. Let us pay with our bodies for our soul's desire. — Theodore Roosevelt. THEODORE ROOSEVELT EXTRACTS FROM THE SPEECH AT PORTLAND, MAINE. MARCH 28, 1918 This country is now involved in the greatest war of all time. In common with the rest of the world it is passing through one of those tremendous crises which lie centuries apart in world his- tory. Under such conditions the ques- tion of partizanship sinks into utter in- significance compared with the great question of patriotism, compared with the duty of all of us to act with stern and whole-hearted loyalty to this mighty republic, and to serve the interests of the republic and the ideals which make the republic the hope of the future of man- kind, ... I make precisely such an appeal as I should have made fifty-five years ago, in the days of the Civil War. We stand for the nation now as Lincoln stood for the nation then. We stand against Germany now as he stood against slavery then. In those days the men who demanded peace or kept demanding conferences to talk about peace were the foes of the Union and of liberty. Today they are the foes of liberty and civiliza- tion. There is but one way to get a right- eous and lasting peace and that is to beat Germany to her knees. . . . We are pledged to the hilt as a nation to put this war through without flinching until we win the peace of overwhelming victory. We owe this to our own honor and to our future well-being. We owe it to the liberty-loving peoples of man- kind. We are pledged to secure for each well-behaved nation the right to control its own destinies and to live undominated and unharmed by others so long as it does not harm others. We are in this war because of special and intolerable grievance against Ger- many; because in addition to many other misdeeds she for two years followed a course of deliberate murder of our un- armed and unoffending citizens, men, women and children; because her contin- uous and contemptuous maltreatment of our country rendered it imperative for us to go to war in order to ensure our future safety against such maltreatment by any foreign nation. Our first duty is to beat down Germany in order to save ourselves and our belongings, in order to save our women and our children and our homes. We fight for the future of our own dear land, but we are also in the war because in common with all civilized mankind we have been outraged by Germany's callous and cynical brutalities against well-behaved weaker nations. This is a war on behalf of treaties as against scraps of paper; for the freedom of the sea against world enslavement (for Germany has been the real foe of freedom of the seas) ; it is a war on behalf of small well-behaved na- tions against the domineering and infi- nitely cruel arrogance of the brutal and scientific German militarism; a war for helpless women and children against mur- derers; a war for civilization against bar- barism, honor against infamy, right against wrong; a war against the powers of dark- ness, of death and of hell. As for our own special grievance it is far more serious than any grievance for which ever before we had to fight a foreign foe. Germany has wronged us far more seriously than Great Britain wronged us during the years that led up to our Declaration of Independence. Germany has waged war with utter faithlessness and with inhuman cruelty. The black infamy of her con- duct toward Belgium has no parallel in civilized history since the close of the dreadful wars of religion in the seventeenth century. . . . We cannot with honor 42 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 43 accept any inconclusive peace. Our aim is to beat Germany and the allies of Ger- many and we cannot abandon a single one of our allies, as long as that all\- is true to the common cause. The events of the past three and a half 3'ears have brought home to us in startling fashion the truth that in this country the man who is not wholly American and nothing but Am.erican is a traitor to Am- erica. There can be no such thing as a fifty-fift}' allegiance. There are no better Americans in this land than the Americans of German blood who are Americans and nothing else. It is a shame and a disgrace not to treat these men precisely as all other Americans are treated. They are fit to ser\'e in our armies in any position, from the major-general do\sTi; they are fit to hold an\' position in civil life, from President down. But the mien of German blood who have tried to be both Germans and Americans are not Americans at all, but traitors to America and tools and serv- ants of German)' against America. Or- ganizations like the German-American Alliance have serv^ed Germ.an\' against America. Hereafter we must see that the melting-pot really does melt. There should be but one language in this coun- try — the English language. W'e require of all immigrants who come hither to be- come citizens that they shall specificalh- forswear allegiance to the land from which they came as well as swear allegiance to this land. Hereafter we must see to it that this oath is observed in spirit as well as in letter; and that the men bom here, of whatever blood, and whether their an- cestors have lived in this land for genera- tions or came here from some foreign land, are brought up as Americans and as nothing else, speaking as their own tongue the speech of Washington and Lincoln; and knowing lo}alty to but one flag, the flag that floats over our armies now, the flag that was carried by our fathers when in their days the storm of war blew over the land, the flag that was borne b>' their fathers and fathers' fathers up the red heights of danger to the summits of glory and honor. . . . The men under Pershing reflect honor on this republic precisely because they have those qualities of courage, hardi- hood, resourcefulness and energ\' which were possessed b\' the men who followed Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson, by the men who followed Mad Anthon}' Wayne and Light Horse Harry Lee. So it is with the great and complex machinery of our industrial and social life. The simple governmental processes which sufficed in the days of Washington and even in the days of Lincoln are as utterh- inadequate today in peace as the flintlock of Bunker Hill and the smooth-bore muskets of Bull Run would be in war. We cannot afford to tolerate flintlock methods of warfare in time of war, or flintlock meth- ods of government for meeting the prob- lems of industry in time of peace. We need new weapons. But we need the old spirit back of the new weapons. We need to show the same combination of idealism and of hard-headed common sense, of in- dignation against wrong and sober cau- tion against being misled into foolish ac- tion against wrong, that our forefathers have shown in both the great national crises of the past. We need to show generosity of heart and also soundness of head. We need courage; we need com- mon sense — for without courage and com- mon sense we shall not work out our sal- vation. But even more we need to show in our relations with one another here within our own boundaries and in our relations with the rest of the nations of mankind, that qualit>- for the lack of which no other qualities atone, that qualit}' — itself the sum of many qualities — lacking which no nation can ever attain to true greatness: the qualit\- of character — character which neither does wrong nor suffers wrong; character which will rather do right to its own hurt than profit by evil done others. Let us judge each man on his worth as a man; for the line of cleavage between good men and bad men runs through every class. There are some bad men in every rank of life. Yet I believe that in every 44 THEODORE ROOSEVELT rank of life the good men far outnumber the bad. Trouble generally comes from failure to understand one another, and therefore failure to s\mpathize with one another's needs and feelings and purposes. Let us try to look at all the puzzling questions that arise with our brother's eyes as well as with our own. Lincoln laid down the great needs for us to meet. This is the people's government — our govern- ment, friends, yours and mine. It must be a government of the people; for every- body must be governed, must be con- trolled, and if there is not self-control there will in the end be alien control; if we do not govern ourselves somebody else will surely govern us. It must be government by the people; by all of us; not merel>' by some of us. It must be government for the people; again for all the people, not merely some of us; not for a mob, nor for a plutocracy, but for all decent, well- behaved men and women. Woe to those who would sunder us, brother from brother, along the lines either of envy or of arrogance! HIS LAST PUBLIC MESSAGE Mr. Roosevelt's death occurred on the 6th of Januar\', 19 19. On the 2nd he wrote the letter which follows to the American Defense Society in response to an invitation. On the night of the 5th it was read in New York at a public meeting under the auspices of the Society. I cannot be with you and so all I can do is wish you godspeed. There must be no sagging back in the fight for Americanism, merely be- cause the war is over. There are plenty of persons who have already made the assertion that they believe the American people have a short memory and that they intend to revive all the foreign associations w^hich most directly interfere with the complete Americanization of our people. Our principle in this matter should be absolutely simple. In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people. ELIHU ROOT THE ISSUES OF THE WAR Extract from an Address Before the National Security League, Chicago, September 14, 191 7 This is a war of defense. It is perfectly described in the words of the Constitution which established this nation: "To pro- vide for the common defense" and "To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity/' The national defense demands not merely force, but intelligence. It re- quires foresight, consideration of the policies and purposes of other nations, understanding of the inevitable or prob- able consequence of the acts of other nations, judgment as to the time when successful defense may be made, and when it will be too late, and prompt action before it is too late. By entering this war in April, the United States availed itself of the very last opportunity to defend itself against subjection to German power before it was too late to defend itself successfully. For many years we have pursued our peaceful course of internal development protected in a variety of ways. We were protected by the law of nations to which all civilized governments have professed their allegiance. So long as we com- mitted no injustice ourselves we could not be attacked without a violation of that law. We were protected by a series of treaties under which all the principal nations of the earth agreed to respect our rights and to maintain friendship with us. We were protected by an extensive system of arbitration created by or con- sequent upon the peace conferences at The Hague, and under which all contro- versies arising under the law and under treaties were to be settled peaceably by arbitration and not by force. We were protected by the broad expanse of ocean separating us from all great military powers, and by the bold assertion of the Monroe Doctrine that if any of those powers undertook to overpass the ocean and establish itself upon these western continents that would be regarded as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, and would call upon her to act in her defense. We were protected by the fact that the policy and fleet of Great Britain were well known to support the Monroe Doctrine. We were protected by the delicate balance of power in Eu- rope, which made it seem not worth while for any power to engage in a conflict here at the risk of suffering from its rivals there. All these protections were swept away by the war which began in Europe in 19 1 4. The war was begun by the con- certed action of Germany and Austria — the invasion of Serbia on the east by Austria and the invasion of Luxemburg and Belgium on the west by Germany. Both invasions were in violation of the law of nations, and in violation of the faith of treaties. Everybody knew that Russia was bound in good faith to come to the relief of Serbia, that France was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Russia, that Eng- land was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Belgium, so that the invasion of these two small states was the beginning of a general European war. These acts, which have drenched the world with blood, were defended and justified in the bold avowal of the Ger- man government that the interests of the German state were superior to the obligations of law and the faith of treaties; that no law or treaty was binding upon Germany which it was for the interest of Germany to violate. 45 46 ELIHU ROOT All pretense of obedience to the law of nations and of respect for solemn prom- ises was thrown off; and, in lieu of that system of lawful and moral restraint upon power which Christian civilization has been building up for a century was rein- stated the cynical philosophy of Fred- erick the Great, the greatest of the HohenzoUerns, who declares: "Statesmanship can be reduced to three principles: First, to maintain your power, and, according to circumstances, to extend it. Second, to form an alliance only for your own advantage. Third, to command fear and respect, even in the most disastrous times. " Do not be ashamed of making interested alliances from which \-ourself can derive the whole advantage. Do not make the foolish mistake of not breaking them when you be- lieve your interests require it. "Above all, uphold the following maxim: To despoil your neighbors is to deprive them of the means of injuring you. "When he is about to conclude a treaty with some foreign power, if a sovereign re- members he is a Christian, he is lost." From 1914 until the present, in a war waged by Germany with a revolting barbarity unequaled since the conquests of Genghis Khan, Germany has violated every rule agreed upon by civilized na- tions in modern times to mitigate the barbarities of war or to protect the rights of non-combatants and neutrals. She had no grievance against Belgium except that Belgium stood upon her admitted rights and refused to break the faith of her treaties by consenting that the neu- trality of her territory should be violated to give Germany an avenue for the attack upon France. The German Kaiser has taken posses- sion of the territory of Belgium and sub- jected her people to the hard yoke of a brutal soldiery. He has extorted vast sums from her peaceful cities. He has burned her towns and battered down her noble churches. He has stripped the Belgian factories of their machinery and deprived them of the raw material of manufacture. He has carried away her workmen by tens of thousands into slav- ery, and her women into worse than slavery. He has slain peaceful non-com- batants by the hundred, undeterred by the helplessness of age, of infancy, or of womanhood. He has done the same in northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, in Roumania. In all of these countries women have been outraged by the thou- sand, by tens of thousands, and who ever heard of a German soldier being punished for rape, or robbery, or murder? These revolting outrages upon human- ity and law are not the casual incidents of war, but are the results of a settled policy of frightfulness answering to the maxim of Frederick the Great to "command respect through fear." Why were these things done by Ger- many? The answer rests upon the accumulated evidence of German acts and German words so conclusive that no pretense can cover it, no sophistry can disguise it. The answer is that this war was begun and these crimes against hu- manity were done because Germany was pursuing the hereditary policy of the HohenzoUerns and following the instinct of the arrogant military caste which rules Prussia, to grasp the overlordship of the civilized w^orld and establish an empire in which she should play the role of ancient Rome. They were done because Prussian militarism still pursues the policy of power through conquest, of aggrandizement through force and fear, which in little more than two centuries has brought the puny mark of Branden- burg with its million and a half of people to the control of a vast empire — the greatest armed force of the modern world. It now appears beyond the possibility of doubt that this war was made by Ger- many pursuing a long and settled pur- pose. For many years she had been preparing to do exactly what she has done, with a thoroughness, a perfection of plans, and a vastness of provision in men, munitions and supplies never before equaled or approached in human history. She brought the war on when she chose, because she chose, in the belief that she could conquer the earth, nation by nation. ELIHU ROOT 47 All nations are egotistical, all peoples think most highly of their own qualities, and regard other peoples as inferior; but the egotism of the ruling class of Prussia is be\'ond all example and it is active and aggressive. The>- believe that German\- is entitled to rule the world b\' virtue of her superiorit}' in all these qualities which they include under the term '"' Kultur,'' and b}' reason of her power to compel submission by the sword. That belief does not evaporate in theorw It is translated into action, and this war is the action which results. This belief of national superiorit\' and the right to assert it everywhere is a tradition from the great Frederick. It has been instilled into the minds of the German people through all the universi- ties and schools. It has been preached from her pulpits and taught b>- her philosophers and historians. It has been maintained b\' her government and it will never cease to furnish the motive for the people of Prussia so long as German power enables the militar)' autocrac>' of Prussia to act upon it with success. Plainl}- if the power of the German government is to continue, America can no longer look for protection to the law of nations or the faith of treaties or the instincts of humanity or the restraints of modern civilization. Plainly, also, if we had sta\ed out of the war and Germany had won there would no longer have been a balance of power in Europe or a British tleet to support the Monroe Doctrine and protect America. Does any one indulge in the foolish assumption that Germany would not then have extended her lust for power by conquest to the American continent? Let him consider what it is for which the nations of Europe have been chiefl\- con- tending for centuries past. It has been for colonies. It has been to bring the unoccupied or weakl}' held spaces of the earth under their flags and their political control, in order to increase their trade and their power. Spain, Holland, Portugal, England, France, have all had their turn, and have covered the earth with their possessions. For thirt\' \ears Germany, the last comer, has been pressing forward with feverish activity the acquisition of stations for her power on ever\- coast and ever}* sea, restive and resentful because she has been obliged to take what others have left. Europe, Asia and Africa have been taken up. The Americas alone remain. Here in the vast and undefended spaces of the new world, fraught with potential wealth incalculable, German}' could "fmd her place in the sun," to use her emperor's phrase; Germany could fmd her "liberty of national evolution,'' to use his phrase again. Ever}' traditional polic}', ever}- instinct of predatory Prussia, would urge her into this new field of aggrandizement. What would prevent? The Monroe Doctrine? Yes. But what is the Mon- roe Doctrine as against a nation which respects onl}- force, unless it can be main- tained b}" force? We already know how the German government feels about the Monroe Doctrine. Bismarck declared it to be a piece of colossal impudence; and, when President Roosevelt interfered to assert the Doc- trine for the protection of Venezuela, the present Kaiser declared that if he had then had a larger nav}' he would have taken America b}' the scruff of the neck. If we had sta}ed out of the war, and German}' had won, we should have had to defend the Monroe Doctrine b}- force or abandon it; and if we abandoned it there would have been a Geiman naval base in the Caribbean commanding the Panama Canal, depriving us of that strategic line which unites our eastern and western coasts, and depriving us of the protection the expanse of ocean once gave; and an America unable or un- willing to protect herself against the establishment of a German naval base in the Caribbean would lie at the mercy of Germany, and subject to Germany's orders. America's independence would be gone unless she was read}' to fight for it, and her securit}' would thenceforth be not a securit}' of freedom, but onl}' a security purchased b}' submission. 48 ELIHU ROOT But if America had stayed out of the war and Germany had won, could we have defended the Monroe Doctrine? Could we have maintained our inde- pendence? For an answer to that ques- tion consider what we have been doing since the 2d of April last, when war was declared. Congress has been in continuous ses- sion passing with unprecedented rapidity laws containing grants of power and of money unexampled in our history. The executive establishment has been strain- ing every nerve to prepare for war. The ablest and strongest leaders of industrial activity have been called from all parts of the country to aid the government. The people of the country have generously responded with noble loyalty and enthu- siasm to the call for the surrender of money and of customary rights, and the supply of men to the service of the country. Nearly half a year has passed, and still we are not ready to fight. I am not blaming the government. It was inevi- table. Preparation for modern war can- not be made briefly or speedily. It requires time — long periods of time; and the more peaceful and unprepared for war a democracy is, the longer is the time required. It would have required just as long for America to prepare for war if we had stayed out of this war and Germany had won and we had undertaken then to defend the Monroe Doctrine or to defend our coasts when we had lost the protection of the Monroe Doctrine. Month after month would have passed with no ade- quate army ready to fight, just as these recent months have passed. But what would Germany have been doing in the meantime? How long would it have been before our attempts at prep- aration would have been stopped by German arms? A country that is forced to defend itself against the aggression of a military autocracy always prepared for war must herself be prepared for war beforehand or she never will have the opportunity to prepare. The history, the character, the avowed principles of action, the manifest and undisguised purposes of the German autocracy made it clear and certain that if America stayed out of the great war, and Germany won, America would forth- with be required to defend herself and would be unable to defend herself against the same lust for conquest, the same will to dominate the world, which has made Europe a bloody shambles. When Germany did actually apply her principles of action to us; when by the invasion of Belgium she violated the solemn covenant she had made with us to observe the law of neutrality established for the protection of peaceful states; when she had arrogantly demanded that American commerce should surrender its lawful right of passage upon the high seas under penalty of destruction; when she had sunk American ships and sent to their death hundreds of American citi- zens, peaceful men, women, and children; when the Gulflight and the Falaba and the Persia and the Arabic and the Sussex and the Lusitania had been torpedoed without warning, in contempt of law and of humanity; when the German embassy at Washington had been found to be the headquarters of a vast conspiracy of cor- ruption within our country, inciting sedi- tion and concealing infernal machines in the cargoes of our ships and blowing up our factories with the workmen laboring in them, and when the government of Germany had been discovered attempting to incite Mexico and Japan to form a league with her to attack us and to bring about a dismemberment of our territory, — then the question presented to the Ameri- can people was not what shall be done regarding each of these specific aggres- sions taken by itself, but what shall be done by America to defend her commerce, her territory, her citizens, her independ- ence, her liberty, her life as a nation against the continuance of assaults al- ready begun by that mighty and con- scienceless power which has swept aside every restraint and every principle of Christian civilization and is seeking to ELIHU ROOT 49 force upon a subjugated world the dark and cruel rule of a barbarous past? The question was how shall peaceful and unprepared and liberty loving Amer- ica save herself from subjection to the military power of Germany? There was but one possible answer. There was but one chance for rescue and that was to act at once while the other democracies of the world were still maintaining their liberty against the oppressor, to prepare at once while the armies and the navies of England and France and Italy and Russia and Roumania were holding down Germany so that she could not attack us while our preparation was but half accom- plished, to strike while there were allies loving freedom like ourselves to strike with us, to do our share to prevent the German Kaiser from acquiring that dom- ination over the world which would have left us without friends to aid us, without preparation, and without the possibility of successful defense. The instinct of the American democracy which led it to act when it did arose from a long delayed and reluctant conscious- ness still vague and half expressed, that this is no ordinary war which the world is waging. It is no contest for petty policies and profits. It is a mighty and all-em- bracing struggle between two conflicting principles of human right and human duty. It is a conflict between the divine right of kings to govern mankind through armies and nobles, and the right of the peoples of the earth who toil and endure and aspire to govern themselves by law in the freedom of individual manhood. It is the climax of the supreme strug- gle between autocracy and democracy. No nation can stand aside and be free from its effects. The two systems can- not endure together in the same world. If autocracy triumphs, military power lustful of dominion, supreme in strength, intolerant of human rights, holding itself superior to law, to morals, to faith, to compassion, will crush out the free de- mocracies of the world. If autocracy is defeated and nations are compelled to recognize the rule of law and of morals, then and then only will democracy be safe. To this great conflict for human rights and human liberty America has com- mitted herself. There can be no back- ward step. There must be either humil- iating and degrading submission or terri- ble defeat or glorious victory. It was no human will that brought us to this pass. It was not the President. It was not Congress. It was not the press. It was not any political party. It was not any section or part of our people. It was that in the providence of God the mighty forces that determine the destin- ies of mankind beyond the control of human purpose have brought to us the time, the occasion, the necessity, that this peaceful people so long enjoying the blessings of liberty and justice for which their fathers fought and sacrificed shall again gird themselves for conflict, and with all the forces of manhood nurtured and strengthened by liberty offer again the sacrifice of possessions and of life itself, that this nation may still be free, that the mission of American democracy shall not have failed, that the world shall be free. II OUR INTEREST IN THE VIOLATION OF BELGIUM Extract From Address Before the New York Republican Convention, February 15, 1916 The American democracy stands for something more than beef and cotton and grain and manufactures; stands for something that cannot be measured by rates of exchange, and does not rise or fall with the balance of trade. The American people achieved liberty and schooled themselves to the service of justice before they acquired wealth, and they value their country's liberty and 50 ELIHU ROOT justice above all their pride of possessions. Beneath their comfortable optimism and apparent indifference they have a con- ception of their great republic as brave and strong and noble to hand down to their children the blessings of freedom and just and equal laws. They have embodied their principles of government in fixed rules of right conduct which they jealously preserve, and, with the instinct of individual freedom, they stand for a government of laws and not of men. They deem that the moral laws which formulate the duties of men towards each other are binding upon nations equally with individuals. Informed by their own experience, confirmed by their ob- servation of international life, they have come to see that the independence of nations, the liberty of their peoples, justice and humanity, cannot be main- tained upon the good nature, the kindly feeling, of the strong towards the weak; that real independence, real liberty, can- not rest upon sufferance; that peace and liberty can be preserved only by the authority and observance of rules of national conduct founded upon the prin- ciples of justice and humanity; only by the establishment of law among nations, responsive to the enlightened public opinion of mankind. To them liberty means not liberty for themselves alone, but for all who are oppressed. Justice means not justice for themselves alone, but a shield for all who are weak against the aggression of the strong. When their deeper natures are stirred they have a spiritual vision in which the spread and perfection of free self-government shall rescue the humble who toil and endure, from the hideous wrongs inflicted upon them by ambition and lust for power, and they cherish in their heart of hearts an ideal of their country loyal to the mission of liberty for the lifting up of the oppressed and bringing in the rule of righteousness and peace. To this people, the invasion of Bel- gium brought a shock of amazement and horror. The people of Belgium were peaceable, industrious, law-abiding, self- governing and free. They had no quar- rel with any one on earth. They were at- tacked by overwhelming military power; their country was devastated by fire and sword; they were slain by tens of thou- sands; their independence was destroyed and their liberty was subjected to the rule of an invader, for no other cause than that they defended their admitted rights. There was no question of fact; there was no question of law; there was not a plausible pretense of any other cause. The admitted rights of Belgium stood in the way of a mightier nation's purpose; and Belgium was crushed. When the true nature of these events was realized, the people of the United States did not hesitate in their feeling or in their judgment. Deepest sympathy with downtrodden Belgium and stern con- demnation of the invader were virtually universal. Wherever there was respect for law, it revolted against the wrong done to Belgium. Wherever there was true passion for liberty, it blazed out for Belgium. Wherever there was humanity, it mourned for Belgium. As the realiza- tion of the truth spread, it carried a vague feeling that not merely sentiment but loyalty to the eternal principles of right was involved in the attitude of the American people. And it was so, for if the nations were to be indifferent to this first great concrete case for a century of military power trampling under foot at will the independence, the liberty and the life of a peaceful and unoffending people in repudiation of the faith of treaties and the law of nations and of morality and of humanity — if the public opinion of the world was to remain silent upon that, neutral upon that, then all talk about peace and justice and international law and the rights of man, the progress of humanity and the spread of liberty is idle patter — mere weak sentimentality; then opinion is powerless and brute force rules and will rule the world. If no dif- ference is recognized between right and wrong, then there are no moral standards. There come times in the lives of nations ELIHU ROOT 5» as of men when to treat wrong as if it were right is treason to the right. The American people were entitled not merely to feel but to speak concerning the wrong done to Belgium. It was not like interference in the internal affairs of Mexico or any other nation, for this was an international wrong. The law pro- tecting Belgium which was violated was our law and the law of every other civil- ized country. For generations we had been urging on and helping in its devel- opment and establishment. We had spent our efforts and our money to that end. In legislative resolution and execu- tive declaration and diplomatic corre- spondence and special treaties and inter- national conferences and conventions we had played our part in conjunction with other civilized countries in making that law. We had bound ourselves by it; we had regulated our conduct by it; and we were entitled to have other nations observe it. That law was the protection of our peace and security. It was our safeguard against the necessity of main- taining great armaments and wasting our substance in continual readiness for war. Our interest in having it main- tained as the law of nations was a sub- stantial, valuable, permanent interest, just as real as your interest and mine in having maintained and enforced the laws against assault and robbery and arson which protect our personal safety and property. Moreover, that law was written into a solemn and formal con- vention, signed and ratified by Germany and Belgium and France and the United States in which those other countries agreed with us that the law should be observed. When Belgium was invaded that agreement was binding not only morally but strictly and technically, be- cause there was then no nation a party to the war which was not also a party to the convention. The invasion of Belgium was a breach of contract with us for the maintenance of a law of nations which was the protection of our peace, and the interest which sustained the contract justified an objection to its breach. There was no question here of interfering in the quarrels of Europe. We had a right to be neutral and we were neutral as to the quarrel between Ger- many and France, but when as an inci- dent to the prosecution of that quarrel Germany broke the law which we were entitled to have preserved, and which she had agreed with us to preserve, we were entitled to be heard in the assertion of our own national right. With the right to speak came responsibility, and with responsibility came duty — duty of gov- ernment tow^ards all the peaceful men and women in America not to acquiesce in the destruction of the law which pro- tected them, for if the world assents to this great and signal violation of the law of nations, then the law of nations no longer exists and we have no protection save in subserviency or in force. And with the right to speak there came to this, the greatest of neutral nations, the greatest of free democracies, another duty to the cause of liberty and justice for which America stands; duty to the ideals of America's nobler nature; duty to the honor of her past and the hopes of her future; for this law was a bulwark of peace and justice to the world; it was a barrier to the spread of war; it was a safe- guard to the independence and liberty of all small, weak states. It marks the progress of civilization. If the world con- sents to its destruction, the world turns backwards towards savager>', and Amer- ica's assent would be America's abandon- ment of the mission of democracy. WILLIAM M. SLOANE EXTRACTS FROM A HISTORY OF PEACE Public Lectures Delivered in Several Universities, 1917-1918 I But as the war progressed it proved a more desperate struggle than had been deemed possible, and elements of brutal ruthlessness which might have been foreseen, but were not, began to distress not only the belligerents, but substanti- ally the entire civilized world. It has proved to be not merely a struggle for the seizure of power in the less civilized parts of the earth, but the grim array of two types of civilization, our own and that of Germany, for their very existence. Into this titanic struggle we have thrown ourselves whole-heartedh' for the main- tenance of self-respect in part, but largely from a sense of the most imperative duty to preserve the institutions and tradi- tions not merely dear to us, as they are, but essential to the onh' life we are able to live — for self-preservation as well as for self-respect. Dimly and vaguely con- scious of this as we fmally are we begin, as other great powers are doing, to ask our- selves for what we are appealing to that last awful tribunal of bloodshed; not what we want in the large, which seems clear enough, but what we must fix in detail. Some are saying that we war for nationality, some for democracy, and many for the liberation of enslaved peoples from the bondage of autocracy; more clearly stated, for nationality every- where such as we possess at home, for democratic government everywhere such as we maintain in America, for liberty under law such as Americans demand and enjoy. Those who have read history superficially talk, as if it were a matter of absolute right, not of expediency and right, about restoring the stolen Schles- wig-Holstein to Denmark, the stolen Al- sace-Lorraine to France, the stolen Savoy to Italy; Poland and Finland to inde- pendence, Persia to autonomy, the Slavs of Austria-Hungary to equal rights with Germans and Magyars under the Haps- burgs, the Shantung peninsula to China, Ireland to home rule, and all the depend- encies of the United States to self-govern- ment. Of course these are only samples: there are eighteen peoples and nations within the former confines of Russia; there are certainly two Chinas, perhaps three; within the Balkan peninsula are five different claimants to self-directing nationality. To those who have deeply studied history these are not the words of sober- ness and sense. Since the world began there have been aggregations of indivi- duals united by blood or territory but mainly by common interest, the res- puhlica: throughout the ages some have shown capacity for self-government, some have not. Society in the large sense had its origins not in physical strength; there never were gorilla communities reliant on their own brute strength for protection against marauders, while simultaneously practicing the arts of peace in the tillage of their fields. There was no uplift to- ward civilization in the hunter stage, and no smooth transition from that to the nomadic anci further to the settled oc- cupations of fields, villages and towns. In every case known to research there were wars and convulsions from which guile, that is, mind, emerged triumphant over brute force. It was the union of this with physical weakness which pro- duced the strength essential to security: there was of course constant warfare, but fortification, tactics and strategy, how- ever primitive, overwhelmed sheer brute onset; organization conquered numbers, nerve power, which is will-power, began the never-ceasing push of animalism back 52 WILLIAM M. SLOANE 53 into the limbo of impotence . Then histon- began; ideals were formed; the statesman outran the general, even, in all that makes for progress. \\'h\' civilization moved westward to Europe and crossed the Atlantic is understood and can be ex- plained, but not in a few words. The fact is sufficient and the vestiges of its march are an open book to the traveler. What was initialK' true remained true; so completely true that around the globe there were and are degrees of culture among persons and peoples, that the inequalit>' of adaptation to high forms of living is glaring, that the social institu- tions of the few are absolutely impossible to the many, that politics must fit a na- tion like a garment and that misfits cause unrest with recourse to violence. Past and present are words totalh' destitute of meaning in the grand politics of our planet. The past is in the present, it is here and now as regards institutions, laws and forms of government. We cannot bum this fact deep enough into our souls. It is a crime against humanit)- to think of other peoples in terms of ourselves and our folkwa\s; in terms of our ideals and efforts to realize them. There is no reprobation sufficient for that trend toward intervention of a narrow self-sufficienc\- which conceives of the savage, the barbarian, the man of the tribe, the city-state; and of the modern nation in its varied forms as either desir- ing or needing the complexities of free democracy How far even we ourselves are fit to work the most perplexing and expensive s\'stem of government ever devised is as \"et undetermined. But for the free chance, the unhampered op- portunit}' to realize our ideals, we do and will sweat mone}' and blood; we lay, and, please God, we ever will lay our lives and fortunes on the altar of political liberty. Hitherto we have made our enormous sacrifices for ourselves and those within our gates; henceforth, we make the same freewill offering for the great world without, in so far as it desires our gifts and can by their acceptance strengthen its own purposes and fructif>" the blossoms of its own aspiration. W> shall indeed be foolish if in the coming peace there is an\' effort, successful or otherwise, to impose on any or all the stratified human- it}' of the world our dim, vague, \'et pre- cious and vital notions of nationality, con- stitutional government, or of democracy, that iridescent arch of promise in our heaven. Such a preamble to peace negotiation would probabl}' chill man\' ardent re- formers and be stigmatized as reaction- ary But the plea is hypocritical and Pharisaic because the merest wa\-farer can read the clear truth: peace stability depends on national institutions being a good fit, and no institutions from a second- hand shop will fit any single nation when the war is over. Japan wants a limited autocracy — strange oriental contradic- tion in terms — and has it. What Russia or the many Russias desire they must secure; either anarch}- or monarchy with or without checks and balances. France must remain a centrahzed republic or oligarch}-, as it is, or else turn federal republic, as has been proposed. And so on throughout the list; with stable govern- ments there can be peace, without them none. There are careful thinkers holding the conviction that when Bismarck set up the Thiers government and gave it the prestige of ending the war of 1870, he knew the device could barely outlast a generation. If we want an armistice, let us b}- all means set up governments which correspond to our own notions; if we want peace, let the respective peoples set up their own in order to have within their borders the only peace which can insure peace without. II This is a novelty in the relation of na- tions to each other because in the passing and antecedent ages the contracting parties under international law have without exception had governments im- posed on them b}- the hard hand of historv or custom, or else by the hostile temper of each nation regarding ever}' other. The onl}- country working a system made b}' a 54 WILLIAM M. SLOANE constitutional or constituent assembly is our own; and to this single fact we owe the rock-ribbed durabilit\- of the constitu- tions under which we live, state and federal. How shameful such an outcome ! many will exclaim. Perhaps. It re- mains a fact that " shame in the mantle of profit or advantage to its citizens has ever been pronounced wisdom." There is no inherent absolute right in sentimentalit}' or emotionalism; neither is there any in the pragmatism based on ruthless, selfish practicalit}'. But in negotiating a peace with a people content in its particular form of government there is no emotional- ism whatever and no pragmatism, there is just an effort to secure what the world has set out to get. Antecedent to the conclusion of the next world-charter the peoples must — not by plebiscite, a futile deceptive trick}' device, but in representa- tive assemblies — select and instruct their negotiators, responsible delegates of the popular will, constitutional bodies with power to maintain or to discard the men and groups who have made and conducted the war. Mere appointees of a party machine or a ruling caste cannot negotiate anything stable and bring in the reign of new principles in international relations. If theoretical independence is to be re- placed b\' actual interdependence the fact must be proclaimed; if not, there can be no enduring peace. .Mephistopheles declares: " I am a part of the force which, ever desiring evil, yet alwa\s creates the good." Possibly there is something basic in good resulting from evil, as it does; but impatient democracy calls for a good be- ginning that there may be surely a good end. EXTRACT FROM A HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY Public Lectures Delivered before Several Universities, 1917-191; '' 1 must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the wind, " said the melanchol\' Jaques, "To blow on whom I please." This is the democracy of peace, but that of war is quite another matter. Be- neath, above and around the democrac}' of war is liberty to choose superiors, to sen.'e and to sacrifice; the libert\- of stern duty, freedom from selfishness. Radical democrac}' in war spurns subordination and promotes coordination; conservative democrac}- exacts subordination and obedience to authority, once constituted. It supports the administration; the other hampers it. One is quick and determined ; the other noisy and impulsive, or else sullen and silent. Radicals cry peace when there is no peace and invite attack by unreadiness; conservatives prevent war by preparedness for it in time of peace. The latter concentrate responsi- bility in elected officials for long terms: the former swap horses while crossing the stream. To these, any man suffices for any emergency at any instant; to those. confidence in experience, character and previous training is axiomatic. Competenc}' and efficiency are on one side; on the other, unshaken faith in all human nature and trust in spontaneity, as the lively hope of victory. Spontane- it}- has gone far, will go far again; but ultimate victor}- comes when holocausts of human victims have been offered at its shrine, and after the one most gifted man having been made responsible, has welded his self-willed democrats into obedient ironsides. Cromwell did this; Napoleon did it; neither proved able either to make a lasting peace or to triumph as a peaceful administrator. Yet emergenc}' requires the man and if he come forward as did Lincoln and Grant the country is saved nationally, institutionally and morall}'.. The close of our Civil War was the con- clusive proof of democratic efficiency in war as well as in peace. The conqueror firmh' commanded a peace and dismissed himself with a veteran soldier}- to peaceful pursuits; while a democratic people. WILLIAM M. SLOANE 55 blended of radicals and conservatives, promptly, over-hastily, perhaps, but not ungenerously, began the work of reconcil- iation and reconstruction, happih- con- cluded within the brief space of a single generation. In war the greatest thing is not heroism, nor scientific murder, nor machiner\', nor even discipline and tactics : it alwa\s was and remains strateg\", which is the art of >^^nning victory with the least possible destruction either of life or of propert}-. Examined from this point of view, mon- arch\- and aristocrac\' have on the whole had the best of it in warfare. Washing- ton was a consummate strategist and in a societ}' like that of eighteenth century America could prove it. So could Lee in the Civil War, emerging as he did from a similar societ>' and acting through its organs. Probabl}' McClellan was the prominent strategist and arm\'-builder of the northern side, but his fondness for compromise, his stem militarism and his pathetic concern for the lives and well- being of his soldiers were so resented b\' impatient democracy as to relegate him to temporar}' obscurity. The wars of radi- cal democracy during the first French re- public, in our own later struggles, and in South Africa, were blood\- and destructive of material resources; >'es, even ruthless and unprincipled and atrocious. Despair begets madness and scouts agreements made in time of peace to ameliorate war- like brutalitw There is a strateg>^ of peace as well as of war: there would have been no Civil War in America had we possessed an army proportionate to the then existing navy in size, in discipline, and in lo>alt>-. It was a thoroughh* democratic navy, far more democratic than the army, because its personnel was far removed in the performance of duty from political strife and social pretensions. It saw the countr\' from without as well as from within, and the sailors of every rank from ever>' section were, with rare exceptions, passionately loyal to the L'nion. Our navy was and remains a superb example of democratic etficiency for purposes of defensive war. Provided we avoid the loose thinking that accompanies uncertain language, and reduce the concept of democracy to the definite limits expressed b\' a state of mind, we shall see the world of to-da>' as it is. Emperor, king, president, consul or chief magistrate; he is a monarch abso- lute, sa}'s the people, while and when he does our will. Even the papac\-, in the opinion of the most learned doctors of the church throughout the ages, expresses the will of God because founded on the will of the people: vox popidi, vox dei. At bottom all secular and political thought is, though it should not be, deistic rather than theistic, and this god in the form of popular will which sets up states and systems, even ecclesiastical rule, is a mere adumbration of the God who created men as political beings, even in their embr\-onic societies founded on guile, perpetuated in brains, and. by long-suffering, developed into nations. All government apparenth' rests on the deistic concept, even dem- ocratic government in its narrowest and concretest sense of rule by public opinion through powers adapted to make democ- racy' efficient alike in its peaceful evolu- tion, and in its defense against mob rule or foreign attack. Two things are es- sential to efficiency, efficient citizens and an efficient s\'stem. Of neither is there an absolute standard. In the long vistas of democratic evolu- tion, popular opinion has emplo>'ed every known form of social order and organiza- tion, monarchy and txranny; aristocracy and oligarch}', politeia and democracy. Trial has been made of despotism, of conspiracy, of ochlocrac\': each and all devices to put base men into power, each and all they have been discarded, often after discouraging, heartrending strug- gle and sacrifice, but the\^ have been discarded. Sur\'ivals of course there are: of privilege, personal and class; of un- equal representation and legislation, of judicial per\'ersion and misprision of justice. But for all that, the diplomacv of democracy, the moral and material well-being under democrac}', the swift, stern retort of war by democracy,all alike 56 WILLIAM M. SLOANE stand, if not as examples, at least as en- couragements to believe that in nothing is democracy feebler and that in most things it is healthier than other systems of society and politics. The divine right of the people is only another form of the divine right of kings as understood in our day. The president has just as much divine right in his representative character, and of the same kind, as a hereditary monarch, since everywhere and among all classes of civilized man the right to overturn a throne is the first article of faith. Ex- pediency is of course another matter. What is expedient in the United States of America we ourselves admit in practice is inexpedient and impossible in the United States of Mexico. The American doctrine of recognition was for a time based on the de facto principle; under the changed conditions of the Civil War and of international relations on this conti- nent, it has reverted to the de jure principle in many startling instances. Consist- ency in public law and foreign policy is far to seek. When Napoleon violated the neutrality of the little Duchy of Anhalt there were shouts of execration from all the monarchies; when the same monarchies adopted the Metternich system and violated the neutrality of the Sicilies and of Spain there was almost universal ap- plause. Aristocracies and democracies have been exactly as inconsistent one as the other. The appeal to self-preserva- tion, the declaration that the state is in danger seems to justify any breach of faith, and to turn treaties into waste paper. Many of you will remember that when Panurge proposed a "problematick'' theme: to wit whether he should marry or not marry, the faithful Trouillogan at first replied, yea or nay, both together; then on second thought he opined not the one nor the other. Which answers the mystified Panurge characterized as repug- nant and contradictory, exclaiming that he understands them not. Gargantua recalled the philosopher who said he owned his wife, although she did not own him. Rondibilis considered the answers like the "neuter in physick,'' neither sick nor healthful; or like the mean in philoso- phy, the abnegation of both extremes. Hippothades quoted the apostle: Those that are married, let them be as if they were not married: and those that have wives let them be as if they had no wives at all. 1 thus interpret, quoth Panta- gruel with finality the having and not having of a wife. To have a wife is to use her as nature hath ordained for the aid, society and solace of man, and propa- gating of his race : To have no wife is not to be uxorious, play the coward and be lazy about her and not for her sake to dis- dain the lustre of that affection which man owes to God; or yet to leave for her those oifices and duties which he owes unto his country, unto his friends and kindred; or for her to abandon and for- sake his precious studies and business of account; to wait still on her will, her beck, and her vapors. If we be pleased in this sense to consider the ''having'' and "not having'' a wife we shall indeed find no re- pugancy or contradiction in the terms at all . Our western world is wedded to democ- racy. There can be no question of "to marry or not to marry." Of "yea and nay, both together," and on second thought of "not the one nor the other," there is a large and grave question, and the best answer for us is that of Pantagruel. We are not to be, uxorious and play the coward, not for democracy's sake to scorn God and common sense, not to neglect the offices and duties we owe to country, friends and kindred, our pre- cious studies and business of account. Democracy exists for the aid and solace of Man and is to be used as nature hath ordained. You can no more circumscribe the democratic state of mind than you can the feminine. Held to strict ac- countability for the performance of its duty and its task, that state of mind has proved both adaptable and efficient, and if we who compose and manage the system are neither uxorious, cowardly, nor lazy, the system will prove like a good husband or a good wife the means of perpetuating and adorning the order of nature in poli- tics and society. WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER THE SHIPWRECK OF KLLTUR From "Germany vs. Civilization" Wherever Germany extends her swa\', she r?n";z5 Culture. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, p. 38. Culture and the State are antagonists: a "Culture-State" is merel\' a modern idea. The one lives upon the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. ... In the history of European Culture the rise of the [German] Empire signifies, above all, a dis- placement of the centre of gravity. Every- where people are already aware of this: in things that realh' matter — and these after all constitute Culture — the Germans are no longer worth considering. The Tii-ilight of the Idols, p. 54. Every great crime against Culture for the last four centuries lies upon their [the German] conscience. Ecce Homo, p. 124. Man started among the beasts in whose struggle for existence there is the unending play and counterpla\' between brute force and cunning. Man became Man by sloughing off the qualities which chain the Beast forever to the Beasts' level. Meas- uring b>' geological ages we see him emerge with incredible slowness from Beast-hood into Man-hood; and so up through Sav- agery and Barbarism, till he stands erect on the lowest step of Civilization; and then he mounts, still with groping hesita- tion, with frequent pauses, and with actual backslidings, the ladder of Ideals. Gradually there dawn in him instincts, motives, which neither the Beast, the Savage, nor the Barbarian ever knows. These are the stuff through which he dis- covers that he has a soul, the august and awful inmate of his inmost self. Thenceforward Man fares on his jour- ney through life, a strange blend of animal and of spirit — the animal in him always on the alert to regain entire mastery, and the spirit, though often baffled and betrayed, ready to renew its divine mission. This antagonism runs through all human af- fairs; and w'hen the earliest moraHsts looked beneath the surface of life and ex- amined the fortunes and deeds of men, they discerned that this is a moral world in which the forces of good and the forces of evil — God and Devil — battle forever for control. Subsequent scrutiny has always reached the conclusion that the only permanent good is spiritual. Pride of intellect, beaut\' of form and face, the conquests of science over the material world, the triumphs of w^ar-lords after great battles won and imperial territories annexed — these are not the true measure of Civilization. True Civilization is of the spirit, whose treasure the world can neither give nor take awaw How ir- relevant, how external and fleeting in the presence of Emerson is the uncounted lucre of Cecil Rhodes or of Rockefeller! With what scorn w'ould Washington have repelled the suggestion that he should ex- change places with Frederick the Great! With what iron}' would Lincoln have dis- missed a proffered exchange with William 11! To Washington and Lincoln the pos- sibility of being degraded to the level of Frederick and of William would have been abhorrent. So rapid has been Man's subjugation of Nature, and so astounding the inventions by which he has turned her laws into servants of his own will, that it has come to be the fashion to mistake these things for progress. We even hear them blithely lauded as essentials of Civilization. But Man, and not his tools, makes Civiliza- tion, and its character will be either ani- mal or spiritual according to his nature. Ability to shoot up in an express elevator to the top of a fifty-story New York sky- 57 58 WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER scraper, or to motor a hundred miles in an hour, or to telephone across the continent, or to send messages by wireless telegraph, does not constitute Civilization. It took Shakespeare two days to ride on horse- back from Stratford to London; has poetry out-soared Shakespeare in these days when one can be whirled from Strat- ford to London in two hours? Inventions and ideas also bless or curse according to the spirit of their user. Hardly had printing been discovered, to bring incalculable benefit to mankind, before the Devil saw his profit in it, and he has kept the presses of the world sup- plied with copy ever since. The modern probing into Nature has already produced a state of mind in scientific investigators which awakens anxiety as to the source from which their knowledge springs. Many religions have had a foreboding that there dwells something at the heart of the world which should not be unveiled, some primordial terror which, like the Gorgon, blasts those who look upon it. To hide this from the common gaze, mysteries were devised which it was sacrilege to attempt to penetrate, and Faith, not Reason, was declared the door to the truth that saved. Modern Science, inquisitive and reso- lute, undaunted and tireless, has drilled its shafts of investigation, and has applied its microscope and its test-tube throughout the domain of Matter: and it has found Matter, and more Matter and nothing but Matter, apparently directed by mate- rial laws. The dyer's hand is subdued to what it works in. Assuming that there is a spirit in Man, might not that spirit be slowly stifled, materialiied, and finally extinguished by continuous devotion to Matter and material laws? Might it not even come to pass that the worship of these material laws which Science has evoked should undo Man, as Frankenstein was undone by the monster he created? What if the Germans — hav- ing drawn aside the veil from the last mystery — have seen that Moloch is the Prime Mover of the world? We cannot call material laws merciless, because they proceed from that which feels nothing. So human laws devised by materialists may be logically unfeeling; and the rulers of a people who have ac- cepted the revelation that Moloch is God will naturally develop a system patterned after Moloch's commands. Ponder this well. If the Prussian pagan creed is true, then Moloch is God: his altars are the shambles of battlefields; the sacrifices most acceptable to him are the victims of combat and massacre; the hymns he de- lights in are the shrieks of ravished women, the pitiful cries of terrified little children, the mingled groans and curses of wounded and dying soldiers. His high priests are those who lead the teeming millions to slaughter — Attila, and Tamerlane, and William 11 of Hohenzollern. This is the corner-stone of Kultur, this the infernal abyss into which Kultur has already dragged Germany and would drag man- kind. Ponder this well. No plea for a place in the sun can justify the cruelty and the cunning which its attaining involves. The pomp of many armies, all marching obedient to the command of Moloch's Vice-Regent, does not hide the butcher's errand on which they speed. The Reli- gion of Valor is a thin disguise for brutal- ity, in which Man at the touch of the Devil's wand is metamorphosed back into his Beast Original. Patriotism becomes the disguise under which the primal instincts of tiger and wolf riot unleashed. In Kultur's triumph Civilization dies. Kultur is not designed to benefit any other race except the German. If it conquered, it would revive the feudal re- lation of lord and vassal, Germany being the lord and all other peoples being her vassals. Kultur, as W€ have seen at every point in this survey, permits all things to the Germans. Their religion, their sense of honor and of mercy, their respect for common men apply only to themselves. German truth ceases to be truth when it crosses the frontier. Gott, the German deity, is a tribal god, made in the image of the Germans who created him. WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 59 Shall we man-el most at the patience with which the Teutonic genius has re- ticulated such a s>"stem, or at the over- weening conceit with which each Teuton regards himself with supreme satisfaction and Kultur as the perfect Civilization which must be nailed down and riveted over the rest of the world? And what shall we sa\' of a nation which at this late day supposes that an\' one political sys- tem can be the best for all nations? If you view mankind as it is, divided into hundreds of varieties, each diifering from the others in traditions, in geographical environment, and in moral and intellec- tual capacity, you will surel\' conclude that to attempt to standardize them would be as fatuous as to wrap the earth in a uniform climate. Such fatuit\' is born in the brains of would-be world- conquerors. The great and deep and hol\' things of life do not come b\' the sword. World- conquerors by Frightfulness ma\- com- mand lip-ser\ice; they may batten on the fruits of their victim's labor: but the\- can- not command respect or friendship, lo\-- alty or love. Of all the conquering races, the Prussian has thus far been the least fitted to conciliate the vanquished. After one hundred and fort\- years Polish Prus- sia, although it has suffered uninter- mitted persecution, remains Polish in de- sires and hopes and still requires to be terrified. Fort\'-five \-ears of Prussian hectoring in Alsace and Lorraine have not diminished by a hair's breadth the French spirit there. In their more recent colonial possessions the Germans have not even pretended to wish to secure the good-will of their subjects, it being a dogma of Kultur that the dark-skinned races are in fact only animals, to be treated as such. But above political and militar>' s>s- tems. above tribal customs and standards conditioned b\' climate, are a few hal- lowed principles which sum up the ideals of civilized men, ideals which even the least civilized have acknowledged, and all have endeavored, according to their var\- ing capacit)-, to serve. Justice is one of these principles; Freedom is another; Pit>-, another. The State worshiped b>' the Germans as an abstraction "above Society" is indeed just as personal as was its medieval proto- t\-pe. But in the Middle Ages, Church and State went together; and the Church, which was the organ of religion, exercised, in theory at least, authority over the State in those matters into which religion or morals entered. But mark well that in the s\stem devised b>- Kultur, the State is omnipotent. Kultur recognizes neither morals nor religion apart from |x>- litical considerations. The conscience of the Germans and their public and private acts are in the keeping of this godless ab- straction. No wonder that poor old Haeckel shouts out his octogenarian re- joicing that the war has proved that God and immortalit\- are absurd delusions, and that Kultur is the highest achieve- ment of Man. I quote from a private letter, written b\' an eminent ph\'sician with the British expedition in France to a distinguished American ph\sician : — With all my soul I believe that the ideal of pity is the noblest thing we have, and that its denial, which waves on ever\' German tlag, is the denial of all that the greatest men have striven for for centuries. 1 see in this war the colossal strife between the doctrine which I call good, and der Geist der siets verneint. You see I am almost borrowing the language of the Kaiser. I feel that the two enormous spirits that move this world are sho\s'ing their weap- ons almost visibl\', and that never was the garment of the living world so thin over the gods that it conceals. I am not much elated by the thought. I have little opinion of providence as an ally. I am surprised at the weakness that the Kaiser shows for his pocket Deitw What we have to do in my opinion we do ourselves, and our task is none the lighter that we defend the right. But I am hardened and set by the thing I be- lieve. I and my dear boy* talked of it much as I am talking to you, for we were close friends and we felt, both of us, that we were fighting for the life of England — > es, for the safety of France — \es, for the sanctity of treaties — * The son had recently been killed. 6o WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER yes, but, behind these secondary and com- paratively material issues, for something far deeper, far greater, for something so great and deep that, if our efforts fail, I pray God I may die before I see it. Kultur, which shuts out Justice and Freedom and Pity, shuts out Chivalry also, which, if it be not fundamental like these three, is the fragrance of the higher Civilization. Saladin, the Arab, had it, in his conflict with the Crusaders. It was the ideal of every worthy knight in Christendom; it is a second nature to every modern gentleman. Grant had it at Appomattox, when he bade the vanquished officers of the Confederacy to keep their side-arms, and spared them the slightest suggestion of humiliation. But Chivalry seems to have found no lodg- ment in Prussia. I recall no generous act of Frederick the Great, or of Bismarck when he imposed terms on fallen France. The Prussian is not satiated by the over- throw of his enemies; he must see them prostrate in the dust and plant his heavy foot upon their necks. A nation accessible to Chivalry would neither have ordered the torpedoing of the passenger ship Lusitania filled with non- combatants, nor have gloated over the crime, holding great meetings for exulta- tion and gathering the children of the Fatherland into theatres and churches to sing hallelujahs over the destruction of those twelve hundred innocent souls. I turn away from such barbaric rejoicings to the pictures of the sea strewn with the bodies of drowned babies and of drowned mothers clasping their little ones in their arms. Happy those little ones, who could never grow up to have hearts like the Germans, bereft alike of Chivalry and of Pity! Happy, too, those mothers, who displa>'ed in the swift, final test of life that mother-love which neither Kaiser, Krupp, nor Kultur can vanquish. Where was Chivalry when Von Bissing, the Prussian Governor of Belgium, or- dered Edith Cavell's execution? If she had been guilty of the worst crimes im- puted to her, she might at least have been put to death with decency. Instead of that, Bissing let only a few hours inter- vene between her condemnation and her being led out at two o'clock in the morning to face the platoon of soldiers. No respite allowed for reviewing the evi- dence; no person except the prison chap- lain permitted to see her; no friend to take her last message; all hurried, clandestine, ruthless, as if Von Bissing feared that he might be deprived of his victim; he, backed by the full power of Germany; she, one woman alone in an impregnable cell, ringed about by a fortress with regiments to defend it. And when they had shot her. Von Bissing's agents, wish- ing to debase her memory, gave out to the papers that she had quailed and broken down and pleaded for mercy: but the prison chaplain told the truth. Such is Chivalry as practiced by WiUiam IPs chosen officers. Thus, wherever we test it, Kultur breaks down. It has created a nation which boasts itself superior to the common laws of humanity; a nation which asserts that Honor and Justice and Truth, that Pity and Chivalry and Self-sacrifice, have no meaning for it in its dealings with the whole world outside. It might as well assert that the law of gravity or the formulas of algebra applicable elsewhere ceased to operate on German soil. Kultur, proclaimed by the Germans as a system which will overspread the earth, is in reality not universal, but local, tribal, narrowing. No modern race ex- cept the Germans could have invented it; so only Germans can both use it and glory in its use. It is like the harness of steel and straps which a cripple has to wear: by practice he learns to move about in it with ease; but though he be a giant, he is none the less a cripple, and the steel and straps are none the less a harness. " But what!" you ask; "has not Kultur produced the highest efficiency ever known to man? Has it not trained sixty millions to such mechanical skill and mental docility that at a signal from Ber- lin they all turn east and bow in unison, and at another signal they all turn west? WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 6i Has not Kultur created an arm>- so per- fect that its units and indiNiduals could hardl\' be more machine-like if the\' were actually cogs and bolts of iron? Has not Kultur resulted in a s\'stem of education which directs every German at ever> moment of his life from the da\' he enters the Kindergarten to the da\' when he be- comes a doctor of philosophx? Has not Kultur applied science to industry* and to commerce as well as to the most trifling daily needs? Has it not subjected reli- gion and philosoph\', poetrv*, histor>', and letters, to the microscope of criticism? Has an\' other s\*stem imposed an equall\' rigid discipline or been rewarded b\' an equall\' submissive obedience?" To all these questions there is but one ans\^^er: Kultur has achieved this, and the achievement marks at once the glor)' and shipwTeck of Kultur. The object of every beneficent teaching is to take even human clods and evoke the souls latent in them; Kultur takes Germans and reduces them to the state of soulless machines. Ef!icienc\' i praiseworthy than is vital consideration is, and for what purpose. evil, then the harm done is greater in proportion to the greater efficiencw The voltage of a lightning bolt which sets fire to a to>Mi might suppl>' power to run a dozen factories. Granted that Kultur- made efficienc}' ranks first, has it been justified by its works? Are the s\ stem which plotted for the Atrocious War, and the efficienc>' which has conducted it, to be commended as the final crown of Q\ilization? Would \ou who read be proud of > our scheme of life if it revealed you as cruel, dishonorable, hing, un- chivalrous, and as an egomaniac who did not shrink at murder? Under the touch- stone of Kultur collective Germany stands so revealed. Satan, who turns all mate- rial inventions to his own uses, and sucks out the souls of men in order that their bodies and their minds ma>' serve him, is the Master of that Efficiency for Hate which Kultur has bred in Germany. "We don't care how many nations of itself no more electricit>-. The who applies it If the object be hate us, so long as the\- fear us," said recently a leader of German opinion. In such words Kultur epitomizes its message to mankind; in such words posterit\' \sill write its epitaph. Kultur has had many forerunners, dif- fering in specific aim and in scale, but similar in character. The Spanish In- quisition, for instance, was in essence al- most the exact counterpart of Kultur. It strove to comj)el absolute submission to itself as the agency "above Society," not of the Prussian Gott, but of a per\'ersion of the Christian God. The Inquisition threw over Humanity, Justice, Mercy, and set up standards of its o\sti, intended to promote onl\' its ovsti interests. To secure conformity and obedience, it im- prisoned, harassed, terrorized, tortured, and destro>-ed its victims. Like Kultur, the Inquisition maintained a large corps of eavesdroppers and spies. Like Kultur, it taught a nation to accept xsithout demur its declaration that it was engaged in the highest mission kno^vn to mankind. It did not, indeed, organize an arm\' to wage bodily war against its enemies: it simply used, in case of need, the armed force of terr^poral rulers to carr>' out its commands. It both aspired to be and was a world- power, in so far as it was co-extensive with the Spanish Empire. Millions of i>eople accepted the teach- ings of the Inquisition and fell quite naturalh" into the inhuman state of mind which such teachings induce. Like many a German who would personally shrink from committing cruel acts, the Spaniards and the other races whom the Inquisition held in subjection came to gloat over col- lective crueltv'. How man\' millions of hoHda\'-makers, men, women, and chil- dren, went out from Seville to the Ouem- adero and witnessed \\ith rejoicing the auios-da-fc of thirty-five thousand heretics whom the Inquisition burned there in the course of three centuries? The feelings of those Spanish spectators, as the>' be- held such human sacrifice offered up by the Inquisition to its deity, did not differ from those of the .Aztecs who watched the blood sacrifices on their p}ramid temples. 62 ABBOTT H. THAYER or from those of the French Terrorists who attended the dail\- exercise of the guillotine, or from those of the Germans who shouted their hallelujahs at the slaughter of the innocents in the Lusitania. Under whatever name Kultur operates, U tends downward. The individual who thinks himself a Superman is likely to end in a madhouse or on the gallows: the nation, despotic king, or hierarchy, which substitutes its own selfish interests for humanitw shuts itself out from humanity, becomes inhuman, revives and worships standards of the Beast, and heads straight for perdition. ABBOTT H. THAYER I did all 1 was fitted for, toward helping the Allies, b>' hurrying over to England early in the war, and seeing that the>- made good application of m>' concealing colora- tion discoveries to their army and navw The>' told me, over there, that the French got their camouflage entireh' from m\' book. God knows that human- it} 's cause at this ghastly moment could have the whole of me if it would help. Fortunatel)' we all know that it is always these immeasurable torture-fires out of which the world goes on getting her pure gold. HENRY \AN DYKE Late Ambassador to Holland THE CRIME OF THE Ll'SITASIA EXTR_\CT FROM AN ADDRESS AT THE AUTHORS ClUB, NoVE>'.BER I. I917. Now that we ha\e been forced into this war b\' the Imperial German menaces and attacks, the great dut\' for all of us is to realize fiill\' what we have at stake, and to spare no effort to win the real victor>- for our righteous cause. We are fighting for libert\- and the life of our countr}', just as trul>- as we did in the Revolution or in the Civil War. Free speech is precious. But there is one thing much more precious, and that is the preser\'ation of the freedom of the republic. Any inhabitant of this coimtr>' who puts destructive material into the machiner>' of the ships which are canning our brave bo\s across the ocean to serve under our flag, is a con- structive murderer and a traitor. He should face a traitor's trial and a traitor's doom. Shooting would be too good for him. If convicted he should be hanged without delaw The same thing is true of ever>' man who puts destructive material into the minds of our American citizens. urging them to be dislo>'al or recalcitrant. persuading them to evade or to resist the call which our countr\' has made for the service of all its people in the defence of its rights and its honor. These men are in fact trying to obstruct and impede the action of the Ship of State. They are imperilling the unity, the welfare, the success of our countr>" in this great strug- gle which has been forced upon her by Germany. Let them reckon with their own conscience in the sight of God for their private thoughts and feelings. But if the>' speak treason, or act treason, or incite others to treason, the>' also must face a traitor's trial and a traitor's doom. For while the>' go at large and continue their nefarious work, they imperil the lives of thousands of lo>al citizens and the safety of the republic. I have reall\' no speech to make to \ou to-night, gentlemen, except that which is contained and embodied in this bit of bronze, — a hideous medal struck in Ger- many to commemorate the unla\s-ful and cruel sinking of the steamship Lusitania. ^'ou know the stor>' of that crime. On the 7th of May, 191 5, this great passenger vessel, unarmed, and crowded ^ith human beings, going their la\^"ful errands upon the sea. was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German submarine. More than a thousand human beings lost their lives in consequence of this atro- cious misdeed. Among them were one hundred and fourteen innocent and help- less American men, women and children. The\ were drowned \^ithout pit\', " Butchered to make a [German] holiday/' The hoHday was celebrated certainl}' in Prussia, and perhaps in other parts of the German Empire. The little German chil- dren made merr>- over the death of the American children. The soldiers in the reser\"e camps joined in the jubilation. The streets were full of flags, and the air resounded v^ith cheering and singing. A German pastor in a series of discourses on the Sermon on the Mount, said: '"Who- ever cannot bring himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking of the Lusitania, him we judge to be no true Ger- man. " ( Deutsche Reden In Schwerer Zeii, No. 24, p. 7.) To cro\sTi all. medals were struck to commemorate this glorious achievement of a German U-boat. This is one of them. On one side it shows a ticket office with Death at the window giving out tickets to the innocent passengers. On the other side it shows the great ship going dowTi stem foremost (as a matter of fact she ^ 64 HENRY VAN DYKE sank bow first) and underneath is the in- scription, " Big passenger Hner Lusitania, sunk by German submarine, ^th of May, Why this discrepancy in dates? Be- cause the 5th of May, according to the Potsdam time table, was the date ap- pointed for the crime. But the Lusitania was detained for two days in New York, and so the assassination could not be car- ried out until the 7th. But the medals were already prepared with the earlier date on them, and this date must have been given to the maker of the medal by the German Admiralty. Thus the fact that the crime was premeditated and com- mitted with malice aforethought and pre- pense, is immortalized in bronze. It is a beastly, ugly medal, a characteristic work of modern German art. But 1 keep it as a memento, "lest 1 forget." In my honest judgment it is impossible for decent people in the sight of the right- eous God, to talk peace or make peace with the criminals who instigated, plotted and ordered this crime, until they have been brought to repentance. For such evil-doers there can be no peace and no forgiveness unless they renounce their evil deeds and make reparation. MARE LIBERUM From "The Red Flower, Poems Written in War Time' You dare to say with perjured lips, "We fight to make the ocean free"? You, whose black trail of butchered ships Bestrews the bed of every sea Where German submarines have wrought Their horrors ! Have you never thought, — What you call freedom, men call piracy! II Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave, Where you have murdered, cry you down ; And seamen whom you would not save Weave now in weed-grown depths a crown Of shame for your imperious head, — A dark memorial of the dead, — Women and children whom you sent to drown. Ill Nay, not till thieves are set to guard The gold, and corsairs called to keep O'er peaceful commerce watch and ward. And wolves to herd the helpless sheep. Shall men and women look to thee. Thou ruthless Old Man of the Sea, To safeguard law and freedom on the deep ! HENRY VAN DYKE 65 IV In nobler breeds we put our trust: \ The nations in whose sacred lore I The "Ought" stands out above the " Must/' | And honor rules in peace and war. • j With these we hold in soul and heart, ■ With these we choose our lot and part, i Till Liberty is safe on sea and shore. i London Times, February 12, 191 7. 1 THE NAME OF FRANCE Give us a name to fill the mind With the shining thoughts that lead mankind, — The glory of learning, the joy of art, — A name that tells of a splendid part In the long, long toil, and the strenuous fight, Of the human race to win its way From the ancient darkness into the day Of freedom, brotherhood, equal right, — A name like a star, a name of light. I give you, France! Give us a name to stir the blood With a warmer glow and a swifter flood, At the touch of a courage that conquers fear, — A name like the call of a trumpet, clear And silver-sweet and iron-strong. That brings three million men to their feet, Ready to march, and steady to meet The foe who threatens that name with wrong, — A name that rings like a battle-song. 1 give you, France! Give us a name to move the heart With the strength that noble griefs impart, — A name that speaks of the blood out-poured To save mankind from the sway of the sword, — A name that calls the world to share The burden of sacrificial strife, Where the cause at stake is the world's free life And the rule of the people everywhere,^ A name like a vow, a name like a prayer. I give you, France! September 28, 1916. BARRETT WENDELL A CONFLICT OF IDEALS Extract From Address in the Academy Lecture Series, April 17, 191 7 Chaos come again, we may well call this world of ours now; and turn back to the despair of Lucretius as the final mood in which bravely to face fact. If a story I was told some years ago be true, though, this was not the mood of at least one distinguished ecclesiastic, about the time when the Concordat came to an end. Lamenting the plight of the French clergy, it was said, this worthy man — himself of saintly character — touched on the general condition of Europe, expressing his belief in the divine sanction of sovereignty, and declaring that only one modern sovereign conducted himself with due obedience thereto — the German Emperor. To be sure, he added, that sovereign is blind to the true faith; but it is not for men to inquire why God chooses His instruments. Hearsay though this story be, it may well give us pause. There is certainly an aspect in which the career of William the Second may be regarded as almost Augus- tan, as an ideal effort to impose upon the turbulent peoples the rule of peace, sparing those who will submit, extirpa- ting the rebellious. And we may grant that he believes in God; and we must grant, as well, that the two most charac- teristic German virtues — honest, untiring industry and cheerful acceptance of col- lective duty — have never been more admirable than they are now. All the same, there is another aspect in which we can hardly admit the career of His Im- perial Majesty to be apostolically divine. Otherwise, we should have to admit ourselves, and the other nations now allied together against him, impiously rebellious to the law of God. Instead, there can be no doubt that we believe ourselves nobly in the right; nor that we are coming to believe the Allied Nations, who have led the way where at last we follow, nobly in the right, as well. Nobly in the right we could not believe our- selves nor them, unless this tremendous conflict involves something else than a blind clash of material forces. Yet to deny an ideal, and an ideal of world-order, to the forces so appallingly exerted in the name of the German Em- peror, would be unworthy. So far as we can discern, the ideal which inspires them is that of an authority which shall command and control all men, for their own good and the good of the future. This, indeed, was implicitly admitted, a little while ago, by a fantastic notion which occurred to one of those among us who cherishes least love for Germans. It was when their lines in Northern France began to withdraw, and when some thought the purpose of this manoeuvre to be concentration for a swift attack on Italy. Can it be, this American asked, that the German Emperor has a purpose of sweeping down on Rome, and there in St. Peter's — where Charlemagne was crowned before him one Christmas Day — celebrating next Christmas by placing on his own head the crown not of German Empire but of Roman, which should carry apostolic title to empire of the world? Fantastic though this notion be, it does not seem out of character, and it extremely indicates the imperial ideal against which the Allies, and we too, find ourselves arrayed. This ideal is not con- temptible; for contradiction it needs something higher than force and more enduring than denial. It can be met only by another, equally ardent and newly true, ideal of empire. Such an ideal, I believe, not yet rightly recognized, has animated the undaunted courage of the Allies; such an ideal, 1 believe, has always animated our Ameri- can national history, and at this moment animates our national course. The Allies, 66 BARRETT WENDELL 67 — like ourselves and the German Empire, too, — still think in the national terms which have been inevitable since the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire faded, six hundred years ago. All the same, a new ideal of empire truly inspires us, even though as yet we know it only by the vague and vulgar name of democracy. For the moment, the fact of democracy often looks troublous — justifying the use of the term in the Politics of Aristotle. There he gives the name to the abuse of power by an irresponsible majority who would conduct public affairs not for public good but for their own selfish ends. Ac- cording to him, democracy is a disease, and probably politically fatal — just as tyranny is in monarchy and oligarchy in aristocracy. Right and left, nowadays, popular governments seem, on the sur- face, to afford example after example of what he meant — shackling ability, de- crying excellence and asserting privilege for the irresponsible. At their worst, however, these democratic excesses are only realities, which need no more quench the ideal they dim than the ideal of im- perial authority has been quenched by the rape of Belgium, by the Lusitania massacre, or by the sacrilege of Rheims. Any government, autocratic, aristocratic or popular, may abuse its power; any government must do so at its own ulti- mate peril. The question before us now concerns not dangers but hopes, not con- duct but faith, not the benumbing facts of realities but the inspiring potency of ideals. For an ideal, 1 believe, is what nerves us all for the conflict where we must bear our part. In few words, the ideal which inspires the peoples now staking their lives for what they call democracy is belief that government may best and most hope- fully persist when based not on submis- sion but on consent. Under the most popular forms of government, the gov- erned must doubtless submit to no small degree of authority; under the most despotic forms, until these forms crash in revolutionary anarchy, the governed must, often despairingly, consent to bear their burdens. No government worth the name can command respect, or hope to last, if it fail to preserve that public order, and to protect that private prop- erty on which together throughout his- tory the true right of individuals has inevitably been based. In substance, I take it, we should all agree that no individual can claim more than the right so to conduct life that the con- structive virtues of intelligence, indus- try and self-control may on the whole bring a man prosperity, and the destruc- tive vices of stupidity, idleness and self- indulgence may surely bring a man to grief. Social justice, we may gladly believe, is based on a natural law too rigid for much deflection by the forms which now and again government may chance to take. The real question is under what form it may most hopefully be maintained. The older ideal has believed this to be the form of implacable authority — sometimes national, at least once divinely imperial The newer ideal believes rather that the most hopeful form is that to which men themselves will gravely, deliberately and, so far as may be, unselfishly consent. In its nobler aspect, the older ideal was of a world governed by God through certain of His selected and commissioned creatures; in its nobler aspect, the newer ideal, for which we are now risen to arms, is of a world governed by God through all His human creatures. To call it democracy is to disguise its grandeur; a better name for it were the Empire of Humanity. Ideals, we must sadly remind ourselves, have never been realities and never can be. A thousand aspects of human his- tory, too, may well make our new imperial ideal seem more madly unreal than any of those which have preceded it, national, patriotic, Roman or Holy. Yet as we ponder on literature, from the primal wisdom of the Greeks to the sophistica- tions of centuries within the memory of men we can remember, and to the ephem- eral vulgarities of our modern press, we can find traces of this imperial ideal al- ways and everywhere. Slowly and won*- 68 BARRETT WENDELL deringly we may be brought to admit that it has not only shown sparks of vitaHty and germs of growth, but that it has tended straight toward the cathoHcity it is reveahng now. What is more, when we turn our pondering from the ideals of literature to the realities of history, we may find in them not the forever unat- tainable fact of realization, but sign after sign that our ideal of consenting human empire may perhaps be capable of an approach such as has been denied all others. An example of what I mean may be found in the history of our own country. Beginning its course under the first two Stuart sovereigns of England, it came to establish in all the colonies which fringed the Atlantic seaboard forms of govern- ment essentially popular. To a great degree, this was a matter not so much of ideal purpose as of natural growth, — of accident, or of practical convenience. The fact remains that when the lapse of some five generations brought us to the test of the American Revolution, our traditions of government by consent proved so firmly established as not only to achieve our national independence but a little later to check anarchy and to sustain order, property and individual rights by that supreme masterpiece of government by consent, the Constitution of the United States. There have been shadows and perils in our subsequent national history, enough and to spare; shadows and perils encompass us at this moment. What we may still recognize, however, as the characteristic spirit of America lays little, perhaps too little, stress on these realities. It still prefers to find constant inspiration, unbroken warrant for faith and hope, in the ideals of government which have animated our progress from a group of separate and remote colonies to that state of nationally imperial dominion of which we are citi- zens today. Meanwhile, no other government in the European world has changed so little since our Constitution was adopted by our forefathers. In 1789 we were the youngest of European nations; in 1917 we are politically and socially the eldest. There is surely an aspect in which we may regard this as something else than accident — as a confirmation, rather, of our belief that we have been privileged to see, a little sooner than others, the course which shall be taken by the world- empire of the future. For aspiration to world-empire is an ideal so constant, so invariable, that, at least as an ideal, we must admit it inevi- table. If it takes on, as at first, the guise of irresponsible national expansion, it must fail as soon as the strength of the nation fails which for the moment em- bodies it — Egypt or Macedon, Spain or the France of Louis the Fourteenth. So it must fail if it takes on the form most nobly expressed by Virgil — of armed authority, responsible to its own con- science for imposing peace on the sub- missive peoples. So it must fail, too, in its highest authoritative form — that of the Holy Roman Empire — a form so splendidly superhuman that it never came anywhere near realization. So, no doubt, it must finally fail in any form; for, like human life, this planet where for a little while we are alive is mortal. Even so, even on earth, a humanized ideal of empire may long outlive ourselves or any phase of human persistence as yet within our powers of imagination. And if what I have tried to tell you today be not all a dream, the history of these United States of America may already give us hope that the ideal of future world-empire may prove to be an ideal not of empire by authority but of empire by consent. If so, this country of ours — the United States of America — may show itself to have been the harbinger of a world- empire which shall outlast those of the past. What will come of this war on which we are now entered no man can tell. What may come of it is an attempt to establish by common consent a world- empire in which each state, large or small, — monarchic, aristocratic or popu- lar, — shall have an acknowledged right BARRETT WENDELL 69 to independent existence. In such an and devoted consent of all. That name empire the common authority of all has not yet been even proposed, except would protect the independence of each in vaguely general terms, like a League to part, enforcing the law of peace, sparing Enforce Peace. But we of the United those who submit to it, checking aggres- States of America may surely be forgiven sion, suppressing rebellion. All this such if we think of it as a name in which, as in common authority must do, not in a the name of our own country, all sep- name foreign to any, but in a name com- arate names may merge — the United mon to every part — for such common States of the World, authority must be based on the humble BRAND WHITLOCK LAFAYETTE, APOSTLE OF LIBERTY Address Given at the Tomb of Lafayette in Picpus Cemetery, July 4, 191 7, BY THE American Minister to Belgium Mr. Chairman, Monsieur le Ministre, Monsieur le Marechal, Mr. Ambass- ador, Ladies and Gentlemen: At long intervals in the progress of our race, once or twice in a century perhaps, there is born into the world one of those rare and lofty souls whose passion for humanity makes them worthy to be intrusted with the cause of human liberty. They are born with a vision, a courage and a faith that lift them high above their fellows and yet their love and sym- pathy and pity keep them close to the heart of mankind. By their sacrifices and their toils they work new emancipa- tions and they come somehow to sum up, and to express in their great personalities, their peoples and their times. The story of their lives is the history of the nations — as with Washington and Lincoln, as with him at whose tomb we are assem- bled today. It was the distinction of Lafayette, indeed, to sum up the history of two nations in his time. For, as he used to say, he had two countries, France and America, and he seemed to fmd it difficult to say which he loved the more. With his keen perception he discerned that in essential, spiritual ways the two nations, inspired by the same motives and devoted to the same ideals, were but a part of that larger nation of the mind, where all who love liberty and mankind are citi- zens by right. There are few stories more romantic than his. As an ardent youth, not yet twenty years of age, without the consent of his father or his King, he sets forth across the seas on that matchless adven- ture, the old yet ever new and alluring quest of human liberty. We see him before that first Congress in the old Liberty Hall at Philadelphia; then by the side of Washington, who comes so to love him that when he is wounded at Brandy wine Washington tells the surgeons to treat him as his son. He has an honored place in the councils of war and he "shudders to think that the voice of a twenty-year-old youth might decide the fate of two worlds.*' Then the long winter at Valley Forge, where the snows are reddened by bleeding feet, and, with the sword that Congress gave him, he comes back to France for succor and returns with the army corps that went with Rochambeau. Finally, he is at Yorktown, and four years later is once more in America at Mount Ver- non, the guest of Washington. He is elected a citizen of the Republic and adopted into the very heart of the nation. Every one refers to him affectionately as "The Marquis," while the Indians call him " Kayewla.'' All over the land, towns are named for him; there is not a city in America that has not an avenue bearing his name, and, as children in our schools, we are taught to revere him. We see him then engage in the struggle for liberty in his own land; he is at the assembly of the Notables and drafts the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And ever after, whether at Paris, at Olmutz or at Lagrange, down to the memorable days of July, 1830, it is for liberty that he strives, it is of liberty that he writes and dreams; "la liberte americaine," he used to call it. To us his correspondence with his friends in America must ever have a peculiar personal interest. He was al- ways writing to them, to Washington, to Jefferson, to Adams, to Monroe, to J. Fenimore Cooper. Jefferson, when 70 BRAND WHITLOCK 71 President, after the purchase of Louisiana, offered him the governorship of the new province if he would come back, and Hamilton, the great rival of Jefferson, wrote him that there was only one sub- ject on which the various parties in America could agree and that was in their love for him. The thought of returning to America continually fascinated him; he was al- ways referring to it. And it must have been a moment big in its implications when in his old age he made that last visit and there, under the stately portico of Monticello, he and Jefferson clasped each other in a long embrace. When he died, and old Andrew Jackson in an order of the day announced that the last Major-General of the armies of the Revo- lution was no more, the same military honors that had been paid to Washington were rendered to him, guns were fired until the sun went down, flags were at half mast, the army wore mourning for six months, and in the Senate, in the presence of the President, the two houses and the diplomatic corps, John Quincy Adams pronounced an oration in his memory. We assemble then at his tomb at this solemn moment in the history of the world, on this day that meant so much to him and means so much to us, to pay our tribute to his memory and to render homage to the nation whose various vir- tues were so nobly exemplified in his character and career. We come to rev- erence the memory not only of our sons who fell in other wars for liberty, but to salute those who have fallen in this great and, as we would fain believe, this final war for liberty, those noble dead who fell heroically at the Marne, on the Yser at Verdun, on the Somme, giving their lives that freedom might not perish from the earth, those boys, your own and ours, French, English, Belgian, who went for- ward with smiles upon their beardless lips, and in John Hay's fine figure are triumphant now in the beautiful immor- tality of youth. The ground whereon we stand today is not foreign soil, for when France came to bury her hero, America claimed a privilege of affection and sent her earth from our own land that it might be min- gled with the soil of France, as a last resting-place for him who was the son of both. Even were it otherwise, it would not be foreign soil, for the soil of liberty is always home to him who loves liberty. This day meant much to Lafayette all his life, he never forgot it, and he cele- brated it always by writing to one or other of his American friends. Once writing to Jefferson he referred to it as that day of which the expression was worthy of the event. He was addressing the author of the classic Declaration of human liberty, written, to employ one of the fine phrases in its opening pas- sages, in "a decent respect to the opin- ions of mankind." "We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'' How these old truths blaze out today with a new and vivid meaning ! We were so accustomed to hear them that famil- iarity had dulled our appreciation; we were so accustomed to live them that their repetition brought only a superior smile to the face of sophistication. And now, even as we stand here, the world is in the agony of a war that is to determine, in Lincoln's words, whether nations con- ceived in these liberties, and dedicated to these propositions, are to endure. The right to life, the right to liberty, the right to happiness! These three phrases are the synthesis of the ideals of the western world; they resume in them- selves all that culture, all that imagina- tion, all that taste, all that honor, all that art and beauty have revealed to the human mind. Considered in relation to its time and construed with the Constitution and the 72 BRAND WHITLOCK Bill of Rights, that sought to apply its ideals to the practical affairs of life and government, the Declaration marked the highest point that the human ideal at that day had attained. It was the logi- cal conclusion of the old struggle for English liberty, bearing a direct relation to the revolution of 1649 and forming one of the great series of charters of human liberty that began with Magna Charta. Its stately and sonorous cadences are not the rigid impossibilities of doctrin- aires, nor the vague dreams of idealists and mystics, but the practical statement of the terms on which human beings can live together in political equality with a chance for self-expression and develop- ment. Every one of its concepts recalls the bitter lesson of some tragic experience in human history; those lines were written one after the other with the blood and sweat and tears of generations that had resisted tyrants for the right to live. In highly concentrated thought they repre- sent the conclusions that intelligent man- kind had reached during eighteen cen- turies of struggle upward out of savagery. Well might Lafayette write to his old friend Jefferson that the expression was worthy of the event ! It was by such means, and on the solid bases of such principles, that over the ugly ruins of feudalism there had arisen a new structure of human society. Slowly, with infinite toil and pain, in spite of many blunders and mistakes, Man has reared the edifice of modern civilization. It was imperfect as yet, but it was being built according to certain fundamental conceptions of liberty, of honor, of justice, words whose connota- tions were common to all intelligent and refined persons. At each step in its progress he paused to consolidate the victory of mind over matter, of reason over force, of the spiritual over the material, of the ideal over the low and base. He had written down the results of these various victories in declarations and constitutions and laws that embodied one by one the triumphs of Italian genius, the visions of Russian prophecy, the clear conceptions of French intelligence, and the solid achievements of English thought. They become the memoranda of the means by which liberty has been kept alive, that the best in man might be given expression, that culture might dwell in the earth, that there might be sweetness and light in life, that Man, the Individual, might stand up in the world and realize the aspirations of the poets and saviors of the race. And then suddenly, as though it had stepped out of the Middle Ages, autoc- racy, reincarnated in a military despo- tism with a camouflage of culture, made its apparition in the modern world, ready to tear up all the charters of human liberty, to destroy the work of the cen- turies. It challenged the validity of the principles on which democratic nations rest, and with them the noblest and most exalted conceptions of the human mind. It impugned justice, it sneered at liberty, it scorned compassion, it flouted honor, and in the name of the amazing theory that any deed is right if one has the brute force to commit it, it would take away what Lincoln called the last, best hope of man. It precipitated anew the old conflict between freedom and slavery, the old battle between the prince of the powers of the air and the prince of the powers of darkness. But thereby it decreed its own destruction, for the world has grown too small for autocracy and democracy to live in it together. The urge of democ- racy is irresistible; it is the destiny of men to be free; peoples developed in the light of free institutions do not turn back- ward to the dark. The history of the liberal nations of the earth all tends one way, toward liberty, upward toward the light. Read the story of valiant France, read the story of Belgium, ah, Belgium! Three years ago this summer day it was a smiling land of happy people whose every scene evoked the memory of some joyous canvas of Jordaens or Teniers. To-day it is the land of sorrow, lightened only by the heroism of an indomitable people. They have not only endured all BRAND WHITLOCK 73 the cruelties and the woes of war, but they have been subjected to the igno- minies of a mihtary occupation; they Hve in the presence of a great injustice, in the shadow of a mighty wrong. Yet those brave spirits back there behind that tragic veil come of a line of men who, ages since, learned what liberty is, and in their communal form of government have stubbornly, through successive alien dom- inations, clung to the right to rule them- selves. And undaunted and undismayed as she stood her ground at Liege, and along the Yser, so Belgium stands her ground today in every commune and at every hearthstone in the land. What was it that led Lafayette to go forth to a new land in the midst of war? He had a place at the most brilliant court of his time; he had youth, and wealth and a noble name; he had a bride, and he was in Paris. And yet, when he heard of the struggle across the sea, he said: '' My heart was enrolled and I had no other idea than to join my colors.'' My colors! The colors of liberty, whose radiant vision beckoned the loving and the daring in all times. He knew that wherever the flag of freedom was unfurled there was his post. Noblesse oblige! And the noblest, like Lafayette and Washington, are not content with liberty for themselves alone; they must have it for all men on equal terms, for they know that character can be devel- oped only in liberty, where the human soul has the right not only to live but the exceedingly more important right to live a beautiful life. Today, as we stand here by the tomb of him who in his youth went forth alone to join his colors across the seas, we hear the tread of a million youths of America, sons of his spirit, marching to the ships that bear them hither to join their colors on this new front of Liberty. They come with the same unselfish motive that led him forth, not for con- quest but for freedom, to help, as our President said, to make the world safe for democracy. They come as the brothers of their English blood, with the grim determination of their race, vowing that autocracy shall not tear up Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. They come in the name of those great principles of which Lincoln, for us, is the incarnation, resolved that the dead on all the battlefields of liberty shall not have died in vain, that each nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for»the people shall not perish from the earth. They come singing the " Battle Hymn of the Republic," to the blowing of the bugles that shall never sound retreat. They come bearing the hopes and the Resolu- tions and the faith of a whole free people, a mighty continent aroused, whose genius salutes the sister republic in the strophes of Walt Whitman, the poet and prophet of democracy : O Star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long! Bear up, O smitten orb! O ship, continue on! WOODROW WILSON I ON THE THRESHOLD OF WAR Address of the President, April 2, 191 7 Gentlemen of the Congress: I have called the Congress into extra- ordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally per- missible that 1 should assume the respon- sibility of making. On the third of February last 1 officially laid before you the extraordinary an- nouncement of the Imperial German Gov- ernment that, on and after the first day of February, it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every ves- sel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Ger- many within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the Ger- man submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft, in con- formity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after in- stance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruth- lessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Govern- ment itself and were distinguished by un- mistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of com- passion or of principle. 1 was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto sub- scribed to the humane practices of civil- ized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free high- ways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accom- plished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no wea- pons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. 1 am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants,- men, women, and 74 WOODROW WILSON 75 children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. Ameri- can ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no dis- crimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperate- ness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious as- sertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of hu- man right, of which we are only a single champion. When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last 1 thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against un- lawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has as- sumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such cir- cumstances, grim necessity indeed, to en- deavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our mer- chant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such cir- cumstances and in the face of such pre- tensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent ; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are in- capable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life. With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step 1 am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what 1 deem my constitu- tional duty, 1 advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war. What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable coopera- tion in counsel and action with the govern- ments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our re- sources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organiza- tion and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the 76 WOODROW WILSON materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the im- mediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least five hundred thousand men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authoriza- tion of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equit- ably be sustained by the present genera- tion, by well conceived taxation. I say sustained so far as may be equit- able by taxation because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary en- tirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans. In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wis- dom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equip- ment of our own military forces with the duty, — for it will be a very practical duty, — of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them in every way to be ef- fective there. I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive depart- ments of the Government, for the con- sideration of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the Govern- ment upon which the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall. While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the un- happy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I ad- dressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that 1 had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and on the twenty- sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the Hfe of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feas- ible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circum- stances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of re- sponsibility for wrong done shall be ob- served among nations and their govern- ments that are observed among the in- dividual citizens of civilized states. We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon WOODROW WILSON 77 in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make con- quest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cun- ningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from gen- eration to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happil}' im- possible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concern- ing all the nation's affairs. A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic gov- ernment could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render ac- count to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow in- terest of their own. Does not ever\- American feel that as- surance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known b\- those who knew it best to have been al- ways in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the in- timate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habi- tual attitude towards life. The auto- cracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor. One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting com- munities and even our offices of govern- ment with spies and set criminal intrigues ever}'where afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our com- merce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war be- gan; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been car- ried on at the instigation, with the sup- port, and even under the personal direc- tion of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Govern- ment of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to ex- tirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serv'ing to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friend- ship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 78 WOODROW WILSON We are accepting this challenge of hos- tile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, al- ways lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic gov- ernments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if neces- sary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples in- cluded : for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedi- ence. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace- must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no domin- ion. We seek no indemnities for our- selves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as bel- ligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the prin- ciples of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 1 have said nothing of the govern- ments allied with the Imperial Govern- ment of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, in- deed, avowed its unqualified endorse- ment and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to re- ceive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Govern- ment has not actually engaged in war- fare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and 1 take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a dis- cussion of our relations with the authori- ties at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights. It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act with- out animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any in- jury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irrespon- sible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire noth- ing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us, — however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship, — exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and ac- tions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sym- pathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegi- ance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few WOODROW WILSON 79 who may be of a different mind and pur- pose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and with- out countenance except from a lawless and malignant few. It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people in- to war, into the most terrible and disas- trous of all wars, civilization itself seem- ing to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, — for democ- racy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all na- tions and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privi- leged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. II OUR PURPOSE IN THE WAR Extract from Address of President Wilson to a Joint Session of the Two Houses of Congress, December 4, 191 7 If 1 have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the omission. What 1 am perfectly clear about is that in the present session of the Congress our whole atten- tion and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task of winning the war. We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of con- quest or spoliation; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and de- struction. The purposes of the Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of the States. Our safety would be at an end, our honor for- ever sullied and brought into contempt werfe we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty. It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded to- gether for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irre- proachable intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired. 8o WOODROW WILSON I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has been held in honor among the nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the great generations that went before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy. HI THE PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'S PEACE Extract from Address of January 8, 1918 We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were cor- rected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we de- mand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish ag- gression. All the peoples of the werld are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this: I. Open covenants of peace, openly ar- rived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. HI. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establish- ment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembar- rassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political devel- opment and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcoming into the so- ciety of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a wel- come, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their WOODROW WILSON 8i comprehension of her needs as distin- guished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish s\mpath\-. VII. Belgium, the whole world vvill agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sover- eignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will ser\'e to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which the>- have themselves set and de- termined for the government of their rela- tions %Wth one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and valid- ity of international law is forever im- paired. VI II. All French territor>- should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the \sTong done to France b\' Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Aisace-L ; t which has unsettled the peace of t for nearl>' fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearl}" recognizable lines of nation al it \. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of auton- omous development. XL Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another de- termined by friendly counsel along his- torically established lines of allegiance and nationalit>-; and international guar- antees of the political and economic in- dependence and territorial integrit\- of the several Balkan states should be en- tered into. XI 1. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be as- sured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutelv un- molested opportunit\' of autonomous development, and the Dardenelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees. XI I I. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be as- sured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic inde- pendence and territorial integrity' should be guaranteed by international covenant. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guar- antees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel '5 to be intimate partners of all trnments and peoples associated : against the ImperiaHsts. We c:. : e separated in interest or divided in rur: ise. We stand together until the end. For such arrangements and covenants we are v:\.[:r.i :: f ^ht and to continue to fight until tne} are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does remove. We have no jeal- ousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or dis- tinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record ver\' bright and ver>^ enviable. We do not \^ish to injure her or to block in any way her legiti- mate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equalitx' among the peoples of the world, — the new^ world in which we now live. — instead of a place of master\'. Neither do we presume to suggest to 82 WOODROW WILSON her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a prelim- inary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination. We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program 1 have out- lined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation, no part of the struc- ture of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test. IV AFTER A YEAR OF WAR President Wilson's Speech in Baltimore, April 6, 1918 Fellow Citizens: This is the anniversary of our accept- ance of Germany's challenge to fight for our right to live and be free, and for the sacred rights of freemen everywhere. The nation is awake. There is no need to call to it. We know what the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest men, and, if need be, all that we possess. . . . 1 call you to witness, my fellow coun- trymen, that at no stage of this terrible business have 1 judged the purposes of Germany intemperately. 1 should be ashamed in the presence of afi^airs so grave so fraught with the destinies of mankind throughout all the world, to speak with truculence, to use the weak language of hatred or vindictive purpose. We must judge as we would be judged. I have sought to learn the objects Germany has in this war from the mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with them as 1 wished them to deal with me. 1 have laid bare our own ideals,, our own purposes, without reserve or doubtful phrase, and have asked them to say as plainly what it is that they seek. We have ourselves proposed no injus- tice, no aggression. We are ready, when- ever the final reckoning is made, to be just to the German people, deal fairly with the German power, as with all others. There can be no difi'erence between peoples in the final judgment, if it is in- deed to be a righteous judgment. To propose anything but justice, even-handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany at any time, whatever the outcome of the war, would be to renounce and dishonor our own cause, for we ask nothing that we are not willing to accord. It has been with this thought that I have sought to learn from those who spoke for Germany whether it was justice or dominion and the execution of their own will upon the other nations of the world that the German leaders were seeking. They have answered — answered in un- mistakable terms. They have avowed that it was not justice, but dominion and the unhindered execution of their own will. The avowal has not come from Germany's statesmen . 1 1 has come from her military leaders, who are her real rulers. . . . Their purpose is, undoubtedly, to make all the Slavic peoples, all the free and am- bitious nations of the Baltic Peninsula, all WOODROW WILSON 83 the lands that Turkey has dominated and misruled, subject to their will and ambi- tion, and build upon that dominion an empire of force upon which they fancy that they can then erect an empire of gain and commercial supremacy — an empire as hostile to the Americas as to the Europe which it will overawe — an empire which will ultimately master Persia, India, and the peoples of the Far East. In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity and libert)', the principle of the free self-determination of nations, upon which all the modern world insists, can play no part. They are re- jected for the ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must rule the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subject to the patronage and overlordship of those who have the power to enforce it. That program once carried out, Amer- ica and all who care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare themselves to contest the mastery of the world — a mastery in which the rights of common men, the rights of women and of all who are w^eak, must for the time being be trodden underfoot and disregarded and the old, age-long struggle for freedom and right begin again at its beginning. Every thing that America has lived for and loved and grown great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization will have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy will have once more pitilessly shut upon man- kind! The thing is preposterous and impos- sible; and }'et is not that what the whole course and action of the German armies has meant wherever they have moved? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment; to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the German arms have accom.plished with unpit\'ing thoroughness throughout every fair region they have touched. What, then, are we to do? For my- self, 1 am ready, read\' still, read\' even now, to discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it is sincerely pur- posed — a peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But the an- swer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia and I cannot mistake the meaning of the answer. 1 accept the challenge. I know that )'ou accept it. All the world will know that you accept it. It will appear in the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with which we shall give all that we love and all that we have to redeem the world and make it fit for freemen like ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we do. Let everything that we say, my fellow-countrymen, everything that we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this response till the majesty and might of our concerted power shall fill the thought and utterl>' defeat the force of those who flout and misprize what we honor and hold dear. Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the af- fairs of men, whether right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of man- kind. There is, therefore, but one re- sponse possible from us: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion dow^n in the dust. 84 WOODROW WILSON THE PRESIDENTS SPEECH AT MOUNT VERNON, JULY 4, 1918 Gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps and My Fellow-Citiiens: I am happy to draw apart with you to this quiet place of old counsel in order to speak a little of the meaning of this day of our nation's independence. The place seems very still and remote. It is as serene and untouched by the hurry of the world as it was in those great days long ago when General Washington was here and held leisurely conference with the men who were to be associated with him in the creation of a nation. From these gentle slopes they looked out upon the world and saw it whole, saw it with the light of the future upon it, saw it with modern eyes that turned away from a past which men of liberated spirits could no longer endure. It is for that reason that we cannot feel, even here, in the im- mediate presence of this sacred tomb, that this is a place of death. It was a place of achievement. A great promise that was meant for all mankind was here given plan and reality. The associations by which we are here surrounded are the inspiriting associations of that noble death which is only a glorious consummation. From this green hillside we also ought to be able to see with comprehending eyes the world that lies about us and should conceive anew the purpose that must set men free. It is significant — significant of their own character and purpose and of the in- fluences they were setting afoot — that Washington and his associates, like the Barons at Runnymede, spoke and acted, not for a class, but for a people. It has been left for us to see to it that it shall be understood that they spoke and acted, not for a single people only, but for all man- kind. They were thinking not of them- selves and of the material interests which centered in the little groups of landhold- ers and merchants and men of affairs with whom they were accustomed to act, in Virginia and the colonies to the north and south of her, but of a people which wished to be done with classes and special interest and the authority of men whom they had not themselves chosen to rule over them. They entertained no private purpose, de- sired no peculiar privilege. They were consciously planning that men of every class should be free and America a place to which men out of every nation mignt resort who wished to share with them the rights and privileges of free men. And we take our cue from them — do we not? We intend what they intended. We here in America believe our participation in this present war to be only the fruitage of what they planted. Our case differs from theirs only in this, that it is our inesti- mable privilege to concert with men out of every nation who shall make not only the liberties of America secure but the liberties of every other people as well. We are happy in the thought that we are permitted to do what they would have done had they been in our place. There must now be settled, once for all, what was settled for America in the great age upon whose inspiration we draw today. This is surely a fitting place from which calmly to look out upon our task, that we may fortify our spirits for its accom- plishment. And this is the appropriate place from which to avow, alike to the friends who look on and to the friends with whom we have the happiness to be asso- ciated in action, the faith and purpose with which we act. This, then, is our conception of the great struggle in which we are engaged. The plot is written plain upon every scene and every act of the supreme trag- edy. On the one hand stand the peoples of the world— not only the peoples ac- tually engaged, but many others, also, who suffer under mastery but cannot act; peoples of many races and in every part of the world — the people of stricken Rus- sia still, among the rest, though they are for the moment unorganized and help- less. Opposed to them, masters of many WOODROW WILSON 85 armies, stand an isolated, friendless group of Governments, who speak no common purpose, but only selfish ambi- tions of their own, by which none can profit but themselves, and whose peoples are fuel in their hands; Governments which fear their people, and yet are for the time their sovereign lords, making every choice for them and disposing of their lives and fortunes as the\- will, as well as of the lives and fortunes of every people who fall under their power — Gov- ernments clothed with the strange trap- pings and the primitive authority of an age that is altogether alien and hostile to our own. The Past and the Present are in deadly grapple, and the peoples of the world are being done to death between them. There can be but one issue. The settle- ment must be final. There can be no compromise. No halfway decision would be tolerable. No halfway decision is conceivable. These are the ends for which the associated peoples of the world are fighting and which must be conceded them before there can be peace: I. — The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separate!}-, secretly, and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at the least its re- duction to virtual impotence. II. — ^The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political re- lationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a difl'erent settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. III. — The consent of all nations to be governed in their conduct toward each other by the same principles of honor and of respect fpr the common law of civilized society that govern the individual citi- zens of all modern States in their rela- tions with one another; to the end that all promises and covenants may be sacredly observed, no private plots or conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with impunity, and a mutual trust established upon the handsome foundation of a mu- tual respect for right. IV. — The establishment of an organi- zation of peace which shall make it cer- tain that the combined power of free nations will check every invasion of right and serve to make peace and justice the more secure by affording a definite tri- bunal of opinion to which all must sub- mit and b>' which ever)' international readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly con- cerned shall be sanctioned. These great objects can be put into a single sentence. What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the or- ganized opinion of mankind. These great ends cannot be achieved by debating and seeking to reconcile and accommodate what statesmen may wish with their projects for balances of power and of national opportunity. They can be realized only by the determination of what the thinking peoples of the world desire, with their longing hope for justice and for social freedom and opportunity. I can fancy that the air of this place carries the accents of such principles with a peculiar kindness. Here were started forces which the great nation against which they were primarily directed at first regarded as a revolt against its right- ful authority, but which it has long since seen to have been a step in the liberation of its own people as well as of the people of the United States; and 1 stand here now to speak — speak proudly and with con- fident hope — of the spread of this revolt, this liberation, to the great stage of the world itself! The blinded rulers of Prus- sia have roused forces they knew little of — forces which, once roused, can never be crushed to earth again; for they have at their heart an inspiration and a purpose which are deathless and of the very stuff of triumph! OWEN WISTER From "The Pentecost of Calamity"* And what of ourselves in this well-nigh world-wide cloudburst? Every man has walked at night through gloom where objects were dim and hard to see, when suddenly a flash of lightning has struck the landscape livid. Trees close by, fences far off, houses, fields, animals and the faces of people — all things stand transfixed by a piercing distinctness. So now, in this thunder- storm of war, each nation and every man and woman is searchingly revealed by the perpetual lightnings. Whatever this American nation is, whatever aspect, noble or ignoble, our Democracy shows in the glare of this cataclysm, is even already engraved on the page of History, will be the portrait of the United States. We have yet to find our greater selves. We have also yet to realize that Europe, since the Spanish War, has counted us in the concert of great nations far more than we have counted ourselves. . . . To speak of the Old World and the New World is to speak in a dead language. The world is one. All humanity is in the same boat. The passengers multiply, but the boat remains the same size. And people who rock the boat must be stopped by force. America can no more separate itself from the destiny of Europe than it can escape the natural laws of the universe. Because we declared political inde- pendence, does any one still harbor the delusion that we are independent of the acts and fortunes of monarchs? If so, let him consider only these four events: In 1492 a Spanish Queen financed a sailor named Columbus — and Europe reached out and laid a hand on this hemisphere. In 1685 a French King revoked an edict — and thousands of Huguenots enriched our stock. In 1803 a French consul, to spite Britain, sold us some land — it was pretty much everything west of the Mississippi. One might well have supposed we were independent of the heir of Austria. In 1 914 they killed him, and Europe fell to pieces — and that fall is shaking our ship of state from stem to stern. There may be some citizens down in the hold who do not know it — among a hundred mil- lion people you cannot expect to have no imbeciles. Thus, from Palos, in 1492, to Sarajevo, in 1914, the hand of Europe has drawn us ever and ever closer. Yes, indeed; we are all in the same boat. Europe has never forgotten some words spoken here once: "That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth/' She waited to hear us repeat that in some form when The Hague conventions we signed were torn to scraps of paper. Perhaps nothing save calamity will teach us what Europe is thankful to have learned again — that some things are worse than war, and that you can pay too high a price for peace; but that you can- not pay too high a price for the finding and keeping of your own soul. * This volume has been published in English, Russian, German, Dutch, French and Italian. 86 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY EDITH CAVELL The world hath its own dead; great motions start In human breasts, and make for them a place In that hushed sanctuary of the race Where every day men come, kneel and depart. Of them, O English nurse, henceforth thou art, A name to pray on, and to all a face Of household consecration: such His grace Whose universal dwelling is the heart ! Oh, gentle hands that soothed the soldier's brow And knew no service save of Christ, the Lord! Thy country now is all humanity! How like a flower thy womanhood doth show In the harsh scything of the German sword, And beautifies the world that saw it die! Scribners Magapne, 1916. A SONG OF SUNRISE On the morning of the Russian Revolution To those who drink the golden mist Whereon the world's horizons rest. Who teach the peoples to resist The terrors of the human breast ! — By burning stake and prison-camp They lead the march of man divine. Above whose head the sacred lamp Of hberty doth blaze and shine: O'er blood and tears and nameless woe They hail far off the dawning light; Through faith in them the nations go, Smit by the sun in deepest night; — Honor to them from East to West Be on the shouting earth today! Holy their memory! Sweet their rest ! Who fill the skies with freedom's day. N. Y. Tribune, March 20, 191 7. 87 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY ON THE ITALIAN FRONT 1916 " I will die cheering, if 1 needs must die; So shall my last breath write upon my lips yiva Italia! when my spirit slips Down the great darkness from the mountain sky; And those who shall behold me where I lie Shall murmur, 'Look you! how his spirit dips From glory into glory ! the eclipse Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!' "Live, thou, upon my hps, Italia mine, — The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay ! Let thy dear light from my dead body shine And to the passer-by thy message say: *Ecco! though Heaven has made my skies divine, Thy sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'" Boston Herald, March 25, 1917. Note. — The editors of this collection are proud to include in it the tvio poems which follow, written dur- j ing the Qvil War by members of the Academy. Mr. Hay's touching lyric and Mrs. Howe's immortal ' hymn were constant and piDfound sources of patriotic inspiration to soldiers and civilians in the recent ] strangle. i JOHN HAY* WHEN THE B0V5 COME HOME There's a happ>' time coming when the bo>s come home; There's a glorious day coming when the boys come home; We will end the dreadful stor>' Of the battle dark and gon.- In a sunburst of glor}', When the boys come home. The da\' ^i^ill seem brighter when the bo>s come home. And our hearts uill be lighter when the boys come home; Wives and sweethearts v»ill press them In their arms and caress them, And pray God to bless them, \\"hen the boys come home. The thin ranks will be proudest when the bo\'5 come home, And our cheer ^ill ring the loudest when the boys come home; The full ranks v,ill be shattered, And the bright arms v,ill be battered. And the battle-standards tattered, \\'hen the bo>-s come home. Their ba\"onets may be rust>' when the bo\s come home, And their uniforms be dusty when the boys come home; But all shall see the traces Of the battle's royal graces In the brown and bearded faces, When the bo>s come home. Our love shall go to meet them when the bo>s come home, To bless them and to greet them when the boys come home; .\nd the fame of their endeavor Time and change shall not dissever From the nation's heart for ever, I When the bo}-s come home. I i *Mr. Hay died July i, 1905. ! I 89 ! JULIA WARD HOWE* BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can see His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel : "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on.'* He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. While God is marching on. Mrs. Howe, a member of the Academy, died October 17, 19 10. 90 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pro Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: i-iy ^j PreservationTechnolo( A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESEflVi 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111