»ii i ! ; - . I ; i < : ; 1 ) ; -. i 1 1 ; I / : ilti';! !f ' ■ I! 111}}; !:i!ti iiljlij iHiii: .^uen^algjj <> I I I !■ dj.mi^ THE DIARY OF A NATION THE WAR AND HOW WE GOT INTO IT •"*( Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/diaryofnationwarOOmartrich THE DIARY OF A NATION The War and How We Got Into It BY EDWARD S. MARTIN " T -rrr,^ »> OF " Life GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1918 3t M'> vV Copyright, 1917, by DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian « ' . • COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1916, 1916, 1917, BY THE LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY INSCRIBED TO JOHN AMES MITCHELL EDITOR OF "life" AND FRIEND OF FRANCE September, 1917 441072 PREFACE The observations here presented are selected from articles that appeared in Life during the three years fol- lowing August, 1914. They are concerned with the war in Europe and with American politics as affected by it. By what processes of sympathy and indignation, through what vicissitudes of diplomacy, delay and almost despair, we came after two years and a half to the breaking point with Germany, may be traced in a measure in the current discourses that follow. Edwakd S. Mabtin, vu CONTENTS PAGE Caught in a Trap . 3 German Intelligence 8 How to Manage a Continent 13 How We Feel and Why . 15 Voices 19 The Dream of Domination 22 WiU They Get to Paris? 26 Backing Away from Paris 30 The Case of the Kaiser S3 A Complaint from the Kaiser 35 The Pathos of the Germans . . ... . . 38 A FoundHng 41 The Unscrambling of Europe ...... 47 Let Us Turn Out Our Pockets 51 German Kultur and the Prussian Idea .... 55 A Little More Armament for Uncle Sam ... 59 Germany the Doctor 64 Thinking Like a German . ., 68 Germany and Colonies 73 The German Ideal 78 "The Most Senseless War" 82 Military Provision ......... 85 The War and Religious Unity ...... 87 Military Preparation 90 Jekyll and Hyde 94 Non-Resistance 97 Mr. Wilson 102 Plugging Along . ^ 107 ix ^ CONTENTS PAGB Mr. Bryan, Mr. Dernburg 110 Notices to Germany 114 Mr. Root 118 Two Years of Wilson .12^ Mr. Hoover, the Rescue Specialist ..... 127 Josephus Daniels 129 So Serious 133 Dernburg Writes a I^etter 136 A Bet at Dinner 138 The Lusitania 144 The President's Letter 149 Italy Gets In 153 German Trust in Mechanism 157 No Skulking 161 Mr. Bryan Goes 164 A Sharp Prod Needed 169 The German Note 172 A Year of It 177 The British Blockade . 181 Plattsburg ........... 185 Wanted: Democratic Discipline 187 Have Patience, Henry! ........ 189 A Credit For the Allies ........ 191 The Allies Have Caught Up 194 National Defense 197 A Better Military System 201 Ancona '. . . 203 Henry Ford 204 Girding at the Empire . . 206 Ford and His Pilgrims . . . . . ' . . . 208 Europe Not Pleased With Us 214 CONTENTS x! PAGE Berating Mr. Wilson 218 German Peace Hopes 222 Hold On, John Bull! 224 Preparedness 227 Knowledge and Impulse 231 Americans Ready to Fight 232 Mr. Roosevelt 235 Mr. Garrison Gets Out 238 Go to It, Republicans 240 The McLemore Resolution 244 Carnals and Celestials . 249 Verdun . . . . " 253 Military Preparation 256 The Democratic Army 259 The Warning of a Shock 262 "Only One Excuse to Fight" 265 Remarks from Monaco 269 The Issue of the Lusitania 271 An Answer from Berlin 274 The Army Bill . _ . 277 Mr. Wilson Makes a Speech 279 Hughes Nominated . 281 Mexico Our Training Field 285 TheMihtia 289 The Colonel Declines . . 292 A Respite from the Job 294 A Submarine Arrives 296 The War m its Third Year 298 Two Great Conceptions Opposed 302 Hughes Speaks 304 Railroad Strikes 306 xii CONTENTS -► , - '- PAGE Rising Hatreds . 309 Russia the Great Gamble 311 "Thrice Tested" 313 "Out to Beat the Rich" 316 Does the Country Want the Republicans Back? . 321 Submarines off Nantucket 326 Lined Up with the Hyphens 328 Hughes is Faithful ......... 330 End of the Campaign . 334 Mr. Wilson Wins Out 338 Hopes Renewed . 341 Christmas, 1916 344 Lloyd George . . . : 347 Peace Proposals 349 Are We Ossified? 350 Mr. Wilson Asks for Peace Terms 353 Alas for Germany! 356 The Allies Reply , ^ . . 359 British Strength and German Dearth .... 364 American Apathy 3G6 Germany Avoids a Show-Down 369 Establishment vs. Dissent 372 "Peace Without Victory" 378 Germany to the Rescue 383 Time to Do Something 388 Bagdad .393 The Czar is Out 395 Easter in War Time 398 Into the War at Last 401 Mr. Wilson as a Fighter 404 Two Years After 406 THE DIARY OF A NATION THE WAR AND HOW WE GOT INTO IT THE DIARY OF A NATION THE WAR AND HOW WE GOT INTO IT August 13, IQlJf. IS IT that armament is a trap and Europe is caught in it? What is the inwardness of these proceedings which now, at this writing, have for ten days been going day by day from bad to worse, and read so Caught in entirely unlike real life and so much like a Tray a forecast-story by H. G. Wells? Is it all happening — has it all happened — logically, because the causes and the means were there and the clock had struck? Or is it Germany's put-up job again, like the war of 1870? The extraordinary mix-up of it! A Slav-and- Teuton row in Austria, that within ten days brings every gun in Europe out of its rack, fills France and Germany with weeping women, sends German ships scurrying to port or holds them there, and closes every stock exchange in the world! The mere wash of this disturbance, look what it does to us! Our stock exchanges closed for the first time since 1873, our values disordered, our blessed tourists by the thousand running hither and yon in Europe, their credits useless and no ships to bring them home ! It is like being caught in a vast flood, an overwhelming torrent of hate and sudden death from Europe's broken dam. We clutch at the newspapers falling from their presses in continuous showers like autumn leaves from storm-shaken trees. We can do little at 4 ::. , THE DIARY OF A NATION the piottieiiit for ou,r own caught in that huge welter ' of oiviliaation ru^^mg amuck, and nothmg yet for all those other mnocent victims of— what? Victims of what? What has done it? With whom is the final reckoning to be made? It seems a war not brought on by peoples, but by three aristocratic governments: by the tottering Hapsburgs and their allied interests in Austria, by those governors of Russia that direct the irrespons- ible absolutism of which the Czar is the figurehead, and by William the Prussian and the Germany he stands for. It is no war of France, no war of Eng- land. Italy as yet holds off from it. It seems to spell Austria's desperation, Russia's resistance, and Germany's opportunity. Well, it is the hundredth year from Waterloo, and we shall see what we shall see; signs and wonders, who can doubt, and an upshot far beyond calculation. Out of all the sudden din of rumour, prediction, and mobilization, which has proceeded from Europe, it has seemed apparent that no great power over there wanted to fight except Austria, and she only about enough to chastize the Servians and save her- self from impending disruption. Between no other countries was there immediate bitterness of spirit. The rest were prepared, but anxious and reluctant. So, arguing from reasons, it seemed as if our brethren must manage to localize the war. For Eng- land, France, and Russia to fight Austria, Italy, and Germany because the Austrian Serbs are unruly and the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated seemed too preposterous to happen. It is incredible that it should happen. But wars spring out of conditions far deeper than the immediate causes. Germany is a great and ambitious military power with importunate de- sires and an enormously expensive army. The con- dition of Europe, sweating under an enormous arma- THE DIARY OF A NATION 5 ment, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente watching one another with weapons ready, was a condition of long-standing strain and very unstable balance. Somehow, sometime, Europe has got to have relief from such expenditures for armament as she has been carrying; somehow, it would seem, there must come to be, virtually if not nominally, the United States of Europe, with a central authority strong enough to keep order in the whole European family. As it is, with the Alliance and the Entente, Europe was organized for a huge civil war. Must that come, and vast destruction with it, before the members of the European family can reach a larger understand- ing and submit to the regulation of the family coun- cil.'^ Our States split, fought, and joined again; but, slavery gone, there was comparatively little to hinder their reunion. There is vastly more to keep the na- tions of Europe apart — repulsions of race and tradi- tional hatreds without number, and the family inter- est of rulers, titular and actual. Still, half a loaf is better than no bread, and a modified and regulated independence may seem preferable to destruction. Especially it may seem so after a great war. To fight, to suffer, if need be to die for something dearer than life and worth more, is one form of human satis- faction and the quarrel with it has no very tenable grounds. But to fight and suffer and die merely that the processes of civilization may hunch along by another jolt is pretty tedious, and the doubt if civilization is advanced by vast, wholesale wars makes it more so. The end of all wars is peace on a better basis, and the clearing away of obstacles to the development of the peoples whose development shows the most promise. The last big war in Europe gave Germany an 6 THE DIARY OF A NATION Emperor and France a President. The next may give Germany a President, and to Russia commission government, and to Austria heaven knows what, for tradition, when the smoke clears away, may be found among the dead on the field. Nobody can guess what will come in the wake of such a war as now seems under way; nobody can say whether there will be a crowned head left in Europe. All anybody can safely assert is that a vast treasure will be consumed, and that tens of thousands of the best lives in Europe will go out. This enormous topic puts all ordinary topics deep in the shade. Watching Europe is the ruling occupa- tion in these States at this writing, and it is a pretty lively job, especially for thousands of people who have friends travelling abroad, and who want mightily to know what is happening to them and how they are to get home. Our government is taking thought actively about them, of course, but war is not polite, and does not always wait for non-combatants to get out of the way. Our friends in England we think of as safe. About our friends in France we shall think with more anxiety until we hear further. There is a great food problem coming, and great money problems. So far the chief function of these States in relation to the threatened suicide of Europe has been to assist the intending decedent in turning his effects into cash. But if the threat is to be car- ried out there will be fiscal transactions to conduct that will call for the highest available skill, and that has stirred again the demand for the prompt comple- tion of the Federal Reserve Board so that it may pro- ceed to business. If all Europe is to be one tremendous moving picture of war it will be hard for us to keep our minds sufficiently on things at home to do our neces- THE DIARY OF A NATION 7 sary business here. School is keeping in Europe for all mankind while these terrific possibilities impend. We are prone to forget what sort men are; prone to think they have become different; have risen above the possibilities of such behaviours as they once com- mitted. But who, besides Mr. Bryan, and perhaps Mr. Carnegie, can think yet of civilization without wars? Men fight more politely than they used to, and are less cruel in retaliation and revenge, but there is as much fight in them as ever, and when the l)reventives of war and the sacrifices to avert war and preparations for war have finally got too irksome to be endured, at it they go, hammer and tongs, and the best men win, presumably. At any rate, results come in that way that do not come otherwise. If Europe must have an enormous revolutionary convulsion preceding some new arrangement of her institutions and the relations of men, she will have it, and have it to a finish, and we who will look on must learn what we can and help as we may. August m, 19U. 4 RE the Germans intelligent? h\ Of course some of them are. Individuals -*- -^ of every pattern are intelligent. But the Germans who have managed Germany for the last sixty years; who believe, as Bismarck did, in blood German and iron; who have made of Germany such Intelligence ^ wonderful machine, have made her strong and rich and masterful, and are so intensely bent on securing for her all that may be coming to her — what of them.f^ Are they intelligent now.^ Everybody seems to feel that Germany might have stopped the war that Austria had started if she had really wanted to. Not on old Franz Josef, but on William the Prussian, is laid the responsibility for this war. The belief is that the management of Germany was ready for more of the great blood-and- iron tonic, and let the war come, and probably even encouraged Austria to light the fuse. It looks so. "This time France must be finished so that she will make us no more trouble." That sentiment, frankly expressed by some of the German managers, is part of the formidable German motive, and along with it goes imperial, world-gobbling purposes that it needs a large map even to discuss. Was it intelligent of the German management to want to finish France.^ Between individual French- men and individual Germans there is not much ill will. They can get on together perfectly if condi- tions are favourable. The chief trouble between France and Germany since '71 has been Alsace and 8 THE DIARY OF A NATION 9 Lorraine, captured by Bismarck and dragged away over the French border. France must be finished because Bismarck carried her beloved provinces off to his poKtical harem, and she will go after them the first good chance. But nobody but the German management wants France to be '* finished." England, Russia, Italy, these States, all the rest of us, prefer France in the unfinished French state as heretofore. We want no (jrerman jailers in charge of her, no German flavours in her honourable dishes, no German admixture m her architecture. We do not want any made-in- Germany France. No, no not any! It is not popular, this idea of "finishing" France. France is too valuable to be "finished." For one tiling, she is charming. For another, she is a labora- tory of civilization where experiments are made in government, in religion and irreligion, in cooking, in art, in the regulation of the affections, in every- thing. Of course, to finish her is the idea not of the German people but of the German management. The German people would not gain a lap by finishing France. They probably prefer variety in the world, as the rest of us do, and like the picture better with France left French. But the German management is a different affair. It is no more a free agent than a locomotive engine. It has to run on the rails that have been laid down for it by Bismarck and the en- gineers before and since. It has got to hang onto Alsace and Lorraine, and get all it can wherever it can get it, and stick to blood and iron, and load up with armament, and plot to swallow Holland, and plot to swallow Denmark and Belgium, and plot a German pathway to the Mediterranean, and paint the map of the world the German colour to the last possible peninsula and cape. The management is 10 THE DIARY OF A NATION free only to acquire. It may not be merciful; it may not be generous; it may not even keep its word if its "interest" conflicts with it. It may only be greedy and grab and rise up early to keep what it gets. It sounds like the story of the New Haven Railroad over again, doesn't it.^^ Can it be that the Kaiser is the Charles Mellen of Germany .^^ They say France has only one joke; certainly autocracy has only one story. Live and let live seems to be a necessary rule of life, but it is a rule that autocracies can never keep. Their interests will always conflict with the let-live end of it; their existence is too precarious to risk a competition of strong neighbours; they must be, and take thought always to keep on being, the great trusts that are so strong that nothing can touch them, and that are able at any time to swallow any one that is inconveniently active in the same business. It is the old story again that the chain that binds the slave binds the master. Autocrats are no more free than autocratized people. There is a "must" for Hapsburgs, a "must" for Hohenzollerns, and they must do it or quit. However, autocracy is a process. Some things are accomplished by it that could hardly come other- wise. Diaz was a process; Standard Oil has been a process; Mr. Morgan was a great process in some respects, and the German Empire could hardly have been organized in a mass meeting. The empire was all right enough — a going concern of great efficiency and one of the leading assets of civilization. The German people are very valuable folks; nobody doubts it. But is their management up to the date.^ Is it intelligent with a current and contemporaneous intelligence, or is it driving along unadjusted to its generation.'^ I'hat seems to be the great question whereof these great war movies now proceeding may have the THE DIARY OF A NATION 11 answer coming in their films. The Germans are intelhgent. In spite of the large detachment of intelhgence from that country for the benefit of this one that followed 1848, there is plenty left. They are able and they are well trained. They will not like to tip out their board of directors and discharge their hereditary manager, the genial and exemplary William Hohenzollern. He is a good man of the kind and liked and respected. But if he is out of date what can they do.^^ If Germany is a mere Hohen- zollern asset the creditors may get it, but if Hohen- zollerns are a mere liability of Germany they can be discharged. That is where France has the best of it. She fired her hereditary manager along about 1793, and has never had one since for long at a time, and since 1871 committees of her stockholders have run her busi- ness, and done fairly well. Never was anything so interesting as this war. They say that England may run out of news paper. Appalling! Any live person hereabouts would rather give up food than newspapers. The Everting Sun de- clares that, regard being had to the means of trans- mitting the news, the week ending August 6th was " the most interesting seven days any generation of man lias lived through." Very likely; and the second act in the great drama may make the first act seem tame. We are getting the climax of materialism. One re- calls reading lately with amusement mixed wdth sympathy the suggestion of Mr. R. A. Cram, re- viver of the Gothic, that we are at the beginning of a new five-hundred-year period in which what we call "modern civilization," dating roughly from the fall of Constantinople in 1453, "will dissolve and disappear as completely as the Roman Empire vanished at the first node after the birth of Christ." And, then, Mr. 12 THE DIARY OF A NATION Cram suggested, we will get back the best of what was in "the great Christian Middle Ages." This idea seenied interesting though fantastic, but nothing seems fantastic any more, and it is "a lead- ing banker" whom a newspaper quotes as saying, anent the collapse of the mechanism of exchange : We have been building up this delicate fabric for hundreds of years and we thought that it was in perfect working order and was sufficient to stand up under any contingencies. But it has broken down in a night and the world plunged into a condition like that prevailing in the Middle Ages. The world may not be going all the way with Mr. Cram, but it has made quite a lurch in his direction. August 27, 19U, IT IS evident that the European method of running a continent is behind the times; so obviously and fatally behind that it has come to terrible smash and involved every one concerned in it in an incalculable disaster. The principle of How to Manage this collapsed method has been every a Continent nation for itself with such help as it could attract, and the devil take Europe. There have always been combinations, but they have been temporary. There have been concerts of the powers and Ententes and Alliances to preserve the balance of power, but nothing effective enough to permit any European nation to allow her powder to run low or miss the latest thing in guns and war material. Think what life in these States would be f they all had to arm and drill and carry guns against one an- other! Think of New York setting up to be boss of the family and maintaining a fleet in coalition with Connecticut and Rhode Island in rivalry with Massa- chusetts and Maine! Think of the ambitions of Illinois to control the waterway to the Atlantic, and the anxiety of Missouri to keep clear the way to the Gulf! Think of Texas with separate interests, of California v/ith still another set of needs and rivalries and an army and navy to back them! Think, for short, of hot water, and then of hotter water, and more of it, then of immense quantities of boiling water under pressure, and you will have an idea what this country would be if run on the European plan. Incidentally, you will get a notion of what the American Civil War was fought to avoid, and of what 13 14 THE DIARY OF A NATION the Monroe Doctrine was contrived to avert, and of the value to peace of the disposition that left Cuba her autonomy, that seeks now to open a path to independence for the Philippines, and that has held off with scruples that have been so much criticized from every sign of land-hunger in Mexico. If a great, preponderant power is to keep the peace in a conti- nent it must not be selfish and it must be trustworthy, and it must respect minority representation. More- over, it must not be too free with its neighbours' landmarks. Napoleon tried to rearrange the land- marks of Europe, and they were too much for him. Bismarck took Alsace and Lorraine and Schleswig- Holstein; Austria grabbed Bosnia and Herzegovina and abolished the Sanjak of Novibazar. Behold the fruits of those larcenies! Enterprising European autocrats and their boards of managers must be broken of their propensity to change the map and insist on blue or green peoples living in yellow or red districts. The European mind must learn the lesson that the American mind is born to — the lesson of a continental family made up of diverse individuals, actively competitive, but submissive to such limita- tions of individual action as the integrity and pros- perity of the family require. Autocracies, not people, have got Europe into its present fearful mess. Autocracies and their narrow selfishness and their frightful blunders have fastened militarism on her and brought her to the brink of hell. She will come back, but how can they come back? Surely they are all riding to a fall — Hapsburgs, Hohenzollems, and Romanoffs — for though Russia's lot is cast in with the democratic governments and their success may seem to promise that her present government will stand, she cannot escape a salvation that has become epidemic in Europe. She will get her share. August 21, 191i. SOMETIMES the clouds come up and gather black and threaten torrents, and then the wind changes and they blow away without a drop. So also with war clouds. They have so often How We Feel blown a way without a gun fired. But not and Why this last time. This time there has come war; not a mere single war, but a sudden cloud- cloudburst of wars that fairly beggars expectation in its menace. At this writing that is still about all we know. We have had the furious blast that precedes the storm and watched the scurrying of wayfarers for shelter. We have seen the lightning strike in a few places, but the great destructive energies have not shown their power yet. There have been some thousands killed, perhaps — the news as yet comes very weak in detail — a few vessels sunk or captured; but, as we write in the second week of disturbance, the chief destruction has been to confidence and com- merce. It is as though Europe was afire. And so she is, and no one putting out the blaze, but the available military population of six countries running to add to it, and more expected. What we know who write is that enormous levies of trained soldiers are on their way to great battles. We know the Belgians, to the wonder of onlookers, have checked the German advance through their borders, and nicked with an impressive and cheering gash the prestige of "invincible Germany." W^e know nothing worth mentioning about the English lO 16 THE DIARY OF A NATION and German fleets. We know that Europe is full of our friends and neighbours, caught in the great conflagration, and not able as yet to escape from it. But the edges of the picture are all as yet that we can see. The centre is veiled still. No doubt our read- ers of this issue will have seen some of it. We think of them a good deal as one thinks of people who have had a look in on the Judgment Day. The unanimity of sentiment in this country against Germany is surprising. It is not anti-German, and it is not pro-English. It seems to be a judgment given promptly and spontaneously on the merits of the case as seen by American eyes. As a people we have come in the last fifty years to be almost as near kin to the Germans as to the English. We respect the German ability and value German friendship; nevertheless, the American mind records and dis- closes with hardly appreciable dissent the impression that the English, French, and Russians are fighting in this war in behalf of the liberties of all the world, and that Germany and Austria are seeking to impose on the world a despotic authority to which it would be ruinous to yield. For fifteen years in this country a steady fight has been going on against commercial despotism. It has been a hard fight, the harder because it has seemed to many to be a fight against efficiency. We think we have won it, and we hope that in the long run the result will prove not to be prejudicial to efficiency. But however it may turn out, this fight against powers that were, and seemed indomitable, has per- ceptibly trained and educated the American mind. In many particulars we think differently from what we thought fifteen years ago. What was radical opinion then is public opinion now. We have thrown off the yoke of the railroads and the trusts that had dominion over us. How we shall get along without THE DIARY OF A NATION 17 the guidance they were used to give us we do not know, but we not only hope to get along without the harm to ourselves that would inevitably result from serious harm to them, but hope that in the end they will prosper better and be more serviceable from having been put in their place. Germany, with her stout insistence on having her "place in the sun," no matter who must be crowded out of it, has seemed to Americans to personify the commercial despotism that they have fought long and finally beaten at home. Her word to Europe and all the world has been, "I shall have what I want, and I have the power to take it." With that spirit in control of her government and people she has forced armament on armament on all her neighbours and compelled them to the conclusion that there would be no peace until it had been settled by arms whether Germany or the rest of Europe was the stronger. As to that, we shall know in due time, bu I the instant Europe wins, if she does win, it will be a case like our case of the railroads and the trusts. To destroy them would be only a shade less bad than to be ruled by them. Germany is a very important spoke in the wheel of civilization. The moment it has been drubbed into her that she is not the whole wheel it will be necessary to help her with such re- pairs that she can go on with her work. As much as these States are anti-German because Germany seems to need the illumination of defeat, so they will be pro-German just as soon as she has had her lesson. As for the Slav peril, which Professor Miinsterberg and Professor Richard make so much of, there are very few shivers running up American backs on ac- count of that. The Slav peril is remote; the German peril was imminent, and Europe was justified in taking counsel from the copy book and doing the next thing. 18 THE DIARY OF A NATION A great war is a great pacificator of squabbles. This one in Europe has pitched the Ulster disturbance out of court and made the militant suffragists negli- gible. '-J Nobody in England has time to bother with invented troubles and hostilities when real ones press so hard on British energies. It is a good deal so with our minor difficulties. '_. There couldn't be a great railroad strike, i^ It was no time for it. So the rail- roads agreed to unacceptable terms of arbitration. There was no time for any more fooling by hostile Senators over the Federal Reserve Board, so Mr. Warburg was confirmed and the Board completed by the appointment and acceptance of Mr. Delano. Mr. Warburg, by the way, is a German product, not very long out of Hamburg and only lately naturalized; and yet, though general sentiment is so strongly against the German Government in the war, there seems not to have been a voice raised against Mr. Warburg as a near-German. September S, 19H. PERSONS who are in the habit of talking ac- ceptably to the general public, and have ac- quired the advertisement incident to that privilege, can make themselves heard, and are heard . gladly, even in a din of war. The more the ^^* din and the bigger the babel of unidentified cries, the more acceptable is the sound of the voices that are familiar. Not many German voices are familiar here except those Germans or German-Americans who are resi- dent in this country and speak in English. Professor Mtinsterberg, of Harvard, has long-standing habits of public admonition. We have heard abundantly from him since war began, and fully also from Professor Ernst Richard, of Columbia. Both of these gentle- men chide us for our feeling that Germany needs to be disciplined; both of them offer us pictures of her as the long-suffering defender of civilization and bul- wark of Europe against the insurging Slav. Neither of them seems to feel that in Germany, as often hap- pens elsewhere, prosperity has outrun manners. Voices from England come over the cables. We have had the more or less familiar tones of John Jay Chapman, shocked at being shovelled upon a train and herded out of Germany, recounting "the awe- striking brutality of actual war," the disappearance in the handling of American refugees of "every decency existing in society," proclaiming that "the future of free government of the modern world is now being safeguarded by blood and treasure by Britain" as it was in the days of Napoleon. 19 20 THE DIARY OF A NATION We have had a remarkable voice from the dea , a vision of Tolstoi brought to notice and repeatedly reprinted, in which he foretold *'the great conflagra- tion" starting in 1912 and developing into a destruc- tive calamity in 1913, with all Europe in flames and bleeding and filled with the lamentations of huge battlefields. Out of the North, Tolstoi said, would come in 1915 a strange figure, not a general, but a writer or a journalist, in whose grip most of Europe would remain until 1925. Finally would come a new politi- cal era for Europe, the end of empires and kingdoms, and the federation of the United States of Nations to hold the world for the four great giants — the Anglo-Saxons, the Latins, the Slavs, and the Mongol- ians. And another voice from the dead is Napoleon's : "In another hundred years Europe will be all repub- lican or all Cossack." Through the World George Bernard Shaw has expounded, not greatly to edification, the defects in the deportment of the British Government towards Germany. Bernard would have thrown a good scare into Germany in time to give her warning of what to expect. Through the World also has come the liveliest voice of all, H. G. Wells, sure of what he has to say and saying it with penetration; sure that "the mon- strous vanity that was begotten by the easy victories of 1870-71" has come to its inevitable catastrophe; sure that "never was a war so righteous as is the war against Germany now," glad it has come, glad to be in it, and keen to save the Germans when they have had their licking. Twice Wells has called out to us. In his second vociferation he is sure that the Belgian check pre- figures how the war is going, and proceeds to the sub- division of Europe with a view first to save Germany and next to make the rest of Europe politically com- THE BIABY OF A NATION 21 fortable. He does it with intelligence, so that one hopes that when the Pov/ers get around to this duty of map-making they will call in Mr. Wells and get his views. Of course, though, there may not be any available Powers left when the fighting stops. In that case, what's to hinder Brother Wells from mending the map himself! "A writer out of the North," Tolstoi said, "is to have Europe in his hand for ten years!" There's your chance. Brother Wells. Mr. Kipling must be talking to himself. His voice at this writing is still inaudible. Possibly he is a believer in "blood and iron." And though Chester- ton must be talking, up to this time of writing he has not talked over the cable. But, heavens! How he must be thinking! September S, 1911^, ^ OUR President lias solemnly exhorted us all to keep our shirts on in the great existing crisis in human affairs and not to talk loud, and not to be partisan, but strictly neutral. We are going to. We are sincerely the friends of The Dream of all those parties who are scrapping. Domination There is not one of them that we do not yearn to benefit. We do not intend to meddle in their scrap, except to help them stop when the time comes, and to bind up what wounds we can reach, and carry food, perhaps, where it is needed. But, in- asmuch as all of us read and some of us think, we are bound to have opinions on the merits of the con- troversy and hunches as to who ought to win and who is going to. In our behaviour we must be neutral to a hair's breadth; but if in our minds and feelings we had no preferences in such a conflict and thought only of how it affected ourselves, we should be a good deal duller and more selfish people than we are. And behold, all of us but a little band of German- born defenders of Germany seem to feel that it is for the interest of civilization that Germany should be beaten in this war. We cannot see the welfare of mankind in the domination of Europe by the kind of Germany that has been making in the last forty years. In this country we believe in democracy, and are committed to a great experiment with it. But if the Germany of Bismarck and the Kaiser is right and working on the right track by the right means, then we are wrong and proceeding in delusion, and our experiment will come to grief. If Bismarck and the 22 THE DIARY OF A NATION 23 Kaiser are right, blood and iron, militarism and au- tocracy, the strong hand and the mailed fist are the great tools of civilization. But not with such tools can democracy hope to succeed. Its hope is all in justice and a fair deal, backed, no doubt, by armed men, but not dependent for its prosperity on armed aggression. What do we think of Germans.^ Consider what we think of them as immigrants in this country. Consider our anxieties about the an- nual throng of newcomers that passes through our Ellis Island gate. Dubious material for a democracy so many of them seem. But about Germans there has never been a misgiving. They have always been welcomed as a strengthening stock. Always, wher- ever there has been a settlement of Germans, it has been felt to be a settlement of people able to take care of themselves and to maintain, and in some respects improve, our standards of life. Certainly we have no antipathy to Germans; no racial distrust of them. But we do distrust the leading that Germany has had since 1870. We do consider that her people have been trained to follow a false ideal. We do consider that the policy of Bismarck corrupted her moral sense. A great man was Bismarck and a great deal good, but he lied without scruple, and he took for Germany without scruple or regard for justice an}^- thing that he thought w^ould do Germany good. When he took Alsace and Lorraine he overdid the job and committed his unfortunate country to a hopeless debauch of militarism. Germany as we see it now is not the Germany of Goethe or Schiller, of the demo- crats of 1848; it is the Germany of Bismarck, and of intense commercialism, and of success at any price. When Bismarck told in his memoirs how he changed the wording of the French ambassador's letter and brought on the war in 1870, it was notice given to 24 THE DIARY OF A NATION mankind that in diplomatic concerns the word of Germany may not be trusted. When the German troops crossed the Belgian frontier it confirmed the existing impression that promises of the German Government are only good so long as enforceable by the promisee. To Americans who did not under- stand the spirit and morals of the German Govern- ment, the invasion of Belgium brought a shock some- thing like the shock that came two years ago when the Outlook disclosed the theory of the three cups of coffee. Something important seemed to crumble. Germany stood revealed as, governmentally, a vast and ruthless commercial organization, bound by no scruple, committed to the belief that might is the only right, and ready to crush and destroy any obstacle in her path. Nothing is comparable in importance to the Ger- mans with being detached from that terrible dream of domination. Their teachers and government seem to have an obsession that unless the Germans take charge of the world and give orders to all its peoples the world will go to pot. They are sincere, appar- ently, in the belief that the Slavs will bite the head off of civilization unless the German war lord can bite the head off of the Slavs. But the Slavs are a numerous and husky people, fairly good stock, and coming along fast. It is conceivable that the Al- mighty intended that they, too, shall have a place in the sun. There is lots of room for them, especially in Asia. AVhy this urgent necessity to bite off their so numerous heads. '^ Is it that the world from the German point of view has only two kinds of nations — those whom she can thrash, and those who might thrash her? Is it an essential part of the militaristic concept ion that everybody on earth must some time be fought and, if possible, thrashed? Is it that ter- rible obsession that has left Germany without one THE DIARY OF A NATION 25 zealous friend in all the earth and with only one ally in Europe? We people of the United States seem to be the best friends she has in the world, the most solicitous for her true welfare, the most anxious to save the pieces of her if she gets broken. But we don't like her militarism, nor believe in her theory that the Teuton is the Only Hope. It is no vital defect in her people, but a dreadful misdirection of leadership that has got her, as we see, into a war in which defeat will be disaster but victory would be ruin. Yes, ruin infallibly; for there is not room on earth for the Germany of the Kaiser's hopes and Bis- marck's purposes. There is no place, no possible toleration, for a superman nation that would dominate mankind. The Germans must be content to be good people, living among good people and polite to them. That is the best that the future offers to any nation. Meanwhile the great war goes on behind a great veil two hundred miles long, stretching from Brussels around down the eastern frontier of France. At this writing we still have scant news of its pro- ceedings, beyond what came about Liege and the capture of Brussels and reports of French successes in xAlsace. We think we know that something like two hundred thousand British troops are somewhei^ in France, with twice as many Belgians and ^ve times as many Frenchmen, practising to stem the huge incoming German tide. The Pope is dead — a good old man, very much re- spected, though perhaps not so useful to his genera- tion as though he had had a more contemporaneous comprehension of modern times . He owed his election to Austria, but nullified immediately on his accession the veto power that Austria had had on the election of Popes. If Europe is to be torn apart and reas- sembled it may make a difference what manner of thinking man the new Pope is. September 10, 19 H, ITH the din of Europe continuously in our ears our poor affairs at home get but a slight hearing. Europe is in the con- dition of a village with a mad dog careering up and down its main street. We read day by day, and Will They Get many times a day, of the Germans creep- to Paris ? [j^g nearer to Paris, and wonder if they will get there. When the Allies stand them off somewhere the hearts of most of us rise a little; when the Allies get a setback our hearts sink. Then we feel that Lord Kitchener is probably right in fore- casting a war that will go over the winter — perhaps two winters, perhaps three. Wliat seems unthink- able is Europe with the German foot on her neck: Belgium absorbed, France prostrate and German- ized, England subdued — our turn to come next. Are there Germans enough to accomplish that.^^ One cannot think it. It is conceivable that Paris may be taken, but while England has a navy and Russia an army, how can Germany dictate terms to Europe. f* Nothing that she has accomplished so far is incom- patible with her final undoing, but, as Kitchener says, it may take time. There are those who hold that Germany is unbeat- able; that she is so superior in the military art and in war power as the result of forty years of close de- votion to those details that she can go out and take anything she wants from nations powerless to defend their own against her. President G. Stanley Hall, oi' Clark University, in Worcester, has put this idea into words as clearly as any one. Germany's war per- 26 THE DIARY OF A NATION 27 sonality now in control of her, he says, is Nietzsche's; a worship of power, whereof the ethics is: "Do, be, get everything you have the strength to do. Pity is a vice. Evolution means the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the unfit. Christianity with its sympathies for the poor in spirit means decadence — v/as a disease. The world belongs to those who have the might to get it, and treaties, peace-pacts, arbitration, are mere points of strategy to deceive other nations." This philosophy. Dr. Hall says, has taken a deeper hold of the German mind than any other ever has since Hegel. A large proportion of Germany's ablest men have done nothing but study war, and that so secretly that the other nations of Europe have been taken unawares. The war, so far, follows Bernhardi's book, and probably will to the end, barring accidents. No power. Dr. Hall thinks, could resist Germany's five and a half millions of armed men, trained to the last point of warfare. Perhaps not, but most of us Americans will live, barring accidents, to see. If Germany's controlling mind has been formed by Nietzsche and her hands taught to make his theories good, then in very truth a mad dog is loose in the main street of Europe. But what happens to mad dogs? They give the villagers a frightful scare; they bring death to some, but in the end, poor creatures, if they are not killed they die of their disease. Nietzsche's philosophy and militarism are fatal diseases. In so far as Germany has get them she will die. There is death in them, not life. It is impossible that this Nietzsche rabies runs all through Germany. It will have to be localized and expelled. Dr. Hall's conclusions are not to his own liking. He does not wish to see them come true, and if he is a prudent man he will hedge on them. If he can find some one to give him fair odds against the 28 THE DIARY OF A NATION proposition that the meek shall inherit the earth, let him bet a little something on the meek. They are a much better risk than Dr. Hall seems to think. A deep principle of human life works for them im- mutably, and once they start fighting they are liable to keep at it in their modest way for a long time. The Nietzsche-Bernhardi theory is incredible to ordinary people. They think it is a crazy man's joke. But once they learn it is real, there is nothing to do but beat it or die. Life in a Nietzsche-Bern- hardi world would not be worth living. At this writing, after what the Belgians have done and are doing, and with what the French are doing for them- selves, and with what the stubborn English are doing to help them, and with those loud thumps by Russia at Germany's back door, things do not seem to justify Dr. Hall's fears. If the Germans have become detached for the time from their Christian inheritance and are actuated just now by Nietzsche-Bernhardi philosophy, there is no use of making so much remonstrance about drop- ping bombs in Antwerp. Of course they will drop bombs anywhere they seem likely to put the unfit out of commission. If they have gone back to first principles we must expect a war more like what war was before first principles were modified. General Miles says this will probably be the last great war. No doubt it will be the last great war for the present. One of the discouraging things about schools is that the instructed scholars are continually getting out of them and green ones coming in. It is the same about nations and war. The generation that knows about war is constantly dying and being replaced by a gen- eration that has to be taught. If this is to be the last great war for a long, long time it will have to be followed by a prodigious rearrangement of Europe. And no doubt it will be, however it comes out. THE DIARY OF A NATION 29 Meanwhile, we have the German apologists holding forth about the Slav peril, and the German armies using every means to kill or disable all their natural allies against the Slav. That is the way the Nietzsche philosophy works. Relying solely on aggression, it imputes aggressive intentions to all its neighbours and takes such precautions against them as to force all the neighbours to band together to save their lives. Of course this immense disturbance of the world is going to affect us in all our interests and in our poli- tics. Our fiscal machinery is very much upset, our markets are disarranged ; a great many of our workers have already lost employment; we are going to see high prices for food and diminution of the wages fund. The great German workshop for the time being is dead. Nothing that we have been used to send to it can go; nothing we have been used to get from it can come. The other workshops of Europe are also very much disarranged by the drawing off of so many men to war. These considerations will affect our politics very promptly. In hazardous times par- tisanship lags, and folks want safe men in charge. We want the full ability of the country to be at the service of the government, and a government ready to avail itself of the full ability of the country. It is no time for selfish politics. The world is afire, and our affair is to stand by with the best apparatus we can supply to help put out the blaze and save the burned-out people. September 17, 19 U. WAR is our apology to the animals for the way we kill them. When need calls hard enough, man takes his place in his turn in the line to the shambles. The story of Europe as it comes just now is too much like another tale of the Backing Aivay stockyards by a superheated Upton Sin- From Paris clair. The part of an American citizen continues to be to sit in a chair where the breeze can reach him and read about killings. The read- ing is wonderful, but the part is not a glorious part, and one feels ashamed at times not to suffer more and struggle more when anguish and struggle on such a stupendous scale are going on. Morning, noon, and night we read about it in our newspapers. We are fascinated by the story, so unreal, so portentous, so tremendous. Whatever our work is, it becomes a routine that we go through with perfunctorily and drop when it is done to go back to the great war serial of which there is a fresh installment twice a day. This is "the Day" which German officers in wardrooms of battleships and mess rooms of army headquarters have stood up to drink to these many years past. How is it going .^ Not yet, after forty days of fighting, is there any outcome that seems decisive as to the result. The furor Teutonicus of which we have had warning from Professor Richard has all its cylinders in action. The Germans, said Dr. Richard, in the Outlook, "are determined to win at any cost, and after their victory to leave their enemies in such shape that they will 30 THE DIARY OF A NATION 31 never be able to disturb the peace again." That expresses the underlying purpose of this war — the annihilation of all obstacles to Germany's supremacy in Europe. What we learn of the proceedings in France indicates that it is being pressed with an energy altogether prodigious and unprecedented in warfare. But there is a counter movement going on, not quite so energetic, but remarkably resolute and considerably effective, to leave the Germans in such shape that their neighbours in Europe may give due attention to the rational enjoyment of life. Un- happily, this involves digging a vast number of Ger- mans under the ground, and by the accounts we get the preliminaries for that remedy are being faithfully attended to. The Germans have made a wonderful advance on Paris, but they have met such a skillful and stubborn resistance, and suffered, apparently, such enormous losses that the question is, how manj^ of them are left.^^ What we wonder is. How long can they keep it up, and can they finish France and Eng- land before Russia bursts through their back door.^ Hereabouts, frankly enough, we hope they can't, and our opinions follow our hopes. In spite of all the wonder of the German advance, the Germans seem to us to be in a tighter place than the Allies. They can stand a wonderful lot of killing while they last, but are there enough of them.? The furor Teutonicus undoubtedly has justified Dr. Richard's high opinion of it, but it cannot re-animate the dead. This war may be known in time, if any one is left alive to write about it, as The Great Misunderstand- ing. Everybody concerned in it seems to have mis- understood. The Kaiser, strong for fattening peace and strong in his conviction that armament would secure it, became the business partner of Herr Krupp, and gleaned his passing profit in the making of guns. His motives being misunderstood, the neighbours got 32 THE DIAEY OF A NATION the idea that he was preparing for war and all stocked up forthwith and kept at it to the limit of their ability and beyond. Bismarck, a great deal wiser and kind- lier man than, just now, he gets credit for being, mis- understood the French when he supposed that the defeat of 1870 would set easier on them if he relieved them of the care of Alsace and Lorraine. When it came to the pinch about Servia, the Kaiser and the war lords seem to have misunderstood everybody: Russia in thinking she would back down if gruffly addressed, England in thinking she would grab at a ridiculous bribe and had no prejudice against in- famy, Belgium in supposing she would merely whim- per when trampled on, all of Europe and the rest of mankind in entertaining the astonishing idea that the nations were more afraid of Russia than of the Kaiser and his Krupps and the fu7'or Teutonicus. Was ever there so misimderstood and so misunderstanding a victim as the poor Kaiser! There is a new Pope lately. Cardinal della Chiesa, now Benedict XV; very well spoken of as a man fit in piety to succeed his predecessor, and better trained than he was in diplomacy and the affairs of this world. September 17, 19H» THE chief blame for the war in Europe is laid hereabouts on the Kaiser. Maybe that is just, maybe not, but this seems apparent: that, whether the Kaiser did right or wrong, he did his duty as he saw it. One may think he did terribly The Case of wrong and yet acquit him of conscious the Kaiser fault, of sclfishness, of everything but a misconception of the contemporary world and his part in it. The Kaiser does not believe in representative gov- ernment for Germany. He does not believe in de- mocracy, at least not for Germany. Neither did Bismarck. Bismarck doubtless believed a good deal in Bismarck, partly as the agent of the Almighty, partly as Bismarck, director of the German people. Government of Germany by Bismarck through his Kaiser was representative government of a sort, for Bismarck in a way was representative. The Kaiser does not believe in that. He discharged Bismarck at once. He believes in government by the Kaiser as the agent divinely appointed to govern the German people. He is not responsible to the German people for what he does, but to the Almighty. He believes — he must believe — that he is competent to judge what is right for Germany and that when he does it he has God for his ally. That goes far to make him the resolute man that he is, but it makes him mighty dangerous. Of course he wants to do Germany good, for he is a good man, and Germany is his duty and his ambition. Doubt- less he would give his l&e for her; give it cheerfully. 3^ 34 THE DIAKY OF A NATION The trouble with him and his theory is that in most of the affairs of men many heads are better than one. In spite of the craziness of mobs, the sanity of many minds is more durable and less subject to delusion than the sanity of one mind. The successful kings and emperors nowadays are persons employed by the people they nominally govern. Some of the em- ployed kings are very valuable and useful, but "divine right" rulers like the Kaiser, however good and able and sincere, are utterly out of date in for- ward-looking countries in this age of the world. To us who believe and hope in democracy the Kaiser seems a tragedy. He has hitched his wagon to the wrong star. He is able, he is engaging, he is likeable, a good husband, a dutiful father, a good man. He would have made a tip-top Kaiser if only he could have got on a contemporary basis with the German people and realized that they should be his boss and not he theirs. Employed by them he might be useful, for they like him and he them, but an au- tocratic ruler for such a people as the modern Ger- mans is an anachronism, and the probable fate of the Kaiser is to prove it so. The great destructive machine which he has spent his strength to perfect has got away from him, and is doing its appointed work of devastation. Where he will be, or in what case, when its wheels cease to turn no one can foretell. September 2Jf, 19 H. THE complaint of the German Kaiser to our Mr. Wilson about the thousands of dum-dum bullets found in the French fort of Longwy affords affecting evidence of the Kaiser's disposition to swallow what is handed to him. This is the A Qpm'plaint Kaiser's first considerable war, and from the Kaiser having had, probably, little practice in separating true news from false, he doubtless be- lieves that all his good Germans have been behaving like gentlemen, and that the Belgians, French, and British have done many reprehensible naughtinesses. In this country, where our minds are newspaper-fed, and where to cut a pack of lies and turn up the truth is an exploit done instinctively and repeatedly in the course of the day's reading, we have learned to take all reports of atrocities in war with allowances. Con- sider our recent war in Colorado, and the incident of the militia and the burning of the miners' camp. The various versions of that story contradict one another just as the versions of the story of Lou vain do. If Mr. Wilson should reply to the Kaiser's remon- strance, "Well, Kaiser, everybody's doin' it," that would indicate one way to deal with atrocity stories. Either believe all you read from both sides or else reject all. But to believe all the tales of German cruelties and reject all the tales of anti-German cruelties is not intelligent. War is terribly cruel. It lets loose hordes of men, the bulk of whom are hu- mane but including many who are not humane. Moreover, war excites and intensifies the passions, 35 36 THE DIARY OF A NATION and may brutalize even the kindly. It is not in- credible that Belgian peasants, infuriated by their suffermgs, took dreadful vengeance on wounded Ger- mans. And, of course, it is not incredible that some Germans took terrible vengeance on helpless Bel- gians. When ^ve or six million men are practising to kill one another, why bother about these details or fret because some women and children and other non-combatants are killed.^ It is the war that is terrible, not these poor, dreadful incidents of it. To try to make war nice is poppycock. After we have read of trenches filled and fields heaped with dead young Germans at Liege, and with Germans and Frenchmen and Englishmen along a line two hundred miles wide from Liege to Paris, this protest from the Kaiser about dum-dum bullets sounds like a joke. The poor Kaiser ! The papers quote the late Gen- eral Grierson, who had been military attache at Ber- lin, as saying of him: "He's all right; he's a gentle- man. But those around him are perfectly poisonous." Jiist how much hand, immediately and personally, the Kaiser had in bringing on the war is not known yet, but a theory that commends itself to credulity holds the poisonous Prussian war party responsible for getting Germany into this war while the Kaiser was off on his summer holiday in Norway. The pro- ceedings as to the stiffening of Austria's backbone in her dealings with Servia were doubtless agreed upon before the Kaiser left his capital. Austria was to mobilize against Servia, but it seems to have been expected, and there seems to have been a supposition that it had been arranged, that Russia would do nothing more than protest in Servia's behalf. But when Russia fooled this expectation by mobilizing, the Kaiser was away, and then, apparently, the Crown Prince and all the fire-eaters rushed matters so hard that before the Kaiser could get back the THE DIARY OF A NATION 37 country was committed to fight Russia. That meant France, too, and then, to Germany's horror, England joined them, leaving German diplomacy flat on its back and the war squad in control of everything. If that is a true story, and the Kaiser was thus caught in the machinery he had so laboured to create, still it was his machinery that caught him, and it all only illustrates the saying that those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword. The war news at this writing is all of a successful stand by the Allies in France on the line from Paris to Verdun, and the driving back of the Germans. But we only know generally what is going on. It is fight, fight, fight; a tremendous engagement of huge armies along a long line, with apparent advantage for the Allies. If the defenders merely hold their own in this fighting they are ahead. For the Germans to hold their own is not enough. They must conquer or get out. All the forecasts of students and predictions of prophets, seers, wizards, witches, ho\j men, clair- voyants and soothsayers have been widely published and have made interesting reading of late. We all want to see a little farther ahead than the unaided vision can penetrate. Some attractive long-distance prophecies have set November as the month in which the Kaiser is to lose his empire. That may follow, of course, if this enormous battle between Paris and Verdun goes decisively against the invaders and the Russian successes continue. There is a pious beauty about the phrasing of the little proclamation in which President Wilson calls upon "all God-fearing persons" to pray on October 4th for the restoration of peace in Europe. It reads like a collect out of the Episcopal prayer book. Europe's needs are urgent. It is to be hoped, though, that she will not be past praying for on the first Sunday in October. September 21^, 191^, NO DOUBT in our character as neutrals we ouglit to be as sorry as we can for everybody involved in the great war, without stopping to be over-nice in apportioning blame; sorry for the Kaiser because he has been caught in his own ma- The Pathos of chinery; sorry for France and England the Germans and Germany because, being consider- ably civilized, they should not be under the terrible cost and inconvenience of battling with one an- other; sorry for the Serbs, and for Austria because she is such a back number; sorry most of all for the gallant Belgians who have suffered so much, and least perhaps for Russia whom nothing can hurt very deep and whose chances of gain are biggest in propor- tion to what she risks. And coming to particulars, we ought especially to be sorry for the Germans. As we see them to-day they are a pathetic people. Germany has set up to be the bully of Europe, and a bully, when one has got over being mad at him, is always pathetic. Bullies are always stupid. At the bottom of their pro- ceedings is inability to understand something very important to be understood. They are people who, seeing no chance to get what they want by favour, are constantly tempted to try to get what they can by force. That seems to be the case with the Germans. They have enormous merit o* a most substantial kind, and it has brought them huge and well-earned gains; but when it comes to getting anything by favour there is nothing coming to them. In his 38 THE DIARY OF A NATION 39 present stage of development, the German is the fat man of Europe whom nobody loves. Individual Germans are beloved, of course, but the typical German not. A writer in the Outlook, an American of German parentage, writing in defense of his breth- ren, explains the universal distaste for Germans in Europe by saying: The average German, whom the foreigner sees, is aggressive, self-assertive, loud in his manner and talk, inconsiderate, petty, pompous, dictatorial, without humour; in a word, bumptious. He has, in many cases, exceedingly bad table manners and an almost gross enjo^Tiient of his food; and he talks about his ail- ments and his underwear. His attitude toward women, more- over, is likely to be over-gallant if he knows them a little and not too well, and discourteous or even insolent if he is married to them or does not know them at all. He is at his worst at the time when he is most on exhibition, when he is on his travels or helping other people to travel, as ticket-chopper or customs official. This German apologist knows that underneath bad manners which the German does not know are bad are some of the greatest and best of human qualities, but casual observers don't like the manners and naturally don't like the man; so Germans, apparently, have been taught that every hand in Europe is against them, and that they must always expect to fight for what they get and thrash all comers. Hence militarism and all the troubles that follow it. A little while ago English manners were just as ill thought of, and doubtless with just as good reason, as German manners are now; but English manners seem to have improved. American tourist manners do not edify all foreign observers, but bad manners in our tourists do not have political consequences. Refinement usually comes with prosperity, and has come abundantly to Germans in the United States. German prosperity at home has mostly come within the last thirty years, and probably it would in time 40 THE DIARY OF A NATION have brought manners in its train, and possibly as Germans grew to be more generally acceptable they would have emerged from this terrible idea that they must thrash all the world in order to get their place in the sun. When prosperity will resume its refining course among the Germans in Germany heaven knows, but is not their situation sincerely pathetic? Not only are the manners of ordinary Germans open to such regret- ful criticism as above quoted, but the example set to ordinary Germans by their superiors in rank and power seems far from helpful. Professor Newbold, of Philadelphia, who fled through Germany the other day, is quoted in the papers as saying: The war was caused by a little group of military men who aim at the conquest of the world. They are the most offensive people I have ever met. They are responsible to no one for their ac- tions and they lit the fuse. But as to the mass of ordinary Germans whom he SAW, he says: I never before saw such despair and misery written on the faces of people as I saw in Germany when war was declared. They felt and looked as though the end of the world had come. Be sorry for the Germans. They are in for a terrible time. At the bottom they are good and extremely able and valuable people, but they have been tied up to a wrong conception of what rules our modern world. If the war rids them of the domina- tion of "military men who aim at the conquest of the world," there is no reason why they should not grow in favour; but no country that all the others fear can hope to be popular in a modern world. October 1, 19U. THIS is distinctly a foundling war that is going on in Europe. Nobody is willing to father it. One after another the nations con- cerned have stood up and made formal declaration that it was no war of theirs, but an unwelcome charge . „ ,,. left on their doorstep. It will take court proceedmgs to trace its paternity, but persons who have duly read the papers, white and other kinds, incline strongly to the suspicion that the war is the love-child of the German General Staff. Nobody else in Europe seems to have wanted it, not even the Kaiser. The story that the Staff fooled him with a story that the Russians — or was it the French? — had crossed his frontier is just such another tale as that of Bismarck and the Kaiser's grandpa, and sounds so likely that we hope that in due time the German people will take the matter up with their General Staff and get the rights of it. If they conclude that the war was a mistake for them and that the Staff got them into it on false pretenses, to hang so many of the Staff as they can catch would seem not to be out of the way. And perhaps there are professors left alive in Ger- many with whom some settlement may be in prospect. When one considers what this war is for, the answer hereabouts is that it is to correct certain obsessions that have grown up in the German mind as a conse- quence of wicked and erroneous philosophy and teaching. The gospel of force, of assault, of robbery, has been preached openly and effectively in Ger- many for a generation. Nietzsche preached it until 41 42 THE DIARY OF A NATION his madness became uncontrollable, and Treitschke, Von Sybel, Von Bernhardi, and heaven knows how many others. They got it into the more or less in- nocent German head that it belonged to the Germans to dominate the rest of mankind. To get that idea out of the German head, out utterly and permanently, is what this great war is primarily about. Secondarily, it is a war against the whole idea of militarist domination; a war against brute force; a war to keep the terrible obsession that has brought Germany and all Europe to so dreadful a pass from lodging in the mind of any other people for some time to come. It is not a war of the English to crush German trade; not primarily a war of the French to get back their lost provinces; not a war of the Bel- gians to conquer Germany; not a war of Russia to get Constantinople; not a war of anybody for any detail of trade, or revenge, or advantage, but a war of all hands to destroy militarism and the gospel of force, and bring peace and equity back into the world. It is a terrible job to beat the gospel of force and make peace universally popular. This present try at it seems to be going along as well as could be ex- pected. The Nietzscheans are still extremely effi- cient. Rheims Cathedral, battered and burned, now attests, along with Louvain, their savage competence in destruction. Certainly the Vandals and the Huns had nothing on the Germans as destroyers of the monuments of beauty and of piety. Beaten back on the Marne, the Kaiser's troops are making, at this writing, a formidable stand on the Aisne, where there has been a week's fighting, but as yet without decisive military results. The German rush is over, the Allies, having man- aged, like good shoppers, to avoid or survive it, are at it now, ding-dong, to get the idea of conquest THE DIARY OF A NATION 43 out of the obstinate German head, preparatory to introducing there some less dangerous conceptions of the duty and destiny of man. There seems to be going on a vast killing of men in France, not to mention the wholesale operations in that line which we hear of on the other side of Germany. Truly a bad philosophy is a very fatal thing and desperately hard to eradicate. If missionaries could have con- verted Germany to the paths of peace, that would have been the thriftier way, but what could mis- sionaries have done when a large proportion of the Germans are abundantly religious and suppose that they are Christians already, and the rest don't want to be? Suggestions of peace have been made to our President, but amount to nothing as yet. Neither side is ready for them. The talk is still of a pretty long war in which settlement w^ll be reached by processes of exhaustion. When it comes to that, the feeling of the Allies is that England and France with control of the sea can stand more of it than harbour- bound Germany can; while Russia is inexhaustible. That is dreadful sounding talk, but, of course, it is a hard job to get the poison of a rotten philosophy out of the heads of a strong, obstinate, and very numerous people. Some devils come out, as the Scripture says, only by prayer and fasting. We are going to try prayer on a large scale on October 4th, and with fasting there has been much experiment in the field already, with very much more extended tests in prospect if the war continues long. Only long-distance predictions of this war's results have any chance as yet. It has gone far enough now to prove that no one is to have an easy victory. The Allies on the defensive seem able to stand off the Germans; the Germans on the defensive seem able to stand off the Allies. It looks as though the German 44 THE DIARY OF A NATION invasion of France was a failure, but the German defense of Germany, if it comes to that, promises to be a very hard nut for the AlHes to crack. That is one thing that gives gravity to the talk of a long war. But speculation about these immediate details is futile. The mind dwells rather on the ultimate result to mankind of these tremendous forces of disarrange- ment. The most fantastic prophecies, like Tolstoi's dream and that queer seventeenth century prediction put out by Figaro, get attention because they range so far ahead. The future of the world has not, for a century at least, been so utterly uncertain. It is as Mr. Root said the other day at Hamilton College: This dreadful war, with its terrible destruction and misery, marks the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new day for the world. No man can tell just what the end will be. We are on the threshold of that new day in which the associations of men are taking new forms and new opportunities and are leaving be- hind everything that has gone before. That is the point. Behind this awful cloud that obscures Europe there is something like a new heaven and a new earth, and we want to know what they will be like. This is not a war of hatreds. Hatreds may be bred in it, have been bred in it, especially in Belgium — but they did not cause it. What caused it was fears and obsessions. It is all a dreadful cautery of life to get the madness out of it. It even seems as if the nations that have kept out of it, especially Italy, are half anxious to get in for fear they will miss the treatment. Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian, says the Belgians must not forget their terrible experiences nor feel presently that, after all, the mass of Germans may not be so bad. "We must be pitiless," he says; "the Germans are guilty in the mass; they did what » THE DIARY OF A NATION 45 it was in them, and always will be in them, to do; they must be destroyed like wasps. Let there come a thousand years of civilization, of peace, with all re- finements, the German spirit will remain absolutely the same as to-day, and, given opportunity, would declare itself under the same aspect and with the same infamy." Maeterlinck seems to be a good deal stirred. Probably he has been to Louvain. But to destroy the Germans is too large a contract. Moreover, this idea that a whole race of men is incurably impossible, though excusable in Maeter- linck for the moment, is a very mischievous idea. It is cousin to the idea the Germans seem to have culti- vated about the Slav, and to their further notion that the Teuton is the Only Hope. But "Teuton" in the German mind includes all the races of North- ern Europe — ^British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Scan- dinavian, Celt, and even Slav itself, unless it is too much mixed with infusions from Asia. The Germans have not professed a pious purpose to destroy even the Slavs "like Wasps," and as to the Belgians, their professions about them were most polite. All the Germans want of the Belgians is complete control of their country and their great port. They have not professed yet to see a need to exterminate the Bel- gians. Germanized and subjected to the direction and discipline of the German military caste, the Belgians might look pretty good to Germany. Of course that is what gives intensity to Maeter- linck's wrath and gives extension to the sentiment that when the final settlement comes Belgium ought to have Berlin. The wonderful rush of the German armies from Belgium to Paris was immensely instructive. So were the reports of the exhaustion of the German 46 THE DIARY OF, A NATION troops when they had reached the side-lines of Paris and had to begin to retreat. A terrible, terrible thing is the furoi' Teutonicus; dangerous to all comers, but especially to Teutons. What will the survivors of those driven battalions of Germany thi^nk about it when they get home.^ They have seen the /wror Teutonicus at work; they have felt the drive of it; they have been subject to the orders of the agents of it; have been goaded by their swords, lashed sometimes across their faces by their whips. They have seen German lives spent as lives have never been spent before in Western Europe. They will know the terrible futility of that expendi- ture. What will they think of \he furor TeutonicuSy of militarism, of government by a caste? Can they think .^^ Can the common Germans think? Or has the power to think been thrashed out of them under military discipline? Our Uncle Samuel, extremely busy with his duties as Everybody's Next Friend, has now on hand very much the largest stock of embassies and legations ever carried by one dealer. He had to ask for a million dollars the other day just to use as small change in the transaction of his borrowed business. Uncle prides himself a little on keeping in the ama- teur class in diplomacy, but perhaps his experience this year may help to persuade him to branch out a little and get permanent premises in the foreign cities. They seem to think of him over there as permanently in the business, and he might as well recognize that he is. October 8, 19 U, THE interesting thing ahead when the fighting is finished is the unscrambling of Europe. The German mind takes no account of it. It is all for making Europe a great German trust, capitalized high enough to give a huge profit on the The Unscrambling War, full of Subsidiaries, and with of Europe "common" and "preferred" and the other trimmings. The German idea is to do all that by main strength and then keep it done by main strength. The plan has all the charms that made the argument for our big trusts — economy and efficiency of administration, capacity to do large things on a large scale, and all that. All the small, independent concerns of Europe would be incor- porated into the big German trust, and made fabu- lously profitable to the owners by a perfected organi- zation and the extirpation of competition. No more Belgium, no more Holland, no Sw^itzerland, as little England as possible, a pared-down France, and a grand, gigantic Germany. But the English idea seems to be quite different. We want this war to settle the map of Europe on national lines and according to the true wishes of the people who dwell in the disputed areas. After all the blood that is being shed we want a natural and harmonious settlement which liberates races, restores the integrity of nations, subjugates no one and permits a genuine and lasting relief from the waste and tension of armaments under which we suffered so long. So Winston Churchill, first Lord of the Admiralty, and what he says is a proper sentiment for England 47 48 THE DIARY OF A NATION who cannot hope to occupy this world by her un- aided force, and has need of contented neighbours to work with. Part of the great problem will be to devise due possibilities of contentment for all the Germans except the military caste, and not even that can the Allies shirk. There will be sixty-odd million very valuable Germans left when the war is over, and that is far too many people to be left with punc- tured hopes or without a satisfying vision of the future. Somehow matters must be handled so that in tv/enty years Germans yAU say: "After all, it was a good war for us. It delivered us from militarism and Pan-Germanism and left us free to live and work and trade in a world no longer unfriendly." This war is an enormous process of civilization, and it is as a process that we should look at it — a process that came inevitably out of the preparations made for it and the defects in the world-arrangement that preceded it. We ought to feel confident that out of all the killing and destruction that is going on now ideas and considerations and concessions will come to birth that will be worth the terrible cost and anguish of the accouchement. There is a German point of view that, with all its unconscionable terrors and brutalities and its dreadful entanglement with mili- tarism and the gospel of force and Prussian Junker- ism, is not all nonsense. These Germans that are being killed by regiments ought to be carrying their civilization to the parts of the world that need it. As far as it goes, it is a wonderful civilization, and the made-over world that is coming must provide mar- kets for all that is good in it. For that matter, the world that was before the first of August was open enough, amply open, to the German civilization. It was only closed to German sovereignty, which could not spread except by trespassing on premises already in hands competent to resist trespass. German THE DIARY OF A NATION 49 civilization was welcome almost everywhere. Ger- man sovereignty was welcome almost nowhere out- side of Germany. That it will be any more welcome after the war does not seem at all likely, but with the fear of German sovereignty dissipated, German civilization — meaning efficiency, patience, and order ■ — may be more welcome in the earth than ever. Meanwhile it is all the preliminary details of the process that interest us; the details of the fighting. That goes on at this writing on the line of the Aisne with desperate fervency. The Allies refuse to be beaten; so do the Germans. The butcher's bill grows and grows; we know little about it, and cannot think much about it yet, because of the intensity of our concern about the issue. Clearly, the great plan to overwhelm France by a sudden onslaught is a dead failure. If the invaders are to possess France they will have to earn and pay for every yard of it. But there is no prospect that they will possess it. The Germans on the Aisne are fighting for dear life, and all the time the rapping on the back doors of Berlin grows louder, and winter is coming on. Terrible stories come and persist about German atrocities in Belgium, including outrage and mutilation of women. A letter published in the Sun, written to Harold M. Sewall, of Bath, Maine, is explicit and convincing as to this latter point. This dreadful development of morbid brutishness is perhaps a detail of the furor Teufonicus against which Professor Ernst Richard so lately warned the world. It must make direful reading for the German apologists. The more thoughtful people have had no real vaca- tion this year. August is the vacation month, and since August first we have all been to school every day, Sundays included, learning the military art and the history and geography of Europe. Among other things, we have fought over again the chief 50 , THE DIARY OF A NATION battles of our own Civil War for our better under- standing of the proceedings in France. There has been no peace, no rest. Where we have not been harrowed by enormous battles, vast destruction, and huge mortality, we have been ruminating about the immediate future of mankind. It is as though all bets were declared off and all precedents became in- valid on August first, and a new time began on that date, to which the calculations that had come to be our habit no longer applied. The jar of this iransition is enormous, even here, where we are shielded by distance from the griefs and material distress that accompany it. Our friends are not dead, nor in special peril; no consuming disaster hangs over us, and yet most of us Americans are de- pressed, some consciously, some without knowing \^^hy. You can't read war and think war all the time for two months without feeling the strain of it. No; thoughtful people this year got only so much real vacation as they had in June and July. October 15, 19U. WE OUGHT to get into this European war harder. Since it is not proposed that we shall fight in it, we ought to get into the rescue work with more power. Some of us are doing something, but most of us are doing nothing Let Us Turn ^^^ ^^^ cuough is being done. Not Out Our enough money is coming out for the Pockets Belgians, whose terrible plight is so pro- foundly appealing. Not enough for the Red Cross. One trouble is that we have war troubles of our own; that because of upsets, due to war, in many lines of business, an unusual proportion of our own people are in more or less pecuniary distress. Another trouble is that when six nations in Europe are spending their utmost energies to kill, what even a large country, three thousand miles away, can do to save must seem almost trivial. Still, we ought to do more; we must do more. No other investment offers such returns as the succour of the Belgians, so many of whom, woeful to tell, are beyond aid already. Come, brethren, let us turn out our pockets at least. The special appeal now to us is for the Belgians and the French of Northern France; the regions where the war has gone. What terrible cries will come later and from where no one can tell. In Austria there must be great distress, but Austria and East Prussia and Poland are not so near our door as Bel- gium is. The only safe place for Belgian non-com- batants now seems to be England, and there they have gone by thousands and are being cared for by the English. 51 52 THE DIARY OF A NATION No doubt our great part in this vast disturbance is to mind our own business and keep our general ap- paratus of production and distribution going for the benefit not only of ourselves, but of all Europe. But though to mind our jobs is useful, it does not ease our hearts much. Lucky anybody who can go over there and help. Lucky anybody who has much to give and gives it. Those who have not much to give should pinch and give more than they can. That is better than to be left out of this war. It is not brotherly to stay out. The interminable battle on the Aisne still, at this writing, rages on indecisively, apparently with enor- mous loss of life. We are told now to call it, not a battle, but a campaign. Other huge campaigns are going on to the east of Germany, where the Russians seem to have the better of it, and where also enor- mous losses attest the efficiency of modern war ma- chines. It makes for detachment from life to watch these tremendous proceedings. It seems ignoble, and it is, to cling overanxiously to life when daily so many thousands before our eyes give it up. This is our battle, too, that is beings fought in Europe; our destiny as well as their own that Belgians, British, French, Germans, and all the rest are struggling and dying over. This is a conflict of fundamental ideas. If the German idea wins, its next great clash seems likely to be with the idea that underlies such civiliza- tion as we have in these States. In some ways we are slack, and it might not be altogether bad for us to have the German goad scar our easy-setting hides. Read how the German peril has turned English Aldershot into a factory for turning soft islanders into athletes. A very efficient instrument is the German goad, and wonderful things it seems to have done for Germany. There is a large proportion of unused energy in most people; the use of the German goad THE DIARY OF A NATION 53 is to bring it all to application. Nature's goad is hunger, but that is not enough to carry civilization very far. The German goad undertakes to cover the whole distance that civilization has to go; to prod the whole world into a huge productiveness and all surviving mankind into fabulous efficiency. That is the idea that is now being discussed in Europe. It has come to the point where the nations have to settle whether they will accept the German idea and try to be like Germany, or reject it and demonstrate that it is unsound. What is the matter with it? It looks lovely to the Germans, and in great measure it has agreed with them wonderfully. They tell you that the army and military training is the very hub of their wheel; that it has made Gemany what she is; that it is the greatest thing in the world, and that to force it on the world is to confer on the world the greatest pos- sible blessing. Well, Germany has conferred this blessing very considerably on Europe in the last forty years, and Europe in her deep perversity declines to like it. She Y/ants to be rid of it. Perhaps she doubts that military training is the greatest thing in the world. There have been folks who said that love was. Germany has not bothered much with love, but she is undeniably strong in military training. There is so much good in the German discipline that people were almost ready to believe it was all good. Since the war came that inclination has weakened. The invasion of Belgium weakened it; so did Lou vain; so did Rheims; so did the terrible harrying of the Belgians; so did the unanimity with which nearly all of Europe and the United States have taken, some actively, some as neutrals, the negative side in the argument. The feeling grows that the German idea, with all its immense good, makes for mania, and 54 THE DIARY OF A NATION would ultimately, if it ran on, produce a crazy world, bereft of its jewels, with battles forever running in its head, and huge wars forever in preparation. So the discussion runs very high. When it is over the question will come up what to substitute for the German idea that will possess the valuable disciplin- ary facilities of that system without its dangerous tendency to produce military mania. After all, efficiency isn't everything. It isn't the chief end of man, nor even his main business on earth. His main business on earth is to live, except when, on occasion, as now, the main business of very many men becomes, temporarily, to die. People call President Eliot the First Citizen of this Republic, and Mr. Ho wells is, by general consent, the dean of American letters. Dr. Eliot has fourscore years and Mr. Ho wells three less. Neither of them is excitable. Both of them love peace. Both of them are full of goodwill to mankind, and incapable of racial antipathy. One finds both of these mature and honoured gentlemen in the front rank of the Friends of the Allies. No one can have missed the repeated disclos- ure of Dr. Eliot's sentiments. What is going on inside of Mr. Howells is revealed in his discussion, in the cur- rent North American Review, of the Kaiser's claim to be in partnership with "Gott." Stars above! Mr. Howells can still bite. October 22, 19U. GERMANY'S purpose in the great war, as seen from here, is to teach a reluctant world that what the German Kaiser says goes. In the matter of disciplining Servia, the Kaiser told Austria to go ahead the whole distance and he would German Kidtur hack her. The Czar demurred, very and the Prus- moderately, as to details. Germany sian Idea g^^^^ p^^^ ^^^ g^^ ^^^ ggp^^j.|.g ^f g^y ^^^ diplomats could not avert the clash. It is a war for the vindication of the Prussian say-so; a war of destruction and extermination of whatever stands up against Prussian domination; a war to parcel out the world anew, and give Prussia what she wants. Prus- sia has dominated the rest of Germany so completely that it has forgotten that there ever were ideas in Germany that were not Prussian. Undoubtedly Prussia is eager to dominate the rest of mankind in the same way, and morally capable of using any available means to do it. With the Prussian idea it is truly a case of world-power or downfall. It is an idea that is incapable of repose, that requires periodi- cal exercise in the field, and must be fed on conquest if it is to keep its strength. That is not at all true of German "kultur," which we have so much been told the Germans are fighting to defend. The German "kultur" means pig-iron, Ki'upps, ships, beer, chemicals, music, discipline, military service, and professors. It is the German civilization and includes the German attempt to dis- cover, assimilate, and apply knowledge and truth. This last needs very little defense by armies. It 55 M THE DIARY OF A NATION only needs time and peace. Given those, it will con- quer the world, if it is good enough, and not a gun fired. Knowledge and truth are things for which, even in this world, there is plenty of room. Of habitable land there is only a limited area on this planet; good ports are scarce; all the ready-made farming land in the better climates belongs to some- hody capable of making trouble if ousted, but the more truth people get hold of, the more there is left; the more knowledge is applied, the more awaits ap- plication. In so far as German "kultur" was good, it had all the world to dominate, and no objection. In thirty years that domination had made vast prog- ress. But against the domination of the Prussian idea the objection is so vital and intense that in the great world-rising against it there is only too much prospect that the breath of German "kultur" will be clean squeezed out of the German body. Krupps cannot do much for it; destruction and extermination — the erasure of beauty, the expulsion of piety — are not aids to it. It should be the ally of those things, not their foe. Alas, then, for German "kultur," ridden to its death by the ruthless Prussian demon; struggling splendidly to do the demon's w^ork, but fated, who can doubt, to sink in due time, gasping and bleeding, foundered by that fatal rider. The pity of it; oh, the pity of it! that what should be the world's example must figure as its warning; that this hell that is heating for the Saxons and Bavarians — kindly people both — is the kind of hell that awaits all people who fail to fight off Prussian domination before it has enchained them. It is a bad hell; a hell of Krupps and ruined cities and violated women, and tears and misery and blood, and blackened fanes. Since Antwerp fell it has seemed more than ever that this world is not our home, and the war seems more than ever like a war of Rome and Carthage. THE DLVRY OF A NATION 51 For the capture of Antwerp seems a blow at England. We were pretty sure all along that the Germang could beat up the Belgians if they put their minds on it, but it was hoped that England and France be- tween them could furnish distraction enough to keep them diverted. But that has not proved feasible, and now it seems a longer road then ever to Tip- per ary. The improved Krupp siege-guns seem to have made all exposed fortifications obsolete. We have been building some defenses lately to protect the Panama Canal. It will be interesting to know if they would be of any use against these new Krupps. Fortifications are expensive and take up room, and perhaps it is something to be put to the credit of the big Krupps and the Zeppelins that they have destroyed the efficiency of forts. If there is to be no security in fortifications, folks who hope to live in the enjoyment of liberty and die in their beds must contrive new means of protection. The peace of the world must rest on some new understanding, ade- quately enforced, or perhaps we must just resign our- selves to taking bigger chances. It was a benefit to the world and helped the general cause of democ- racy when the early improvements in cannon put old- time city walls out of use. City dwellers have had more room ever since, and trade has been freer. Like advantages may come in the end out of the current improvements in war which have made it too effi- cient. When all modern knowledge and all the re- sources of modern industry are concentrated on the work of killing men by wholesale and destroying all their works, a degree of success is attained which is self-decapitating. Questions like this current one, whether the Prussian Idea is the Only Hope and the Kaiser the Preferred Instrument of the Almighty, are, of course, very interesting indeed to discuss, but 58 THE DIAHY OF A NATION even to the Prussians themselves the discussion will seem too dear if the price of it is extermination. We do not realize this war, we Americans. The people who realize it most, as yet, are the Belgians, but all the countries actively concerned in it will realize in due time what it means when the resources of a mechanical civilization are concentrated on the destruction of human life. As for Belgium, she is like a country crucified for the saving of the nations. Of all the countries involved in the war, she was the most innocent, the best justified, the most gallant. Gashed with innumerable wounds, her poor body is a witness, still living, against the aggressions of Prus- sia, and against our modern warfare by machinery. There comes in the papers an echo of complaint from England, alleging that negotiations are making here to stop the war, and protesting that the war can- not be stopped until it reaches its natural finish. As to negotiations we know nothing, and our newspapers have reported nothing. But it is true enough that the war cannot be lanced until it comes to a head. There are two ways in which the Prussian idea of world-domination may achieve its fate; one is to be beaten now from the outside; the other is to succeed now and be overthrown in due time from within. But, either way, it is a very important idea that will considerably change the world; and certainly if it crashes down in ruin now, all the other ideas of world- domination by a single empire, British, Russian, American, or any other, will go with it. October 29, 19U. WE ALL saw the German army march to Paris. We saw Liege fall, and since then we have watched the capture of Antwerp. We have stood by attentive while Ger- man submarines have sunk five British cruisers. A Little More ^^ have also seen the German attacking Armament for forcc driven back from the Marne to the Uncle Sam Aisne by the French and British forces, and German commerce chased from the seas b}^ the British navy. We have been duly attentive to all these spectacles, and unless we are very, very stupid, we must have acquired some new and def- inite realizations about modern war. Chief among them may well be the conviction that if we vv^ere to choose from the animal kingdom the creature that best exemplifies our relative condition among power- ful nations, we would have to remove our good old eagle from our country's seal and coins, and substi- tute for him the soft-shell crab. Considering what we are and what we have got, we are, next to China, the most defenseless con- siderable people on the crust. Only our modest navy impairs our claim to be the Pie of the Nations. To be sure, we are too big to be conquered by any sudden dash, and have in us, besides, enormous potentialities of defense or aggression. To be sure, too, we are so pacific and so little ambitious to take anything from anybody and so isolated that we can safely go much lighter armed and less protected than any other great country. But we seem to have leaned too hard on isolation 60 THE DIARY OF A NATION and our pacific reputation. This war that we have been watching has shown us that our coast defenses are probably out of date; that, in proportion to our responsibilities, our navy is small and insufficiently equipped, and that our little skeleton army needs more meat on its poor bones. Every one who is interested in our equipment for war knows that it is conspicuously incomplete. No one knows it better than Europe and Japan. Mexico at our back door is a big bundle of disorders and anxieties. Our tem- porary tenure of Vera Cruz was threatened last week by some uneasy Mexican bandit, and may be threat- ened again to-morrow. What our duty to Mexico may come to be we do not know, but if our hopes should be disappointed and we should yet have to intervene, our whole military force in being would not be enough for the job. We are pacific, but we undertake some duties which imply maintenance of a moderately competent apparatus of force. The Monroe Doctrine, that is part of our accepted foreign policy, is maintained not so much by us as by the navy of England. We see Germany, her vast efiiciency in military matters and the curious obsessions and aspirations to which the minds that control her are subject. We know that Germany has yearnings that conflict with our continental policy, and that what chiefly stands be- tween them and us is England, now fighting for her life. We don't think England will be conquered, but if she should be, what have we got to back up such an answer as we should wish to make to a proposal from Germany that she should be allowed to improve the culture of Mexico or South Brazil.^ And there is Japan, whom we love considerably, and who, we doubt not, is fond of us, but who will think no less kindly of us for having due shot in our lockers, and being not only polite and considerate, but able-bodied. THE DIARY OF A NATION 61 Are we not rather too short of munitions of war? Recent events have demonstrated that we are living on the same planet with nations w^hose supreme desire is to knock the heads off of one another, and who, just now, have subverted all their other business to the accomplishment of that purpose. What this world will be like, or who will be boss in it, when present activities terminate we cannot guess. What aims the conquerors will have or what means to ac- complish them we cannot tell, but in a world so mad as this, plunging to conditions which cannot be fore- seen, would it not be wise for us to add a little to our means of self -protection? It takes three years to build a battleship. They say it takes a year to make a torpedo. It takes six months, at least, to make even an experimental soldier, and very much longer to make even an experi- mental sailor. We do not want to be a military na- tion, but we should not be too slack about military preparation. Had we not better take, quietly but promptly, our little dose of the medicine which is being passed out in such vast quantities to Europe? Our situation has changed violently in three months. We ought to do something about it, and do it at once. The time is at hand when we shall have to take care of ourselves and may be called upon to protect some of our neighbours. Should we not qualify ourselves betimes for these duties? We are having a tremen- dous lesson in human history, from which, for us, one application is : In time of war prepare for peace ! One alternative to employing some more troops and pro\ading for annual provision of a moderate reserve of trained soldiers, and building a supply of torpedoes, submarines, and junk of that sort, and putting a rather larger share of the national mind and money into military and naval provision, would be to come out for non-resistance. Bishop Greer has 62 THE DIARY OF A NATION done ~ that. To the average unregenerate mind it does not look like a good course. But it looks about as good and quite as hopeful as this other method that is now proceeding in Europe. To be between excessive armament and non-resistance is to be be- tween the devil and the deep sea, and after all, drowning is a comparatively easy death. What does anybody suppose Germany would do to the world if it sat down and let her have her way.^* The chances are that if all outside opposition were re- moved from her, the South Germans would presently get to work to rid themselves of the insufferable Prussian military caste, including every HohenzoUern who could be caught on his way to the tall timber. In the light of events in the last three months, the present united condition of Germany has come to look like a cruel union of the wolf and his prey. The great crime against Germany is not British jealousy, not French revenge, nor Russian malice. It is Ger- man governmental stupidity. Not since William 11 assisted Bismarck down the German front steps with his boot, has Germany produced a man who had the necessary gumption to get anything from Europe, except with a bludgeon. The Kaiser is not so bad as a man, but he is of second or third-rate ability, and he has managed to concentrate in his sacred person virtually all authority over the destinies of the German people. Of course, at times, democracy is heart-rend- ing, but it isn't so bad as a hereditary Kaiserism. Stars above! This spectacle of a great people befuddled and misled in this century by one second- rate man, himself misled by a lot of bughouse mili- tants whose trade is destruction ! It makes one want to go out and eat grass with the cows, like Nebuchad- nezzar; to get in with the animals, of whom Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania for owning things THE DIARY OF A NATION 63 (especially colonies), and who, though at times they fight, fight merely with horns and teeth and claws, and not with the very latest thing in modern im- proved machinery. It all makes one half ashamed to buy a gun or order a torpedo, though in our case, when we have done all that any one as yet will dare propose, we will have acquired no more than a fairly competent national pohce force. The world nowadays, under the great stimulation of German militarism, is like a city infested with gangs, where all the available money is spent in strengthening the gangs, and nothing for the police. Only in so far as our war- money is spent on something that will keep order in the world, will there be satisfaction in spending it. And perhaps it will be so spent, for if the warring gangs fight one another to a standstill and call for the police, it is we most of all who should be ready to respond. October S9, 19U, THERE is no doubt about the efficiency of tlie great current German advertisement. Our German friends may give themselves all credit. They have done the trick as it has never been done before. Everywhere their notice has Germang, taken the head of the column, and reading tJie Doctor matter is lucky if it can squeeze in next to it. Up to the first of August Germany, as we saw it, was a country in Europe somewhere between France and Russia that printed in an old-fashioned, middle-aged type, was good in music, beer, shipping, and manufactures, and rather bumptious in inter- national politics. German history was so mixed up that only the more proficient students got far into it. German baths were good; so were German razors. The Germans were the best chemists, and made excellent toys. We knew them as efficient people; traded with them extensively ; welcomed them here as visitors or settlers; but about the German mind and what was going on in it, very few of us had much knowledge or felt any particular concern. But since the fourth of August, when the Germans began to publish their advertisement across the line in Belgium, all that has changed To all thinking people in the world, the compelling and engrossing thought has become Germany. What is she.f^ How came she so.^^ What does she want, and can she get it? Those have become the ruling subjects of en- quiry, and enquirers have tackled them on the run. The one thing needful has seemed to be to understand Germany. Everything about her has assumed a vast 64 THE DIAEY OF A NATION 65 importance — her place on the map, her history for ten centuries, her rehgions, her ambitions, her ha- treds and the sources of them, and, of course, her mihtary and naval apparatus. We are all in the situation of the fisherman when he had let the genie out of the bottle. We don't know what we have got, but we see that it is a mighty big thing, and want to know about it. We want to know, especially, what it is going to do to us. Already it has done a lot. People used to laugh about the Belgian lion, especially the one on the monument at Waterloo. It may be that the careless morals of the late Leopold impaired the dignity of Belgium's reputation. At any rate, most people thought rather of her thrift than of her punch. But over her line drives Germany, and behold Belgium the wildcat; Belgium who dared the Minotaur; Belgium, the saviour of France, the defense of Eng- land, the pepper in the monster's eye, the hero, the martyr! Never such a splendour of glory and of sympathy — and, alas ! punishment — as the great Ger- man advertisement has brought to little Belgium. And France, whose vice has been thrift, behold her a spendthrift of all things precious! Emotional France! See her calm, determined, prompt; well- ordered, well-generalled ; matching strength with strength, prodigal in devotion, intelligent in sacrifice. There is a new England. Lloyd George tells how "A great flood of luxury and sloth which had sub- merged the land is receding and a new Brit-ain is ap- pearing" that "can see for the first time the funda- mental things that matter in life and that have been obscured ... by the tropical growth of pros- perity." Very wonderful, all this. Germany is the great doctor of Europe. Played-out men and women have been going to her to be cured for generations. Now 66 ^ THE DIARY OF A NATION she is bringing her cure to those who stayed at home. Oh, the amazing Germany! she that practically single-handed has served notice on Europe: "Obey or fight for freedom!" How came it to be in her? Out of what far-off springs, what inward strivings, what leadings, what visions and hallucinations has come to her this extraordinary call to be the purge of a commercialized civilization ! How came it that the Germans, a people mostly simple, kindly, and affec- tionate, should suddenly transpire as "the stern hand of fate to scourge us to an elevation where we can see the everlasting things that matter for a nation?" We want to know; we want to understand. Every- thing about Germany has become vitally interesting. We examine her on the map. We seize on the books that tell her symptoms and the history of her case. We cannot read Von Treitschke, but we read about him; and we read Nietzsche and Bernhardi and Usher and Cramb and many more. In Germans, German- born or American-born, we have a new interest. Three months ago we gave them no special thought. Now we look at each of them curiously, trying to see in them some trace of this prodigious insanity that has shaken the world. When the French went mad and purged Europe they had a great leader. But the Ger- mans have no great leader. They have a sublime delu- sion and a magnificent machine. Their leaders, it would seem, are Von Treitschke and Nietzsche, both dead. Their Kaiser is a gallant but not a wise man; their whole leadership, spiritual and political, seems touched with madness and inevitably destined to disaster. But, oh, the marvel and the splendour of it! And, oh, the immense effect of it on a machine-crazed world — slack in faith, greedy of ease, and filled with people jealous of the means and easements of their neighbours ! THE DIARY OF A NATION 67 The Pan-Germanists have managed by dihgence and perseverance to stir in the EngHsh a very deep and serious anti-German animosity. They have not hesitated to proclaim to all the world for years past that Germany was out for England's scalp, and at last they got both the Germans and the English to believe it. The candour of Pan-Germanist writers like Bernhardi and Treitschke was extraordinary. They did not hesitate to publish to the world in clear print that the pathway of Germany led over the ruins of England. The result is that they have got it clinched in the English mind that the price of life in this world is to floor Germany so completely as to get Pan- Germanism absolutely and finally out of the German head. Treitschke is dead, but Bernhardi is not, and one of the things we shall want to know is how his services to his country are to be requited when the war is over. His book has done more than any other single thing to tie up American public sentiment to the Allies. Bernhardi and the lame cobbler of Zabern are heavy loads for the German apologists. They cannot be explained away. November 5, 19H, IT IS related that Captain Disco Troop, who went out of Gloucester to the Banks, could think lilce a cod, and did so think when he was after cod, and so filled his schooner and got home before his brethren. Thinking Like We in this Country are not yet out after a German Germans, but we are closely concerned with them and mightily concerned about them, and it seems very important that we should learn to think like a German. For three months now a great many of us have been trying to do it, with such assistance as we could get from available au- thorities on German thought, and from an exceed- ingly stimulating spectacle of German action. We have read the newspapers, including great numbers of letters-to-the-editor, both from Germans and anti- Germans, statements from all kinds of professors, re- ports from returning travellers, appeals in great number from professional writers, and "white pa- pers" and government manifestoes. We have read the English reviews, our own magazines and reviews, and books or extracts from books by Bernhardi, Treitschke, Usher, Cramb, Wile, Billow, and the rest. From these researches, coupled with our observation of current events reflected with more or less distor- tion, most of us have concluded that Germans think steadily the will-to-power, conceiving of the world as their lawful apple, from eating which they have been far too long restrained by the rest of mankind, and especially by England. We think we think lil^e a German when we think Kaiserism, Prussianism, the 68 THE DIARY OF A NATION 69 rule of might, blood, and iron, Deutschland iiber Alles, force the higher law, and all that. Accord- ingly, it is getting to be that every German is suspect. Three months ago we thought of Germans not very often, being concerned with baseball, woman suf- frage, our home-grown politics, the reformation of society, the efforts of the Alexander Berkman crowd to confer moral importance on disorder, the efforts to expel the bad germs from business, the vivisection of the railroads, the chastening of the express compa- nies, and Becky Edelson's disinclination to eat in jail. ^Vhen we did think of Germans we thought of them respectfully and kindly, and with the sentiment that it was foolish of the abstinence party people to inter- vene between them and beer. But since August 1st all these other topics have been virtually wiped off the slate, and we think, most of the time, about Ger- mans, and think like a German in so far as we can. Are we doing it? Are we really thinking like a German when w^e think the Germans are out to cap- ture the earth.? Are we justified in thinking of all the Germans, here and everywhere, as for Germany against the world .'^ Must we think of Herman Bid- der, for example, as awaiting, with a concrete howit- zer base in his back garden, the coming of the Krupps to the Western Hemisphere? Are our neighbours here of German derivation potential spies of the Kaiser and potential allies of the Kaiserland against this Republic that has sheltered them? Germany in this war is, apparently, a very compact, united nation. In action all the Germans are working in unison, fighting, paying, dying, shoulder to shoulder; are we to infer that in every German mind exists this strenuous purpose, avowed by one great school of German thought and finding its due expression in a war defended or extenuated by all the rest— the pur- pose to impose on earth the Hohenzollern will as its 70 THE DIARY OF A NATION / dominant governmental force; to seize for Germany whatever Germans covet; to kill and destroy what- ever stands in the way of German ambition, humbling all other powers that Germany may increase? If to think these thoughts is to think like a German, then we Americans ought all to realize it. "Given that mood of mind," writes a friend to this paper, ''victory for the Teuton would be more terrible than defeat, as the world would be delivered to a succes- sion of barren struggles, ending in such suspicion and despair as creation has never witnessed." How is it? How many German minds have yielded to this ter- rible obsession? How many of the German fighting men are consciously expressing it? How many feel themselves committed to world-power or downfall? It is the habit of peoples, when involved in a serious war, to fight first and think afterwards. The trouble about thinking like the German masses is that there is no evidence that the Germ. an masses have yet begun to think. They are very busy fighting and taking care of wounded men, and a great many al- ready are dead. Vorioaerts, the Social-Democrat German paper, showed signs of thinking, and (we hear) was suppressed. The only German thought that shows just now is this Pan-German, world- power, Machtpolitik thought that has brought on and is conducting the war. The mass of Germans be- haves as though it was completely penetrated and possessed with this thought. If we are to think like a German it is the only important and effective thought available for us at present. And yet, if we attribute it to all Germans, it may be we shall do them an injustice. It may be that they are already beginning to think thoughts of their own not identical with this governing thought of the Prussian force-worshippers, and that a little further along in the war, when the Russians, say, finally cross THE DIARY OF A NATION 71 the German border, we shall begin to get a new line of German thought which is not derived from Treit- schke and Bernhardi, and, perhaps, is not strictly Hohenzollern. Let us wait a bit and see. The new thought, if it comes, may be very, very interesting and fruitful; fruitful possibly of the sort of fruit that hangs from trees by hempen stems and is harvested in coffins. Let us wait. And especially let our brother Amer- icans of German descent be advised to wait a little, too, and not be absolutely confident that they are thinking like Germans until the whole of German thought has had a chance to disclose itself. The present leaders and directors of German thought and action are the most important foes of democracy in the world. If our fellow republicans here of German descent give the whole of their adherence to their present leaders, the later German sober second thought may terribly embarrass them. What will they say — Ridder, IMiinsterberg, the Roosevelt Exchange Professors and all the Kaiserbund — if German thought suddenly changes on them.^^ Who will they speak for then? Not for the United States, certainly, for they don't now; and not for Germany if Germany sheds the Kaiser. We do not envy the gentlemen in this country who have got in with the Kaiser. If his tires go fiat they will have a very long walk home. Assistant Secretary Roosevelt says we have not enough men in the navy by eighteen thousand to man the ships we have in stock. Mr. Roosevelt would be obliged if Congress would authorize the Navy Department to recruit that number of men and add them to the force that the law at present allows. We believe Mr. Joseph H. Choate, lately ambassa- 72 THE DIARY OF A NATION dor, would back Mr. Roosevelt in this desire. In the introduction that he has contributed to Cramb's "Germany and England" Mr. Choate says: What is going on now is a contest for the empire of the world, and we have no use for empire. But if we really wish for peace against all hazards, we must ever strengthen our navy and train every youth in the Republic, as he approaches manhood, to such an extent as shall qualify him to be converted into an efficient soldier at the shortest notice. Mr. Choate does not wish to bring on war, but to keep out of it. With armament it is as it is with drink and many other things. Too much is worse than none; enough is better than none. Germany's awful example of too much armament will be used by the inconsiderate to scare us out of having enough. We must have an adequate minimum apparatus of protection. November 12, 19H. A MAN who returned a book by Nietzsche to the Public Library remarked as he passed it in: "This does not get under my skin." The remark applies to the efforts of the German apologists in this country. Some of these gentlemen Germany and have done better than others, but none Colonies of them has got under the American skin. Their best has been to bring some ideas and arguments to American attention that later on may help to inspire sentiments that may be useful to Germany. A good many of us, for instance, think with sympathy of Germany's yearning for good colonial possessions, where Germans may develop as Germans and the German language will not have to yield to English. That seems a natural aspiration for a crowded and energetic country, but while, in a way, we sympathize with it, we are not ready yet to help break up and make over the various continents in order to further it. No doubt we understand and like the English civilization better than the German because it is based in democracy and is more like our own, but we are not finally committed to the idea that the English are the Chosen People and ought for the world's good to inherit the earth. We would be glad to have the Germans have greater territorial possessions if it could be accomplished without intolerable disturbance and if the Germans showed any considerable qualifications for successful colonization. But nobodv seems able to endure German rule but Germans. They can stand the German method when they have to. Other peoples 73 74 THE DIARY OF A NATION hate it, and even Germans, once they have escaped it, stay away. It is related that when Dean Richmond was presi- dent of the New York Central Railroad some ojie said to him: "I see all your conductors have gold watches and diamond pins. Those men must be knocking down fares. I should thinlv you'd dis- charge them." But Mr. Richmond said: "These present conductors have already provided themselves with diamond pins and gold watches. Do you really think we would do well to substitute for them a lot of new men with diamonds and watches still to get.^^" So, in spite of our sympathy with Germ.an desires, the profit to the world of having Germany supersede England as a colonial power seems very dubious. England has been greedy and is now pretty well glutted; she has been harsh and has grown almost gentle; her manners have been bad, but they have improved. In so far as she rules colonies now, she does it chiefly by persuasion. The thought of having Germany, the new broom, sweep through the con- tinents, excites far more dismay than enthusiasm. No doubt there should be organized a great holding company to take title to the outlying portions of the earth, and give deserving peoples privileges of resi- dence and exploitation in spare lands that would suit them. If there were such a holding comipany it m^ay be that Germany would get good openings, for there are vast regions which her widely advertised KuUur might very much improve. Instead of which w^e see it now devoted to an appalling destruction; sacrificing by the hundred thousand the lives of its own young men — very good young men, most of them — killing also by the hundred thousand the valuable and rather scarce young men of France and Belgium and Eng- land, and wasting in like manner the youth of il- limitable Russia, who has room for them all^ and THE DIARY OF A NATION 75 involving Austria and, one after another, the other outlying nations, in corresponding sacrifice and de- struction. It is bad, bad, bad; and all grows out of the vice of nationality, which is so nearly a virtue and yet raises such particular hob. And here in these States all we seem able to do about it is to say how dreadful it is, and moan, and give something to a fund, and go home to dinner. How are we going to get 02ir medi- cine? How shall this enormous discipline the world is undergoing be brought home to us to our spiritual profit? Of course we have been pinched in the general squeeze. A great deal of our business has had and is having a hard scramble to get along. The collapse of the cotton market is only one of many troubles growing out of the war which put people out of their habits of living, and involve loss of employment and distress. The war does reach us and may yet pinch us hard enough to compel great cooperative and per- haps governmental measures for relief at home as well as abroad. But it might, and may, go further than that as a disciplinary experience and yet not exceed our national needs. The seeds of it seem to be very deep. It is the culmination of a world-wide unrest, due to something more than armament and the jealousies of nations, and felt in this country and China as distinctly as in the countries that are fight- ing. We of the United States have by no means escaped this general infection. We have had the suffrage agitation, the Progressive movement, such queer signs of uneasiness as last year's fashions and the tango, and an anti-capitalist revolution with indictments and a fight against the railroads and the trusts. England has like disquietudes or worse. France had its excitements, like the Caillaux case and a political deadlock. Conditions peculiar to 76 THE DIARY OF A NATION Europe have made the disturbance over there cul- minate' in this huge and deadly conflict of nations, out of which the survivors may hope to emerge cured of their insanities. But how are we to be cured of ours? Will the treatment we have had, joined to what we are getting as we sit here on the edge of the hurricane, be enough? Is there discipline enough coming, joined to what we have had, to knock the nonsense out of us, too, and jolt us back into just relations with the realities of life? That is the nature of the question which many minds must be cogitating as we read of the Germans crossing and recrossing the Yser on the bodies of their fellows. Tolstoi, in his curious forecast of world troubles at this time, saw them all proceed out of the "eternal courtesan. Commercialism." But that means the whole world-structure of money-making business, with its vast machinery of machines, factories, shops, banks; the whole apparatus of in- dustrialism and finance. Against that there has been proceeding in this country a fight for fifteen years which has come to a point where the whole money- caste (so to speak) has been dislodged from political control, leaving the administration of government for the most part in the hands of men who can prove an alibi when accused of being seen in the company of a dollar. As a result, a very large proportion of the experience, ability, and leadership of the country has become unavailable for the public service, and the difficulty and expense of commanding a suflBcient advertisement to capture the public fancy has made it hard to bring forward the best men from the resi- due. Nevertheless, we get some of them — perhaps enough; and under Mr. Wilson's leadership we are getting along pretty well. But the great war has caught us in the middle of a big experiment, and if, as seems possible, we are called upon to be an ex- THE DIARY OF A NATION 77 ample to the world and a life-preserver to the perish- ing, we shall have to make a monumental scramble to discharge the conspicuous duties thrust upon us with the requisite energy and skill. The world seems to be getting into a condition which somebody will have to rise to, and nobody else appears of the requi- site size to do it but ourselves. But size will not be enough unless we have also quality, and to manifest that will call for a greater cooperation of the intel- ligence and vigour of the country than our political affairs have seen for a good while past. There is likely to be more for this country to do than to trade on the misfortunes of Europe, or even spend what it can spare in retail succouring. A huge effort to help may be required of us which will lift us out of the trough of selfishness as war is lifting the nations of Europe, and will compel such a use of all our re- sources and such a cooperation of all our abilities as shall really teach us what we are and can do if we have to try. Our immediate opportunity is to succour the dis- tressed Belgians. No one is in a position to do that but ourselves. ^Vhat we have done so far is but a drop in the bucket. The people at large have not yet got into this work, and until they do it will not be done in the measure that the exigency calls for. November 19, 19H-, PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE of Harvard is one of the more successful German apolo- gists because he is intelHgent and not over- bearing. He comes, not from Prussia, like Dr. Mun- sterburg, but from Schles wig-Hols tein, and has The German apparently inherited amenities with his Ideal Danish derivation. In a recent speech in Boston he explains that while there is still work for freedom to do in Germany, "it cannot be said that freedom during the last generation has been the great national need of Germany, or that it is any longer the ideal that inspires Germany's best men." It has not, he says, been replaced by militarism, nor is world-dominion the ideal of responsible Germans. Their ideal is of national self -improvement and na- tional efficiency. "To the German the State is a spiritual, collective personality leading a life of its own beyond the lives of individuals, and its aim is not the protection of the happiness of individuals, but the making of a nobler type of man and the achieve- ment of high excellence in all the departments of life." This is the Kaiser's ideal, too, and his glorifi- cation of his office "makes him the incarnation of the active and disciplined Germany." We are all trying hard just now to understand the Germans, and these words of Dr. Francke are adapted to help us. Just now this German ideal has to be taken in association with about ^yq million highly competent soldiers, all practising to spread it, and a large supply of exceptionally efficient Krupp guns exploding to the same end. The association is a little 78 THE DIARY OF A NATION 79 trying to the ideal. Is that a mere misfortune, or do the army and the ideal belong together? Is this German ideal necessarily tied up to militarism be- cause it is necessarily hostile to the ideal of individual freedom that belongs to such nations as France, Eng- land, Belgium, and the United States? Nobody outside of Germany would object, it would seem, to Dr. Francke's German ideal unless there is something in it that threatens the security of other nations. Is there something? Our ideal of individual freedom is vague, vulnerable, impracticable often, outrageous sometimes. A lot of bad government usually gets in with it. This German ideal is smooth, efficient, steady, powerful — until it blows up. Must it blow up? Does it carry in it the certain germs of destruction? There is so much about it that is strange, almost incredible, to us. It is so old-time Jewish in some things. The Kaiser seems to be to the Germans what Moses was to the Israelites — a go-between between them and God; a leader, a master. All peoples, it seems, must start that way, gathering around a master whose will protects and directs them, but it is hard to think of the Germans as be- ginners. But as a great modern power they are beginners, and this system that they have endured has brought them along, in material things at least, very wonderfully. But has it been doing what Dr. Francke says its ideal calls for? Has it been making a nobler type of man? It has certainiy achieved high excellence in many of the departments of life. But in all? No. Not in all. It is good in Krupps and chemistry, in manufactures, in trade, in civic government, in the regulation of life for the promotion of average com- 80 THE DIARY OF A NATION fort. It is bad in art. It is not notable in the higher forms of literature. And as to the great point of making nobler types of men — has it done it? The Germans are notably efficient, but are they creative, are they inventive, and are they nobler than other men? They have told us that democratic France was decadent; that democratic England was a pre- tense and an empty shell ; that Russia was barbarous. They said nothing about Belgium. There ought to be a Nobel prize for nobility. If there were, would it go to Germany? One sees in Germany immense eflS- ciency, courage, aggressiveness, capacity to suflPer, but where, so far, has she been noble? In Belgium? At Lou vain? At Rheims? Her specialty is fighting, but man for man she can't handle the Belgians or the new French, and her superiority to the Russians is dubious, while as for the English, they are but a handful so far in this war, but it has been a handful for Germany. No; get them out of their shops and laboratories and the current Germans don't seem to be of an egregious nobility. The Belgians can give them odds in it, and they seem to have nothing on the lately decadent French. They must be learning a wonder- ful lot about the qualities of other people, and per- haps they are revising their self-esteem. Arthur Withington, of Newburyport, who writes a letter to the Springfield Republican, says: Efficiency and the acceptance of arbitrary authority by the sacrifice of liberty is admitted as a Socialistic end. In other words. Socialism is in being in Germany to-day. The Kaiser is fighting its fight and German culture is Socialism. What is there in Dr. Francke's exposition of the German ideal that conflicts with this opinion? Mr. Withington says further: THE DIARY OF A NATION 81 When this war is over, Socialism, Prohibition, the Kaiser's mailed fist, Lord Kitchener's military rule, and all other mani- festations of the gospel of force and the anti-Christian movement will have less blind followers than during the last quarter of a century. There will be a return to the simple faith of the fathers that government is a necessary evil. Shouldn't wonder; shouldn't wonder at all. And not the least of the wonders to come will be the adjustment of the German ideal to the change in faith. December 10 y 19 H, UNDOUBTEDLY this is the most stupid, senseless, and unnecessary war of modern times." So the Crown Prince of Germany at the head- quarters of his army in France, as reported by Karl "The Most von Wiegand, correspondent of the Senseless War" United PresS. These are admirable words, which pierce the haze of war as a sun ray cuts through fog. No matter that the young Highness goes on to say the war was forced on Germany. He could not well say less. But in calling it stupid, senseless, and unnecessary he blurted out the truth. But this welcome exploit is the only considerable German success that, at this writing, looms up. Our news may not all be true or up to the date, but taking it day in and day out, and comparing one source with another, we have confidence in it. We think we know where the battle line runs in the north of France, and about where it runs on the Russian side of Germany. On the west we are told the Allies are rather more than holding their own, and on the east, though advices conflict, the Russians seem to have, lately, very much the best of the fighting, so that we put our ears to the ground and listen to hear the German back door rattle. What with mines and submarines and mysterious ailments a British warship has come to be no place for persons of a nervous temperament. But for that matter we hear of very few places in this war where persons of nervous temperaments could be 82 THE DIARY OF A NATION 83 happy. Even the trenches ashore, where most of the fighting is done now, are nothing to brag of as tranquil homes. Nobody is beaten yet, except, possibly, Austria, and Austria is so imperfectly articulated and is aggregated out of so many components that probably it is hard for her to tell at any given time what has happened to her. Besides that, her situation is com- plicated by her being mixed up with Germany. She may die in peace, but the Germans won't let her die in war until they get ready. They are not ready yet by a great deal. They have not yet, at this writing, got do^vn the coast to Calais, but they are installed in Belgium with an elaborateness that implies a disposi- tion to make themselves a home there. Against that disposition the sentiment of almost all the rest of the world, and especially of the French, the English, and the Belgians, is very decided, and to that sentiment — unless we are very much misled about what's going on — they presently will have to yield. What with the urgency of the Western Allies and the clamours of the delegation from the Czar, some forecasters think the Germans will all be home in Fatherland for Christmas, but that seems almost too abrupt a leave- taking for a people so attentive to formal manners. Forecasting the end of the war is getting to be a favourite form of relaxation. Some of the banker gentlemen, as Mr. Schiff, are in favour of closing it with the least possible delay, fearing, possibly, that if it goes on much longer there won't be anything left even for Israel. But the Germans still seem strong for going on, at least until they have destroyed the English, and the English are for going on until the Germans lose all their appetite for loot and the sun, and withdraw their claim that they are the destined renovators of the universe. A British army officer says in the papers that the war will be over in six 84 THE DIARY OF A NATION months; an American army officer, well qualified to guess, says three months; an American naval officer says January will see the end of it, and that it will settle nothing. But nobody knows, and the opinion of a seventh son looks just as good as that of a mili- tary expert. Prospective American politics is in a condition of almost as much uncertainty as the affairs of Europe and Mexico. That Mr. Wilson will continue to be President for a second term is very likely, but what voters will elect him is more uncertain. As we write, an autopsy on the Bull-Moose party is about to be held in Chicago, and while a certificate of natural death is expected, the fact may not be admitted. In the year just ahead a great deal is going to happen, and the present record of the present administration may be virtually replaced by a new one made in very critical affairs. Mr. Wilson is in the fortunate posi- tion of having his legislative decks pretty well cleared for action. That is a vast advantage, due to his astonishing pertinacity in getting work done that the Democratic party had promised to tackle. December 17, 19H, TO OUR mind, Representative Augustus Gard- ner does a useful work when he calls attention to the fact that we are slack, even for us, in military provision. When Mr. Gardner does something that he con- Military siders important, he does it with emphasis. Provision and even noisily. One recalls his defian- ces, accompanied with execrations and the clash of cymbals, of the Hon. Theo. Roosevelt in a late political campaign in Massachusetts. What the defiances were about has passed from memory, but traces of the concomitant noise still remain in one's mind. In asking for more torpedoes, soldiers, salt- petre, tinned beef, sailor-men, gunners, aeroplanes, diving-ships, trained censors and other attributions of the apparatus of contemporary warfare, Mr. Gardner has done it, as usual, with the utmost din he could produce. We do not criticize him for that, for no doubt to stir people up to improve their de- fenses is a noisy job and has to be noisily done. But while the noise seems to be doing its work, it has scared a lot of very good people who, as it looks to us, have really no reason to be alarmed by anything that is contemplated. The respected Evening Post is the chief vehicle by which they convey remonstrances to the ears of a select public. Bishop Greer has spoken in the Post, in deprecation of all war prepara- tion, and consistently, because Bishop Greer has come out flat for non-resistance. Mr. Carnegie has so spoken, and the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, and lat- est at this writing Miss Lillian Wald, the eminent 85 86 THE DIARY OF A NATION settlement worker. Miss Wald says the social work- ers are against armament. She says that if we fortify the Canadian line, we shall presently be fighting Canada. She thinks the psychology of those who would insure peace by being ready to fight is all wrong, and she applauds the reported attitude of President Wilson in opposing the Congressional in- vestigation of our means of defense which Mr. Gardner desires. Meanwhile, the remonstrance already seems dis- proportionate to the military improvements in- tended. We have not heard yet of any purpose to fortify the Canada line against the Germans, and hope is still high that the Germans will not conquer Canada. The most that seems to be proposed by the anxious is that we shall try to get better value for the considerable expenditure which we already make on our army and navy; that we shall keep up our navy, and perhaps increase it a little; that we shall provide due store of such things as cannot be improvised in an emergency, and that we shall increase the army a very little and try to contrive an available force of in- structed men about as large as that maintained by Switzerland. December 2^, 1914. THERE are those whose interest in the war vents itself entirely in disapprobation, and contrivance of means to stop it, and there are others whose dismay is all but overcome by their interest in what it will do to the world. The first The War and Want peace, no matter what. The Religious Unity latter. Seeing that destruction has gone so far, are for having a sufficiently thorough job done to put to rights the chief things that are amiss with Europe, and incidentally with the rest of the world. They don't want so much war wasted. They want the world to be definitely better for the immense suffering now going on and the immense sacrifices now being made. These people do not think over- much who is right or who is wrong. They see now in the war an immense con\ailsion breaking down old divisions, political and social, destroying edifices of all sorts, and filling the world with material for new construction. They bear the smash with pa- tience, because of the intense anticipation with which the^^ look ahead. Some of them are ready to ride on this great wave the whole distance to the millennium. No doubt they won't. The millennium will prob- ably keep up its reputation of being a receding festi- val, but a lot is happening, and a lot will come of it, and the people who dream dreams and see visions about it are timely, at leasi, in their hospitality to such exercises. Ferrero says the war may recreate the mind of the world. That would mean that all sorts of people would get new viev/s of all sorts of subjects, and a new attitude to questions they had 87 88 THE DIARY OF A NATION supposed were impossible of settlement or disposed of. There seems to be more to this war than politics; more than geography or commerce; more than to see whether England or Germany is to lead the world; more than the progress of Russia to civilization and Constantinople; more than the amplification of the influence or prosperity of the United States. It may be the point of a new departure in the relations of men; a huge world-change out of which are to pro- ceed new conceptions of duty, of profit, of individual success. And there may easily come out of it an immense revival of interest in religion. This last possibility is in many people's minds. This war has stunned a good many people. They think it is not a Christian exercise, and they ask themselves what Christianity has been about — what good it is — if such a war can tear up the most Chris- tianized continent on the globe. Whole pages of letters appear in some of the newspapers — as the Evening Sun — wherein the writers discuss whether faith is dead. A large majority of them say No, but the flood of letters shows the rising interest in the discussion. Now, this war is not in any large detaO of it a religious dispute. Perhaps it is a war for commercial supremacy, but it is certainly not a war for religious supremacy. Catholics, Protestants, Russian-church- men, Buddhists, Mohammedans, pagans, and miscel- laneous sinners are all mixed up in it. A holy war has been proclaimed to the Mohammedans, but the proclamation doesn't seem to take. It isn't a fight about religion, and it declines to become one. That makes more interesting the suggestion that some minds entertain, that out of the ruins of what has been established may spring up for the Christian peoples some workable contrivance of religious unity. Of course church unity has long been talked about. THE DIARY OF A NATION 89 and, of course, to that Tipperary the way looks very long; but the time for rebuilding is after an earth- quake, and if this present European earthquake goes on long enough, the reconstruction that will follow is likely to be proportionate to the destruction that will have been done. To peoples and churches desperately shaken and looking for a fellowship that shall help to insure them against a recurrence of like disasters, readjustments and conciliations are possible that could not be considered by prosperous, going con- cerns. If this is "the great day of the Lord," as the militant Bishop of London has said it is, a lot of things may be coming on the ticker-tape besides the fluctua- tions in the price of stocks. December 21^, 19H. THE Evening Post has been able to include Miss Jane Addams in the list of ladies and gentlemen "who would discourage agitation at this time for increased military preparation on the part of this country." Miss Addams is "not in Military favour of preparedness." She is satisfied Preparation with our present army and navy, and ap- parently indifferent whether we have enough powder or not. She points out that Germany was prepared for war and got into trouble. She would not have the United States build up a great army and navy just as Hamilton Holt's plan for legal peace is about to go through and international disputes will be settled by interparliamentarian courts and an inter- national navy will police the seas. No; not. Moreover, Miss Addams says: The fear of war being manifested in the United States is a part of the reflex action of the war in Europe. The enormity of the war has driven the sane views of miUtarism from the pubhc mind. Viewpoints are distorted. All war will in time be eliminated except among savage tribes. Future generations will put it in the same class with pestilence and plague. Nations will settle international matters by bar- gaining with each other, just as cities now bargain. Lovely! Lovely! But perhaps over-sanguine. If these observations came from William II, or even the Crown Prince, or Lord Kitchener, or General Joffre, there would certainly be warrant for telegraph- ing them from Chicago and printing them on the front page of the Everiing Post with four and a half 90 THE DIARY OP A NATION 91 inches of headlines at their top. Coming from Miss Addams, it would have been kinder of the Post to print them inside, with less spread, and where they would be more likely to escape the eagle scrutiny of Col. T. Roosevelt, Miss Addams's late leader in political combat. We believe Col. Roosevelt will agree with us that Miss Addams's remarks taste a little of the can, and that she has missed the point of the prevailing discussion. Perhaps the Post did not give her the right tip. What is mooted is not whether we shall have a three-power navy ("perhaps one greater than that of England or Germany," Miss Jane suggests) or a "great army," but whether we have on hand a safe minimum of military and naval junk and enough available military and naval me- chanics to work it. That is all the question there is. Mr. Gardner insists with loud and sometimes rude vehemence that we haven't. The Posfs idea that there is a militarist plot afoot is just a Vesey Street nightmare. The President said in his message to Congress: A powerful nav^'^ we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense. . . . Our ships are our natural bulwarks. ... From the first we have had a clear and settled policy with regard to military establishments. We never have had, and while we retain our present principles and ideals we never will have, a large standing army. If asked. Are you ready to defend yourselves? we reply. Most assuredly; to the utmost; and yet we shall not turn America into a military camp. . . The only thing we can do (is) ... to provide a system by which every citizen who will volunteer for the training may be made familiar with the use of modern arms and rudiments of drill and manoeu^'Te, and the maintenance and sanitation of camps. We should encourage such training . . . make it as attractive as possible, and so induce our young men to undergo it. . , . It is right, too, that the National Guard of the States should be 92 THE DIARY OF A NATION developed and strengthened. . . . More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole history and character of our policy. That is very well if it is done, but it will cost something to do it with success. Will the money be voted? Moreover, the increase of the regular army by twenty-five thousand men, as recommended by Secre- tary Garrison, would not reverse any of our history or character. No more would a due provision of field-guns. Mr. Garrison says we need more; also more ammunition. It is nothing to the advantage of character, nor does it embellish history, to be short of powder when you want very urgently to shoot some off. It is true that from the first we have had a policy about military establishments, and it is also true that we might have had a worse one than we did, but not without considerable effort. We have always been slack and had to scramble scandalously when we got into trouble. Of course we don't want a large stand- ing army, but if, when asked if we are ready to defend ourselves, we reply, "Most assuredly; to the utmost," we are usually bluffing, for we are not ready by a jugful. We have had to fight from time to time, and we have never been anywhere near ready when the clock struck. We do not want to be too ready. That would be worse than the way we have been used to manage. But we ought to make a decent approximation to readiness, especially in these days when there is so much military efficiency knocking around in the world. There's nothing new in the idea that our war policy is shiftless. Everybody who knows about such things knows that. Mr. Root did as much to im- prove it as our numerous and pacific people would THE DIARY OF A' NATION 93 permit. It is better than it was, but not good enough yet, and this is a good time to stir about it, just as when the next village burns up is a good time for our village to buy a fire-engine. We can boost our precious military ideal an eighth of an inch without lifting the roof off of our national domicile. December 31 ^ 19 H, A LETTER writer to the Times expresses him- self as deeply grieved to see "the absolutely unrelenting anti-German feeling" expressed in that paper since the war began. If that is guilt, we are all guilty together; all, that is, who lined up Jekylland against the new German ideal in the first Hyde place. There is a German Jekyll and a German Hyde. We are all more than ever against the German Hyde. When we read of Germans dead and German suffering and get ready to soften a little, along comes another batch of details about Belgium and hardens us all up again worse than ever. There is a German Jekyll. We read about him and always with sympathy. He has a kind heart, is merciful to wounded adversaries, is sorry some- times for the suffering he has caused; but he is under the discipline and orders of the German Hyde, whose aims he is committed to fulfil while life is left to him and by means that have sometimes been abhorrent to humanity. We don't hear so much of atrocities as we did, and distrust what we do hear, but there are dreadful stories of massacre of Belgian peasants and villagers, and of ruthless, punitive destruction of everything Belgian, that persist under investigation and keep the German Hyde well up in the forefront of the picture. "The Germans are brave," writes a correspondent-, "but the Belgians are the gamest people of all." That is the testimony of all observers. Sympathy with the Belgians is unrelenting. The most pro- German news we get is the news that the Germans '94 THE DIARY OF A NATION 95 are playing fair about Belgian relief and facilitate the distribution to Belgians only of the supplies that stream across from this country. That is something; it is very much; but for himself the German Hyde seems not a bit concerned to keep Belgians alive. His theory now is that Belgium belongs to him, and that he is going to keep it; he talks about selecting a German king for it, and it would doubtless suit his convenience entnely to have all the Belgians dead and re-people this convenient country with con- venient Germans. Naturally and of course that dis- position breeds a counter sentiment of resignation to the idea that the German Hyde is proceeding fast along the road that leads to his own extermination. He will have very few mourners in this country. The German Jekyll has plenty of friends, but as the German Hyde looks around on our considerable circle of spectators, it cannot escape his notice that virtu- ally all the hands he sees are raised thumbs down. It seems a pity that there should have to be so much discussion of the needs of our army and navy, but it is quite amusing and it serves to take our minds a little off of the war, which is not amusing at all. The Evening Post reported on December 19th the meeting of the American League to Limit Arma- ments. There were about one hundred persons pres- ent, half of them men. Some curious remarks were made. Bishop Greer said* "We are not here for any political purpose. . . . We may, however, I think, voice our approval of the attitude of the Presi- dent of the United States on this question." Con- sidering that the President favours a powerful navy and urges military traming of young men, it seems odd to find approval of him "voiced" by Bishop Greer, who has come out flat for non-resistance. And there is the remark credited to Brother Hamilton Holt: "When you prepare for something 96 THE DIARY OF A NATION you get what you prepare for." Brother Holt seems not to distinguish between preparation and precau- tion. When we prepare for dinner we get dinner if we are lucky, but when we prepare for fire we hope to avert it. A fire-engine is a preparation for fire, but a precautionary preparation. So any army we would have, or any navy, would be a precautionary preparation. Would there be some other point that Brother Holt would wish expounded.'^ No? Then forward to Dr. Nicholas Butler, who somewhere in the back reaches of his mind found excuse for being at the meeting in the intimation that contrary to our tradi- tional policy we are threatened with an outbreak of "competitive armament-building." But all arma- ment-building is competitive. All the armament we have is competitive. The power of our "powerful navy," which President Wilson says is part of our traditional policy, is related to the power of other navies. We want navy enough to make a favourable impression on pacific countries like Germany or Japan, a regular army of not more than one hundred and twenty thousand men, and as many available trained reserve troops as Switzerland. That and the requisite equipment is the utmost that has been suggested by any responsible person, so far as the observation of this humble and pacific semi- serious journal has extended. Non-resistants may consistently object to such a program as that, but what under all the stars has Dr. Butler got against it? January 7, 1915, A FRIEND of this paper who is shocked by the great war and deprecates all discussion of military preparation for this country, writes to suggest how much better it would have been if no armed opposition had been made to the demands ATon- and designs of Germany. Suppose, our resistance friend says, that King Albert, "a man of understanding," had let the Germans quietly pass southward on their rapid march to Paris; that Poin- care, "having the brain of Napoleon with the voice of Tolstoi," had succeeded in preventing a single shot; that an immense indemnity had been paid to the invaders and a few colonies surrendered. What would have happened .^^ « The German soldiers, our friend thinks, would have become ashamed of their job; the Socialists would have come to the top in Germany; German students would have flocked to the Sorbonne; France would have become "the fashion" to all the world with great resulting profit to French trade, and so on and so on, with Saturnian details to suit the taste. Never mind the details, but the great question is interesting. Was it wise, was it right, was it worth while, for Belgium to resist? No doubt she would have fared very well materially in German hands, and so, perhaps, would France. We see what resist- ance has cost her. Does it pay to be a hero? Does human life go forward or backward by resistance to force? Is Belgium's immense, irreparable sacrifice all a mistake, her glory too dear-bought, her national soul not worth the price of it? 9'? 98 THE DIARY OP A NATION Of course we do not think so. Every shipload of food that sails to Rotterdam says that Americans do not think so. For us the great, clear issue of this war is Belgium. If we see anything right at all in all this matter, Belgium is a martyr to civilization, sister to all who love liberty or law; assailed, polluted, trampled in the mire, heel-marked in her breast, tattered, homeless, but sister to every nation whose God is greater than XJtilit3\ The great unconquerable fact of the great war is Belgium. She is the crucified country that is to save the nations. They cannot let her go down; they dare not, unless they all go down with her. It is she that is the damnation of Germany, and yet that will be Germany's spiritual salvation in that Belgium's wrack secures it that Germany shall take the medicine poured out for her. War is dreadful. This modern machine-made war must especially be an abomina- tion before the Lord as it is before men, but there is a worse thing than war that kills the body, and that is a peace that destroys the spirit and leaves the body fat. On Harvard's Soldiers' Field is the monument to the ^ve soldiers, which, by Lowell's choice, bears Emerson's lines: Though love repine, and reason chafe. There came a voice without reply — ** 'Tis man's perdition to be safe. When for the truth he ought to die. That is the great answer to the question whether it paid Belgium to resist. No wise person wants to be a hero if he can conveniently get out of it, but no wise person will dodge the call if it is a true call. There are concerns in life much more necessary than living, but we get so insufferably attached to the habit of life THE DIARY OF A NATION 99 that we are prone to neglect everything that threatens to conflict with it. Such a war as this that is going on helps to get us all out of this rut of living and of thinking that the whole duty of man is to eat and get rich. A perpetual conflict seems to go on between the concerns of the flesh and the concerns of the spirit. They ought, hand in hand, to trip sweetly along to kingdom-come, each alleviating and helping out the other. Instead of which they wrangle a good part of the time, and periodically come to outbreaks of misunderstanding that jar the very earth and make waste-paper of history. Well, it is a new year, and we shall all want to live through it and see what sort of a record it makes for itself. The hundredth year from Waterloo is no slouch of an anniversary. Waterloo led to the miser- able mess of the Holy Alliance, and a shell-game between diplomats which left Europe full of fragments of peoples in cages nursing their hurts. Some excel- lent improvements have been carried through in the course of a hundred years, and the great European problem seems to be very much better understood now than then. A century ago the rulers of Europe got together with their chief managers and settled things. This time it promises to be the representa- tives of the peoples of Europe, kings or otherwise, who will face a job that involves not merely the na- tional boundaries of Europe, but huge holdings in Asia and Africa, and questions that concern and affect every country in the world. The hard rub that one sees ahead is about armament. Germany may be beaten. From the viewpoint of what she undertook to do, she seems beaten now. But she is not yet beaten back into Germany, and even when that is accomplished there will still be a lot of beating coming to her before she is a pulp. And even when she has been beaten to a pulp — if any one out of 100 THE DIARY OF A NATION England is sanguine enough to foresee that — it is hard to see how she can be permanently restrained from gradually re-tricking her Socialist-Democrats and her Kultur and going out on the road again after loot. She can't be kept in a cage; disembowelled she would soon make herself new linings; her people are too numerous to be destroyed, and doubtless too valuable; nobody but Prussia wants the job of govern- ing them. Essen can be blown to bits, and probably will be, but that would be mere poetry, and while it would be nice, it would not hinder the great German murder-mill from growing again. What people will want if the Allies win is assurance for the future, for a generation or two, that the sleep of honest people in four continents will not be disturbed by the rattle and clang of the Krupp forges in the night, getting ready to blow the lid off the world. Holding the Germans is going to be hard work un- less the Germans will turn in and help. They are handy people, and if they conclude, or can be induced, to hold on to themselves, their assistance will be much appreciated. The practical way for them to show promise of helping with their difficult case is to democratize their government and let the more peace- able part of their population have a louder voice in determining their destinies. Whether there is anything really practical in the idea of an international police force, naval and mili- tary, to keep order in the world, is hard to say. The Allies, as far as they go, constitute such a force now; a greater force would only mean a greater alliance, and, of course, alliances are delicate crockery and liable to break. And an international police force would imply a maintenance of present boundaries and "spheres" — the status quo — which would be very foreign to the habits of mankind. But, after all, this is 1915, the hundredth year from Waterloo, and THE DIARY OF A NATION 101 ; nothing that looks good for the world should be turned down because it is a novelty. Moreover and furthermore, this is the age of machines, in which one of the great competitions is that between human life and machinery. If Europe shall conclude after due continuance of contention that this current factory- made war is a joke of Vulcan on humanity, and that the laugh is too much on man, irrespective of nation- ality, that will help, of course, very much to arrive at terms of settlement. But everything in its due time. As yet the fac- tory-made war is still running strong. Our anti- armament friends here who calculate that by the time it is over there will be no efficient war-power left in Europe are wrong. Whoever comes out on top over there will come out immensely strong in trained troops and military implements. It is worth re- membering that these States after the exhausting four years of the Civil War were for the moment masters of the ablest military force in the world, and had only to whisper to Napoleon III to get his troops withdrawn from Mexico. January H, 1915, A GOOD many people have been would-to-God- ding of late that they could get Mr. Bryan out of the State Department. Of course ! We may yet have to pay for what good we have M wis ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ good that is in that worthy man by suffering devilish consequences from the foolishness that has always been in him. The would-to-Godders point out that even if he is nothing worse than a nullity in the State De- partment, these are not convenient times to have a nullity at the head of the State Department. The President, they say, should have the help of a Secre- tary of State whom he could lean upon, instead of one who is himself a diplomatic problem. One can easily sympathize with this position, and yet Mr. Bryan has done better in his place at the top of the Cabinet than could have been expected. His spirit and temper have been better than was even hoped for. His absolute technical unfitness for the place was always obvious, but his disabilities have become a more serious matter since the world war broke out on us. The best that can be said of him as Secretary of State is that probably he does not con- sciously hinder the President in what he wants to do. For that reason it is conceivable that the President prefers him to some one more competent. Dr. An- drew White says, in an essay on Bismarck, that Bis- marck was never able to work well with equals. When he was young he could not work with his brother in managing the family estate. As Ambas- 102 THE DIARY OF A NATION 103 sador he had only subordinates around him; as Minister President he ruled Prussia; as Chancellor he was the only Minister of the Empire. He would have no Imperial Cabinet. He called about him able men, but as secretaries, not ministers. He would have "subordinates but not colleagues." President Wilson seems a good deal like Bismarck in that. Perhaps Washington was that way, too. Men who have in them a great conception and are trying to make it come true, are apt, no doubt, to be lonely workers. Mr. Wilson works as he can, and works best, apparently, with helpful subordinates. He has not got the king-like quality that Roosevelt had of being primus inter pares and using his supe- riors. It is not to quarrel with him for being what he is and doing his work as he can, but it is interesting to understand him. He is worth understanding. He may be Cromwell in some resemblances and Bismarck in others, but he is never Charles the First nor Wil- helm II nor T. R. nor W. J. B., and he never will be either successful or dangerous by having captured by his personality the imaginations of infatuated adher- ents. Not but that people who work with him like him. They do; they more than like him. But his hold is on the mental side of men, not the emotional side. Bryan can beat him hands down in working simple folks on their emotional side, and so can Roosevelt. There is no witchery about him except his exceptional handiness in the choice and arrangement of words, and his ability to use them vocally or in writing. His force of character is not witchery. It is a great fact. President Wilson works as he does because he is what he is. It is not a matter of choice, but of condi- tion. We may wish he worked differently; that he met more intimately a greater variety of men, and 104 THE DIARY OF A NATION advised with them; that he had a more eflScient Secretary of State and a Secretary of the Navy who inspired less disgust in sophisticated men. Any reasonably good observer can suggest at least as many improvements in Mr. Wilson and his methods and ifiis Cabinet as a lady about to hire a house would suggest to a prospective landlord. No doubt a competent improver could brighten Mr. Wilson up wonderfully , and by teaching him what and how, could bring his administration right up flush with the Republican conception of the Republican record. But, after all, he is not a property which we are about to hire, but something that we are committed to. We are in for two more years of him, and they seem likel^^ to be pretty ticklish years. We can nei- ther swap him nor make him over, and it seems the more sagacious part for us to take him as he is and resign ourselves to letting him work as he can, and with any one whom he finds acceptable. There is the more point to this large-minded atti- tude in us, because the times are so monstrous queer. There is going on in Europe this prodigious struggle between democracy and autocracy; precedent is up a tree, tradition is hiding in the cellar, the old order is smashed to bits, and the plans for the new order are being discussed by all the seventh sons in the world; there never was such perplexity about the future, and never so brisk a demand for constructive minds to shape it. In all this medley and muddle, Mr. Wilson, partly because he is our President, but considerably because he is Woodrow Wilson, stands out as the most conspicuous new-model democrat in the world. Not yet, even after two years of remarkable administra- tive exploits, has his measure been taken; but every one knows that he is very much out of the ordinary, and there are those who think they see in him the most notable combination of qualities and abilities THE DIARY OF A NATION 105 now being shown in the great human exhibition. He was elected President as an intelligent radical ; a man who had thought long and deeply on government; had constructive as well as reformatory ideas, and seemed suitable to be the leader of Democrats and the head of the government at a time when a great economic revolution was coming to a head. He was elected not to follow precedents, but to break with them; not to insure prosperity, but to dispute with it; not merely to uphold the law, but to change it. The people of our country did not like what they had been getting. They elected Mr. Wilson because they wanted something different. They have got some- thing different largely as a result of his influence. Before they have had time to discover whether or not they like what they have got, along comes this prodigious row in Europe, because a very large pro- portion of the countries over there want something different and cannot get it without fighting. If the notion once gets abroad that Mr. Wilson is an excep- tionally good hand at understanding what disordered peoples want and helping them to get it, there is no telling how much foreign practice may press in on our President's attention. Altogether he has a good deal to think about, and we must let him do his thinking as he can and not bother him excessively about whom he advises with or other details. His immediate task is to be neutral himself and keep our government neutral, and just in that capacity both to its ov/n people and the neigh- bours. In the discharge of that task he has been punching up the British brethren about their rather impulsive treatment of our commerce with neutral ports. It had to be done, and it seems to have been done with care and skill and propriety, and all of us, whatever our feelings about the war, must stand behind the doing of it. We neutrals have to trade 106 THE DIARY OF A NATION under flie rules for neutrals, and have an obligation to see that the rules are respected even by combatants whose cause enlists our individual hearts. As in- dividuals we can feel as we will and play what favour- ites we choose, but our government, so long as it undertakes to be neutral, must live up to its under- taking. It cannot be a neutral and an ally at the same time. The proposition that the United States should not be neutral has not yet been even discussed. The immense preponderance of public sentiment in fa- vour of the Allies and the democratic conception of government is unmistakable and undisputed. To what it might lead, to what it may lead as the war develops, cannot be forecast. The German mad- ness might reach a pitch of frenzy and an enormity of conduct that would upset the equilibrium of the American mind and bring us out heaven knows where. But so far, undoubtedly, public sentiment here is all for keeping out, and the opinion that pre- vails is that so we shall best serve not only ourselves, but humanity. In the way of immediate armed as- sistance we could do very little for the Allies if we joined them, and we should very much diminish the possibility of being useful to all hands when at last there comes a pause. But what we can do as neutrals to modify the horror of this war we should do, and do it as occasion offers, not only generously, but boldly. January ^1, 1915. THE gentleman who forecast some time since that the war would end the last of January is heartily invited to make good. The war is plugging along in a dull, dogged monotony that makes, at the moment, poor reading, and lets a pj . .J dreadful surfeit of marital delinquencies ^ ^ back into the first-page headlines of the daily papers. Nobody is beaten yet, though Austria comes nearest to it; there is plenty of power left in all the combatants, and considering the season a great deal of fighting is going on. Rumania is expected to join the Allies, and that is important if true, as Rumania can put into the field enough troops to facilitate considerably the destruction of Austria. Italy is said to be full of military preparations; Eng- land's new troops are reported to be well up to expec- tation, both in number and in forwardness of training. Nothing looks like peace. Everything looks like war to the bitter end, which saves thought, because it is impossible to think of a rearrangement of Europe, and of life in general after a deadlock. If Germany can thrash the rest of Europe, Germany can arrange the future. If the Allies can thrash Germany to a standstill, the Allies can arrange the future; but an arrangement between a still powerful and unbeaten though unsuccessful Germany and unbeaten Allies is a harder nut than even the most ambitious peace- maker is able to crack. A huge dose of violent medi- cine has been poured out for this ailing world, and so far as appears, it has got to be taken to the last drop. The pre-engagement of all the forces of mind and 107 108 THE DIAEY OF A NATION weapon of Europe with Europe's own affairs is of obvious advantage to our administration here in leaving Mexico absolutely in the Lord's hands. A country whose posture is so described is expected to save itself or go under. To which alternative Mexico is proceeding just now is a matter of opinion that varies with what happens to be reported in the morn- ing paper. President Wilson, in his Jackson Day speech, defined his attitude towards Mexico with entire clearness. He means to keep hands off. He said: Until the end of the Diaz regime eighty per cent, of the people of Mexico never had a look-in in determining who should be their governors or what their government should be. Now, I am for the eighty per cent. It is none of my business, and it is none of your business how long they take in determining it. . . . The country is theirs. The government is theirs. The liberty, if they can get it, and God speed them in getting it, is theirs. And, so far as my influence goes, while I am President, nobody shall interfere with them. That is very definite. Mr. Wilson will be Presi- dent for two years more, barring accidents, and per- haps for six years more. Any gentleman who has a different plan from his for dealing with Mexico is invited to submit it for discussion. But meanwhile, to most of us, the Wilson plan looks about as good as any. Present prospects are excellent that the end of the great war will find us the most disliked nation in the world. The Germans will hate us because our sym- pathies were not with them, and the Allies will prob- ably hate us because, approving their cause, we would not go in with them, but bothered them about neu- trals' right and took big prices for what we sold them. Germany is mad now because we sell war THE DIAKY OF A NATION 109 material to the Allies, and the Allies are getting mad because we talk about buying German ships to trade in. We are in the position of being defended at a vast cost from Teutonic aggression, and being peevish about the details of the immunity we enjoy. Not that we are to blame, but the natural fate of a neutral seems to be to be disliked. Belgium is gathering the proper fruits of neutrality. We shall probably escape the fruits, but harvest the sentiments that would accompany them. The position on the fence is not altogether delectable, aside from the risk, not quite negligible, of being knocked off. February 4, 1915, MR. BRYAN'S letter to Senator Stone, telling what careful neutrals we are, conies timely, in that it defines in detail what ought to be expected of neutrals. Nobody, so far, except profes- sional Republicans, finds much fault with the letter Mr. Bryan: nor denies that the duty of neutrals as Dr.Dernhurg laid down in it is about right. Senator Stone comes from Missouri, a State particularly well stocked with citizens of German descent, who require to be shown why our country is not doing more to help the Germans win. Some of them, and the pro-German brethren generally, want our government to prohibit the sale of war material to the fighting nations. Mr. Bryan's letter en- lightens them on that point, disclosing that it is always the way for neutrals to accommodate bel- ligerents with anything they have to sell so long as the belligerents' credits hold out. Fifty years ago, when a difference had to be fought out in this country, our fathers on both sides bought what they could of what they needed in Europe, especially in England, and got it home the best they could and used it to blow their brethren's heads off. Being so kindly accommodated then in our time of need, it would ill become us to decline in our turn a like ac- commodation to Europe. Mr. Bryan explained further that under the rules of this game of selling war supplies to belligerents the buyer is expected to carry home his own parcels, and if his antagonist can get his purchases away from him on the way home, that is all fair and nothing that a 110 THE DL\RY OF A NATION 111 neutral is concerned about. It happens just now, while most of the German fleet is playing a home en- gagement in the back yard of Heligoland, that the road to Europe is much safer to parcels addressed to the Allies than to consignments for the Turks, the Austrians, or the Germans. But that just happens so and is no fault of ours; and so Mr. Bryan reminds Mr. Stone, who, besides being from Missouri, is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. We suppose Mr. Bryan w ould not have had to be at all these pains and expense to publish the rudi- ments of neutrality if our pro-German brethren were not so indefatigably diligent in trying to twist us out of our proper neutrality and get us into a scrape with the Allies. To aid them in this endeavour, which surely no unhyphenated American can approve, the German Government maintains here among other agents Dr. Bernhard Dernburg. Dr. Dernburg's office is to make Germans look good to us. You may read about him in Mr. Wile's book about the Men About the Kaiser. He is a sagacious, able man, not a German by race, but a Jew, and his job has been this long time to clean up after Germans and put things to rights that they had muddled. He came to notice first as a banker who took over bankrupt Ger- man enterprises, reorganized them and set them on their legs again. The Kaiser, seeing how good he was at that, drafted him away from that very profitable business and put him on a small salary in charge of the German Colonial Office, which was spending a lot of money and getting very meagre results. Dr. Dernburg obediently took hold of it, discharged as .many incompetent German officials as he could, and improved the colonial situation (so Mr. Wile says) very much, but made so manj^ powerful enemies in doing it that they presently were able to get him out 112 THE DIARY OF A NATION of office. So, when the war broke out, he was avail- able to help the Kaiser in some new way, and was sent to New York to do what he could to disabuse the American mind of the impression, so prevalent, that Germany had gone out of her head and was out to conquer the world. Dr. Dernburg seems always to have done well everything he has put his hand to, and this big job of cleaning up after Germans in the United States he has dealt with in a fashion worthy of his record. There has been some feeling that he has been almost too good and too busy with it, and has affected public sentiment here more than it was proper for public sentiment to be affected in a neutral nation. For our part, we do not see it so. In so far as he has attracted attention to himself and his utterances and away from the Germans and their utterances, he has, of course, done well by Germany, because his utterances are skillful at least, whereas the detach- ment from fact in the most of the German utterances is so palpable that the easiest-going understanding can hardly fail to detect it. If all the Germans could have sat tight and let Dr. Dernburg say and do for them, no one can say what he might have ac- complished. But the trouble has been that they have all been active and vocal at home and abroad, and whether multiplying horrors in Belgium or issuing learned and exceedingly vulnerable addresses from Bonn or writing to the newspapers in New York, have never suffered us to forget how very German Germans are and how very different both in mental process and in behaviour from Dr. Bernard Dernburg, the German alleviator. "We Germans," he said, at New Rochelle the other night, "love the French and the Belgians who were forced into the war." Tut, tut. Doctor! You love them, no doubt, but heaven help the object of such THE DIARY OF A NATION 113 affection as the Germans have lavished on Belgium! Have you read Cardinal Mercier's pastoral letter? A grand letter, that, Dr. Dernburg. You cannot but admire it. But it is hard to get over, and so is the report of the French commission that investigated the atrocity charges, and still more terrible stories than that report contains come here by private letter or by word of mouth of returning travellers. It is hard to make a soothing or ingratiating picture of the affectionate Germans while they are so infernally active. But you could do it. Doctor, if any one could. Stay on with us, and when it is all over you shall have a better chance, for you shall be the funeral orator of Pan-Germanism. February 25, 1915. OUR government's recent notices to Germany and England gave general satisfaction here at home. They were polite and definite. The one to Germany was called out by Germany's recent warning to all vessels to keep out of the English Notices to Channel and other waters that surround Germany the British Isles. It said that even Ger- man submarines would be expected to observe, even in British waters, the formalities heretofore custo- mary in dealings of belligerents with neutrals and merchant ships, and that we should take it hard if they didn't. The one to England said that if the practice of sailing English ships in perilous British waters under the American flag became a habit, it would be liable to lead to objectionable conse- quences to American shipping, and that we should take it hard if it did, and would not England be so good as to check it.? Pretty much all the newspapers hereabouts except Herr Ridder's have approved both of these notes. Whatever may be the lack of technical qualifications of our Secretary of State, it has not affected the important papers issued by the State Department in connection with the war in Europe. Mr. Brj^an's letter on neutral rights was excellent. So are these notes to England and Germany. It is a great satis- faction in these grave concerns to have proper action properly taken. The authorship of these papers is credited to Mr. Robert Lansing, the Counsellor of the State Department. The approval and bacldng of them must be credited to the administration, 114 THE DIARY OF A NATION 115 which has been getting so many hard knocks about the shipping bill that a slice of credit does not come amiss. The note to Germany points out very gently that if commanders of German vessels acting upon the pre- sumption that the flag of the United States was not being used in good faith should destroy on the high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citizens, our government could hardly help viewing it as an indefensible violation of neutral rights, and would be apt to take any steps necessary to safeguard American Hves and property and secure to Americans their rights on the high seas. One infers from that, that if a German submarine, acting impulsively, should punch and sink an Ameri- can ship that was going about its lawful business, the explanation that the submarine did not believe it was really ours would be coldly received, and there would be something doing. The chance of that, however, might not affect Germany's action. Presumably, she would not wantonly stir this pacific country'- into hostile action, but England is trying to starve her out and she does not like it, and if by use of submarines she could starve out England, perhaps she would, even at the cost of abrading American sensibilities. One finds in print the English-born suggestion that the German war-masters fully realize that they can- not win and foresee that the longer they strive the worse it will go with them, and are casting about for a good chance to quit, and think they will best find it by grieving and making hostile what remaining neutral nations there are, so that with all Christen- dom piling onto them they can say that the odds are impossible and that it would be mere waste of good Kanonenfutter to continue hostilities. If that is so (but probably it isn't), peace may come sooner than expected, since the Allies also will be glad to have 116 THE DIARY OF A NATION some young men left alive if it seems compatible with the best interests of civilization. But, of course, the more necessary results of this prodigious war should be attained before it ends, including that most neces- sary one of all, the cure of the Germans, so that they will be safe in the world and the world safe with them in it. For the Germans are not going to stop after this war. They will pick themselves up and go on ajs hard as ever. There will be a lot of them to be fed and clothed, and they will have to work with all their skill and energy to do it. They will get their trade back. Everybody says so. H. G. Wells says so; Edison says so. They will get rich and strong again; it can't be prevented without destroying them, and they are too many to destroy. Neither would it be right to prevent it, but it is right to try to effect that the Germans shall come out of the war permanently cured of the idea that they are the only really valuable people on earth; cured of the more objectionable details of Prussianism, militaristic and professional; improved in their travel-manners; less submissive to drill-sergeants and brutish officers, and cured finally of the doctrine of "f rightfulness" in war; so cured of it that for a thousand years, as the Kaiser would say, considerate persons wfll avoid to mention "frightful- ness" to a German soldier for fear to make him sick at his stomach. Certainly this war ought at least to put organized military "{rightfulness" so definitely on the junk pile that even the German General Staff will abjure it, and it will never again appeal to the re- sourceful German mind. Somehow, when this mar- velous family of ant-people starts in its business again, it must be started right, so that it can make a safe and kindly progress towards real prosperity. That seems a great deal to ask of the war. But it is not all. Some of the English radicals ask from it a THE DIARY OF A NATION 117 lot of cure for England; democratization; the restora- tion of the land to the tillers of it; the re-creation of the English people largely at the expense of the Eng- lish aristocracy. Then there cannot but be many who feel that the hands of the clock are passing the hour when England alone, or any other single nation, can rule the seas. And one is told, on the one hand, that England can hardly get all the improvements that she needs unless she is whipped, and is assured, on the other hand, that nothing but a thorough drubbing will do the job for Germany. I;. It is mighty difficult and expensive doctoring these sick countries. To persuade Germany, or England, that she must be beaten for her highest good is imaginable. But how persuade both of them? Aid, then, the industrial apparatus of Belgium and Northern France is destroyed, or badly damaged, while as yet the whole industrial apparatus of Ger- many stands unharmed. What cure for that inequity if the war stops soon, so that Belgium and France can get their markets back before Germany grabs them? A good deal more than office work remains to be done, apparently, before this war is settled. March 11, 1915. MR. ROOT has emerged from the Senate with the finest line of obituary notices seen in print this long time. Everything was done about him except to hold a joint memorial meeting of the House and Senate and expound his virtues in ,. „ declamations. To be sure, in some of his Mr. Hoot ,- 1 .• 1 1 n • . 1 notices commendation has been alleviated by regrets, as when the New Republic, recording his achievements and expounding his defects as a leader, concludes that "he has failed because of the absence of a sympathetic and creative imagination." The two great specifics for quickening the sympathies and the creative imagination are "rum and true religion." Possibly Mr. Root has been too abstemious; possibly he has missed his due allowance of religion. He has not been at all like Daniel Webster, whose great spirit was duly warmed by liquid fires; nor yet like Lincoln, whose sympathies were quite mdependent of potable stimulation; nor like Gladstone or Bismarck, whose imaginations dwelt considerably with the unseen powers. Some of the most potent leaders of men have felt themselves to be interpreters to mankind of the celestial intentions. They have felt, as the Kaiser does, that what looked right to them was the divme will. Mr. Root has never shown signs of possessing an assurance of that sort. His strength has lain rather in a comprehension of the machinery of modern life; of business, law, government, and the minds of men, and in ability to perceive what was practicable and how to do it. His mind seems almost the antithesis of Mr. Bryan's mind. Mr. Bryan has 113 THE DIARY OF A NATION 119 vision — quite a lot of it — coupled with very imperfect capacity to understand and operate the machinery by which dreams come true. Mr. Root can take anybody's dream, organize it and put anything that is good in it on the road to arrival. He understands and can handle machinery. He knows, and he knows how. This is an age of mechanisms. Mr. Root is a great chauffeur of government; knows the machine, knows the road, and can do as much as any other to get you where you want to go. Of course any one who exhibits Mr. Root as a political failure has got confused in his catalogue and should not expect any large receipts of gate money. A great chauffeur of government is at this time about as valuable an asset as a country can have. We have battalions of young men who see visions, and an ample contingent of old men who dream dreams, but people who know the road and understand the ma- chine are scarce. There are people who lay it up against Mr. Root that now and then in times past he has carried joy-riders in his tonneau, and brought them home safer and more comfortably than seemed consistent with their deserts. But that is nothing against his abilities as a chauffeur; quite the contrary. This is no time to be printing his political obituary. He is seventy years old, in excellent health, and of a practiced skill. Franklin was seventy years old when he served on the committee to draw up the Declara- tion of Independence. His greatest services to the country followed that. For nearly nine years he was American Ambassador to France. He came home at seventy-nine and afterwards was President of Penn- sylvania for three years and a member of the convention that contrived the Constitution. The job immediately ahead of Mr. Root is to assist next summer in tinkering the Constitution of the State of New York. That is an important work, but the 120 THE DIARY OF A NATION State will be lucky if he is not called away from it to duties still more imperative. For nobody can tell whether he is retiring, or emerging into the period of his greatest usefulness, not as a partisan, not even solely as an American, but as a citizen of the world and a servant of mankind. The Sixty-third Congress has done its work and quit. No Congress for half a century has accom- plished so much important legislation. When it as- sembled it was full of green and wild-appearing legis- lators, and the older hands, especially the Republi- cans, wondered how it would ever manage to do any business. The explanation of its achievements is that it v/as well led and well driven, and possessed with an instinct of self-preservation that enabled it to stand discipline. The lion's share of credit for what it did belongs to President Wilson, who kept it at its task with such astonishing pertinacity, but it is a credit shared by Mr. Underwood, Mr. Clark, Mr. Bryan, and various other gentlemen, and in which the Congress itself, by and large, must not be denied participation. The credit for some things it did not do and for modifications and improvements in its doing, and for assistance in some good acts that would have failed without it, belongs to Mr. Root and other Republi- cans. They helped the President invaluably in the Canal tolls repeal bill, and helped or hindered the Democrats very usefully indeed as critics and sifters of other legislation. No Congress has ever been so hard worked as the Sixty-third. It sweated through two successive Washington summers, hard driven nearly all the time. Its survivors must feel as though they had been through a war, and if any of them need pen- sions they ought to have them. THE DIARY OF A NATION 121 Two eminent British statesmen, Lord Bryce and Mr. H. G. Wells, have been speaking kindly of us. Lord Bryce explained the obligations of our govern- ment to uphold its neutrality and to remonstrate when the trading rights of our citizens seemed to be more abraded than is warranted by previous con- ceptions of international law. He counselled his fellow-citizens to go easy in their complaints about us. Mr. Wells said (in the New York Times) that our modest country has surprised the world. When the war came, he says, "what we feared most in the United States was levity, excitement, fluctuations of opinion, irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous interventions." What he discovered was "a very clear, strong national mentality, a firm, self-con- trolled, collective will, far more considerable in its totality than the world has ever seen before." It looks as if this issue of Life might find Constan- tinople in the Allies' hands. It is four hundred and sixty-two years since it fell to the Turks, and its recovery will be one of the facts accomplished that will make 1915 one of the large-type dates in the history books. Gradually the leading necessaries of this war are being attained. The main job is to nick the theory of blood and iron supremacy so deep that it will stay nicked, and that is a tremendous task. But it will be done. It is going to be demonstrated that development of a nation of soldiers for purposes of world-burglary, the ravishment of Belgium, and the great system of lies, spies, and international bad faith is all based on mistaken calculation and an error in politics. March 18, 1915. MOST of the obituary notices of the Sixty- third Congress ran on into summaries and reviews of the first half term of President Wilson's administration. Making allowances for the snorts of Republican papers that have to adduce Two Years some reasons for a change, the notices of Wilson were not so bad. No one who wants to speak handsomely of President Wilson has far to seek for a basis for his remarks, and when said they sound better and carry more conviction than most of the unhandsome things said of him. We need to recall now and then what he is trying to do and what he has to contend with. He is trying to arrest or restrict the control of human life in this country by too few people who have acquired too much power. Almost any intelligent, observant per- son will agree that this desired restriction of the power of property and business has come to be necessary. Organization, stimulated and extended by all the mechanical inventions, has made life a new problem, and one that it is very difficult to work out. Mr. Wilson is trying to do his share of the work of solv- ing it, and the Democrats, in the main, are with him. Plenty of people realize the need of limiting the power of property so long as the idea is general and the property affected belongs to some one else. But when the idea becomes concrete, and especially when some of the property belongs to themselves, the idea of limiting its powers begins to look "visionary." The Republican party, if it stands for anything just THE DIARY OF A NATION 12S now, stands for the protection of the rights and privileges of property. It may admit — probably would — that business needs watching, and perhaps even regulation, but it does not want it to be watched or regulated to its detriment by anybody, nor by Democrats, even to its good. So Mr. Wilson and the Democrats in their efforts are up against a great deal of property and the votes and newspapers that represent it. And they are also up against loyalty to the existing order. This loyalty of hundreds of thousands of citizens to existing order is almost the same as loyalty to a king or a kaiser. In some persons it is a policy based consciously on self-interest, but in lots of others it is a sentiment. The main thing a king represents is the established order. Good people have often stuck to bad kings for no better reason than that what they were used to seemed right to them. And for the same reason they will stick to bad practices in railroads, trusts, public utility companies and banking combinations, bad habits of business and bad laws. They are honest people and they hate to see anybody's be- longings, no matter how acquired, taken away from them. Their instinct of fidelity prompts them just as surely to side with the New York Central in New York or the Pennsylvania Railroad in Pennsylvania as the same instinct prompted the Jacobites to side with the Stuarts. Honest people of this sort are what give stability to political institutions. The Jacobin temperament is useful when things have got so bad that they are due to blow up, but when you have a going machine that only needs tinkering, the Jacobite, hold-fast temperament has its abundant value. Mr. Wilson has enough Jacobin in him for present political necessities, but he also has a substantial infusion of hold-fast. He does not mean to destroy 124 THE DIARY OF A NATION the existing order. He wants to save it by a neces- sary medication. It is certain that he will make mis- takes and likely that he will make blunders, but there is a better quality of political hope in him than in any one else at present visible in either party. We had to put the Democrats in power, because the Republicans did not have it in them to do what the country needed. Mr. Wilson was far and away the best visible Democrat to be President. He has done some wonderfully good things, and he is likely to do more. He has in him the capacity to do them. If he has also in him the capacity to get in wrong on occa- sion, that is to be expected and is no more than the legitimate cost of having him for President. In the end he ought to get with him his full share of the honest people who are loyal to existing order and don't want anybody to lose property except by due process of just laws. The debate between our government and the governments of Germany and England about the relative proprieties and validities of submarine and surface blockades proceeds with politeness, but except from persons directly interested in shipping, receives less attention at this writing than the proceedings in the Dardanelles. The desire of the Germans to stock up with food is quite to be expected from per- sons of their healthy, normal appetites. They are surely entitled to discuss the ways and means of doing it, and the courteous attention their arguments receive from our government is no more than ought to be. Their assurance that American food shall only be used for their civil population does not seem important, because (a) the importance of any Ger- man assurance has been prejudiced by occurrences since the first of last August, and (b) because food carried into Germany increases that country's total THE DIARY OF A NATION 125 supply, and it matters nothing whether soldiers and civilians are helped out of the same bin or supplied from different compartments. So also the desire of the British to end the war, and especially their so positive aspiration to throw the Germans out of Belgium and France, must command our respect, and if they think it can be done quicker by shutting off all supplies from Germany, that opin- ion is certainly entitled to the attentive consideration our government has been giving it. But these blockade matters are all sea-lawyer's questions to which the laity give but a languid atten- tion, though appreciative of the importance of keep- ing the record straight against a possible return of a time when international questions will be settled by international law. What ninety per cent, of us are keen about is that the domination of the world by the German Kultur, linked to Krupps, may be averted; that the surviving remnant of the Belgians shall be saved alive; that the unspeakable "f rightful- ness" of the German invasion shall be damned with an unpopularity that will last a thousand years; that the Prussian militaristocrats shall be abated and labelled effectively with the tag that belongs on them, and that a maltreated and anguished world may wan back to the paths of peace and humane civilization. If the Germans think they can avoid or delay this desirable consummation by blockading the British Isles with submarines, they w^ill do it, of course, in so far as'they are able to. If the English think they can hasten it by proclaiming a blockade of Germany which they cannot make a fact, of course they will do that. If our government feels that such blockades are a deleterious invasion of the rights of neutrals, of course it is bound to say so and to reiterate the opinion at convenient intervals. Everybody surely will try to oblige our government, if not immediately, then as 126 THE DIARY OF A NATION soon as is reasonably practicable; but as long as the talking forces and the fighting forces are distinct, there will be fighting, no doubt, as usual, ashore, asky, afloat and submerged, and the usual adventur- ing of cargoes across the main. April 8, 1915, THE London Nation declares that "Mr. Hoover's American Commission for the feed- ing of the starving Belgians" has done "a miracle of diplomacy" in obtaining and distributing its supplies. Brand Whitlock and a good many Mr Hoover others have shared in that nuracle and will the Rescue * come in if there should be sometime an Specialist adjustment of credit. There seem to have been extraordinarily good American men on this job of feeding the Belgians. That the Rockefeller Foundation's men should be intelligent and efficient was to be expected, but that a man with such a spirit inside of him and such a human experience as Mr. Whitlock should have been appointed minister to Belgium was a wonderful piece of luck, or perhaps a political Providence. And as for Mr. Hoover, how did he happen.'^ \\Tien the war suddenly exploded one began to read of the activities in London of an American named Hoover, a business man full of business, and considerably full of money, who got right in and took hold of the work of salvaging distressed tourists, finding money for them, and getting them home. It has not been pos- sible since that time to intrude far into salvage activi- ties without running into this Mr. Hoover. His per- formance has been like that of a man in a play who transpires, say, from L. U, E. at the critical moment and straightens out the situation that w^as as good as lost. Mr. Hoover, however, seems to belong to real life. One reads from "Wio's T\Tio" that he is an engineer, mining and assorted, forty years old, born in 127 128 THE DIARY OF A NATION Iowa, a graduate (and trustee) of Leland Stanford University, a resident of London, with offices in New York and San Francisco, a director of a line of mining companies, most of them operating in China, and of a number of engineers' societies in England, France, and Belgium. Mr. Hoover, it would seem, will emerge from the war with a large advertisement as a handy man in social service. That is a serious prospect for a mining specialist only forty years old. People who are known to be efficiently helpful in the work of looking after other folks are liable to be drafted for that em- ployment. April 15, 1915. A NY reliable sage will assure enquirers that the /A use of misfortune is to discipline and instruct -^ -^ us. When we have a misfortune, therefore, we ought not to waste any of it, but should practise, by close attention to its incidents and results, to get Josephus as much forwarder as possible in the paths of Daniels wisdom and peace. We should not lose any opportunity to improve ourselves in this fashion by paying close attention to Josephus Daniels while he continues to be Secretary of the Navy. There is a large preponderance of sen- timent that it is a misfortune that Josephus should be boss — or, as he prefers to say, head-master — of the navy. Let us make this trouble useful to us. Let us study Josephus carefully, try to find out what is the so very particular thing that ails him, and what the consequences of it are, that we may be consoled by advance in knowledge for what he costs us, and be the better qualified if we should be called to be Presi- dent not to pick any such person for that office. The latest consequence of Josephus is that Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske has begged the head- master to excuse him from being any longer Aid for Operations of the Navy Department. Admiral Fiske did not say why he wished to be excused, and it is a permissible hypothesis that his grandmother is ill. But the general supposition is that he wants to get out because he knows about navies, and what ought to be done about ours, and Josephus has different views and blocks the way to doing what his Aid for Operations tliinks is necessary. 129 130 THE DIARY OF A NATION Joseplius, as all conscientious observers must have noticed, has very positive views and the confidence of them. He has been defined by high authority as a man who knows nothing and is sure of it. He is con- firmed just now in his certainties by the news that the King of England has given up drink until the war is over. Admiral Fiske is nothing but a common naval expert without views on great moral, dietetic, or political questions, and Josephus, being noto- riously good-natured, will doubtless spare him gladly and run the navy himself on the lines he learned at Raleigh. But it is our navy, and we must watch him. We may need a navy some time, and, in view of that possibility, it may become our duty any minute to give the President all the help we possibly can in getting rid of Josephus Daniels. The great current slogan against rum is that it is the enemy of efficiency. But is it possible to con- gratulate the President on the efficiency of his two teetotal Secretaries.^ Curious to say, they are the least efficient members of his Cabinet. If the argu- ment for efficiency rested on them, it would fall all in a heap. To our mind, Josephus is the heaviest load the Wilson administration has to carry. Mr. Bryan may be burdensome, but he is probably worth his weight. Our foreign affairs are being very well con- ducted. People blame President Wilson for what he has done about Mexico and what is going on there, but we must never forget that the best cook in the world cannot make a satisfactory omelet out of bad eggs. But Josephus is a great affliction and one that has no visible compensations except in so far as it is good for us to suffer. The officers of the navy are in the main men of high character, able, devoted, and self- respecting. To have them subjected to the whims THE DIARY OF A NATION 131 of this ignorant and unterrified Tar-heel is truly exasperating. Nobody has ever been able to ac- count for the inclusion of Daniels in the Cabinet. He is not important politically or personally. It is inconceivable that he should be acceptable to the President. But for some reason unknown the place was offered him, and it is as hard to turn him out of it as it was for Taft to get rid of Ballinger. Our President in this case is Sinbad, and the legs of the Old Man of the Sea are locked about his neck. Dr. Dernburg, the German apologist, thinks that too much fuss has been made about the sinking of the Falaha by a German submarine, and the other like attacks on merchantmen, with resulting loss of lives of non-combatants. It seems shocking to sink a merchant ship with over a hundred assorted pas- sengers aboard, and such things have not been used to be done in modern wars. But m this war there are novelties. The submarine is a novelty, and the New German, bred and taught since 1870, is a novelty. It will save trouble to accept Dr. Dern- burg's position that nothing that either of these novelties can do, under any circumstances, is prop- erly subject to adverse criticism. They are both out to do all the harm they can to any enemy they can reach. To criticize them for violating old rules of war is a mere waste of time. Their purpose is to kill, rob, and destroy what they can, and the only visible cure for that intention is to kill as many fight- ing Germans as possible. There is no sign that any- thing will end the war except dead Germans. Of course that is a sad prospect, and the sadder because to realize it will cost not only so many lives of New Germans, but so many that are not of the New German species and are not ailing with the terrible New German disease. But there doesn't seem to be 132 THE DIARY OF A NATION any other way out, and though the Allies have doubtless every disposition to do their job with the utmost economy, it is not one in which economical methods seem likely to be effective. For what peo- ple must have they pay the price, if they have got it. The Allies feel that they must have a lasting peace and freedom in Europe, and that those blessings can only be regained by eradicating the New German dis- ease at any cost. So there is no use of squirming more than one must when the New Germans drown or otherwise destroy non-combatants. Such deportment is one of the symptoms of their ailment and will go on until they are cured. Meanwhile, we must preserve our souls in such patience as we may, and do what good we can, and pretend to ourselves that this year it is the fashion in Europe to die. April 22, 1915, IT IS a strange war. It is so serious ! " These are days of great perplexity," said President Wilson to the Methodists, "when ... it seems as if great blind material forces had been released which had for long been held in leash and restraint. And „ „ . yet, underneath that, you can see the strong So Serious . i j. . • i i j> impulses oi great ideals. To be sure! It seems like a war of religions; and so, no doubt, it is, of rehgions alike in profession, but antagonistic in practice. One reads details of Ger- man conduct that make one feel that there are not enough Germans dead or alive for the purposes of expiation. Again, one reads details of German devo- tion, fidehty, and sometimes of humanity and sweet- ness that make you feel, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." There are many, many excellent Germans dying for something, and doing it with alacrity and absolute consecration. The same is true of a iot of Frenchmen and Belgians, a lot of Eng- lishmen and a raft of Russians. Perhaps one reason Italy finds it so hard to come into the war is that she cannot raise her consecration to the current level. Life seems to have come to be altogether a secondary matter to these contestants. Out of so much good dying a great deal of good ought in time to come. Perhaps one result will be a general swap of cultures. Everybody engaged has been learning the art of war from the Germans, and incidentally the German system of getting ready be- forehand and starting when the whistle blows. The immense effort to thrash Germanv seems to be 133 134 THE DIARY OF A NATION Germanizing Europe in the details of organization and government control much faster and better than Germany could have hoped to do it by uni- versal conquest. When you have to imitate a man in order to beat him you are apt to get a lasting lesson. And the Germans must be learning, too. It does not show yet; there is hardly a sign of it. But the subconscious German mind must be recording such facts as that the Prussians do not know all that is knowable about the management of empires; that the Germans are not the only worth-while people on the earth, and that militarism has unsuspected de- fects as a protective policy. None of these acces- sions to the sum of German knowledge has begun to be operative yet. They are still eating their way into the subconscious receptacles of German thought, but one may hope with considerable con- fidence of expectation that in due time they will climb up into the German head and manifest their presence. Our domestic concerns intrude upon attention, but only get scant measure of it. Wall Street has been doing business again. Somehow people have con- cluded that American stocks will still be valuable no matter what, and have been buying them with a good appetite in rising markets. Nobody seems harsh enough to grudge the stock brokers tliis relief. The internment of their business for four or ^ve months, followed by sluggish markets, had made them seem almost as worthy as the Belgians. The Uplift in Wisconsin seems to be standing on its head. It was not kind to sinners when it had the right of way, and now some of them have elbowed their way back into office and are inclined to be harsh. It does not do in politics to disfigure sinners THE DIARY OF A NATION 135 too much, even in pitching them out for the people's good. WTien they get back they are apt to be incon- siderate. If the Wisconsin Uph'ft will just watch w^hat happens to the German Uplift in Belgium they will understand all about it. April 29, 1915. DR. DERNBURG'S letter to the Portland mass meeting has been read with interest by many friends. It is understood to be a feeler for peace, and as such has been kindly and hospitably received by neutrals. Its suggestions of conditions Dernburg Under which peace might be acceptable to Writes a Germany are doubtless not so very im- Letter portant, but they offer details for discus- sion, and have been profusely discussed. AYhat is of main concern is that here is an intimation that Germany is not deriving so much improvement and satisfaction from the so salutary and glorious exer- cises of warfare but that she would let up on them if it could be made graceful for her to do so. The good doctor intimates that the idea that Ger- many wants to conquer the world — the excellent Bernhardi's "World-Power or Down-and-Out " no- tion — is all nonsense. To do Dr. Dernburg justice, we guess he always thought so. He intimates that Belgium could be returned to the Belgians and re- paired as far as possible, and that all that Germany would want would be the status quo ante, and a few rearrangements that v/ould assure her that she could trade anywhere on good terms. Dr. Murray Butler is quoted as of opinion that Herr Dernburg did not dash this letter off on his own typewriter, but that it was composed by some one of superior diplomatic gifts — Von Biilow, perhaps — and transmitted to Dr. Dernburg to divulge. Who- ever wrote it, it is interesting and entitled to its place in the great war file. But the war seems not 136 THE DIARY OF A NATION 137 threshed out yet. Constantinople is not taken, the soil of Germany has hardly been scratched by the war plough, the validity of "f rightfulness" has not been debated in western Prussia, the Prussian militarists — those that are left — are still in control of Germany. Germany may easily get better terms when thoroughly thrashed than when half thrashed, since not until there are plain signs that the nonsense has been pounded out of her will her neighbours dare to trust her with the power for future mischief. A Germany cured of her madness — of trust in lies and spies and Krupps, of robber morals and slave-driver lusts, and pillage-hunger — would not find it hard to get fair terms. But it is important that when the war does end, Germany shall realize what has hap- pened to her and why. May 6, 1915. ATA dinner of young men in New York last /a month one said to his companion at table: -^ ^ "Look around this table. I am willing to bet you that within five years half of us here will be killed in a war brought on by our feeble foreign policy." A Bet at That was an idea put into concrete form to Dinner express how some people feel, or profess to feel, about the present state of our national affairs. They are usually persons whose political hopes in- volve a change in administration at Washington. Such persons, especially, think our navy is not strong enough, and are worried because of our lack of a reserve of trained soldiers. They think the solicitude of the present administration to avoid every chance of war anywhere will hurt the prestige of the coun- try and make somebody think presently that w^e are an easy mark, and that our national convictions in matters of policy need not be respected. They think we should have taken hold harder in Mexico, and should have taken the lead nine months ago in uniting all neutrals in a protest against the invasion and destruction of Belgium. They are willing to bet that we shall get our dues in time, and will pay in the end a heavier bill in life and treasure than we need have paid if somebody else had been President and had done differently. Perhaps so; but for our humble part, we do not think so. And, anyhow, we can't help it. Our present administration has nearly two years more to run, and we could not escape from it without a 138 THE DIARY OF A NATION 139 revolution. It behooves us, therefore, to sit tight and hope on. No one knows, but it may be that an official remonstrance about Belgium would have done some good if all neutrals could have been joined in it. But to say that is to say that if some one else had been President matters would have gone differently. Some one else was not President. It is the President we have who must work for us, and it is for his needs and omissions that we are responsible. The country, except the Fatherland, the Rev. Thomas C. Hall and Col. Roosevelt, seems fairly well satisfied with what has been done anent Europe. As to Mexico, what has been and is now going on there has not yet come to be a political issue in this country, and there is not likely to be one so long as the war in Europe continues. But between now and the time next year wh.en a President is nominated, Mexico, unless it straightens out, is likely to be a subject of urgent discussion, and our policy there may easily become a Presidential issue. Herr Dernburg speaks to us so freely and in- timately about our affairs and is so candid in telling us what is for our good and warning us how we may get hurt if we don't watch out, that we have quite got out of the habit of thinking of him as a visitor, and if he should decide to run for Congress it would seem quite natural. He was not satisfied that his letter to the Portland meeting should be described as a feeler for peace, and came out in the Sunday papers of April 25th with voluminous obser- vations on that subject. He took us so far into his confidence as to disclose that Germany was doing exceedingly well on all sides of the war and had no occasion to be thinldng of peace except as she might attain by it such concessions as she felt to be neces- sary to her future growth and welfare. We might as well make up our minds, he thought, that the Ger- 140 THE DIARY OF A NATION mans were invincible and would hold all of France and Belgium that they were now possessed of unless they got attractive offers to swap these holdings for something they liked better. Of course, in these remarks, our good friend took his peace discussion out of meeting and deposited it on the line that runs between the Germans and the Allies on the North of France. That seems to be where, as yet, it belongs. If the Germans are in- vincible they will make such a peace as suits them when they get ready. If they can be beaten they will take what they can get when they have to. If the German Empire holds together it will be interesting to compare the reward of our good Dr. Dernburg for his labours with us, with that conferred on Prince Von Bulow for his efforts to swing the Italians. Von Bulow has the harder job, and they say he has worked at it with admirable skill. But our Dernburg has worked faithfully, too, and when it comes to getting next to reading matter he is hard to beat. If anything he could say would have in- fluenced American opinion in this country he would have said it, but so far he seems only to have in- fluenced German opinion here. He is Germany's ambassador to the Germans in the United States. The Germans are using gas bombs on the line in France, and there is some disposition to discuss the propriety of their doing so, because Germany, and all the nations now at war, signed a Hague agreement not to use them. There were stories, untrue perhaps, in the papers a while ago about French experiments in the war with asphyxiating bombs, and if the French used them the Germans can. But, anyhow, why compliment the Germans any further by discussing the propriety of the details of THE DIARY OF A NATION 141 their warfare? They abolished propriety once for all before the war was ten days old in Belgium. They substituted for it — f rightfulness. They will do anything, anywhere, that seems likely to promote their ends. What they do, the Cossacks will do in turn if they get a chance, and the other Allies are likely in the end to retaliate as far as their superior civilization permits. It is a superlatively cruel war. It has got clean away from all discussion of proprieties or details of any sort. May 13, 1915, THERE is plenty of peace talk, but no other prog- ress towards it. It has been said that it would not be so very difficult, even now, to get the European governments to agree on terms of peace if they dared, but that in every country concerned the people have been so positively assured that they were certain to win that none of their governments dare face them with anything less than victory to offer. President Eliot, who is by no means for peace at any price, can suggest terms of peace that would be advantageous to every one, and has done so. It can be done at any time. Whenever Germany is licked enough there can be peace. She has received great benefit already. She is much sadder and some wiser. She still fights very well, with big guns, chemicals, bluster, torpedoes, anything she can pro- duce, and keeps pushing her obedient Kanonenfiitter into all holes that are made in her lines, so that it is truly a terrible job to give her a full course of treat- ment. But while a good half the news nowadays is of German successes, they do not get her ahead any, and the war-sharps whose views we most rely on find the significant advantages increasingly with the Allies. The infernal ding-dong of it all is very terrible. The Germans, at this writing, have managed to torpedo an American oil ship and to kill some of the people aboard it, and there will have to be settlement for that, and there may be complications about it. The Germans are so mad at us now that they may want us to get into the war and lose some money. Or they may want to see what our Germ an- American popula- 142 THE DIARY OF A NATION 143 tion would do in such a case. But, after all, there are good reasons why it would pay them better to have us remain neutral, and neutral we are likely to remain. We have need to look back now and then, and recall to mind with what aims Germany, after her long and thorough preparation, started this war. She was out to crush France so that France should never again be an obstacle to fulfillment of any Ger- man ambition. She was to sting Russia so that Russia would stay at home and mind her business for a generation or two to come. She was to have her will with the small countries and reduce them all to docility and obedience. She was to go on building warships at her convenience until England presently should take orders from her. She could have done it all, probably, except for England, and with what dreadful emphasis, with what lootings, and pillage, and ransoms, and rapine, and assorted' "f rightfulness," we loiow, because we know the story of Belgium. From these incalculable horrors, these measures taken to teach mankind "not to look askance at a German," the world has been saved at great cost of life and treasure. These horrors will not happen now. Lives by the hundred thousand will still, no doubt, be lost, and grief and want will darken many lands, but the German monster will not strut victorious through the earth, helping him- self to better people's homes and treasures. That much is clear now. How thoroughly the Germans are to be drubbed is not yet disclosed, but the horrible shadow of the all-conquering, all-looting German is no longer black on the earth. That spectre is laid for good. France will still be France, Belgium will presently again be Belgium, however scarred; Russia will be a better Russia, and England, let us hope, will be a nobler England than she has been for generations. May 20, 1915. AS Life goes to press the only intimation of the action of our government in the ease of the ^ Liisitania is what can be gleaned from the President's remarks to some newly naturalized citi- zens iu Philadelphia. Of course these remarks must The not be taken as addressed to Germany, or as Lusitania a token of our national attitude. The Presi- dent said : " There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right." To be sure, but when it comes to fighting outlaws we are not too proud. We are just as humble as anybody. And as to a nation being so right that it does not need to use force, that seems to depend on circumstances and on the state of mind of the nation that is wrong. There is no sign yet that with Ger- many anything but force, applied or prospective, will have the least effect. We should not say it was the Germans who sunk the Lusitania. Germans did sink her, but they were men acting under orders. We should go back of them to the source of their activities. It was the Kaiser who sank that ship and took those lives. It is he that stands for that crime. It is he and his divine right that stands for this war. He and that element in Germany that has linked its fortunes with his are accountable in this matter. We must not forget that. We must not forget that this war of wars is a desperate struggle of absolutism to cripple democracy; a war of force to cripple free- 144 THE DIARY OF A NATION 145 r dom; a war of f rightfulness on faith. It is not a war of the German people on anybody. Their bodies have been in it, but not their minds. Their minds have not worked. Their wills have counted for nothing except obedience. It is a war of the German masters on all free peoples. Of course the sinking of the Liisitania was just more "f rightfulness"; a flash of terrorism to scare us all into submission to the Lords of Earth. The German masters, it seems, cannot be satisfied to leave us out of their universal discipline. While they are subduing the world, we might as well be included. And so they get to work and sink our ships, and, contrary to all known rules of civilized warfare, drown our defenseless citizens by the hun- dred on an unarmed merchant vessel. How now, brethren.^ What are we going to do.^* We have been defied with monstrous outrages. These German masters are marshalling their poor subjects with aid of any hellish machine that contrivance can perfect to destroy every principle of government, every asset of civilization that we value or respect. Nothing holds them. Law, custom, treaties, morals are all straw to them. Fear they understand, for they have known it; force they understand, for they have used it, and it has been used on them. By fear and force they think to have their way with us and all the world besides. Well, brethren, shall tliev have it.^^ A gentleman who went to France last month wrote this letter, which he addressed to the President: '^On April — I am sailing with my family for Bordeaux on a French ship. In case the boat is torpedoed by the Germans I request that you will make a protest. I do not ask you to inaugurate quiet and friendly inquiries or negotiations with Germany as to the rumours of my death. Indeed, your willingness to rely on quiet 146 THE DIAEY OF A NATION negotiations under the circumstances of the Falaba case is what causes me uneasiness as to the safety of my family. The course that you have taken in that case has made travel for Americans not more safe, but much more unsafe; and should the American public come to acquiesce in the methods of the Administration we may expect wholesale killing of Americans by the Germans. I ask you, in case of my death, to take some action that shall be immediate and open, and which shall awaken all Americans to the fact that an appeal to arms may be needed to save the lives of our citizens — to say nothing of the honour of our nation. He did not send his letter to the President, not being satisfied at the time that it was wise to do so. x\nd happily, he and his family got safely across to France. But in the gloom of the sink^ig of the Lusitania it looks like a good letter for anybody to read. Certainly we all feel that "quiet and friendly inquiries" have passed their usefulness. When the pacificent Evening Post speaks of the destroyers of the sunken Cunarder as "wild beasts against whom society has to defend itself at all hazards," there can hardly remain a doubt even in the most reluctant mind that "quiet negotiations" are played out, and that the time has come for some action with punch in it. For our part, we still look with hope for such action from President Wilson. It was he who said the other day in a public address that if a really worthwhile scrap should offer, he was the man for it. It was he who so very lately served formal notice on the German Government that "if commanders of German vessels of war . . . should destroy on the high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citizens, . . . the government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Im- perial German Government to a strict accounta- bility . . . and take any steps it might be necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property." These words, of course, gave universal satisfaction to the people of this country. They are THE DIARY OF A NATION 147 in the record, and Mr. Wilson may surely be trusted to make every letter of them good. Of all the lives that have been poured out in the great war, none, we are confident, will prove to have been expended to more fruitful purpose than those of the six score Americans who died when the Litsitania went down. The Titanic loss was fifteen hundred and three lives. Estimates at this writing make the loss by the Lusitania one or two hundred less. But the main difiPerence is that one was accident, the other murder; "a deed" — to quote the Evening Post again — "for which a Hun would blush, a Turk be ashamed, and a Barbary pirate apologize." This is the greatest disaster that has befallen the German arms since the retreat from Paris last Sep- tember. Not one of those thirteen hundred lives — not a baby, not a woman, not a stoker nor a million- aire — will be wasted. It is sad about them, but at least these non-combatants — and especially the forty babies — have done a feat of great military value. By their death they have shocked the moral sense of a nation that needed a shock of terrific penetration to jolt it into action. Those torpedoes got to the quick of our hesitant country. Of course we are not afraid. We slattern along in a state of vociferous neglect of preparation, and then always we are like President Wilson in that if there offers a really worth- while scrap, we are for it. No doubt that is the wav with most countries, but it is not what Europe thinks of us. An American writes from Paris : The general European opinion of the United States is that we have no thought beyond a dollar. Their people come to America and do not get beyond Wall Street and the Chicago pork packer- ies, and they do not realize that there is no civilized nation where wealth has less political influence. Neither do they understand that we are a sentimental people and full of idealism. 148 THE DIARY OF A NATION The Europeans in these days are finding out a good many things about themselves and one another, and it will be all in the day's work if they find out some- thing about us. Some of them have been developing consciousness that they have souls, and if we develop a discernible soul they may be able to recognize it. So far since this war began our national soul has not been easily discernible from a distance. But it has been in its place all the time. The great American desire has been not dollars at all, but to be right. Mmj ^7, 1915. ^ _. . /' A GOOD deal of the delight of the country in the President's w'ot t' 'ell letter to the Kaiser was reaction from the fear that he wouldn't do it. The one fear was that he wouldn't say enough, or say it hard enough. He said a-plenty, and said The Presidenfs it with an admirable skill and preci- Letter. sion, and the whole country was satis- fied. It knows, too, that Mr. Wilson is a sticker, and Mr. Wilson knows that the country is behind him as solid as a stone wall, and asks nothing of him except not to let the Germans fool him. There is no fear at this writing that they will. Evidences abound that the note and the news of American sentiment that came with it have jolted some new ideas into the German Government. A paper that takes a week to get itself printed is too slow a vehicle to keep abreast of the times like these, and must not venture to forecast what the Kaiser will do, but there is a feeling that what he does will make more difference in detail than in essence. If he drives the United States into open war it will involve much confusion about diplomatic services and in- creased pains to European sufferers whom we are trying to help; whereas, if we stay out, we shall still be powerful aides of the Allies and still the service- able go-between of all the warring powers. No doubt there is still left in Germany the capacity to appreciate that on the day these States went into the war on the side of the Allies the last doubt about the final outcome of the war would disappear. There are people who suppose that because our army is so 149 150 THE DIARY OF A NATION little and our navy hardly up to date, we could not help much. But that is a mistake that no informed European would make for a minute. We make excellent shells, shrapnel, and powder, and can increase our product of these combustibles indefi- nitely; we have money, credit, food, and productive apparatuses too numerous and important to men- tion, and we could turn out soldiers in a compara- tively short time. Our navy also would be im- mediately useful. We should be a huge asset for the side we were on, and everybody knows it who knows anything. For that reason it seems unlikely that we shall get into the war. And, after all, it is not quite our war, and if we can keep out of it, it may be better in the long run for all the world. Our great affair is to serve mankind the most we can. So far as concerns our own safety, it does not matter much whether we join the war against Ger-' many or not. If anything, we are safer in the line with the Allies than outside. Germany as a world- terror has got to be abated; abated for us as well as for all the other nations, great or small. In any case we shall do our share in the abatement, but if we do it directly and at our own cost our position will be safer when the job has been done than if we do it indirectly and at the cost of the Allies. It is very desirable to disabuse the European mind of the idea that we care only for dollars and that the war interests us mainly as an opportunity to do busi- ness and make money. President Wilson's letter has done much to clear away that misapprehension. What remains of it will be dispersed whenever Ger- many declares war on us. The action of whoever did it in chucking the Kaiser's representative effects out of the Chapel of the Garter at Windsor was very suitable. The togs THE DIARY OF A NATION 151 of all the otiier German members went with them, and that was right, too. It is important to keep these persons permanently out of society, but espe- cially the Kaiser. That unfortunate man stands be- fore mankind smeared with ineffaceable guilt. He represents officially the appalling crimes of Germany. The man who years ago told his troops about to sail for China so to bear themselves as to be remem- bered as long as was Attila and his Huns — that was the man and that the mind that must settle for "f rightfulness" in Belgium and for the Lusitania. There can be no two thoughts about that man and the caste of Germans that he stands for, and who are doubtless worse than he. They are murderers, and those of them who survive the war should be out- casts. The Kaiser and Von Tirpitz must feel that they are fighting with ropes around their necks. One reads of Jane Addams and her voluminous desire to stop the war, but when Miss Addams has read the Bryce report, one may surely expect to hear of her co- operation in getting up an international rope-and- lamp-post party to swing off the whole house of Hohenzollern. Not that there was anything new in the Bryce report. Open-minded people who were informed have known for six months most of what was in that report, and many details not therein included, and have been well aware that mere fragments of a horrible storv were all that had reached them, but the Bryce report convinced a great many who had not believed before, and coming especially on the heels of the Lusitania story, it could not be doubted. Even the German denials of it hereabouts were faint. Viereck, in the Fatherland, felt the crushing need to say it was not so, but there was obvious perfunctoriness in his denial, and evidences of realization that the sinking of the Lusitania marked 152 THE DIARY OF A NATION the close of the German exculpators' season In the United States. They are all done now. Von Eernstorff saw the game was up, and went very sensibly into retreat. Dernburg babbled on and lost what reputation for gumption he had left, and used up the last shreds of his welcome; the Rev. Thomas Hall gave final evi- dence of his amazing obsession; all of them went down together with the forty babies on the Lusitania, Really, the stain on Germany is horrible. There was a dinner to be given by American naval officers to the officers of the two interned German warships. It was dropped like a shot when the Lusitania sunk. These officers are personally innocent of that crime, but Von Tirpitz has destroyed the honourable stand- ing of the German navy. Men who take his orders can no longer rank as gentlemen. Happy Richard, who died in time, and did not live to see to what a depth of infamous repute the furor teutonicus, that he warned us of, has brought his Germany. June 3, 1915. AS WE wait, at this writing, for German3'''s /A reply to our President's letter, there is an -^ -^ appearance that Italy has leaked into the war. For ten months she has been shivering on the brink and haggling on the side. She finally got excellent Italy offers from her former allies, but probably Gets In doubted both their ability to make a good delivery and their disposition to stand by their bar- gain after the pinch of war was over. For months past Italy has cut rather a sordid figure, but that has been a good deal her misfortune. She has been full of opposed and wrangling parties, some for war, some against it. She goes in because participa- tion in the actual war has come to be more desired by the mass of her people than the costly perch on the ragged edge which she has so long been oc- cupying. What Italy can do will be disclosed suflSciently soon by events. Nobody seems to know beforehand.. If she gets her share of discipline, that may be impor- tant, especially as she is full of factions, industrial, religious, and political, that need shaking together. And that she is in the war means also that another of the important peoples of Europe is struggling for peace. W'hen a sufficiently large proportion of the population of the earth gets to fighting sufficiently hard for peace, no doubt peace will come. The Swiss and the Dutch are not in yet, nor the Scan- dinavians, but, of course, the Rumanians and all the rest of the Balkan peoples may get in any minute. There is only Spain that does not look lilve a possible 153 154 THE DIABY OF A NATION participant. Her cheerful young king must feel lonely. More interesting than Italy's proceedings are the Northcliffe-Kitchener and Fisher-Churchill rows in England and the reorganization of the British Cabi- net. Lord Northcliffe stands for government by headlines. We all know the breed. Lord Kitchener stands for government by orders. The theory has been that government by headlines was not adapted to war times, and since last August the British War Department has been supervising editor of all British newspapers, including Lord Northcliffe's. No doubt this has been a trial to Northcliffe. He has had the gift of selling periodicals. He has been a good judge of vs^hat various groups of the British people were willing to read, and an expert purveyor to them of whatever reading they would buy. He has had re- markable judgment and discretion, too, in the selec- tion and employment of writers and editors. The use of these abilities has brought him great power. He has had the money to carry out his plans, and what has been said in the Times, the Mail, and his other newspapers and periodicals has had a great effect on public opinion, and often on government. Perhaps Lord Northcliffe had come to feel that he was the British Government. It is a mistake that such men are liable to make. They imagine they are the power that makes things happen, when the truth is they are only the news. General Kitchener seems to be a faithful man, v/ith moderate gifts, obstinate tenacity, and great power of work. He took up a huge task and has doubtless made plenty of mistakes in the doing of it. But British opinion so far is back of him, and against Northcliffe. As for Fisher and Churchill, Fisher is a good and able, old-salt, fighting admiral, and Churchill seems to represent the combination of notable abilities with THE DIARY OF A NATION 155 sporting standards. Sporting standards are excellent in subordinates, but somehow do not stand the strain of the top places. An immense reorganization of everything is going on in England. The strong German medicine is purging the English people. They seem to be turn- ing to authority, and as between the British and the German lash they may prefer their own. There is the German organized obedience to be met, and nothing but organized obedience can meet it. Our people seem not to be taking very seriously the possibility that we may get into war with Ger- many. Folks who discuss it move on to other topics. The general sentiment is that, whatever befalls, we are too far away to be hurt. Canada is at war with Germany and is not uncomfortable, though the Canadian losses in men have been severe. Here hardly a hand has lifted to prepare for a possible war, though doubtless some thought has been taken by the government. But there is consciousness that our present state of military and naval preparation, or unpreparation, is not safe whether we become entangled in the present war or not, and that there is coming either a great change in the world or a pronounced change in our habits. The temper of average, thoughtful, pacific Americans appeared in a striking fashion at the annual Lake Mohonk Conference during the third week in May. One of the aims of these conferences has been the conserva- tion of peace, but several speakers waked up the meeting this year by advocating active preparation against the possibility of war. One speaker who took this view was President Hibben of Princeton, who declared that as a nation we "are looking into a future that is dark and mysterious," and that, though we may properly make great sacrifices for peace, if we sacrifice what we ought not to, "the peace thus 156 THE DIARY OF A NATION bought becomes for us the veriest torment of a living hell." Never in the twenty -one years of its existence, says the Evening Post, had the Lake Mohonk Conference heard such a call to arms as it had from President Hibben. A timely call it was, and all the delegates took notice. June 10, 1915. GERMANY has put her trust in mechanism and means to sink or swim with it. The Prussian army was a mechanism, and with the help of Bismarck it took possession of all Ger- 'many. That whole country has been mechanized. German ' ^o, to be sure, has all the Western world, Trustin which uow rcsts on a basis of machinery. Mechanism g^|. Germany is the leading exponent and victim of this new method in life. Since she be- came Prussianized she has made steady and rapid progress towards becoming a perfect machine and past mistress of all things mechanical. She hoped for national salvation — for boundless wealth, bound- less power, and the mastery of Earth — as a result of making the best use of the most efficient machines. That is what she stands for just now: machines and a boundless appetite for all they can win for her. Of course she must stick up for her submarines in anything they do. They are part of her new religion of mechanisms. The leading tenet of her new faith is: Whatever a machine can be made to do is right. Her invading army was a machine. For nothing that it did in Belgium or northern France has Germany shown remorse. Her machine can do no wrong either in general aims or in details. The whole duty of a machine is efficiency. Nothing else matters. That is her attitude about the sinking of the Lusitania. What are submarines for except to sink enemy ships? If non-combatants are aboard of them, so much the worse for non-combatants; if 157 158 THE DIARY OF A NATION neutrals are aboard, so much the worse for neutrals. Whatever happens, a German machme can do no wrong. For Germany to admit the contrary is to give up her whole case, her whole ideal. Her sole reliance is on force and mechanisms, and she is bound to justify them. Everything else she has let go : her friends, her word, her honour, her civiliza- tion — they are all laughing-stocks or subjects for tears; but her machines are good and she is bound to stand by them. So she stands by her military machine in Belgium. Replying to the Bryce report, she says the Belgian behaviour was in some cases very irregular and even cruel, and, of course, her military machine had to put it in order. Replying to President Wilson's communication about the Lusitania, she makes an- swer by evasion and delay and by allegation of what is untrue and can easily be proved to be so. If the profitable use of an efficient mechanism necessitated the loss of eleven hundred non-combatants on a passenger ship, including six score American neutrals, how can she help that? If such a destruction was contrary to modern habits of war, what is that to her.'^ She has some new machines and they neces- sitate new habits, and she is in a tight place and must make the most of what she has! The real question in all this discussion is how far mechanisms are to be allowed to dominate men? That is a question that affects not only Germany and us, but the whole civilization of this time. It is interesting that this question whether submarine mechanisms have rights and privileges superior to all known human laws should come for a decision to President Wilson, whose political aspiration from the start has been to fetch human life loose from the domination of mechanisms. Life goes to press with- out the advantage of reading his reply to the German THE DIARY OF A NATION 159 note, but in full confidence that it will not be a reply that will confirm in any measure the German theory of the super-humanity of mechanisms. No doubt it will have to be a note correcting the German mis- apprehensions of fact about the status and equip- ment of the Lusitania, and so calling for a further response. But there is already assurance that it will give no encouragement to delay or evasive discussion. As for the possibility of our being drawTi into open war with Germany, it is hard to get excited about it. Germany does not seem like a nation at all ; she seems like an idea and a condition of mind. Fighting her is like fighting a lunatic. The actuating purpose must be the utmost avoidance of damage that is consistent with getting a strait jacket on the patient. It is no fun to fight a lunatic, and there is no glory in it, and often it is extremely hard and dangerous work. Our attitude towards Germany is one of the com- pletest benevolence. We want her to come right in her mind and see life as it is, and stop destroying the world she lives in. That is all. To help towards that indispensable achievement we will do, no doubt, anything we can — advise with her, send her ambas- sador home, fight her — chiefly by aiding the other keepers of the great world sanitarium in their efforts to reduce her to order. Those efforts, so far as one can judge, are going oil as well as could be expected. The exertions of the patient continue to be wonderful, but the Italian keeper, who has lately joined the sanitarium forces, seems an active man, and likely to be an appreciable help. Rumania has not joined the keepers yet, but is waiting in line; Holland is grumbling very audibl^^ and in accents of deep apprehension, and one even reads of Spain as making efforts to increase her sup- plies of munitions. There is much complaint from England about the 160 THE DIARY OF A NATION indisposition of the British workingman to exert himself to produce ammunition. Perhaps that is just another symptom or consequence of the mechaniza- tion of modern Kfe, which, making wealth its object, has produced, as Mr. Jacks says in the Hibbert Journal, "conditions which satisfy nobody and against which all men are, by this higher human na- ture, born rebels." If the British mechanic loves rum better than England and is not pleased enough with his share of machine-made existence to sweat to keep the Germans out of it, that is not flattering to machine-developed life in England. June 17, 1915. STILL at this writing the President is busy with some details of his answer to the German reply to the Lusitania note, dotting "i's," crossing "t's" and clinching some of the language on the underside of the document so as not to leave in it oT. 77.- anything that is misunderstandable. As mg ^^ ^^^ Gulflight and the Gushing, pre- sumably the German reply was acceptable. As to the Lusitania, it was not acceptable. Our posi- tion is that our citizens may embark on merchant vessels of the warring powers, and that no one may sink such vessels except after such preliminary formalities in the matter of taking off crews and pas- sengers as are prescribed by international law. What Germany did to the Lusitania we won't have. Nei- ther will we refer such behaviour to The Hague nor parley long about it. Germany must agree not to do such things or take what consequences the United States may contrive. That is what a great majority of our people want and expect to have said. The sinking of the Lusi- tania was no worse than plenty of other things that Germany has done and is constantly doing in this war, but it is the one great thing that affects our coun- try and about which there can be no skulking. Ger- many can neither sidestep the responsibility for this horror nor argue it away. She has got to face it, and either back down or take the consequences. It has been revolting in a way to have any further official communication with a government that sank the Lusitania, but it has seemed necessary. If we 161 162 THE DIARY OF A NATION are to break with Germany we must break on definite and justifiable grounds. We owe as much as that to German sympathizers here; men Kke Dr. Morris Jastrow, of Philadelphia, who has said what he could for Germany from the start, but who will not back her in actions which, he says, are "contrary to the cidtivated humanitarian instincts of mankind." In her own interest, says Dr. Jastrow, Germany "must be made to see that she cannot conduct a war with methods that endanger her position among the na- tions of the world." For Germany's sake, pro- German Dr. Jastrow would have our government stand firm in its expression of American abhorrence of an action that "stamps this w^ar as the most cruel since the Dark Ages." Some people who come from Europe, especially from the hospitals, say that we do not begin to realize the horrors of this war. Doubtless not, but we realize enough to maintain an increasing unanimity of opinion that it is so intolerable that a position on the outside of it is almost as bad as participation. We blame Germany for it and we want to see it stopped at Germany's cost. A good man^^ of us think we should have become active participants before this to bring that necessary achievement to pass. A good many more of us feel that it is not our war and we should be wary and formal about getting into it, but that if we are dra\^ai into it on just grounds we shall be where we belong. That has been the burden of many of the bac- calaureate sermons which at this season so much abound. There are very few voices raised in en- treaties to go slow. It is felt that that counsel is not needed. There is no national or official disposi- tion to go too fast, and the counsel of the elders and the reverend clergy is that the United States should face its dutv to civilization and do whatever that THE DIARY OF A NATION^ 163 duty demands. Never was a calmer or more dis- passionate country face to face with a possibility of war, and seldom lias a people been more united in disposition to back its government to any length in whatever course seemed right to it to follow. As for war news, it has of late been comparatively dull. The Russians have been short of war material and the Germans have had pretty much their owti way with them. One reason for that has been that Japan, threatened by troubles in China, kept her shells at home for a time instead of shipping them to Russia. But that embarrassment is over now, and the port of Archangel is ice-free at last, and Russia is being fed up again and should do better. If the Dardanelles can be cleared and Constanti- nople captured, that will solve many side problems and start a new set of calculations about the duration of the war. But the Dardanelles are obstinate, and peace speculations continue to rest much more on hope than on expectation. We know that the Germans can beat the Russians, and that the Russians, when they have the neces- saries of war, can beat the Austrians. Nevertheless, even for Germans, beating Russians is a fatiguing exercise and costly in life even when the Russians are short of ammunition, and when you have got a lot of Russians beaten there comes along a new swarm of them and it has all to be done over again. With all her deficiencies, Russia is still a considerable obstacle between any other European nations and world-power. June 2Jf, 1915, WHAT a wonderful dispensation of Providence it was that lifted William Bryan so gently, spectacularly, and opportunely out of the Cabinet where months ago he had ceased to be useful, and placed him where he will himself be alone re- Mr B G sponsible for his opinions and deport- ment! Oh, what a blessed relief it is to have this worthy but misguiding brother detached from a situation where he seemed to speak and act for the American people and restored to that freedom which belongs to folks who speak only for themselves! It was not worth the cruel loss of the Lusitania to have it happen, but it was worth very much. And to have it done voluntarily, without a quarrel, by Mr. Bryan himself was almost a kinder fortune than we deserved. It would not well have been done otherwise than by the free will of the Departed, for truly his merits and deserts have been considerable. His usefulness and loyalty as a member of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet have exceeded the expectations even of those politi- cians who approved his appointment. Really, Mr. Bryan has been very good. He has helped the administration as much as he could (sometimes to great purpose) and has lived m personal urbanity with his fellow cabineteers. He has, of course, been an impediment to business and an anxious care as Secretary of State, but as a working member of the administration he has probably been worth his cost. The opinion that "his appointment as Secretary of State was a colossal blunder" (Boston Transcript) is 164 THE DIARY OF A NATION 165 not sound at all. His appointment has proved a great success and his voluntary retirement is the shining crown of it. In the days when this Republic began it was served, and with great efficiency, by a galaxy of statesmen who had firm minds and (most of them) loose morals. Mr. Bryan is an example of the opposite sort. His morals are firm, but his mind is loose. It sees part of a subject vividly, but the rest it skips. It is a good agitator mind, and it is in agitation that Mr. Bryan has made his fortune. He has never had to be responsible for anything but language, and not much for that. He has lots of talent and cylinders enough for a great man, but when he trusts his mind it plays tricks on him and beguiles him with mis- taken conclusions and proposals. He does well only when he has a competent leader and sticks to him. He found such a leader for the first time in Mr. Wil- son, whose mind is an entirely different organ from his, and it is to Mr. Bryan's credit that he has been so pleased with Mr. Wilson's leadership and has stuck to him so long. But in the very act of fetching loose from him he demonstrates what he has so often dem- onstrated before, that he is a quack statesman. A quack he always has been, and no doubt will always be, not because he does not love the truth, but because he cannot see enough of it. He seems a sincere man fooled by a deluding mind. ^ His sin- cerity, his brass, his vigour, his talent, his human sympathies, his voice, and his vivid and tenacious perception of what he sees, make him a leader, and then his deluded mind twists him into a quack prophet. The papers complain of what he has done and the way he did it. Nonsense! He had to do it. That's the way he is made. It is a great thing to have him raise his 166 THE DIARY OF A NATION blessed old standard again. If all the political goats presently flock to it we shall know where they are and how many. Things are no longer as they were when the Democrats had no other leader. Lately Mr. Bryan has been keeping out of the Democratic party new recruits who wanted to come in. If pres- ently he sets up as rival candidate to Mr. Wilson we may see the great realignment of voters which has seemed to be impending. It is possible, however, that Mr. Bryan will quit party politics and devote himself to the improvement of the habits of his countrymen and their advance in religion. Mr. Bryan has explained that the second Lusitania letter did not have enough arbitration in it to satisfy his peace proclivities. But that seems to have troubled no one else. The letter is admirable, very gentle and urbane in its phrasing, careful in every syllable, but of a due and definite insistency and penetration. Praise be to the Divinity that has thus shaped this end of our rough-hewn affairs! Under Mr. Wilson's leadership we shall do our duty. Un- der Mr. Bryan's leadership Heaven knows what our course would have been, or into what desperate toils of imbecility it might have led us. But it is not an accident that Mr. Bryan is not our leader. The American people never have accepted his guidance. Three times they declined it, because in spite of a strong and warrantable disposition to change, they saw he had not the mental qualifications to be a safe President. He had the great advantage of being a hayseed and believing fervently in all hayseed stan- dards; he had peculiarities that invited the hypothe- sis that there had been revealed to him matters not disclosed to the wise; he had a great deal of personal charm and understanding of the art of popularity, so that he has always been able to make himself agreeable to all kinds of people, and yet with all THE DIARY OF A NATION 167 these advantages and the use three times of the ma- chinery of the Democratic party he has never been quite able to pull our great country's honourable leg. The trouble has been with his mind. It never could be trusted to work right. With a different bean on him, what a wonder William might have been! The importance of our country as a factor in the great war is very much increased by the all but universal support given to the President in his deal- ings with Germany. Mr. Bryan's compunctions have met with virtually no response. The country is satisfied with Mr. Wilson's management of its foreign concerns, and will back it wherever it leads. No- body worth mentioning is alarmed; nobody is afraid of a war with Germany, though scarcely any one wants it. President Wilson well expressed the gov- errdng sentiment of the country when he said : The Government of the United States is contending for some- thing much greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is contending for nothing less high and sacretl than the rights of humanity, which every government honours itself in respecting and which no government is justified in resign- ing on behalf of those under its care and authority. That is the pith of the matter and really tells what all this correspondence is about. It is about everything that has happened since last July, not at sea alone, but on shore as well ; not only about the Lusitania^ but about Belgium. What interests our people far beyond the rights of property is civiliza- tion. They will do now what they lawfully can to save it. Nothing will induce them to forego these so-called neutral efforts, and they will insist upon their neutral rights because the interests of civiliza- tion demand it. But how strange a thing is our system of govern- 168 THE DIARY OF A NATION ment! Here we have been for two years and four months educating a President and practising him in government. In another year we will be in process of discussing whether to lay him off or not, and in any case we will deposit him in our national museum of living political curiosities not later than on March 4, 1921. It is a funny way to manage and seems wasteful. We train soldiers so as to use them and have them on hand in case of need. But we use our Presidents untrained, and when they have learned how we lay them off. Still, there are worse ways than ours. If Ger- many had a vote coming on the Hohenzollern family the possibilities of peace would look considerably brighter. July 1, 1915. THERE are no very promising visible results as yet to the efforts of the National Security League and other like organizations to rouse us to the importance of provision for self-defense. Young men invited to go to camp and learn soldier- A Sharp Prod iug agree that it may be advisable, but Needed gay, "What's the use? It takes valuable time, and there would only be a handful of us, after all, and our labours would probably be wasted." There is willingness enough to volunteer for war, but reluctance to make sacrifices against a mere possibil- ity of war. It is doubted, apparently, that we are in much immediate danger. We are a long way*off from Europe and have a navy, such as it is, and the Ger- mans are very busy, and no one else over there has hostile dispositions towards us just now. So we do not seem to be in acute peril from Europe. And as for Mexico, the problem there, if we get entangled, will be not defense, but to get together an expedi- tionary force, and for that we could take what time was necessary. War seems to us Americans so foolish that in spite of all object lessons we can't believe that we are going to get into it. Consequently we are not getting ready on our individual initiative, and we are not likely to make any preparations worth considering except as a result of action by Congress. If war actually comes we shall spring, of course, to such arms as we can find to spring to. If Congress takes action and appropriates money to provide for a citizen sol- diery, there will be proceedings on a large scale that 169 170 THE DIARY OF A NATION will amount to something; but, judging by present signs, private enterprise is not going to help us much in war preparation. The government will have to move in the matter before rnuch will be done. That is a reason why a harsh answer from Ger- many to the last Lusitania note would be likely to do us a lot of good. It will take a sharp prod of some kind to get us moving. Considering what manner of proceedings are going on in the world, we are taking life much too easily. June is going out without supplying us with any very happy thoughts about Europe. The lament- able ding-dong that is going on there is more per- sistent than progressive. The Germans in Galicia seem to be having things very much their own way, but not to an extent that promises to affect the con- tinuance of the war. The English have made mis- takes, especially about ammunition, but seem to be increasing in earnestness and diligence; the French have held their own and a little better — perhaps a good deal better — but nothing decisive; the Darda- nelles still stay shut, and their opening is not at present advertised. To follow the activities of the Italians takes a new map and more study of geography and history than most observers afford, but they seem to be aggressive and successful in their attentions to Austria, and as yet nothing untoward has hap- pened to them. It is estimated that the Germans are now at the top of their military strength and will not be so strong again, whereas the Allies, especially England, will increase in military strength for some time to come. That encourages patience under German successes in Galicia and talk of a long war to be ended only by exhaustion. As an entertainment the war seems to be every- where a failure. Nobody is enjoying ii; not the THE DIAEY OF A NATION 171 Germans, the French, the English, nor the neutrals. They like it so little that they are ready to share it with all applicants. Greece is expected to join the Allies very shortly, and perhaps Rumania at the same time. There never was more dangerous and unattractive fighting, but the stakes are enormous, and for European countries, staying out has come to be almost as dangerous and expensive as getting in. Then, too, participants have a chance to win some- thing, but neutrals have no prospect except of loss. As for our chance of getting in, it does not look good. It lies entirely with Germany, and German talk seems to be getting rather more sensible. There seems to be a growth over there of the feeling that the defeat of the rest of Europe by the Teutonic com- bine will sufficiently attest the superiority of their Kultur, and that it is rather a pity to let the United States get more involved in the melee than they are already. The mass of the German people are ter- ribly tired of the war, and their capacity for hating seems to be getting overstrained, so there may be an earnest effort to satisfy the demands so affably pre- sented by our President. But, as above remarked, if the contrary happens and the German war-leaders control the reply to our note and refuse its suggestions, that may be best for us in the long run. July ^2, 1915, THE matter of the German note is very sim- ple. The German Government announced on February 4th that after the 18th of February it would destroy any enemy merchant ship (it could catch) in waters surrounding Great Britain and Ire- The German land, and could not undertake to avoid ^ote loss of passengers' lives. Our govern- ment gave notice (February 19th) that it would hold the German Government to "strict accountability" and would **take any steps necessary to safeguard American lives." On May 7th the Lusitania was torpedoed. On May 13th our government said that the right of American citizens to travel on merchant ships of belligerent nationality must not be abbrevi- ated. Germany answered (May 28th) that because of the exigencies of submarine warfare the German commanders were no longer in a position to observe rules of capture otherwise usual. Our government replied politely (June 10th) that they must observe them, and there came (July 9th), "in the spirit of friendship," the German proposal not to meddle with American ships specially marked, announced beforehand and carrying no contraband, and to allow four enemy steamships for passenger traffic under the American flag. Of course, this is a very great abbreviation of the rights of American citizens, and, of course, the pro- posal cannot be accepted. The submarine war and these notes that have grown out of it are consequences of the great mischance to the German arms eleven months ago. Germany's weakness on the sea and 172 THE DIARY OF A NATION 173 the hold-up of her trade that would come with war were recognized by Germans, but the calculation was to win so great an advantage by the first over- whelming onset as to offset all that. But it didn't quite happen so, and here is the war in its twelfth month, and the unhappy German Foreign Office try- ing to get relief by guile from embarrassments that force could not avert. Not for an instant, as one reads the latest German note, must the present German situation be forgotten. It is that of a bully, who, after forty years of incessant preparation, attacked Europe, was foiled in its first dash, has been held off for a year from any decisive advantage, and is now struggling with every power it has to escape a just punishment for its intolerable aggressions. Shall the cornered bully get any aid from Washing- ton? Thumbs dow^n, Uncle Sam! Thumbs down! It may be worth remarking that the German note, while dwelling duly on the atrocious "lack of con- sideration" of the English and others in trying so hard to shut off Germany's wind, has not a word to say about the lack of consideration shown by Ger- many for the neutral Belgians. The note says that England is practising to give the German people "the choice of perishing by starvation with its women and children or of relinquishing its independence." If the German people are anywhere near starvation or in danger of it, it is news; but who was it that offered the Belgians the choice between war and the loss of independence and wrested their neutrality and their independence from them and left them to starve? Oh, what a beam is this in the eye that sees so distinctly the British mote! How can Germany have the face to talk about the rules of international law and the rights of neutrals? And her complaints 174 THE DIARY OF A NATION about the traffic in war materials! Who seized not only Belgian food and Belgian money, but the great Belgian armories and munition factories, and is running them now day and night with all the Belgian labour it can compel to work? Having seized one of the greatest neutral gunshops in Europe, the plain- tive Germans wail over the disposition of the Allies to get what they can oversea, and at the unfeeling con- duct of the Americans in selling to them. It is like the howl of a burglar who has robbed a storekeeper and set himself up in business and bewails the incon- siderateness of a competitor who gets in goods from outside and starts in opposition. Mr. Bryan, who, naturally enough, has not been able as yet to detach himself from concern about our foreign policy, issued a statement on the German note and the American comment on it, in which he says that some of us are pro-German and some of us pro- Ally, but that the great mass of the American people, if he knows their sentiments, "are interested solely in protecting American rights and in preserv- ing American neutrality." He is not willing to gratify the pro-Germans to the extent of putting an embargo on arms and ammunition, but he would have us accommodate ourselves to their submarine war- fare by separating American passengers from contra- band, and especially ammunition. But that would be to change our sea-going rules in war time to favour Germany, and that, if we are to take the exclusively American view that Mr. Bryan approves, would be a dangerous proceeding. American individuals can avoid cargo ships and contraband if they choose, and probably do, but our government cannot direct them to, nor avoid responsibility for their protection if they make their travels conform to the rules of inter- national law. If we are to think as neutrals, mindful only of our THE DIARY OF A NATION 175 own immediate interests (which is not at all the way most of us are thinking), we will do well to think a little of the British sea power which Germany's submarine activities are directed to destroy. But do we want it destroyed? Theoretically, it is no more right that Britannia should rule the waves than that Germania should be the world bully ashore, but practically Britannia and her blessed navy are at this moment the mainstay of the freedom of the nations, and but for them Germany would not be at these pains to write notes to us, but would do as she liked with no more concern for our views than she had for Belgium's. For a generation Britannia has been the great marine policeman. As trading neutrals we don't want her efficiency in that employment to be too much impaired until there is in sight a competent substitute to do for us and others what she has been doing. Looldng off from any high point on this continent, the great operating check to German world-dominion is seen to be British sea power. If Germany, by provision of new scraps of paper not to be torn up until she gets ready, could make the seas safe for trade, war or no war, where would Free- dom, or any other deserving party, look for help the next time Germany has a brainstorm .^^ No, Mr. Bryan; no, brethren all. As thoughtful neutrals let us not accommodate Germania quite yet by submission to her new sea rules. Better let this war go through under the rules it began with. Miss Jane Addams was very much impressed with the state of mind of Europe. She has seen much, talked much, and brought back profound impressions. One of them was the impression of a disturbance too big to be handled by the people engaged in it. So she is for having some kind of a commission of neu- trals that will try to help the warring nations to make peace. 176 THE DIARY OF A NATION Judge Gary thinks the war will end sooner than is supposed, and that peace, when it comes, will pop out unexpected-like. He thinks so because he thinks the war is so bad the belligerents can't stand it much longer. And Miss Addams says they can't stop it and it is for neutrals to help them out. The Judge seems a very suitable neutral to be on Miss Addams 's commission. August 12, 1915. NO DOUBT the Germans will be In Warsaw be- fore this issue of Life reaches its readers; but, apparently, they will find an empty city, captured at very great cost and not especially profit- able if the Russian armies that defended it get away. A Year of P ^^^ ^^ ^^^ Writing the prospect is that they will get away. We shall not be able to read as yet the items of the bill that the Germans have paid for Warsaw, but it is very heavy. The first year of the war has come to its close with this German success and with no very significant changes on the line of the western trenches, and with the Dardanelles still closed and Italy hammering cautiously but pretty hard at Austria. The Allies have lately had some serious losses and no great recent successes; nevertheless, it is not the opinion here- abouts that matters are going dangerously well for the cohorts of Kultur, There are lots of Germans, but there is not quite no end to them. The German resources are enormous, the German energy and dili- gence is prodigious, the German willingness to spend lives is appalling, but the Germans are not knocking anybody out. The inference is from the information we get that after Warsaw the Russians will still be about as troublesome as ever. The Germans can kill and capture great numbers of Russians, but they can- not do it easily. It is very hard work and very costly in German lives, and there are always many more Russians left than Germans. After a year of war there is nothing in sight but more war. The tide of war material is rising against 177 178 THE DIARY OF A NATION the Germans. In all the allied countries the war factories seem to be increasing their output and steadily creeping up on the German superiority in facilities for destroying civilization. Germans at home do not seem to like the way things are going. Some of the Social-Democrats make bitter complaints of the war, and are able to print them. It is in the papers at this writing that Maximilian Harden has been sent away from Berlin, which is interesting if true, for Harden has an inveterate propensity for blurting out truths. For weeks, while the German drive in Poland has been going on, the main items of news have been of German successes, but they have not materially bettered the prospect of eventual German success. The question that presses is not so much will Germany win as how much of existing civ- ilization will she be able to destroy before she is beaten. For there are people nowadays who offer you the opinion that our civilization is in a very precarious state. They think this war may be the end of it. Not that we will dress in skins and live in trees and caves again before the war is over, but that somehow we shall all be so hard hit that our apparatus of in- dustry, order, and exchange may crumble. They feel that if the destruction of wealth and lives goes on much longer at the present rate our world will be bankrupt and have to be closed to business and pass through a receivership. When you say there will still be people and they can still plant and reap and grind and support life and make and swap commodi- ties, they speak of the public debts that are piling up by the hundred billion dollars. When you say the countries will have to dump their debts if they can't pay them, they tell you that our civilization rests on credit, that the repudiation of national debts would destroy credit, and that the conse- quences would be a social collapse. THE DIAEY OF A NATION 179 There is doubtless something in what such persons say. Most of us have no clear idea of what war debts mean. Current destruction of life looks like a loss that twenty or thirty years will repair; the diversion of industrial energy from useful commodi- ties to war material is wasteful, of course, and de- struction is immensely wasteful, but the idea of a general condition of human existence in which people who do not personally cultivate a potato patch will have no potatoes comes slowly to realization. Some such idea as that seems to be back in the heads of persons who fear that the war, if it goes on long enough, may destroy our civilization. The Thirty Years' War reduced Germany to a condition where people who did not have potato patches died. More than half her population died. If it is going to be necessary to reduce her again to that condition the consequences will be extremely severe not only to her, but to everybody concerned in doing it, for it will be a very big job and take a long time. So, of course, it will be better for everybody if it is possible to compass the restoration of the Germans to sanity without reducing them and a large part of the rest of Europe to the individual-potato-patch level of exist- ence. For we are used to such civilization as we have, and would miss it, however harshly we aver that it is a poor thing. For most of us motor-drawn, tailor- clad creatures to be shaken out of our tree of life and have to start again somewhere, maybe as pilgrim fathers, would come as a hard jolt, however much good it might eventually do our characters. That is the excuse for everybody who practises or prays or even babbles to stop the war. We are all concerned, all endangered by it. What is it for, anyway? What must be accom- plished before it can safely stop.^^ Napoleon had an errand in the world and did it — rather overdid it in 180 THE DIARY OF A NATION the end. He pretty well exploded the divine right of kings, which has looked foolish ever since he made a butt of it, in spite of its mischievous survival in Prussia. That this war will extend Napoleon's work in that respect has all along seemed probable. But that is not enough. Is there enough good in German Kultur to justify so great an expense to advertise it to the world? Napoleon could not conquer the world, but he could change it, and, that done, he passed on out. Prussia cannot conquer the world, but she has been able to change it, and it may be that is her er- rand, and when it is done she will pass on out as Napoleon did. The Great Administrator used Napo- leon to plow Europe for the planting of democracy. It may be the use of Prussia is to plow it — and all the world — for a planting of order. We don't like Ger- man Kultur as we see it, but no one can deny that it is a great crop. It could not have been raised unless the Prussian tares had been allowed to grow up with it; but harvest it, thresh it, and fan the tares out of it, and it may be food the world needs. Kultur — what is good of it — may conquer the world, though Prussia never can, and if it is, or contains, or leads to, the method that secures the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the world may get to like it. At all events, at present German methods have all the world under instruction and are prodding it at every point. For the only cure for the world just now seems to be a hair of the dog that bit it. If it has to kill the dog to get the hair, that will be a pity, but such details seem beyond human arrangement. August 19, 1915, MORE people will go to a football match than to a lecture, and more people will read the news under headlines that tell of a battle than will read the details of diplomatic discussions. The Lusitania notes to Germany commanded at- The British tention because they might lead to war. Blockade The discussion with Great Britain about the efiFect of the British blockade on our exports and imports has not that claim on public attention. It is the duller reading because there is no fight in it. There are many million dollars' worth of goods piled up in Rotterdam that our merchants want. There are many million dollars' worth of products here that clamour to be exported. That makes discussion necessary, but it does not excite the general mass of readers. They want our folks to get what should be coming to them and approve the efforts of the govern- ment to bring about that conclusion, or at least to keep the record straight as to neutral rights. But the main interest of the great mass of Americans, unless Life mistakes it, is not in these details of trade, important though they are, but in the greater issues of the war, the prodigious struggle of the Allied Powers against the vast pretensions and prep- arations of Germany. They are concerned about the future of Europe and the immediate future of civilization; concerned to discover whether for a generation to come or longer the world is to be cowed by Teutonic ambitions resting on Teutonic force. They see in England and in the might of the British navy one of the main obstacles to that consummation, 181 182 THE DIAEY OF A NATION and while they recognize that so long as the United States continues to be neutral it is under obligations to stick out for neutral rights, they are very loath to have the powers of our government used to embarrass England and all the Allies in a struggle in which four- fifths of the people of this country are heartily on the Allies' side. Accordingly, the great majority of us see in the notes to Great Britain not peremptory demands, but necessary negotiations. England is to do, and doubt- less will do, what she can to relieve our embarrass- ments. Our disposition, if our governmejit's action matches the feelings of four-fifths of us, will be to think first of her embarrassments and only second- arily of our own. One group in this country wants from England the most the law allows. The other group wants, at this time, the least the law demands. If, as we believe, the second group is four times as big as the first one, it is because in the minds of that group the interest of our country in having the war end right far outweighs for the time being all con- cern about shipping cotton or getting in dyes. The best that can be said about the fall of Warsaw is that it arrived ten months late and might have been worse, but it might have been so much worse that that is a great deal to say. How much more of Russia will Germany wish to occupy at a price proportionate to the price paid for Warsaw .f^ There appears to be vastly more of Russia to be had than there are Germans to pay for it, and in the end every acre of Russia that Germany may occupy will again be Russia's, except so much, per- haps, as may become part of a new Poland. It has been noticed in the papers that at this year's annual convention (at San Francisco) of the National German-American Alliance the suggestion was of- THE DIARY OF A NATION 183 fered that if our immigration laws were not improved so as to make our population more select and com- mendable, the tide of immigration would turn, and what Germans we have would begin to stream back to the old country. Probably not. There will be lean pickings in the Fatherland for long after the war and little attrac- tion to immigration. Moreover, we have had small accessions from Germany of late years, and our original Germans who came here for political reasons seemed to like tliis country, and their descendants doubtless like it and will stick to it. Nevertheless, the great war has brought out as it never was brought out before the fact that it is hard to be so many kinds of people as we are at once. It is not impossible, but there are difficulties about it. As long as we could go along without any deeper internal rivalries than the eternal competition for a living the difficulties did not become prominent, but since the German Kiiltur has transpired as something that defies and despises all the rest of civilization and practises to subdue and change it as devotees prac- tise for the triumph of their creed, the difficulties have become easily visible. The cure for them would naturally be to devise and develop an American Aaron's-rod Kultiir that would swallow all the others. Something has been done in that line. We have the public schools, albeit they are nibbled at all the time by adherents of various ideals that the public schools cannot teach. But not enough is done. Somehow it must be ac- complished far more thoroughly than is done yet, that when the question is put, "Who is Who in the United States.'^" the answer, both prompt and defi- nite, will be, "The Americans!" This defining and crystallizing of nationalities seems to be one of the great results that is to be forced 184 THE DIARY OF A NATION onto the world by the onset of the German Kultur, and how it is to be effected without the subversion of individual liberty as we have known it is a great problem. One detail of the problem in this country is the provision of military and naval forces sufficient for our protection and to give a proper emphasis to our sentiments. It is a curious thing that the pro- Germans as a rule are able to combine opposition to a reasonable American provision of this sort, with hearty sympathy with the most efficient mili- tary nation in the world. The hyphenated Americans know that American activity in military preparation just now would be unfavourable to Germany's pretensions. Conse- quently they oppose even the most moderate meas- ures. August 26, 1915. THE Plattsburg training camp has much ex- ceeded expectations. It has been overrun with apphcants of a high quahty. If it did nothing else, it would be worth its keep as an adver- tisement of the need and possibility of military train- p, , ing. It has attracted thirteen hundred re- cruits, including a large proportion of sty- lish or otherwise distinguished and husky young men whose names the newspaper-reading public knows, and feels an interest in their proceedings. They are men excellently qualified to set an example. An example is useful in proportion as it is known. The example set by the Plattsburg war students is comparable in its reach to that set by the Rough Riders in the Spanish War. It helps to make mili- tary training the fashion, and that is a real help to the country. That such lively politicians as Mayor Mitchel and Collector Malone should betake them- selves to Plattsburg means a good deal. It suggests that active young men with leadership in them see in the camp an opportunity they ought not to miss. Probably the camp is pretty good fun. The com- pany is excellent, and in having fun good company is the biggest factor. The work is hard — about as hard, apparently, as training for football, but it is interest- ing, and the papers say the progress made in mili- tary knowledge hy the neophytes is marvellous. In June people were saying: " How flat that train- ing camp proposal has fallen! Nothing will be done till Congress votes money and the government takes hold." 185 186 THE DIAEY OF A NATION But it did not fall flat. Something has been done without waiting for an appropriation. An effectual appeal was made, and the appealers kept at it till they got an effectual response. Give them credit for their efforts; they deserve it. September 9, 1915. THE interesting question about the war is, what it will do to the world. For months the great question has been, Can the Germans beat all creation? But all creation seems to be neither winning nor losing. It is hanging on like grim death. Wanted: ^^^ secms likely to continue in that pos- Democratic turc cveu if it docs uo better. Conse- Di^ciphne quently concern about what the Germans may do is giving way a little to inquiry and con- jecture as to what the war may do. Evidently it is changing the world. But how much and in what particulars? Mr. Beveridge, of Indiana, has been over to in- spect it, and offers us his guess. He no longer feels that the war is a contest between absolutism and democracy. He believes that, whoever wins, the war will produce in all European countries except Russia "an immeasurable advance in democracy expressed in terms of collectivism." Team work wins, and Germany is ahead in that, but the other countries, England especially, are hurrying to catch up. The principle, as he sees it, that runs through all the new war-born laws in England — as the De- fense of the Realm Act — is "government control of fundamentals for the common good." The applica- tion of that principle, he thinks, will outlast the war and the people of the countries that have had exper- ience of it will not let it go. But our gifted Hoosier brother must recognize that Germaii collectivism and German Kultur, Ger- man team work and power generally, rest on disci- 187 188 THE DIARY OF A NATION pline, and that the source of German discipline has been autocracy and the steady squelching of demo- cratic aspirations. The Prussian kings have governed, and governed extremely well in many particulars. They kept the Prussians under discipline and made them the most efficient robbers in Europe. Also very efficient farmers and manufacturers. They and their discipline developed Germany on its material side. They made a wonderful job of it. The only trouble was that they omitted to develop Germany's moral sense along with her wealth. They had no moral sense in matters of state, and taught their subjects not political righteousness, but merely obedience. Their collectivism includes leave to pil- lage the neighbours whenever Germany feels strong enough. It is Prussian discipline that is crowding the world so hard, and the question is whether democracy can produce a discipline to match and overcome it. If it cannot, Prussian discipline based on autocracy seems likely to possess the earth. So the war seems still to be a contest between absolutism and democ- racy, its main errand being to compel democracies to develop and maintain an effective discipline. Col- lectivism may result from the war, but it will be a by-product. The main result will be democratic discipline — a better authority, a better obedience, and better team work, as Mr. Beveridge says. September 28, 1915, HENRY FORD says he has ten million dollars to spend if necessary to persuade this coun- try that peace is always the best plan. No doubt he has the dollars and is ready to spend them, but his reported talk does not give much promise that Have Patience, his investment will be effective. He Henry! thinks people have a false idea of war that ought to be educated out of them. He imagines that they are fooled by the glory and glamour of it. He wants all pages glorifying war to be torn out of the school histories. He wants the people to be per- suaded that preparedness for war creates war. Henry does not seem to realize that several times ten million dollars is being spent every day, and has been spent every day for fourteen months, to per- suade mankind that peace is the best plan and that excess in preparation for war is about as dangerous as no preparation at all. Our newspapers and movie shows are telling the truth about war nowadays in so far as they can get it. They represent it as a terrible job. The glory and the glamour of it go for nothing. It is all tragedy, the purge of the passions; tragedy, destruction, and waste. Henry's ten millions would be a mere scratch on the slate compared with the daily picture of war that we have been getting this last year. Have patience, Henry. This is a war against w^ar. Folks who survive it are going to be gim-shy for some time. You have done a great deal to make life attractive. That is your great service to peace, be- cause the pleasanter life is the less people want to 189 190 THE DIARY OF A NATION die. But war, Henry, brings a much greater lesson than that — the lesson of self-sacrifice. Nobody is much good who has not in him some idea, some ideal, that he cares more for than he does for life, even though it is life alleviated by the Ford motor. You help to make life pleasant, but war, Henry, helps to make it noble, and if it is not noble it does not matter a damn, Henry, whether it is pleasant or not. That is the old lesson of Calvary repeated at Mons and Y'^pres and Liege and Namur. Whether there are more people in the world or less, whether they are fat or lean, whether there are Fords or oxen, makes no vital difference, but whether men shall be willing to die for what they believe in makes all the difference between a pigsty and Paradise. Not by bread alone, Henry, shall men live. As for military preparedness, enough is good and salutary; too much is militarism, and that is bad, bad, bad, as the Germans are teaching us. They are the great teachers of peace, and, be sure, Henry, they shall learn that lesson themselves down to the last line. Leave peace propaganda to them; but you, if you have ten millions to spare, put it into Ford ambulances for France. September 30, 1915. GENTLEMEN opposed to establishing a credit in this country for the AlKes include: Mr. Hearst. Mr. Bryan. Mr. Jeremiah Leary, president of the American A Credit ^T^^^^ Society. far the Mr. James Hamilton Lewis, of Virginia, Allies Georgia, Washington, and Illinois, [the Avell- known carpet-bag Senator. A swarm of hyphenated gentlemen not necessary to record. In spite of this opposition the credit seems about to be established, maybe for half a billion dollars, maybe for a billion. tVhatever the sum is, it repre- sents an American bet that France, England, and Russia are not going to be wiped off the map of Europe in the present set-to. There are those who predict that the fighting nations will have to repudi- ate their war debts. This credit will be an American bet that they won't. It will be a bet that the Bel- gians will get back Belgium, and the French Northern France; a bet against payment of indemnities to Germany by anybody; a bet against "f rightfulness," against the armed-robber habit in nations, against Hunism, Kaiserism, Prussianism, and the most brutal warfare waged in Europe for three centuries. If we are to continue to trade with the Allies we have got to bet in this way that they will win. They cannot send us gold enough to pay for what they buy, nor would it be to our fiscal advantage to have them do so. A plethora of gold is a fiscal nuisance. 191 192 THE DIARY OF A NATION If we are to sell to them far more for a time than they can sell to us, we must give them credit and take their paper. So by these negotiations, born of trade necessity, ours as well as theirs, we get a step further into the war, to the disgust of Mr. Bryan and all the pacifists, and the satisfaction of every one who cares to have it demonstrated which side the United States is on in this great war. Parson Eaton, the Madison Avenue Baptist, takes the bull squarely by the horns and declares that the war is "the greatest blessing that has befallen man- kind since the German Reformation." That is putting it strong, though not all our breth- ren admit that the German reformation was a bless- ing; but so it reads in Dr. Eaton's sermon in the Monday papers. The world, he says, was losing its soul and got the war to cure it by the purge of pain. Many people feel so about the war and see a neces- sity in it; that things could not go on as they were going, and there had to be a great shaking down of card houses and reconstruction of life from the bot- tom of better materials. But Americans who feel this way wonder how our country is to get its share of the discipline. But countries don't go out after discipline. If it comes to them they take it, but not till it comes. It is possible that our country has dodged its duties, especially in Mexico, but the case is not clear. Cer- tainly no one with justice can blame the United States for not yet being in Europe's war. It was not our business to butt in. It is complained of President Wilson that, having nothing to fight with, he has been satisfied with talk, and that he has finally talked words that may mean war without any inten- tion of fighting and without any provision to that end. Of course, he has known what his words meant. THE DIARY OF A NATION 193 no one better, and he has known, too, that we can get into war without previous provision, without much risk of being hurt. We are in no danger of war with any one except Germany. Germany's ships are locked up and she can't get over here to do us a damage. But if we go to war with her, we can do her a lot of damage from the start. That Mr. Wilson has not called a special session of Congress to vote money for military preparation is no argument at all that he does not realize that the position he took with Germany about the sinking by submarines of merchant ships might any day, and still may, join us with the fighting Allies. Life is of opinion, and has been for eleven months, that both our army and navy should be strengthened, and it favours a con- siderable expenditure to that end. But it is not the lack of means to fight that has kept us out of the war, for we have the means — cotton, copper, wheat, beef, munitions, and money. And the truth is that, though Congress has not voted an extra dollar for war^ prep- aration, preparation has gone on enormously in the increase of means for manufacture of war material. We are vastly better able than we were a year ago to be a powerful ally to the Allies. Let no one suppose, therefore, that we have got to avoid war even at cost of honour because we are not prepared for it. That is not so, and no one knows it better than President Wilson. October U, 1915. THE gist of the war news seems to be that at last the AlHes have caught up with Germany in preparation. They seem to have armies enough and shells enough and making to give due emphasis to their operations. That means — if one The Allies accepts it as true — that there will not Have Caught be any longer the advantage to Ger- ^^ many of having thought of everything beforehand. That advantage lasted more than a year. The advantage that is left to Germany and her accomplices is their central position. The other advantages — numbers, wealth, the command of the sea, and power thereby to draw on all the resources of the continent of America — are with the Allies. We have had evidence that there is plenty of fight in the men on the French side of the western line and plenty of means to fight with. It is not a deadlock any more, but an active line with the invaders on the defensive and something important liable to happen any minute. German reports have pared down Al- lied successes as much as possible, but a great deal remains. And the successful half -billion loan in this country is a success that cannot be pared down. Mr. Villard, writing to the Everdng Post from Washington, groans, warrantably enough, about the war, and avers that the longings for peace of the people of the fighting countries are censored out of print and do not find the expression that they should. Doubtless not. No doubt the European appetite for war is completely sated and the people of every country engaged long every day more passionately 194 THE DIARY OF A NATION 195 for peace. But longings for peace will not bring it. Nothing will bring peace but to fight the war out to a point where Germany is ready to quit. Then there can be peace, and peace on that basis is appreciably nearer than it was a year ago. But until a change befalls the German mind so that it gives up its con- ception of Christendom as a storehouse for Germans to pillage, there can't be any lasting or comfortable peace in the world. Meanwhile, even to us who are not being personally killed, the war is a very weary proceeding. V\^e all want to have it over so that we can make some new plans for living. We cannot make such plans until we begin to see what the world is lils:ely to be like for the next half-century. The break in thought that the war has made is prodigious. A lot of people have been winning money betting on war stocks. No doubt they have been interested in it, and it has helped to get their minds off the war for a little while, which must be a relief. IMaybe the money will be good after the war. But who knows .^ After- the-war is a faraway picture behind a veil. One puts on glasses to look at it, but still it is dim. The people — are they real people? The money — is it real money? Life — is it real life and anything like the life we are used to? At this writing the papers say that President Wil- son is going to vote for woman suffrage in New Jersey. One feels that he might just as well vote to let women vote in heaven, since he knows hardly less about existence there than about mundane existence after the war. Judge Cullen says the work on the revision of the constitution must all go for naught because of the omission to put a proper restraint on the power of military tribunals. It seems a severe sentence even if the offense is conceded, but think of repairing a 196 THE DIARY OF A NATION State constitution in this year of direful tumult, to be used after the war! And Admiral Fiske dreams in the North American Review of the possible acquirement of world mastery by some "monster of efficiency," and then of "wars beside which the present struggle will seem pygmy!" Tut! Tut! War stocks, votes for women, our tinkered constitution, all seem about equally specula- tive as the guns roar all around the great German ring. But so, doubtless, Burke felt about the French Revolution, and after all it was real money that Nathan Rothschild won on the battle of Waterloo. November 4^, 1915. THE President, one reads, will insist in his next message to Congress upon a practical consider- ation of the question of national defense. He is understood to have approved army and navy bud- gets providing for an increase of one hundred and National forty millions over last year's appropriations. Defense and he is expected to ask Congress for this money and to expound the need of it. He wants this provision to be made, not sometime, but now. A year ago or thereabouts he took this whole matter under advisement and made recommendations in a message. Nothing was done about it. A year is enough for the country to think such a matter over in. This time he wants something done. Mr. Bryan is flatly opposed to any such increase. It is inspired, he insists, by the measureless cupidity of the munition makers. He says in the Commoner: No time is to be lost; immediate action is necessary. Con- gress will soon meet, and when it meets this issue wUl confront it. Write to your Congressman; write to both your Senators, Tell them that this nation does not need burglar's tools unless it intends to make burglary its business; it should not be a pistol- toting nation unless it is going to adopt a pistol-toter's ideas. Here is the basis for a new line-up. The prospect seems to be that the Democrats in Congress will go by a very large majority with the President, and will pass army and navy bills that will satisfy him. But if Mr. Bryan is able to muster any considerable op- position it may lead to a very interesting split in the Democratic party and later to rival definitions of 197 198 THE DIARY OF A NATION Democratic doctrine in various particulars by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan, which may next year affect many votes, both for nomination and election. A great number of Wilson Democrats think Mr. Bryan the most dangerous influence in public life. They v/ant to be quit of his domination finally and com- pletely, and they will welcome a division in Congress which will show just how much political influence he has left. The land is full of voters who in this world-crisis want this country to discharge its full duty to hu- manity. They don't know clearly what that duty is, but they are ready to back whatever leader has the power and the spirit to fulfill that desire. President Wilson, and no one else, has the power and will con- tinue to have it for a year and four months longer. We cannot waste any of that time. We cannot wait until after another election to learn what is the feel- ing of the country and to organize it for possible action. When Congress meets we must find out where we are; find out who is for the United States and humanity; who is ready to organize, arm, and prepare, and who is for a pacifistic inaction. We must also find out who is for America first and who for Germany first. President Wilson has the people with him far more than any other leader. His administration is for the most part satisfactory to most of the people. He called the other day for a line-up of all America- first Americans. He has come out in favour of an increase in military preparation, and it is evident that he is not in the least in awe of our Germany- first voters. In all measures for national protection and assertion he will be entitled to the support of every one in Congress who believes in national pro- tection. Party lines are very much blurred just now, anyway. In this matter of putting the country THE DIARY OF A NATION 199 into a position to meet any duty there should be no party Hnes, and probably there will be none. If the President will put his foot on the hard pedal and strike the right note, Progressives, Republicans, and hard-shell Democrats will all come running to the standard of the United States for Humanity. Apparently he is prepared to do that very thing. No one can accuse him to advantage of wanting to get us into war, for he has hugged peace right along, not so tight as he gets credit for, but, certainly, tight enough. If he calls for large military and naval appropriations nobody can raise a scare of militarism at his expense, for if he has a fault in that direction it is that he has delayed his call overlong. If the pacifists in Congress attempt to talk an army bill to death or to pieces, as they probably will, we shall see how many pacifists there are in Congress and whom they represent, and we shall also see who is for the pork-barrel and who for the United States. There is a prospect that within the next four months we shall learn a great deal about the temper and sentiments of the American people, and to persons who believe that our nation is sound at heart it is a cheering prospect. We shall want to hear what George McClellan, apologist for Germany in Belgium, has to say in justification of the execution of Miss Cavell, the English nurse. Disapprobation of the German con- duct in shooting her because she had helped Belgian and English fugitives to escape from Brussels has been very emphatic. Col. McClellan may point out that she broke the German rules and that her life was forfeit under German military law. He may feel that, though she was not in the ordinary sense a spy, she deserved or had lawfully incurred what she got. It is possible to go a point further and hold that, considering what hands she was in, Miss Cavell got off 200 THE DIARY OF A NATION easy. She was shot; that was all; an honourable death. Scores of Belgian women have been shot; hundreds of women, both in Belgium and France, have sufiPered far worse than that, and as for the Armenian women, we all know what the Kaiser's allies have done to them, not merely by the hundred or the score, but by the hundred thousand. To shoot an Englishwoman for breaking German war- rules is the worst that Germans dare at present to do openly in Brussels. What they do in secret Heaven knows, but their public military conduct, as General Joffre has pointed out, is much improved since the battle of the Marne warned them that they might have to make an accounting for their actions. November 18, 1915. PRESIDENT WILSON'S plea in his Manhat- tan Club speech for a better military system is a harbmger of changes that will be forced upon us by the experiences of our neighbours. What he calls "the problem of the mobilization of the re- A Better sources of the nation" has got to be worked Military out, and will be worked out, because, as he System g^^^^ ^^^ ^iave become thoughtful of the things which all reasonable men consider necessary for security and self-defense on the part of every nation confronted with the great enterprise of human liberty and independence. Which is to say that we are getting down to brass tacks in the matter of national defense. It is time Mr. Garrison's plan contemplates an increase in the regular army to about 140,000 men, and the enlist- ment and training of reserve forces at the rate of 133,000 a year, so that in three years we should have a reserve force of 400,000, besides the State militia. That seems moderate enough and is a tentative plan with details still to be worked out and the whole sub- jected to assault and battery in Congress. Mr. Bryan is frankly and heartily opposed to any increase of military preparation. Some of the papers say he is "bitterly" opposed, but we do not see the bitterness. He is in opposition, where he belongs, and the only place where he could long be politically happy or useful. He seems very happy now, carrying the banner of unarmed peace, warning the country against the machinations of the greedy munition-makers and 201 202 THE DIARY OF A NATION calling with all his voice for new subscribers for the Commoner, Mr. Bryan is not exactly for non-resistance, but he feels that so long as Colonels such as he was in '98 and troops such as he commanded can be improvised when- soever the tocsin peals, the country is safe. Mr. Bryan feels that talking is cheaper than drilling, and he is better at it, but the country doesn't seem to think so. No doubt the expostulation which our government has conveyed to the British Government about the rude treatment of American trade by British block- aders is all warranted by facts and justified by law. As expostulations go, it seems an excellent job, dis- pleasing to some of our German friends because it is too polite, and to some of our British brethren as ill- founded and meddlesome. The British claim that they have a good case at law for everything they have done, and a discussion is in prospect which is not likely to be hurried unless by Congress. Let us all be patient in this matter. We ought to be, for various reasons. We shall have to be, anyhow, since, thanks largely to Bro. Bryan, we have a treaty with Great Britain which provides for a year of patience in every dispute before doing anything awkward. Brand Whitlock is coming home for a few weeks of rest. He brings with him the greatest reputation made so far by any American in the war. He is forty-six years old, and his birthday, significant to remark, is the fourth of March. Whether there will be anything left of him when he gets through with Belgium is a question, but if there should be an available remnant, it will be regarded with great interest by politicians. Report says that Mr. Whitlock is tired out. If so, our first duty to him is to let him alone until he gets rested. But the great debt Americans owe him for what he has done in their name will doubtless find expression before he goes back. November 25, 1915, THE details of the sinking of the Ancona are still far from clear, but the points in dispute are only important for their bearing on the duty of our government in the matter. If the ship tried to rmi away, to destroy her would rank tech- . nically as iustifiable homicide, whereas if she was sunk unresisting and not even trying to escape, it is a case of murder. ;0f course, to sink such a ship in such a fashion is utter murder anyhow, and of a sort that would shame an old-time pirate. She was loaded with non-com- batants, men, women, and babies, bound for New York. About two hundred of them were drowned. This exploit is credited as yet to Austria, as the sub- marines that accomplished it had Austrian flags. It is entirely possible that they were German, and that the German navy, baffled in its frightfulness, uses where it can the Austrian flag to evade the obligations of decency its government has been obliged to incur. 203 December 9, 1915, WHY must the education of our good friend Henry Ford be conducted with such a vast publicity? We have had so much education of this very, very pubhc sort in the last three years! Really, it is trying! There was H F d J^sephus Daniels, who had to learn the enry at ^^ujij^gnts of deportment right under the eyes of a hundred million people. Josephus has learned a good deal, but the publicity of his processes of instruction must have been trying to him, and they certainly were to us. William Bryan had to take a course in statesmanship under like conditions of ex- posure. He learned enough to appreciate that he was a victim of misplacement, and that was very use- ful, but how much it would have saved his feelings, and ours, if he could have been privately taught! The whole Democratic administration were green hands — except, perhaps, Mr. Lane — and had to learn, and we had to sit and bear it, because we had put them into office, and that is the democratic way. We were responsible for them, but we are not re- sponsible for Henry Ford. He has got to mind his own eye. He is not our representative, does not speak or act, stay at home or go abroad, for us, and must himself take all the chances of his own educa- tion. If he gets pinched as a suspicious character, he must not expect us to go on his bail bond. We shall be sorry to see anything painful happen to him, for he is a good man, but if he goes abroad with a shipload of pacifists and pro-Germans, as is at this writing his published intent ion, our friends abroad, if 201 THE DIARY OF A NATION 205 we have any left, must take notice — and they are hereby notified — that the expedition is a private ven- ture of Henry's, and that we are not his accomphces nor chargeable with his misdoings, if he does any. If he and his friends should be interned somewhere, or be shooed off the coast of Europe and run into a mine, we shall be sorry, but will not do anything more tragic about it than write, maybe, another note. Henry is right in hating the war and wanting to stop it. We all hate it and want it to stop. He is right, too, in his willingness to do anything he can, all scoffers to the contrary notwithstanding. "VMiere he seems to us to be wrong is in thinking he knows how to do any good. It looks to us as though he didn't; as though, even with the help of Jane Ad- dams, he would not be able to be useful, and might even be detrimental to the cause of peace. In so far as he makes us ridiculous he hurts American in- fluence, though perhaps that amounts to so little, anyhow, that hurting it doesn't matter. If the war was ripe to be stopped, and we could stop it to the real advantage of civilization by being ridiculous, it would be our duty to do it and take the ridicule as it came. The ridicule would all come out in the wash, and meanwhile lives would be saved by the million. Anybody with proper feelings would be a olown or martyr to stop the war, provided it was stopped right. Henry dares to be a clown, and prob- ably has good martyr stuff in him, and that may make him a means of good, in spite of everything. And if not, his education goes forward, anyhow, and that is important, because he is so rich and so restless. Let him do anything he will that is not against the law. If our country has had a fault in this war, it has been in being overcautious. Henry is free from that fault. He rushes in where angels fear to tread. December 16, 1915. DISCUSSING the jincona case in a letter to the New York Evening Post, Theodore C. Janeway, of Baltimore, remarked how drows- ily we had taken the destruction of the Ancona compared with our alertness about the Lusitania. Girding at Why had the moral reaction been so faint the Empire jn the Ancoua case? He said the reason was that "righteous indignation which does not issue in any deed to right the wrong, destroys the power to act in the future, and in the end leads only to pessimism or to the abandonment of moral standards." He felt, what thousands of people feel, that we have, somehow, lost our punch. Emotion, he said, which does not find an outlet in action, be- comes a source of weakness, not of power. He seemed to make no account of our government's notes, accepting the English view that the German submarines had abandoned the Channel because the English had made it too hot for them. A great many people fear, as Mr. Janeway does, that we have let our indignation ooze away and have nothing to show for it. The thought drives some of them frantic. They think they see the moral sense of the country disappearing beneath the yellow slime of traders' profits. They can't bear that, and some of them, like Colonel Roosevelt and the Tribune, rail at President Wilson. As far as their railings show concern for our national honour and for hu- manity we are bound to respect them and share a good deal of the emotion with which they are charged. But they are not fair to the President. He cannot 206 THE DIARY OF A NATION 207 force a situation nor move faster than events. He is caught in the predicament that affects all neutral countries, and which was well described in the letter of an English doctor who wrote from the front months ago: War being what it is, it is hopeless to expect that any nation will engage in it who does not fear great loss or hope for great gain. Nations will always be ravaged by the influences which are now swaying Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, and Rumania. No desire of justice would lead those countries to join us. I doubt if it would justify their rulers in declaring war. However the President feels, he cannot yet be a partisan in this war. He is the umpire between those who want to get in with the Allies and those who want to keep out, and he is exposed to the atten- tions which the umpire usually receives from ardent partisans in a close game. The Fatherland and the Tribune hoot and yell at him with about equal fury. One has dead cats, the other rotten eggs to throw at him. Both wait their chance and holler all the time. Nevertheless, the great mass of spectators still thinks the umpire is doing pretty well and will see that this game between the Get-ins and the Stay-outs goes to the true winners. December 23, 1915. HENRY FORD really did get off, and has not been turned back yet at this writing. It is a happiness to think of that wonder- ful yachting party bounding over the deep at the costs of the adventurous Detroit Fortunatus! Ford and His Andrew Carnegie never thought of any- Pilgrims thing SO sporty as that. What one hates to think is that such a party must arrive and break up! Why should it arrive? Why disband .f^ The Flying Dutchman never arrived: its company never disbanded. There is a precedent for Henry. Let him buy the Oscar II and keep sail- ing that cargo of pacifiers around, putting individuals ashore only in response to calls by wireless. Thus when the Allies capture Berlin, if they want Ben Lindsay to be Governor, put Ben ashore, but not till then. Sam McClure always needs a rest. He is years behind in repose. This is his chance to get it! Navis ! as Horace would say — O ship that carries Henry and all those living curiosities; do not occupy any port; keep sailing of them around and have the newspapermen keep accurate logs of what happens. Meanwhile, perhaps the nations will stop fighting to laugh. The Providence Journal suggests that Henry Ford may be Tolstoi's "strange figure out of the North" who is to hold Europe in the hollow of his hand for ten years. The man of Tolstoi's vision was to be, not a soldier, but something more like a journalist. Henry is an advertiser and could qualify as a near- 208 THE DIARY OF A NATION 209 journalist. His passport entitles him to land in Norway, and Norway is "the North." The odds seem very long against his making any deep impres- sion on Europe, but suppose we try to state the case for Henry Ford. When everybody has said all they can about Henry, and called him all the kinds of a fool, it will be in order for them to produce samples of Sensible Men to whom the concerns of the current fire-alarm world might well be entrusted. They will find that in the last year the ranks of such persons have been terribly depleted. Just as regiments in the war have been repeatedly cleaned out and re-recruited, so it has been with the world's platoon of sensible men. A year and a half ago a number of people were very generally respected; to-day two of the thirds of man- kind think each other crazy, and the third third thinks both are right. For no active leader of men in the world to-day is there the slightest difficulty in getting a convincing certificate of incapacity. Consider our Mr. Wilson. He was pretty well thought of up to a year ago. But to-day draw up a declaration that he is a craven word-spout who has dishonoured the country, and before noon you can get several million signatures, headed by "T. Roosevelt." Draw up another to effect that he is a militarist reactionary, and millions will sign after "W. J. B." Make a like declaration about any active politician in England — Asquith, Lloyd-George, Churchill, Northcliffe, Car- son — and you can do the same there. Possibly in France there might not be more than a million signa- tures to a condemnation of General Joffre, but any one else would easily get five. The only king in Europe who has got any credit out of the war is Albert. The war is about as popular as an epidemic of typhoid. The biggest and most coruscating decora- 210. THE DIARY OF A NATION tion that it produces will go to the resounding hero who stops it. When there comes along some one who can say with authority, "Merciful God! people, put on your hats and go home!'' and makes them go, that person will go down in history. If the states- men, from Bismarck down, whose management has brought Europe to its present wrack have been wise men, anybody ought to feel complimented to be called a fool. It seems in order to offer a resolution that the principles on which the world has been conducted are played out. The balance of acquisition seems to have broken down. The trough, big as it is, is not big enough for all the hogs. Just now the available powers of regulation can achieve nothing but destruc- tion, and ever more destruction. The German ambi- tion to dominate the Earth is hopelessly brutal; the British aspiration to retain the Earth is inevitable and compulsory; the Russian bureaucracy's ambition to attain, possess, and throttle is only tolerable as an ofPset to the black and stupid Earth-greed of the Prussian junkers. France wants her own, and is willing to die for it. Hers is the best case, and her allies shine with reflected light, but the immense and tragic folly of the war as a whole makes Henry Ford and his preposterous pilgrims seem almost sensible by contrast. If the world must be managed foolishly, Henry and his fools seem about as well qualified for a turn at the job as the Hohenzollern family, or the Hapsburgs, or the Romanoffs. The trouble is not with the people, but with the system which in the long run makes fools of every- body who tries to sustain it. The people are good- enough, fallible folks. William Hohenzollern is not such an objectionable ass as we are apt to think. It is the absurd and iniquitous aspiration that he is geared to that makes the trouble. Our 3 Jr. Wilson THE DIARY OF A NATION 211 is a good man and able, though somewhat furtive. The reason that our excellent Mr. Roosevelt finds so much fault with him is that Mr. Wilson is committed to play a game for which he has no stomach. He hates fighting and has to call for troops and ships. Most of us hate fighting and have to provide to have it done, and maybe do it ourselves. None of us ap- pear well in playing a game we hate. But Mr. Roosevelt likes war and shines in it. Heaven know^s what will happen to Henry Ford, but at least he has had the nerve to bet his money on a game he likes instead of on one that he detests. He may be Tol- stoi's strange man from the North, or he may be merely a guy from Detroit, but he says to Europe, *'If I am a fool, what are you.^ At least I am harm- less, but you are destroying civilization." The Great Martyr whose birthday comes this week died to break this old-world system dow^n. It has been modified in twenty centuries, much modi- fied we used to think, but it clings hard to life, and still survives. So many people are dying every day now, some to abate and some to defend it, that dying has come to seem an every-day, natural matter. One could die for something worth while just now and feel that it was all in the day's work. One could die with the gallant French defending France, or with the British going to earth in French soil for England, or with the Russians staggering onward under their bitter load of obstructive tyrannies, or even for the infatuated Germans, riveted to a fatal purpose, but better than their cause. To die for humanity is comprehensible, is almost easy, but who would die for this great system of grab that misconducts the world .f^ If we have got to arm, let us arm to beat it; if we have got to fight, let us fight to beat it; if we have got to die, let us die to beat it. The world is worth a better method. It is too good a world to be n^ THE DIARY OF A NATION run in the interest of "business"; too good, to be run by Ferdinands and Constantines, by the Russian Tchiknovic, by Von Tirpitzes and Von Bissings and the Prussian drill-masters and goose-steppers with their code of calculated brutality. The strong have got the world, and, destructive as they are, it seems impossible to break their grip on it. About Henry Ford there is at least the attraction that he is frankly out to achieve the impossible. Wise people are entitled to laugh at him, but who is wise? What less than the impossible can save the world in this crisis — can drag it back from its rush to perdition under the great system of national grab and put it back on the path to civilization.'^ Joan of Arc, prompted by incredible visions, and working with the meanest instruments, accomplished the impossible and was burned as a witch. Henry has had a vision incred- ible enough in all sense, and is working with instru- ments of a diverting whimsicality. Count both these facts as factors m his favour as a marvel- worker. Miracles are done, not by material, but by spiritual means. If Henry works one, it will be in order to fetch the faggots for him as for Joan, for he is striking at the system that dominates the world, and must be rated as a fool if he fails, and if he wins, as a wizard. But probably no one will offer to burn Henry. He is not a Belgian nor a Servian nor an Armenian, and f rightfulness would be wasted on him. He may be sunk, but hardly burned. The chances are that he is not Tolstoi's strange man from the North, and that he will not cut much ice for all his efforts, but he gives us a valuable and conspicuous example of a pre- posterous man claiming his own in a preposterous world. He is no more absurd a fool than the Kaiser or a hundred other chief figures in the great tumult, all striving with passion and infinite damage to im- pose ridiculous clamps on mankind. As fools go. THE DIARY OF A NATION 213 Henry is a wise one. He has full as much experience of the world as Joan of Arc, and though he has no army, he has a lot of money, and he seems to have the kind of vision that impels him to invite the multitude to sit down and be helped to something. It was he who put the mob into automobile — which no one thought possible — and who made that interesting experiment in increasing the efficiency of labour by doubling up wages. He is a helpful-minded person, and he is helpful now in this, if nothing else, that he has introduced into the war the only occurrence, since it started, at which one can smile. If he doesn't get the Nobel peace prize, it won't be for not trying, nor yet, perhaps, for not deserving it. January 6, 1916, WE SHOULD not take it too hard that Europe is not pleased with us. Col. Har- vey would have Dr. Wilson go abroad instead of Col. House to learn what the European atmosphere is, but that would not help matters. This country may not properly regulate its be- EuropeNot haviour by European feelings in war- Pleased With time. In war-time men think and feel ^* not so much according to the facts as according to their breed. Individual Americans think and feel about the war according to their breed — English, Irish, German, whatever it is; but the policy of our government should be American. If it is soundly American that is all we have a right to ask. But will that satisfy anybody in times like these .^^ Bless you, no! That is, hardly anybody. A few America-first Americans will like it insofar as they think it sound or find a profit in it, but most of us have come long since to be hyphens for the purposes of this war — Ally- or Teuton-Americans — and are ready, all of us, to denounce the administration if it does not lean hard enough our way. Probably that is the most serious cause of the decline in President Wilson's popularity. So far as the war in Europe was concerned he has followed, according to his lights, the course that looked to him best and most proper for the United States. Accordingly the Ally-Americans and the German- Americans are all down on him, and Europe regai'ds him as a considerable failure as a public man. 214 THE DIARY OF A NATION 215 Perhaps he is, but, if so, he has lots of company, for Europe has not yet produced, since the war began, a pubhc man who is conceded to be a success. The feet of once-distinguished public men protrude from the ash-cans of all the chancellories of Europe. Sir Edward Grey still holds down his job, but the effort to oust Mr. Asquith is just now more than usually active. All the Ally-nations and Greece and Austria and Turkey and most of the neutrals have swapped ministers, and even we have sustained the loss of Mr. Bryan. Like as not we would have tipped ?vlr. Wil- son out before this if it had been possible to do it without a revolution, but as it is we shall have him, certainly, for another fourteen months. What we shall think of him a year from next March, heaven knows, but it is entirely possible that his policy of watchful waiting — if he sticks to it — will be a good deal more popular then than it is now. Very able and respected men insist that our coun- try, since the war began, has lost the opportunity of many lifetimes to do an enormous service to the world. Other persons of fair intelligence hold that there was nothing much that we could do and that Mr. Wilson has done it and thereby earned our grati- tude. Both of these views Y\dll find full expression next June and from then until November, events, meanwhile, marching rapidly, no doubt, and shedding light day by da^^ on the discussion. It is all a blind business, terrible, and beyond hu- man control. "No man," says the Evening Sun, "may venture to make phrases or open his mouth in parley between such spiritual forces in mortal com- bat. The only intermediary is a greater spiritual force which will speak in Its own time." Henry Ford, it seems, took sick, and, yielding to the instinct of self-preservation, cut loose from his pilgrim band and hopes to rearrive in Detroit about 216 THE DIARY OF A NATION the same time as this number of Life. He left means of gratuitious transportation for all the pilgrims in case they should conclude to return. It seems they squabbled a good deal going over, and he will doubt- less be just as happy on his way back without their companionship. While Henry was homeward bound The Skipper of our Ark opened the window and let out Col. House. The Colonel circled high above the in- quisitive reporters and sailed eastward on a Dutch steamer without giving inquirers any high degree of satisfaction, as to the nature of his quest. Often, however, we may profitably search the Scriptures for light on obscure proceedings in contemporary times. It will be recalled that when the Ark had grounded, Noah first sent forth a raven which foraged back and forth; then, later, a dove, which found no rest for the sole of her foot and came home to him and was taken in; then, later, the, dove again, which came in in the evening and brought him in her mouth "an olive leaf pluckt off," and presently the dove again "which returned not again to him any more." Obviously, now, to the interpreting intelligence. Col. Harvey is the raven coming back to roost on our roof -tree; Henry Ford is the dove whose foot found no resting place, and of Col. House we may prayerfully hope that he will bring back, this time, a sprig of olive, and that when he goes again it may be to a habit- able Europe. This is the time for armament talk; how much, what kind, what cost, and how to get the money. However regenerate or however crippled Europe may be after the war, she is not likely to continue long in a condition that will relieve us of the obligation to maintain a strong navy and very much more exten- sive and reliable military forces than we have at present. If a co-operative arrangement for the pro- THE DIARY OF A NATION 217 tection of the world follows the war, our navy will doubtless be part of the police force to which the work will be entrusted, and it will have to be strong enough to do its share. If no such arrangement ensues it will have to be still stronger. Either way we shall need more navy. As to the army, there is a surprising sentiment for universal military training of moderate extent, to give the country a reasonably competent reserve force, and abate the scare that we have no adequate means of repelling an invasion. Compulsory mili- tary training for all our 3^oung men is so novel an idea that it seems quite unreal. Nevertheless, it is thoroughly democratic, and it would be valuable as a discipline, and as a means of welding our people to- gether, as well as for merely military purposes. Congress must be all but bewildered at the idea of proposing to the American people plans so completely foreign to their habits, and expenditures that they will be so reluctant to incur. We are sorry for Congress. It has got a big, hard job on its hands. January 20, 1916. MR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD, a citi- zen of the United States who lives in To- ronto, sadly confesses to a poor opinion of President Wilson. He is not alone in this feeling, but he is more definite than most of his brethren Berating who share it. He thinks Mr. Wilson "has Mr. v/ilson utterly failed his own people and the peo- ple of the world." He charges him with weakness and failure of vision which have incalculably injured our nation and our world; with stooping to an un- worthy and unsuccessful attempt to play party politics with the destinies of the world; with being responsible for the degradation of his country and for making it despised by the world; with responsibility for the failure of other neutral nations to rise to the needs of the greatest world crisis ever known, and for the protraction of the war at least a year longer than was necessary; with responsibility for the entry into the war of Turkey and Bulgaria, and all result- ing miseries, including the Armenian horrors and the death or wounding of at least five million persons. "Never," says Mr. Gould, "has such opportunity to serve mankind been offered to a man : never has a man failed so miserably." One may wonder that Mr. Gould did not include in his charges Mr. Wilson's responsibility for the Panama canal slides, but perhaps the bill seemed heavy enough without that. The trouble with it is, it is so inferential. Mr. Gould may be right in thinking that Mr. Wilson might have stopped the war before this if he had had the grit to use his 218 THE DIARY OF A NATION 219 powers. That is conceivable, but it is far from being a fact. The country seemed ready to go any length with him after the sinking of the Lusitania, but, after all, what might have happened is always matter of opinion. If Woodrow Wikon had behaved as Cromwell, Andrew Jackson, T. Roosevelt, John L. Sullivan, Genghis Khan, or Julius Caesar would (possibly) have behaved in his plajce. Mars might have quit his mischief and slunk back abashed into liis hole. But we don't know what would have hap- pened. The war might have stopped or it might have gone on all the hotter. All we know is that Woodrow Wilson, instead of behaving like Genghis Khan, behaved lilve Woodrow Wilson. Was that so great a fault .^ Did we elect Mr. Wilson President with the notion that he was going to behave like Genghis KJian, or like W. Wilson.^ ^ We expected him to behave Kke Wilson. If he had behaved lilve some one else — say Col. Roosevelt — he would not have been playing fair with us. We had a chance to re-elect Mr. Roosevelt, and declined, and chose Mr. Wilson. All we had a right to expect of Mr. Wilson was that he should be true to himself. If he sincerely does his best for the country, that is all we can ask of him. If his best is not good enough, that is our misfortune. Of course, Mr. Wilson has done his best; his level best. We don't at all agree with Mr. Gould that he has played party politics in a world crisis. He has done his best. If he hasn't met the expectations of Mr. Gould and of quite a lot of gentlemen who live and vate in the United States — if he lacks personality, or magnetism, or force, or whatever faculty it is that carries people along and makes them think he is right — that is bad, of course, but it is not so much liis fault as the fault of us who picked him out to be 220 THE DIARY OF A NATION President. Not even Mr. Gould, not even the Trib- une, suggests that Mr. Wilson is a traitor, and has purposely misconducted his country. Mr. Gould's real cliarge is a charge against the Constitution of the United States and American de- mocracy. His real complaint is that when a sudden emergency catches us with an unsuitable President we cannot get rid of him, as we might of an unsuccess- ful general, until his term is out. His real com- plaint is that we have no continuing policies, military, naval, foreign, or any other kind; that we are con- stantly shifting the control of our enormously im- portant and complicated political and governmental affairs from tried hands into untried hands; that our government was contrived so as not to run away with us; that it is such a government as we wish to see Germany adopt — one that cannot be committed to any vital proceeding without a huge preliminary popular discussion, and the previous consent of a hallful of legislators who may or may not know their business. For a green hand, v/ithout extended experience of men or affairs beyond the limits of a college and a college town, Mr. Wilson has done remarkably well. We didn't choose him to steer us through a world crisis : we chose him chiefly to restrain cur abler citi- zens from hogging all the money. He worked faith- fully at that employment, and then when the world crisis came along he made the best fist of it that he could. His record as a pinch-hitter is not closed yet. He may be just a mite less crazy than we are; he may be doing better than we think — have done better than we know — be destined to come out far better than we hope. But if he isn't a good hand in a world crisis, it's our misfortune, and if he cannot quit and we cannot replace him till our constitutional time- lock permits, that is the fault of our fathers in de- THE DIARY OF A NATaON 221 signing our government without a provision for recall of Presidents, and our fault in not improving on their work. There is no special objection to any gentleman, Canadian or American, objurgating about Mr. Wil- son according to his feelings, but objurgation of that sort does not get us very far ahead. Mr. Wilson is doing his best; a large proportion of the country is still satisfied with his performance; we can't swap leaders for another year, and not then unless the country wants to, and since whatever is done for us in the world crisis for a year to come must be done with complicity of the present administration, it be- comes us to view Mr. Wilson, if not with enthusiasm, at least with an effort at composure. If we want Germany and Russia to be democratized it becomes us to bear with democracy ourselves. If Mr. Gould can't bear it to wait, it is easy for him, already a resident of Toronto, to swap fealties and become a Canadian. Then he will know where he is, his duty wdil be clear, he will be purged of all the pains of neutrality, and we shall all admire and envy him. Then, in company with brethren of his own breed, he need not bother any more about Mr. Wilson, or suffer shame because of what he doesn't do. But we can't quit. He have got to see these States and their President through the world crisis of 1916. Our credit is pledged; our money is up, and whether this is the seventh inning that's playing now, or the fifth or the ninth, we see nothing for it but to sit tight and see the game out. January ^0^ 1916. WAR news comes in nowadays to suit the taste. No customer who wants bad news need go away unsatisfied, unless, perhaps, he wants it about the French. As to all the other combatants it is to be had in quantities to German Peace suit, as that the British go from disaster Hopes iq disaster, that the Russians are all in and their armies have no oflScers, that the Italians are running out of money and are half-hearted any- how, that the Austrians are not worth talking about, and that the Germans are on the verge of bankruptcy and are very tired of the war. This last is probably true. No doubt the Germans are very tired of the war and, being ahead, would like to quit on some good basis which would ease them and bind up their deep financial wounds. No doubt that is why they show, just now, a disposition to be polite to us, and agree, if possible, to Mr. Lansing's demands about the Ancona, the Lusitania, the Persia, and the rest. Only gentle language comes over just now from Germany. That is good as far as it goes. Herr Dernburg is again quoted, this time as telling his brethren in a lecture in Berlin that it is a mistake to think of us as pure materialists; that we carry a great deal of moral baggage; that we are anti- militarists, and that the American woman is deeply and simply religious and will not bring up her son to be a soldier. Our German brothers seem to be marking time till they see if peace is going to hatch out. One hears that some of them a month ago expected peace quite THE DIARY OF A NATION 223 confidently, for reasons undisclosed, by March. If they have any such expectation and anything to base it on, it explains their politeness. To come out of the war on a friendly footing with the United States is highly desirable for Germany. One fat friend would be convenient for her, either for purposes of pillage, of banking, or of trade. But for us it is desirable — yes, vitally — that the end of the war should leave us on terms of close co-operation with England. German good will towards us is a luxury, but in our present state of armament, British good- will is a necessity. Without it, the goose-step for us at German convenience. When peace is talked, therefore, what weight we have must go into the scale to make a peace that shall satisfy Great Britain and her allies. No other kind of peace would be safe for us. Of course, the Germans know that, but whether they think we know it is a question. It sounds funny when Dernburg says our women will not raise their boys to be soldiers, but current proceedings in Con- gress afford a good deal of support to that point of view. At present we are in no condition to take care of ourselves, and count on Great Britain, including Canada, to come between us and trouble in any sudden emergency. Friends of Great Britain here find some comfort in that thought, but the situation is so unsuitable to a country the size of this as to war- rant the prompt passage in Congress, by the aid of Republican votes, of the best preparedness "propo- sition that the combined gifts of all the live-wires in Congress and the Cabinet can compound. January 27, 1916. MR. WILSON," complains the Fatherland, "is practically an Englishman." That is, he speaks English, thinks in English, and is of British descent. Fifty or sixty millions of the present inhabitants Hold On of this country are open to the same ob- JohnBulli* jection. As seen by the Fatherland, they must look to be "practically Englishmen." It is a hundred and fifty years since it has been openly popular in this country to be "practically English." A trouble that happened in the last cen- tury but one, when we set up housekeeping, made it necessary for our fathers to accentuate the fact that they were not Englishmen but Americans. Early in the last century there had to be some reaccentuation of this political truth, and more of it a half -century later. A healthy interest in continental self-de- velopment induced a jealousy of the disposition to pattern our tastes and manners after the model that interested us the most and was the most natural for us to follow. The great Irish immigration in the middle of the last century presently furnished a new political motive for the fostering of this sentiment. In those days the Irish disapproval of England had a good case, and one that had to be respected by just people, even though they were careless of the Irish vote. And so it happened, for one reason or another, for a century and a half that the great mass of Ameri- cans were always on their guard not to be too great admirers or lovers of their blood brethren, but to * From the John Bull number of Life. 224 THE DIARY OF A NATION 225 stand on their own feet and be their independent selves. But nature is not to be balked by mere politics. Deep ealleth unto deep and like to like. Race is race, though seas divide and interests conflict. Quarrels heat the blood, but do not change it. Jew is Jew, German is German, Irishman is Irishman, and what is born English lives English, as a rule, on whatever soil and under whatever flag. A crisis, a shiver up the back, and you know what was bom in you and who at the pinch is with you and you with him. In spite of all jealousies and rivalries, the ties between the British Isles and these States have grown closer and closer as the distance between them has diminished. Literature has constantly fed and inter- marriage strengthened them. Out in Samoa in a hurricane the cheers of American seamen on the stranded Trenton reached gratefully to the British Calliope, struggling past to the open sea, and Ameri- can blood ran warmer at the story. A little later, in Manila Bay, we found a friend. Things have gone better between the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes since '98. The backbone of the United States is made of pre- cisely the same materials as the backbone of the British Empire. It is English, Scotch, and Irish. The language, literature, and political ideals of the United States are of the same derivation. That is why in this world crisis we have seen things as we have. It has not been that the British propaganda has captured us. It has been that, with the minds we have, we could not see the case otherwise than we have seen it. We have been for the Allies be- cause we were born so; born to the faith that is in them and to faith in them who hold that faith; born to the duty which they have accepted — to keep lib- erty alive in the world and maintain it against the 226 THE DIARY OF A NATION domination of calculated and machine-made effi- ciency. To us of the English stock the Great War seems to bring a summons to wear our English derivation with somewhat more assertion. The Irish love Ireland openly and are not expected to apologize; American Scots show an open kindness for Scotland; Germans love their fatherland under any sun. Is it only to be England that men sprung from her loins may not care for.? Who says that? Surely not we whose English derivation is all the root we have, who are lawful heirs of a tradition and literature the greatest, all counted, since Rome and Greece. We have been too modest. Poll us in these States and we are a greater company by much than all the rest, the longest planted here, and surely not the least power- ful or least worthy. Who is the anchor at the end of the Allies' rope in the great tug-of-war? Who but our blood-cousin, John Bull! There he stands, with planted feet, sweating and sore beset; his muscles lame, but holding on. Hold on, John Bull, hold on! There are those across the seas who care for you; who hold with you now in daylight and in dark so far as yet they may, and will gladly hold with you in face of all comers when Fate permits it. Hold on, John Bull! February S, 1916. IN THE matter of training armies for future battles of civilization against Kultur (if necessary), and for the defense of American soil and to emphasize American opinions, and for all other suitable and lawful purposes, the National Security League is „ J for going along with Mr. Garrison as far rrevareaness i ^ , , as he can get to go. What the League wants is " an adequate navy and a national army founded upon a system of universal, obligatory, military training," and "wholly under the discipline and control of the national authorities." Mr. Garrison's plan doesn't go as far as that. It pro- vides for a moderate increase of the regular army, for the training of a volunteer reserve force under Federal control, and for the accumulation of a proper supply of war material. It provides for spending a lot of money, and it looks to the gradual acquisition of a reserve of nearly a million more or less trained men. Good, at least pretty good, as far as it goes, says the Security League. Let's get in behind Mr. Gar- rison and see what he can do. So say Mr. Root, Mr. Stimson, Mr. Wickersham, Mr. Wright, and Mr. Bacon, lately Republican Cabinet officers. They see in Mr. Garrison a Secre- tary of War who is trying zealously to put the coun- try in a state of defense. They see good in his plan, and though it does not satisfy them, they are ready to back it as the most feasible first step. But they seem to back it with very moderate confidence. Mr. Stimson admitted that he had no 227 228 THE DIARY OF A NATION idea that Congress would do anything Hke as much as Mr. Garrison wanted. Nevertheless, the backing of these leading Re- publicans is very valuable. It helps to take the armament question out of party politics. It will help to put behind President Wilson, in the effort he is about to make in behalf of national defense, some votes in place of the Pacifist and Bryanite votes that he will lose. Preparedness is a very big issue. Universal-obliga- tory military training of our available young men under control and discipline of the Federal Govern- ment is an absolutely novel idea to the people of this country. Unless they are suddenly and badly scared they will not accept it with a rush. They will want to talk it over and think it over, and have all the ins and outs of it expounded to them, and meanwhile they are likely to prefer to try out Mr. Garrison's plan of voluntary service. That may work for the moment if Congress concludes to try it, because there is a considerable anxiety about the safety of the country, and a good many good and able men will work hard to put through any plan that promises to begin at once the training of a re- serve force. Possibly suflScient interest can be stirred up in these war times to induce the enlistment of the annual 133,000 young men the Garrison plan calls for. If it is a mere emergency plan to tide the country over a perilous season preliminary to the binding of the Adversary for a thousand years and the reign of universal peace, the Garrison plan may do the whole job. But if the scarred and battered nations of this suffering world are going gradually, after the present orgy, to slip back into their old habits of carrying all the weapons they can pile on, for fear somebody will get the drop on them, then the democratic universal obligatory system is what we THE DIARY OF A NATION 229 must come to, though we may have a mild form of it. And it might do us a vast deal of good; enough, possibly, to be worth all its cost. We are well used to pay out money for education in this country. We pay out half a billion dollars a year for common schools alone. Considered as a form of education, this universal-obligatory military training would have a value well worth computing. It would give our young men an annual change of environment and association for several months, during several of their most impressionable years; give them exercises suitable for their physical development, teach them manners, obedience, and other useful branches, and give them new thoughts and ideas. Most of that would be wholesome. If the Garrison plan goes through and the response is sufficient to give it a fair trial, we shall be better able to judge how wholesome and valuable it is. But, anyhow, we would expect to get out of universal-obligatory military service a great deal more than merely national defense. We should expect to get a national tonic as good for us in the regular years of peace as in the hypothetical emergency of war. We want to be not only safe, but sane. If obliga- tory service is going to make us war-mad, we don't want it. We might as well die shot by conquerors as die crazy. But if it can be demonstrated that it would increase our national sanity — relieve us from vague terrors; make us more orderly and less selfish; make us think better and behave better — that would be a very long mark in its favour. In France it seems to have worked that way. The French took up with obligatory service — a great deal more of it than we should have — for purpose of na- tional self-defense. It has not made them war-mad, neither has France become, like Germany, a military 230 THE DIARY OF A NATION aristocracy. We admire the character of the French people — their fortitude and constancy — and we ad- mire their democratic regime. We read a great deal of the brotherly relations between officers and men, an excellent sentiment of good will without prejudice to discipline. If democratic France is able to work in the universal-obligatory system with advantage to democratic feeling, and without developing any crazy lust for conquest, we might hope to do as well. The papers quote College President Harry Garfield as saying that if we have a big, permanent army our government will necessarily become a military dicta- torship, and our tenderly fondled liberties will go bust. He thinks "we ought not to have a larger military establishment than we need to police our country and defend our shores." The danger of our getting more is small and re- mote; the danger of our not getting that is imminent. Get in, please, Dr. Garfield, back of Mr. Wilson ! February S, 1916. GREAT acquirements of knowledge (except in the case of T. R.) make for hesitation in action. That is where our good Henry Ford has an advan- tage. He does not know enough to hinder him Knouiedge from doing anything that he thinks of. and imjpadse Jt is much the same with Helen Keller and her unqualified social and political assertions. She knows enough to make them, but not enough to qualify them. She lives in an imagined world, and so, considerably, does Henry. There is a charm of other-worldliness about both of them. We get so tired of the blunders of the know- it-alls that the extravagances of Helen and Henry are soothing to us. Neither of them has worldly wisdom enough to balk at anything that looks like the leading of the spirit. Theodore has some of the same sort of charm. If a thing looks good to him he does it. He hates to let an impulse die unacted, especially if it is a gal- lant impulse. We ought all to be like that, because gallant impulses are precious, but most of us get broken of acting on them because the world is so full of hard or stupid objects that one hits whenever he skips the beaten path. We get cowled into discretion. It is nast}^; the main justification of it being that per- sons actuated by gallant impulses are apt to collide not only with dolts and posts, but (very much) with one another, whereas, even on the beaten path, you get somewhere if you keep moving. 231 February 10, 1916, There is something that the American people love better than they love peace. They love the principles upon which their po- litical life is founded. They are ready to fight for the vindica- tion of their character and of their honour. SO PRESIDENT WILSON in his speech in New York, the first of his speeches in behalf of strengthening our military and naval forces. It is a rehef to have him feel that it is time to give emphasis to this view. Americans "Nobody scriously supposes," he said. Ready to "that the United States needs to fear an Fight invasion of its own territory. ' He is mistaken about that. A lot of people sup- pose that very thing, and so far as expert testimony is backing, they have got it. They think we need to fear it with a lively, penetrating scare, because though not immediately likely, and not remotely likely if we wake up, it is entirely possible in time if we don't wake up. More than a year had passed, Mr. Wilson said, since he told Congress that this question of military preparation was not a pressing question. Since then, because of the rush of circumstances and great changes in the world, he had changed his mind and come to the conclusion that it is pressing. We hope he will also change his mind about the pos- sibility of invasion. He is about a year late in calling for an army, but he is calling for it now with earnest- ness, and if we get one we may still get along. But for a President to be a year late in realizing the pos- sibility that the country may be invaded might in- 232 THE DIAEY OF A NATION 233 volve us in appalling suflFerings and humiliations. After the fire every one realizes that he ought to have been insured, but the folks who get on best are those who not only take out insurance before the fire, but have some extinguishers ready when it breaks out. Perhaps we take life too seriously, and let our at- tention be too much diverted to transitory matters like making money, and having beds to sleep in and tight roofs and food and bathrooms and grandchil- dren and self-government. If one takes the long view that begins in Genesis, or earlier, and runs out of sight in the Apocalypse, these creature concerns don't matter much. Everybody says, and has always been saying, that the world will go to pot sooner or later with contents and surface furnishings complete, but if we wish to live comfortably on it while it lasts we have to keep awake part of the time, mind what is going on, and keep our mechanisms oiled against the time when we shall see something coming down the road that we shall want to stop. Suitable to the time!" exclaimed Mr. Wilson. Does anybody understand the time.^^" No, sir. Nobody understands it. We observe that this is a very sick world, and that kingdom- come is being piled on Bally-hoo, and that a lot more has got to happen before the creases smooth out of Creation's brow. We noticed before the war that there was great restlessness, particularly among women; that insanity was increasing in most coun- tries at an enormous rate, and that something vital seemed to be wrong. We observe certain superficial troubles, like the rise of Germany and German ambition, and we think that efficiency and machinery have run away with human life. But beyond that we don't seem to go. We see mankind throwing these terrible fits, and hope there will be something left when they are over, but we think the poison 234 THE DIARY OF A NATION that caused tliem has got to exhaust its power before they can stop, and we don't know precisely what the poison is nor how much of it still remains in the mun- dane system. If nations have got to be broken of hogging there may first have to be a great elimination of individual h(;ggishness, and perhaps that is going on with all these horrible, incidental pangs to so many innocent and kindly people. But the whole trouble is obscure, and the proper treatment for it is guesswork; and for you, Mr. President, to go out on the road and preach Johnny-get-your-gun to the Middle West looks as nearly suitable as any treatment we know of. While Mr. Wilson is poking up the country on the subject of military preparation. Col. Roosevelt faithfully pokes it up on the subject of Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson rests on Sunday, but not the Colonel. On January 30th, while Mr. Wilson was renewing his ginger in Cleveland, preliminary to ^ve Monday speeches, the Colonel made a ferocious appeal to three thousand citizens of Brooklyn, wherein he disclosed to them that everything the present ad- ministration had done in foreign affairs was rotten. When you try to follow the Colonel in detail in one of his wake-up-the-people speeches it is rather hard going, but when you look at his gesticulating figure as part of the national landscape it's a fine bit of movement and helps the picture. Mr. Wilson told his listeners in New York not to be satisfied with lis- tening to him, but to go out and preach preparation. Col. Roosevelt is his promptest responder. The details don't matter, says Mr. Wilson; get a move on the people! The Colonel is trying to do it, and he tries hard, and will keep on. February 17, 1916. IT IS just about eight years since Mr. Roosevelt was quoted as saying, "If they don't take Taft they'll get me." They took Taft. One might imagine him now as saying, "If they M Roo li ^^^'^ S^^ ready they'll get me." Perhaps they wouldn't, for Mr. Roose- velt does not seem like a strong candidate this year, but he has stood conspicuously forward as an advo- cate of military and naval preparation in a world crisis, and if it had continued to seem like a case of getting it through him or going without, every day would have added to his political strength. It is astonishing what the country owes to Mr. Roosevelt: First of all an immense entertainment; then his own administration of seven years and a half; then the selection of Mr. Taft and his adminis- tration; then, a good deal, the election of Mr. Wilson and what we have had from him. If he is a cause now of Mr. Wilson's conversion to preparedness, it is only that things are happening about as usual. He is like a handball player with our national politics as his ball. He bangs it against the wall and swats it again as it comes back, always ready to get the ball from any lagging opponent. He proclaims at times his deep disgust with the result of his efforts to serve the country, but he never lets up. If the danger of Roosevelt back in the White House is the peril that has stirred up Mr. Wilson to hard thinking and his recent exertions, it is new evidence of Mr. Roosevelt's value as a political asset. 235 236 THE DIAHY OF A NATION Long may he wave and rage and sweat and swat. He is our best insurance against dry rot; our scourge of the sluggish; tail-twister of our mules, and prod of our pedagogues. When things get so blocked that there is danger of recalling him, the gong strikes for a real effort, and the chariot of state creaks on. If we are not to have an active national conscience, praise God that there is left to us an active national bugaboo. Mr. Wilson made good speeches; they were well received and should have good results. He came out finally for the ablest navy in the world, which seems rather more than we need. Nevertheless, any morning we may read that the German navy has finally come out of cold storage and that the British navy has disputed with it and that our navy has moved up one or two places towards the top. If the relative ability of our navy should be suddenly in- creased in that fashion it would be interesting, of course. Yet it would send us scrambling to the ship- yards to build more of everything, for a serious weak- ening of the British navy would bring us sudden and serious responsibilities. This would be by no means a safer world for us with the British navy crippled, but by a vast deal the contrary. We might need at once what Mr. Wilson called for in St. Louis — the most powerful navy in the world. Meanwhile, if Mr. Wilson thinks the country is in danger and wants more navy, will he please push construction of the ships voted by the last Congress. One reads that no work has yet been done on the big ones; that the Department which is Mr. Daniels, or Congress or somebody, will not permit them to be built in private yards, and that no government yard is yet ready to undertake them. The intentions of the All-Wise about Europe are still obscure, but Turkey seems to be getting hers. THE DIARY OF A NATION 237 She did not let the Germans in for fun, but judging from reports she is enjoying the consequences even less than she expected. It may be some consolation to the Armenians to be avenged, but vengeance is cold comfort. Time is sure to avenge the Armenians; a civilization that massacres Armenians by the hundred thousand ad- mits that it is dead. But that will not bring the dead to life. The pity of the war is that it involves such dreadful atonements. Fehriiary 21^, 1916, UR military education lags. It seems to be hard for Congress to take our military situation seriously. It takes imagination to visualize our need of a trained defensive force, and Congress has been called upon to see it all at once. Mr. Garrison If it is slow about it wc should remember Gets Out that it took Mr. Wilson a year and a half to see it. He finally got a revelation on the subject, and in due time probably Congress will get one. It is asked to accept an entirely novel idea and to put it through at very great expense, and to help itself to nothing out of it. Naturally it balks and wants to contrive something resembling something it is more used to, and that will keep more power of promotion and disbursement in more familiar hands. Well, Congress has the cards and it is the turn of Congress to play and it is our turn to wait. Mr. Garrison's difficulty was not so much vvdth the Presi- dent as with Congress. Mr. Wilson was favourable to his plan of the Continental army, but there were not Democrats enough in Congress who were willing to put it through. Mr. Garrison would not wait. He resigned. Mr. Wilson has got to wait. He can- not resign. It would do no good. But at a pinch he can split his party, and call upon Congressmen of all parties to put through such a measure as he can approve. He cannot well do that until he sees what kind of an army bill the Democratic majority can hatch out, and makes up his mind whether it will do. It ought not to take long to discover that. Mr. Garrison was an excellent Secretarj^ of War, 238 THE DIARY OF A NATION 239 and it is sad to lose him. He has some sporting blood in him, and there is a feeling that there was none too much in the Cabinet even with him in it. The trouble with the militia system of military preparation which the Democratic majority in Con- gress seems to favour is that, so far as yet developed, it knocks the belly out of bellicosity, and leaves in the cost. x\s threatened, it would be as expensive as real preparation and would not be efficient. The Con- tinental army would probably knock our present State militia on the head, and the States would have to set up constabularies for their police work. That would, no doubt, be very unacceptable to labour. The Socialists would oppose it, and there would be many wild words about it from the usual sources of vociferation. It must be confessed that the opposition to the Continental system is strong. The compulsory service people think nothing of it except as a first step to something more effectual; the pacifists op- pose it; the National Guard sees its finish in it; State politicians are prone to look coldly on it, and it may be that Mr. Garrison got out because he concluded that his best plan that he had worked hard over hadn't a chance of going through. March 2, 1916. MR. WILSON'S unpopularity seems to be growing. He is unpopular just now with M. Clemenceau in France, whose specialty is demolishing statesmen, with Punch and others in London who think him too patient, with Germans, Go to It Austrians, and Turks pretty generally Republicans ^e fear, with Mr. Root, Mr. Roosevelt, and most of the other Republicans and Progres- sives who are getting ready to nominate some one for President, with some Democrats who don't know what they want but are conscious of a suspicion that they are not getting it, with pacifists like Mr. Bryan and Mr. Villard, with militarists generally and especially the Continental army and universal- compulsory-service kind, with Col. George Harvey, with a large company of dislikers of Josephus Daniels, and with everybody who ever bet a cent on the bus- iness future of Mexico. If Mr. Wilson was malfeasant, incompetent, cowardly, vacillating, and insincere in the degree that all these detractors, between them, aver, the wonder would be that he had managed to shuffle along three years in office with such immense defects without having a committee appointed to be answer- able for his behaviour. That makes one think that the circumstances of the world have a good deal to do with most of the complaints that are made about him. If his detractors could concentrate on two or three good points — say Mexico, Garrison, and the Lusitania — they might score. But there is safety for him in the variety of their accusations. They «40 THE DIARY OF A NATION 241 lambast him for the tariff bill, the shipping bill, the persecution of corporations, the invasion of Belgium, the Lusitania, British meddling with our exports, the exploits of German spies and fire-bugs, the resignation of Mr. Garrison, the retention of Mr. Daniels,*and the neglect of Americans and their interests in Mexico. It is hard to get proper team work among so many accusers. They get to correcting one another and that weakens the attack. But it is true that there is doubt and dissatisfaction in the land. So there is in every other country on earth. The war is har- rowing, and even here the harrowed don't like it. We have been warmed up to deeds of valour and sacrifice and then allowed to cool, and the effect on the national disposition has not been good. Per- haps it is just as well that the tonic of a Presidential campaign is about to be poured out for us, and that the rival doctors are giving out their diagnoses and telling us what we ought to take. Mr. Root is the leading diagnostician. His speech on February 15th at the Republican Convention in New York in which he arraigned the Democratic party and its President as unfit to conduct the affairs of the country was the chief topic of political discus- sion for a week, and is still discussed. If there is anything that Mr. Wilson or the Democrats have done — the Canal Tolls Repeal bill for example — that pleased Mr. Root, he left it out of that speech. If there was anything that was adapted to persuade the voters to put the Republicans back in control of the country, he put it in. Mr. Root is quite free from the fault imputed to Mr. Brandeis of being on both sides of a contest at once. It was a good speech, whatever its defects; a speech that v/ill be read and reread and kept for reference and study. It was a useful service to examine the Democratic record and put together, in form convenient for examination, everything 242 THE DIARY OF A NATION that can be said about Democratic incapacity and the expediency of turning the Democrats out. We don't want to keep them in if we can do any better. A great multitude of voters in these times are for the United States, and for whatever group or party can handle its affairs best. Democratic incapacity means, practically, incapacity in Mr. Wilson. More of him is all the Democrats can offer us next Novem- ber. If, as the New Republic concludes and an- nounces, "he is not up to his job" it is the duty of the opposition to offer us an acceptable change. Therefore, go it. Republicans! Rake over your principles, present your complaints, capture your candidates and put them all in your show-window where we can take a look at them. We are willing to change if we can better ourselves; willing to look at your samples, and listen to your terms, and do any business with you that our needs and means and past experience may warrant. A former Bull Moose cam- paigner who loves France said that when he heard Mr. Root's speech he cried. His soul had long been athirst for the sound of a voice that meant business. When he heard Root his weary spirit said to him, "Here, at last, is a prophet who can smite the rock and make it gush." But will the rock gush votes for Mr. Root.^^ Probably not. Mr. Root is not a Moses, but he is an admirable Aaron ; a great minister. Yoke him up with his proper Moses and it is a great combination, Moses to strike the rock, Aaron to direct the gush. Now, heretofore, Mr. Root's Moses has been Roose- velt. The two of them together would be a real alternative to Mr. Wilson and his Aaron. We want an alternative. We don't know what will happen from day to day from now to November, or how tired we may get of the present administration. Things may work out so favourably to it that we shall want . JlI THE DIARY OF A NATION 243 it to go on, but if not, we shall be loath to turn to a new experiment. For better or worse we think we know the combination of Roosevelt and Root, and if we were badly enough scared or disgusted we might turn to that if we had a chance. But can it be offered us? Can Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Root get together and work together again, and can they unite the Republican party? It is hard to turn back the hands of the political clock. It would be hard to put William Barnes to work again for Roosevelt. The old Republican party and the Progressives are still as far apart as any two political groups in the country. One stands for the old order, the other for a new one; yet they can do nothing unless they can get together, and the most signal token of reunion would be the recombination of Roosevelt and Root. Allien the Republican psivty came to be half hog half bull it was turned out. There were enough people who wished neither to be tram- pled in the trough nor tossed in the air to put the Democrats in office. If the exigencies of the world crisis can be made to supersede all other considera- tions and all former orders, the Repubhcans and the Progressives may get together and make a formidable fight for the Presidency. If they can, let 'em, but it will be some months yet before we can tell what they can do, and meanwhile the world-fire is burning fast and Mr. Wilson and his political family are all we have to meet it with. Their chance is not gone yet. It strengthens Mr. Wilson's hands in some respects for the country to grow more impatient than he is. Mr. Bryan is out speech-making for the pacifist at- titude which helps to bring his views and the Presi- dent's in sharper contrast. ^Vhat damage Mr. Gar- rison's resignation did the administration in the eyes of persons who favour military preparation is likely to be made good by this sharp detachment of Mr. Bryan. March 16, 1916. 4S Life goes to press the blind in Congress, /A under their blind leader, seem to be proceed- X ^ ing with suitable expedition into the ditch. It remains to be seen to what extent they will be able to hold it against assault. If Congress, too, takes The McLemore to trench warfare it will be in the fashion Resolution and bring home to us the methods of the great war. But the Senate supports the President, and prob- ably the House will, too. To oppose him in the present issue calls for good nerves or very strong inducements. He holds that accepted rulings of international law cannot be changed in war-time by a neutral without consent of all hands concerned. He also holds that the management of foreign rela- tions belongs to the executive branch of the govern- ment and must be handled through the State De- partment, and that for Congress to intrude uninvited, on diplomatic negotiations, virtually destroys the power of the government to negotiate. He is right in these matters, and is bound to have the support of persons who are interested in the maintenance of com- petent government in the United States. To the gentlemen who favour the resolutions that would forbid Americans to sail on the merchant ships of belligerents, competent government of these States seems, for the time being, a secondary consid- eration. Senator Gore is an old-time populist, and presumptively unfavourable to any very definite competence in government. Senator O'Gorman is out to do a damage to England, and, apparently, ~"' 244 THE DIARY OF A NATION 245 would not think a damage to the United States too high a price to pay for it. In the House some friends of the McLemore resokition are anti-English, some are pro-German, some are over-eager pacifists, some are Wilson-haters and anxious to put the President in a hole. Behind all of them is Germany, working every minute, and by all means, to twist/Congress to her purpose. Washington now is as distinctly subject to the sleepless German assault as Verdun. German lives are not sacrificed there, but one hears that German money flows a deep and silent stream through our capital, and wonders to what uses it is put. The British, acting in accordance with advice from their friends here, have left the cause of the Allies in this country to voluntary American advocates. They have spent no money in agitation, and sent over no emissaries to influence public opinion. The Germans have worked hard all the time, beginning, not very fortunately, with Dr. Dernburg, and keeping at it much more privately but incessantly ever since. They haven't captured the country yet, but they are credited with getting a part, at least, of what they have gone after. They are very industrious people, and their means are ample, yet we should be morti- fied, and worse, if their invisible industry, and the underground currents of their means should prevail appreciably against the natural and righteous bias of the great majority of the American people in this war. They may subsidize newspapers and finance Clan-na-Gael meetings and distribute the agents of arson where they may be heard but not seen, but if they are caught meddling improperly with Congress something really may come of it that will not be to their advantage. Nothing would make us readier to part peremptorily with the German Emperor's whole diplomatic outfit in this country than the knowledge 246 THE DIARY OF A NATION < that it was working Congress to beat the President and people of the United States. Proceedings still go on, at this writing, around Verdun with persistence, but as yet with no signifi- cant results except a loss of life said to be appalling. The Germans seem to have paid very dear for what they have got, and not to have got very much. The impression we get is that matters are going, on the whole, satisfactorily to the French, and these un- expected activities favour the notion that the war will not die of old age in a trench, but will be fought out this year. One reads in a Boston paper that at a public meet- ing in New York President Lowell of Harvard pre- dicted that the next war, thirty or forty years hence, will be more destructive than the present one and probably will involve the whole world. Dr. Lowell is about sixty years old, and can afford to make bold predictions about what will happen thirty or forty years from now. And truly, with this war unfinished and in its present stage, any one seems bold who forecasts the next one. But probably what he said would not quite match the report. Is it not conceivable that war will go out of style? This modern war, as has often been said, is not so much a war of men against men as a war of men against machinery and chemistry. Is there no hope that to the survivors of this present war — if there are some — and even to their children, this modern war- fare may seem too fantastic and inexpedient for hu- man patronage? There is no doubt about its being not only hideous but preposterous. Mr. Sidney Brooks, who writes in the NorfJi American Review about The New America, discusses the present extraordinary antipathy in this country to war, and says: THE DIARY OF A NATION 247 Who knows but that the unique patience with which President Wilson has confronted the foreign problems of his administration may not eventually become the established rule of all interna- tional conduct? Who can say that the steady and unceasing revulsion of the American people against imperialism, external adventures and the whole doctrine of militarism may not communicate itself to other nations and be accepted as the universal guide? Who knows? Nobody. Matters one year hence, five years hence, thirty years hence in this world seem all completely beyond calculation. The human mind is receiving a very deep impression. Nobody knows how it is going to work after the lessons of this profound calamity have been stamped into it. It has long been considered likely that war would be abolished by the develop- ment of destructiveness. How much more destruc- tive has it got to become.^ With such a start as has been made, is there any need of putting off Armaged- don for another thirty years? Isn't this a sufficiently drastic proceeding that is now going on? Mr. Baker, the new Secretary of War, has been mayor of Cleveland, and was a friend and disciple of Tom Johnson, who had the dream of three-cent fares for street railroads. Another friend of Tom Johnson was Brand Whitlock (of Belgium). Mr. Wilson seems to like Tom Johnson's friends, but he will never rivet the street railway interests to his cause by appointing them to high offices. To bring the American people to military prepara- tion is very like bringing a colt up to a steam engine. It will take patience and gentle handling. The suspicion lurks in many minds that the next worse thing to a bad army is a good one. If Mr. Baker can allay this suspicion he v/ill do a lot of good. 248 THE DIARY OF A NATION There is an idea that armies are intended to hurt some one, and that, too, he will have to fight, for, as we all know, the truth is that what armies are for is to prevent folks from being hurt. Our people can't be compelled to have a proper army, but maybe they can be persuaded. If Mr. Baker is a persuasive man like Mr. Whitlock, he may be just the man for the War Department. Col. House has got home, and the distress of sun- dry newspapers and newspaper disputants because of the presence abroad of an emissary not selected with the complicity of the Senate is now for the moment abated. He is back in good health and spirits with his reticence in good working order, and has been over to tell the President what he knows. If we were the President and what is up to Mr. Wilson was up to us, we should be mighty glad to have sev- eral hours' conversation with a judicious man who has been everywhere and seen everybody. March S3, 1916. IF VILLA could have sacked St. Louis the shock would have been greater, and the somnolence of the Middle West would have been more effectu- ally broken. But to have him break over the border at all and raid even so small a town as Columbus, Carnals and New Mexico, was shock enough to stir Celestials the government of these States. Within twenty-four hours — which was a day too long, Marse Henry says — Washington had collected its mind and telegraphed **Go and get him" to General Funston, and there, the matter stands. Meanwhile there is no excitement. One can be interested in a Villa foray, but hardly excited over it. And, anyhow, our capacity for excitement is about exhausted. Whatever we might be called upon to do after a year and eight months of such emotions as we have passed through, we would probably go about it stolidly and with the minimum of noise. We have got more lessons out of the great war than we think. For the most part they have resulted in no action, but have merely been stored. But they have produced a vast deal of thought and mental preparation. Even we Americans are not quite the same people we were on August 1, 1914. We are much less parochial. Day after day we have sat on the benches in the current history class, and we have learned something. We know a great deal more about the world we live in than we did a year and a half ago. We have read and read, and thought and thought and thought. We have not got very far^ but we have made a start towards getting some- 249 250 THE DIARY OF A NATION where, and whenever we are jolted into action all our new ideas will begin to operate. There are two great parties now in the United States: the Celestials and Carnals. Into one or the other of these groups the voters may be herded, including those who shift so fast back and forth from one side to the other that nothing but instantaneous photography can catch them. Mr. Wilson is the leader of the Celestial party, and Mr. Hoot is leader pro tern of the other until a candi- date can be selected. The Celestials believe that this is the chance of many lifetimes to change the habits of men, make the world over, and introduce new gears into the running of it, so that it will go better and produce more and better commodities and folks. The Carnals believe that the Celestials, when they are not gainful hypocrites, are farmers; that the world is going on just as heretofore; that the early bird will continue to get the worm, and the battle be, as heretofore, to the strong. The Carnals believe in Mark Twain's motto: Do unto others as you expect them to do unto you, and do it first. The Celestial plat- form is the Golden Rule. Mr. Roosevelt, with his "Fear God and take your own part," is a strad- dler. A lot of the Celestials are mad at Mr. Wilson just now because they think he manifests a disposition to use carnal weapons. All the Carnals have been mad at him this long time because he has stuck so persistently to Celestial methods. Most of the Car- nals who are not Germans are passionately opposed to Germany, though Germany is the great living exponent of the Carnal idea. The Celestials disap- prove of passionate views on any subject, but they also, for the most part, disapprove heartily enough of Germany, though a good many of them cling to THE DIARY OF A NATION 251 neutrality. Carnals and Celestials, however, will alike disapprove of Villa and feel that he must be abated in shortest order possible, even if carnal weapons have to be used on the job. So Villa may prove to be an instrument of Providence to get the Carnals and Celestials together and make them work for good. Mr. Baker, the new Secretary of War, is said to have come down the steps from the President's office four steps at a time on the way to the War De- partment to signal full speed ahead to General Fun- ston, and yet Mr. Baker is a blown-in-the-glass Celestial, lately a Pacifist and a whilom associate of Golden Rule Jones ! Possibly a combination of Celestial purposes and compunctions and Carnal means and instruments may be about right. Hardly anybody wants to conquer Mexico. That would be right in the teeth of the Celestial purpose. But hardly anybody holds to the view that the way to capture Villa is to send Jolin Reed to put salt on his tail. AJmost everybody feels that the time for that is past, and that there is nothing for it but to beat up Villa with soldiers and up-to-date carnal appliances. Wliether the Carnal and Celestial division of voters is going to last till June we cannot tell. They may get all mixed up, and split again on war with Germany. We may have President Wilson on horseback and Col. House out with a rapid-fire gun, and Bryan back in the Volunteer service, and Henry Ford as Chief of Wagon Masters in the Quartermaster's Department, and all so busy that there won't be time to nominate a new Presi- dent. But we can't tell. We can't tell much of anything about what's ahead. Folks who put their ears to the ground almost think they hear the guns at Ver- dun. It may be that the great decisive struggle of 252 THE DIARY OF A NATION the war is on; that spring will see the fall of Essen, or some such signal collapse; that we are closer, a great deal, than we imagine, to the day when Europe shall cease firing, and draw a long breath, and look across the seas. March SO, 1916, THE impression that prevails hereabouts as to the proceedings at Verdun is that the Ger- mans have gone too far to stop, and not far enough to get anywhere. The information that we accept is all to the effect that what they have won has y , cost them far more than it is worth, and that whatever they may win will cost them the same, and that they can neither afford the mili- tary expense of these proceedings nor the political con- sequences of giving up an effort that has cost so dear. At any rate, as a consequence of the assaults on Verdun thus far, French confidence and confidence in France have risen. However fatuous are the stock- market rumours from Patagonia and Galveston of immediate peace, the Allies and their friends are surer than ever that they can handle their job. The retirement of Von Tirpitz seems like a necessary con- cession to civilized sentiment born of the conviction that Germany is not in a position in which she can afford to make any new enemies. Poor old Ernst Haeckel's terms of peace in his new book: "Antwerp our stronghold on the North Sea and Riga on the Baltic," look handsome on the map, but do not match with what we read in the papers. A joint resolution has been introduced in the House calling on the Secretary of State to urge the allied powers to permit the importation of condensed milk for the use of the babies and infants of Germany and Austria and their allies, and of Poland. Certainly a merciful intention goes with this meas- ure, and the appeal of it is strong and pitiful. 253 254 THE DIARY OF A NATION But what has become of the Teuton maxim — Krieg ist Krieg ? War was war in Belgium, and there was no post- ponement on account of babies. War was war in Armenia, and babies perished by the hundred thou- sand. War was war in Servia. How many Servian babies are left alive.^^ How many in Poland? One reads that in France alone 800,000 children have been made fatherless by the war. The French Govern- ment is considering how to feed those children in the years to come. For them Krieg ist Krieg. Is it to be Krieg ist Krieg except in Germany? This war is one of resistance to the German pur- pose so to deal with France that France shall ever- more be powerless to obstruct a German purpose; so to deal with Britain that Britain shall take orders from Berlin; so to deal with Russia that Russia shall tremble and slink back at the German name; so to deal with all mankind that Germany shall be feared and obeyed ilher alles. If there is a dearth of milk in Germany it is the sequence of " f rightfulness " in Belgium and France; a consequence of a purpose so formidable and policies and actions so dreadful that they have bound all the threatened countries together in a do-or-die struggle to defeat them. It is not the Allies who are starving the German babies; it is Treitschke, Bernhardi, Von Tirpitz, and the House of Hohenzollern, artificers and preachers of the doctrine that might makes right and war is the world's great medicine. Why not, then, a joint resolution calling on our Secretary to urge the Kaiser to ask for terms on which to end the war, so that the fear of the German may cease in Europe and German babies may be fed? But put no trust at all in stories that German babies are short of milk. One reads that Belgium had a million and a half of cattle and the Germans THE DI/\JRY OF A NATION 255 took half of them, and half a million more from Northern France. One reads that Germans have systematically skinned the food out of Poland. It works up sentiment against the Allies to have it said that they are starving German babies, and it makes for a world advertisement of Ben Lindsay's humani- tarian reputation to have him appear as the German babies' Galahad. But in this matter one is con- strained to look with suspicion even on Ben. March 30, 1916. WHETHER we want universal^ compul- sory, military service in these States is matter for discussion, but before we can have it, or anything approaching it, we have got to want it. It cannot be forced on an unwilling people Military cxccpt by some power otitside of this con- Preparafiow tinent. Within this continent there is no power that can do it. The first step to universal service must be a mental step. Soldiering must commend itself to the people of the country as a necessary factor in acquiring or maintaining some- thing they want. The London Spectator says that a great change has come over the spirit of the British people; that under pressure of a year and a half of war "a strange new element has glided almost unobserved into the soul of the race." It has no name. It will never have a name. . . . It is in a sense wholly iinp)erceived by those who feel it and show it most. But it is there. It moves with us like a shadow. It lies down with us at night and rises with us in the morning. It controls every movement of the unconscious mind. No man can say when the change came. Most men are still unaware that it has come. Because it is universal there is nothing to measure it by. This spirit shows in a demeanour that recalls "the quietness and patience with which men possess their souls when a great renunciation has been made and they are ready for sacrifice." Nobody worries any more in England, says the Spectator, over stop- ping amusements or racing or sports. And as to 256 THE DIARY OF A NATION 257 compulsory service, "no one is even asking how the people will stand it or what will be the consequences. . . . A duty has only to be pointed out to secure its fulfillment." England, by this account, has had a change of heart — has been born again. Her people's eyes have been opened and they see things from a new stand- point, so that what was impossible has become pos- sible, and what was possible has become matter of course. Some such great regenerative inner change as this has been hoped for for this country as the outcome of the war. We have not got it yet, though we have caught some reflections of it. The military prepara- tion we are trying to make has as yet no sufficient depth of feeling behind it. There was much feeling behind the Piatt sburg camp movement. Most men who went to Plattsburg and the other camps went from a strong sense of duty. They had felt and thought deeply about it. There were enough men of that sort to make the summer camps succeed; there was feeling enough to feed them; but we have still to learn whether there is feeling enough to carry through these larger plans of national defense that are now on the carpet, and fill the regiments that they w^ill provide for. The general conscience of the country has not taken up the military burden yet. The movement has energetic missionaries, but it is still in the stage when men say: "This seems a good thing. Some- body ought to do it." It has not got yet to the stage when they say, "This is my duty. Here I am!" England got to that stage only after a year of pound- ing and bereavement, and of terrors driven home and an immense exercise of all the lifting power of Great Britain. But no terrors have been brought home to us; 258 THE DIARY OF A NATION we have not suffered loss or bereavement. We are called upon to provide in cold blood against a possible need which thousands of talkative citizens deny and deride. That is our predicament, and if we can take elTective measures under such conditions it will be very much to our credit. It may be that for the moment we can do no more than prepare to prepare. If we can string the wires through which the current is to pass, that will be much; very much. It will be much to plan organization both for the army and the navy; to vote and collect the money to provide for the great machinery of defense. If, in addition, we can moderately increase the regular army, provide for the instruction of a large number of officers, so far as it can be carried in peace times, and train young men who are willing, as they come along, in the duties of a soldier, we shall do about all that can be hoped for. We shall have no great popular movement to- wards military preparation until somebody bumps into us hard, or the idea comes that will stir men's souls. April 6, 1916. JAMES LORD, boss miner and head of the Mining Division of the American Federation of Labour, want^ a democratic army. He has observed the war, and read about the German army, and is not pleased with the notion of an obedient army where The Democmti£ the mass of the soldiers are KanonenfuU Army f^f^ j^y ^g^ of which their superiors ex- press their wills. He is not positive as to details of his democratic army, but suggests that officers in it should be elected; that soldiers should be tried by their peers — their fellow soldiers — for military offenses, rather than by officers; that it would help to guarantee the democracy of a democratic army if its soldiers kept their arms and equipment at home. It is not hard to see the ideal that James Lord is reaching for. And it is a just ideal, but one may suspect that an army that conformed with his idea^ would not be an army at all, but an armed mob. His thought is for the members of the trained, armed force, that they shall not be subject to official tyran- nies, nor have their wills subverted to the uses of worse wills, nor be compelled to serve purposes that they disapprove. Very well, but there is another thought to be taken, a thought for the community at large. No one who has reasonable sense is going to make an army that will act its own will. There is enough in- convenience in the world from people who do as they like, without gathering them into regiments, training them in military exercises, and providmg them with 259 , 260 THE DIARY OF A NATION weapons to keep at home, where individually they will have them handy. An army is a servant. Every soldier in it, from the general to the last private, is a servant. Every man jack of them is tliere to do, not what he will, but what is ordered. That is why the military industry is called "the service." So it has been in ail effective armies; so it must be so long as armies are; and as much in a democratic army as in any other. We talk so much about liberty and free speech, and all the other varieties of freedom, that it may seem to be a defect in the military training that it is a training to service. On the contrary, that is its merit, for service is immeasurably the highest thing that man attains to. There is Scripture for that, and probably it was an old, recognized truth when it got into Scripture. Ich Dien on the crest of the Black Prince is only a repetition of it. It is not that man ennobles service, but that service ennobles man, and that through that door every man who would be great must come to his greatness. But whom shall a democratic army serve? The people, to be sure, of whom it is a part, and in whose voice it speaks. An army, any kind of an army, must obey the state and the officers the state gives it. If it gets detached from its state as Xeno- phon's Ten Thousand did, it must obey the officers it gives itself. Unless it obej^ somebody, it isn't an army, but a mob, and except temporarily in emer- gencies it cannot be a town meeting. What would make a democratic army would be, it would seem, a common consent to discipline, a brotherliness in service, a recognition that it is the office thaX one obeys rather than the man in it, and that the office is necessary. But we need not grope about after the constituents of a democratic army. THE DIARY OF A NATION 261 for there is at least one that we can examine. The French have one. It exists by consent and con- trivance of the French people. It is brotherly, it is obedient, and any one who questions its efficiency may be referred to Berlin. If we want to know how to have a democratic army, we can ask the French. ^/ April 21, 1916, THE shock of all crimes wears off after a while. The shock of the Lusitania was tremendous. It gradually wore away in discussion. But, like Villa's attack on Columbus, the sinking of the Lusitania was an insult to the United States, and The Warning an insult with a purpose. It was a detail of a Shock Qf the German policy of *'f rightfulness," and its purpose was the reverse of Villa's, being, apparently, not to get us into a war, but to scare us out. For months there has been a rising sentiment in these States that that German purpose was succeed- ing. When Villa did his exploit at Columbus, orders went out from Washington instantly; not notes merely, but orders. Troops took the field. But what orders followed the sinking of the Lusitania ? Was there a real effort to arm? Was the army strengthened.'' Was the navy strengthened .f' There was nothing done except by diplomatic negotiation. Not for seven months or more was there even the beginning of an effort to create a force competent to back the notes. The shock wore off. The Lusitania case gradually declined from a casus belli into a matter for argument and discussion. With every new note the credit of the United States wavered a little, and faithful supporters of the administration in increasing numbers progressed from patience to dismay and from dismay to indignation. One heard it said: "I stayed with Wilson nine months, but nothing happened, nor gave prospect of happening, and then I quit." 262 THE DIARY OF A NATION 263 But to Villa something did happen. He was pursued, and with great energy and in the face of great risks and perils. Our military force was not really equal to his chastisement, but it got orders, and it undertook it, and the whole country has been behind that undertaking with hardly a dissentient voice. So it would have been behind any action taken on account of the Lusitania. It backed the notes till it got tired, and it would have backed instant prep- aration to support the notes. And it will still back a final stand in that matter, for still the Lusitania case is an ulcer in the American inside, and still the country can be roused to submit to any treatment necessary to cure it. "Are you ready for the test.^" asks our President. "Have you the courage to go in?" Try us, sir. If you are ready for the test; if you have the courage to go in, call upon us. It is pretty late, but few of us have got away. We are still here. We are unprepared, it is true, in a military sense, but in a spiritual sense we could rise to a situation, and in an economic sense we are capable of very much. All we ask is orders. For them we have to wait on government. But give them to us and you will see. "Business as usual," said the English when the war began. Now people say, "War as usual." There is business, too, a vast deal of it; but the great current business is war. It goes on just about as usual: the back and forth at Verdun with its length- ening butcher's bill; a German gain, apparently, in commercial arrangements with Rumania; activities on the Russian front; something doing in the neigh- bourhood of Trebizond, and reports, not very clear, of earnest proceedings on a limited scale about Bagdad. 264 THE DIARY OF A NATION A good many people of influence feel that the war has lasted long enough already for the instruction of all the peoples concerned, and ought to stop. One such person is Maximilian Harden, who professes to be fully satisfied with Germany's prowess, but thinks that peace is possible and that every one should reach for it before all the warring nations have been bled quite white. The plight of the world, so unexpectedly appalling, has prompted some enquirers to search history to discover what had happened before in historical times. One such reader who had been getting up Genghis Khan and his extremely ruthless and destruc- tive conquest of most of Asia only seven hundred years ago, was left speculating whether the possibility of that sort of enterprise had really passed away out of the world. People had supposed so until the day the Germans crossed the Belgian frontier, but now they are doubtful. There are times when this world seems humdrum, but in reality it is an incurably sporty place, and seems never to settle down, except to rest before rising up again and raising more hob than ever. One gets discouraged about it as a place of residence, and inclines in times like these to the Rooseveltian attitude that treats it as an adventure, to be taken on the run and enjoyed for its vicissitudes. In the life of cattle, to be slaughtered is a normal incident. It is getting to be so in the life of Europeans, and fashions shaped in Europe may usually be trusted to penetrate to these States. People who dislike that prospect should take a little thought with Maximilian Harden and interest themselves in stopping the war before destruction has become again a human habit. If staying out of it does no good, it will be in order to try getting in. May ^, 1916. AT THIS writing our government is awaiting a /-% reply from the German Government to a com- -*- -^ mmiication sent through Ambassador Gerard, which reviews the course of German submarine warfare 'VnlyOne and our government's attitude towards it. Excuse To recites in detail the case of the Sussex^ and ^^ ^ winds up with these words: Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of sub- marine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German empire altogether. This action the Government of the United States contemplates with the greatest reluctance, but feels constrained to take in behalf of humanity and the rights of neutral nations. Of the same tenor and largely in the same words was the President's speech to Congress on the day (April 19th) that the communication went forward. There are few better days in our calendar than the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, and few better deeds in our history than the sending of that notice to Germany. Our people, in the main, are delighted with it; our friends abroad are delighted. France is greatly cheered at last by an action of our govern- ment. To be sure, Mr. Mann, Republican leader in the House, betrayed his partisan chagrin by un- seemly remarks, and Mr. Bryan rushed from St. Louis to Washington to rouse Congress against war, but accomplished nothing visible, and rushed back again. But Mr. Taft and 3.1r. Wickersham support the government audibly, the Senate passed the Cham- 265 ^66 THE DIARY OF A NATION berlain bill providing for a million trained soldiers, and the World of April 23d came out with the sug- gestion that since Mr. Wilson had done so much that was satisfactory to all good Republicans, they should make him their candidate for President. And perhaps they will: perhaps they will; or vote for him anyway when the time comes, no matter whom they nominate. It all depends upon what Mr. Wilson does next, and next after that. Some- times it has seemed as though he was going to make a reputation as a pacifist at the cost of the American soul, but his notice to Germany allays for the moment such fears. Everything seems to depend on Mr. Wilson, on his brains and his character, and, as it happens, he is a man whom very few people even pretend to understand. As the leader of the Celes- tial party he acts from motives which are a stumbling block and foolishness to the Carnals. Some excellent men think very ill of him. Some shrewd and ex- perienced men think a great deal better of his brains than they do of his Celestialism. "Do we need a Diaz.f^" cries Marse Henry. "He (Roosevelt) can wrap the flag around him. He can rattle the drum- sticks. He can march down to the footlights. He can fire the hoss-pistols. But so can Woodrow Wil- son." Yes, he can; and he can make a m.ighty good speech, and when he thinks of the right thing to say he can say it admirably. But is he a doer or only a speaker? He is tenacious to get what he wants, but in this great world crisis does he want the right thing, and will he go on all the way to get it.^^ There were no hoss-pistols in the Sussex note and his speech to Congress. The note and the speech were more than words. They were actions, too. But will he stick.? Will he go on? Men ask, who had lost all hope in him; good men and true, who THE DIARY OF A NATION 267 want nothing but bold and sturdy leadership straight down the path of duty. There is a great backing for Mr. Wilson if he can win it; millions of men anxious to give him their confidence, but holding back be- cause they don't understand what is in the back of his mind and cannot foresee what he will do. And he won't do much of anything for political effect. Rather his tendency is to delay action be- cause it looks too much like hoss-pistols and the rattle of drumsticks. He may be a politician, doubt- less he is, but at least he is not a cheap politician. *'Only one excuse to fight," Mr. Wilson has been saying, "to fight for humanity." The Sun says he cherishes a mistaken idea; '*that he is not President of Humanity; he is President of the United States." The Tribune jumps at the chance to bid him "serve America first." But of course there is no way so good to serve America as to serve humanity, and of course what best serves humanity, especially in this present crisis, best serves America. Doubtless there were Tribunes in Jerusalem nineteen hundred and odd years ago that said, "Save the Jews, and let it go at that!" But that's a narrow view. When was there a time when humanity looked to the President of the United States as it is looking now? And would you have him look the other way.'^ And would you have him say, "I am President only of the United States ! " The great fault that is found with Mr. Wilson is that he has seemed too much to do that very thing; seemed too scrupulously, too parochially, neutral. When he spoke in the Sussex note of action "in behalf of humanity and the rights of neutral nations," that was the line to take, and one from which no sound American would raise a finger to divert him. The nation, despotic king, or hierarchy, which substitutes its own selfish interests for humanity, shuts itself out from humanity. 268 THE DIARY OF A NATION becomes inhuman, revives and worships standards of the Beast, and heads straight for perdition. So says Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, a fairly bitter critic sometimes of President Wilson, but not a critic of his concern for humanity nor of the Sussex note. All that we can possibly do for humanity will bo done for the best possible good of the United States. If that is a tenet of the Celestials, we are with theni on it down to the last letter. And the way to help humanity just now is to put a crimp in Germany's barbaric warfare and to help by every means to save the world from the demoniac Kultur. All the decent people are agreed on that — Taft, Roosevelt, Marse Henry, Dr. Eliot, Congressman Gardner — and Henry Ford will come in as soon as he understands. They differ more or less about details, but we shall all be togetherpresently; Germany, demon-driven Germany, will see to that. '"% May 4, 1916. THE papers report that in Washington, on April 10th, Dr. David Jayne Hill, lately Ambassador to Germany, treated the Navy League Convention to a vigorous denunciation of the policy (Mr. Wilson's) which has "caused the com- Remarks pl^t^ loss of our former prestige as a nation" from and made our government "practically neg- Monaco \{gj^\Q as an international influence." Bad, bad, but fairly useful Republican doctrine for immediate use. But will it last.'^ Will it still be felt in June, in July, in November, in March of next year, that American prestige is knocked on the head, and that our influence with the nations has evaporated .^^ One can't be sure about that. Most heads in Europe just now are hot; excusably hot; but one man who seems to keep pretty cool is Prince Albert of Monaco. He claims to be a neutral ruler, and though the Germans have seized and fined his chateau and estate in the north of France, he doesn't mind that. For he is a rich prince with a principality that in- cludes a valuable gambling privilege, and, on the side, he is a scientist of distinction. He doesn't seem to think we are so bad. He is quoted as saying to a newspaper correspondent that "the only chance for the survival and future civilization of Europe is the infusion of American blood into European peoples." In that way he hopes to get American ideas into Europe. European peoples, he says, are the slaves of tradition. It is in their blood, resisting every tendency to change. They live, as it were, in a web of race prejudices and customs and ideas 269 270 THE DIARY OF A NATION wMch only the adoption of the American outlook can alter. If this change does not take place, and there should be three or four more wars in the modern style, Europe will become a desert. No country has done more for the progress of humanity than America, and it is only by learning from America that there can ever be such a thing as a United States of Europe. That is an interesting idea, and to us poor, spirit- less, berated creatures of course it is consoling. Pos- sibly we are not yet without some potential value to the world. Possibly, by staying alive and minding our job, and thinking hard and doing what existing conflicts of American opinion permit us to do, we may yet demonstrate that continuance of even our exist- ence has been worth while. May 11, 1916. THE question of the Lusitania is whether any- thing can be wrong which Germany at any time thinks necessary to success. By the usages of international law it is a crime to sink merchant or passenger ships without taking off their The Issue of crews and passengers. In defiance of the Lusiiania this rule, a German submarine, acting under government orders, sank the Lusitania. Over twelve hundred lives were lost, including many wo- men and children and more than a hundred citizens of the United States. That happened on May 7th, a year ago. Our government did not break at once with Ger- many, but informed the German Government that it would be held to strict accountability for this pro- ceeding. It has been holding it to strict accounta- bility ever since. It has exchanged notes with the German foreign office, and then more notes. Ger- many partially agreed to abate her piratical enter- prises and conform to the rules of international law in warfare, but she has not kept her word. Her promises and professions, as our President told Con- gress, have "in fact constituted no check at all on the destruction of ships of every sort." Again and again, as Mr. Wilson said, the German Government has given our government its solemn assurances that at least passenger ships would not be destroyed with their passengers and crews aboard, "and yet it has again and again permitted its undersea commanders to disregard these assurances with entire impunity." Our people have been patient, with a patience that 271 272 THE DIAHY OF A NATION calls rather for explanation than for praise. Ten or twelve millions of us are of German derivation and swayed by German sympathies. Of the rest, a serious proportion were opposed to war on any grounds, except in resistance to invasion. There re- mained, doubtless, a large majority ready, and more than ready, to support the government with all their energies, but bound to wait until the government's position was defined and they were called upon to back it. Month after month of negotiation passed, until the issue began to grow faint, and in the minds of those who felt it to be vital the fear began to stir that our case would be lost by default. Then there began a defection from Mr. Wilson. In despair of his meeting the situation tho^e of his supporters who wanted something done began to look about to see who else there might be to turn to. Still there are those who doubt that he has it in him to act with due vigour in a great world crisis. Nevertheless, his stand for military preparation, late as it was in com- ing, was right and was welcomed; his speech to Congress and his note to Germany on April 19th were admirable, and it may be that the patience of his backers is to be rewarded by seeing him come finally and powerfully to the scratch. So far as words go, he has come already. Our position could hardly have been better put than he put it in his speech of April 19th. Germany may back down, suspend her piratical warfare, make amends, stay good in one detail, and keep the diplo- matic doors open in Washington and Berlin. It is possible, if the German Government dare do it. The trouble is that the sinking of the Lusitania, the Arabic^ the Sussex, was of a piece with the whole German plan of world war, f rightfulness, and world domination. The whole scheme was atrocious, a plan based on worse than pagan morals; a deadly THE DIARY OF A NATION 273 and ruthless ambition to crush the other nations by any means into conformity with the insane Teutonic purpose. To abandon her abominable submarine warfare against merchant ships is virtually for Ger- many to confess that she can never realize her under- taking. It would be admission that the wheels of her portentous machine are thrashing and rattling, and that the whole diabolical mechanism is on the eve of collapse. But the alternative is not much better. It is to put the conscience and the vast resources of the United States frankly on the Allies' side, where virtually they have been all the time, and where rightfully they belong. Germany is fighting two Gettysburgs at once, one at Verdun and one at Washington. It is the hope of civilization that she will lose them both. Our government declares that to sink the Lusitania was a crime. If Germany admits it she is self -condemned. If she denies it it devolves upon these States to insure her condemnation. May 18, 1916, IN A communication to our government that pro- ceeded from Berlin on May 4th, the German Government sent word that the German naval forces had received the following orders, to wit: In accordance with the general principles of visit, search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by inter- An Answer ^q^[qj^qI 1^^^^^ such vessels, both within and with- •'' out the area declared to be a naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning, without saving human lives, unless the ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. These orders are the German response to the American note of April 20th, which, after some pre- liminary explanation, said to the German Govern- ment: Unless the Imi>erial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels the government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German empire altogether. The orders given by the German Government seem to meet the American demand, and have not up to this writing been violated that we know of. So Mr. Gerard still remains in Berlin and Count Von Bernstorif in Washington. But how long this amic- able condition will continue nobody can tell. There was much more to the German communica- tion besides what is above quoted. Some of it was merely tiresome; some of it was rude, and there were 274 THE DIARY^OF A NATION 275 passages complaining of the perverse and unfeeling conduct of Great Britain, alluding to "the incontro- vertible right to freedom of the seas," and expressing confidence that, in view of the order quoted, the United States will co-operate with Germany to restore the said freedom of the seas, and insist that the Brit- ish Government shall observe the rules of international law as specified in the American notes of December 28, 1914, and November 3, 1915, to the British Gov- ernment. Otherwise, it said, there will be a new situation in which the German Government "must reserve to itself complete liberty of decision." As Life goes to press, the papers print the Presi- dent's response, which, as one would expect, is an acceptance of the new German orders and rejection of everything else in the note. That leaves it to Germany to decide when the "new situation" shall transpire, and what to do to meet it. It is a con- dition of unstable diplomatic equilibrium. At once, if the new orders are violated, we shall expect to part with the German ambassador and welcome home Mr. Gerard. Even if the German Government wishes to avoid such an occurrence, it may happen, and is not unlikely to happen, at any time, and a breach of diplomatic relations would be likely to be followed by our getting into the war. We are balancing, therefore, on the brink of war with Ger- many, and that means a new factor in affairs, and stimulates all the peace agencies to do what they can for peace before any more of the world is involved. Germany undoubtedly wants peace. She is still very formidable indeed for attack or defense, but not very comfortable. She is full of war prisoners and stolen goods, but apparently pretty short of food, and with no prospect of finding relief in uni- versal conquest. She cannot thrash the French at Verdun; she has her hands full with Russians all the 276 THE DIARY OF A NATION way from the Baltic Sea to Trebizond, and when she thrashes them it does her no particular good, since only the dead ones stay thrashed, and there are always more. She can kill and be killed a long time yet, but how can she win, while the French are so valiant and the British so stubborn, and the Russians keep coming and coming? A year ago one might have expected Germany to declare for frightfulness at sea, even at the cost of a break with us. Virtually she did declare for it when she sank the Lusitania. But a year which has seen many German military successes and several failures of the Allies has made a great difference. She does not want another fighting nation on her hands, [not even the United States. She wants peace, and says so, and her need of it is so obvious that we all believe her. But how can she get peace .^ Gorged with the looms of Lille, the machines of Belgium and Northern France, the loot of chateaux, the poor spoil of French cottages — gorged with plunder, drenched with blood, blood, blood — blood of Belgians, blood of French- men, blood of British, of Russians by the million, of Poles, Serbs, Italians, Armenians, and even Amer- icans; blood of women and children an unnumbered throng — how can the dripping Teuton, lately so fierce, find peace? He can have it at a price, for, of course, all Europe wants it pitifully, but he cannot now get much of a bargain, and terms are not growing any easier before Verdun. If the war had had an aim with definite bounds to it, if it had not been sullied with such terrible brutalities, and had not bred such festering hatreds, peace would have been more practicable now. But it was a war for world-power or downfall, and such a war it is very hard to call off till one side or the other is beaten. May 25, 1916. WE DON'T begin to have troops enough to handle the Mexican job, which is liable to take any turn any minute. We may be in a state of war with Germany any day at four o'clock, or before breakfast or after dinner, and just what that would mean we do not know. But we The see the coasts stripped of regular troops, the few Army there are, to guard the Texas border; we have seen, actually, the coast artillery going off to the Rio Grande, and as late as May 13th we read in the paper that, after three weeks of conference, the House was still haggling hard; that the Fordite congressmen from the Middle West were against much army, and that the prospect was that the Senate provision for 250,000 real soldiers would be cut down to a minimum of 175,000. We know at this writing that the conference did better than that, agreeing upon a regular army of 206,000, capable of being expanded in time of need, by order of the President, to 254,000 men. Senator Chamberlain calls the conference measure "an ex- cellent bill," and his opinion is to be respected. The volunteer reserve army that the Senate bill called for is lost, but the National Guard is to be federalized, and if recruited to its maximum strength of 800 men to a Congressional district, will provide a reserve army of 425,000 men. This reserve is, of course, at present three-fourths paper. How much, if anything, it will amount to cannot be estimated. The best qualified judges seem not to be sanguine of the prospect of making a de- 277 278 THE DIARY OF A NATION pendable defense of the National Guard, but a new spirit in the country may accompHsh the impossible, even in that. For the country does seem now to have waked up to the need of military preparation. Mr. Root feels "sure that war is coming to this country"; Colonel Roosevelt confidently expects the deluge as a consequence of Mr. Wilson's sins; but the most significant evidence so far offered of the people's mood was the parade in New York on May 13th wherein 150,000 persons marched to record their conviction that we need to look alive in military and naval matters and do it right off, and several million people looked on at them and approved and ap- plauded. Do it, gentlemen of Congress; do it adequately, do it effectively, and do it now. It is awfully late at best to be doing it. The Mexican situation speaks for itself; the other complication may become vocif- erous any moment. If we have to try to conduct military operations with untrained, unseasoned troops it will be very costly in life and health. If we can't act betimes, we should act as soon after as possible. Do it now, gentlemen. June 8, 1916. THESE are eventful days. On the 27th of May, for example, 2,500 citizens went down to Oyster Bay to express their need for Theo- dore Roosevelt; Judge Hughes continued not to say anything, and President Wilson made a speech. Mr. Wilson It was an interesting speech. The Presi- Makesa dent addressed the League to Enforce Speech Peace, and said, speaking for the govern- ment, and with expressed confidence that he spoke the mind and wish of the American people, that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed to reahze and secure these three fundamental things that we beheve, to wit: that (1) every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall hve; that (2) the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity that the big ones expect; and (3) that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations. The pith of this deliverance is that, in President Wilson's opinion, the United States is willing and ready to combine with, other nations to secure the peace of the world. That means abandonment of our old poHcy of flocking by ourselves and keeping out of trouble, and of course that is important. The President, like Mr. Taft, Mr. Root, President Lowell, and many other eminent characters, approves and sup- ports the main idea of the League to Enforce^Peace. 279 280 THE DIARY OF A NATION Is Mr. Wilson's speech to be the Democratic plat- form? It is very interesting platform matter, and the mere statement of it by the head of our govern- ment breaks a good deal of international ice. What is the Republican platform going to make of it? Mr. Wilson has taken the bull by the horns. Here is a matter that we have all been tallving about since the war began, and nothing done. Now he asks us, virtually, to back him up in putting the country into an international combination. He adopts as definitely as he can a plan endorsed in a general way by Mr. Taft and Mr. Root, and does it not only ten days before the Republican conven- tion, but at a time when an outbreak of peace talk makes it seem suitable to define the American posi- tion. Will the Republicans set themselves to declare that it is not the American position, or will they talk about something else? It makes for a shifting of interest from the Republican candidate to the Re- publican platform. It leaves the good Colonel walking on his hands. The people who want him, and who go with brass bands to Oyster Bay to say so, want him because they want something done, and think he will do it. But here's Mr. Wilson coming out as an advocate of a great American exploit in behalf of political and economical security for all the world! What will Mr. Justice Hughes think of it? W^ill he, too, want to read the Republican platform before he concerns himself about who the Republican candi- date shall be? Will he, too, wonder in the privacy of his mind what other cards the Schoolmaster may have up his sleeve and what chances he may have to play them? June 22, 1916. y4 FTER all, the Republicans did not nominate f-\ Henry Ford. -^ -^ Nor yet the Colonel. They selected Justice Hughes. There are voters who are disappointed because the Hughes Colonel was not nominated by the Repub- Nominated licans. One such person was asked, *'But were you ready to vote against Wilson.^^" "No," he said, "but my feelings needed expression." There are many voters, undoubtedly, whose feehngs needed an expression that only the nomina- tion of the Colonel would have given them. Not all of them were ready to vote for him, but they had a sense of having suppressed too long their reasonable emotions, and longed to holler for the Allies and T. R., no matter how they voted when the time came. Perhaps the enormous noisiness of the Progressive convention was a reaction from all the holding-in of the past two years. To be sure, the Progressives did nominate the Colonel, but at this writing he has not accepted that nomination, and probably will not accept it. How can he.'^ He wants to beat Wilson. Last time he wanted to beat Taft, and went about it the right way. But to split the Republican vote again is not the way to beat Wilson. The way to do that is to induce Bro. Bill Bryan to get up a pacifico-prohibi- tionist bolt, and seduce the Democratic goats from their allegiance. But it does not look to be a good year for that. Judge Hughes stands for as much of the best and [281 282 THE DIARY OF A NATION as little of the worst that is in the Republican party as any man that could have been named. He ought to give us a high-level campaign. He will be the chief advocate of the cause of the Republican party before the court of the people, and no doubt he will say with vigour and precision all that is to be said on his side. The Tribune says it will support Mr. Hughes be- cause it thinks he will make a better President than Mr. Wilson, but that "certain principles which it believed to be vital in American life" are not to be found in the Republican platform nor in the state- ment issued by Mr. Hughes after nomination. The foremost champion of those principles, it says, was beaten. That will be the mood of many people. It is the mood of our friend above quoted whose feelings needed to be expressed. There is an immense emo- tion in this country in favour of the cause and man- ners of the Allies in the war and against the cause and methods of the Germans, to which Mr. Wilson's administration has never given expression. If the Republicans could have agreed on the Colonel it would have lifted the lid off this boiling pot. But Mr. Hughes will hardly lift it. Neither is there any- thing in the Republican program that offers even so much relief to these bubbling feelings as may come out of Mr. Wilson's endorsement of the League to Enforce Peace, if that is pushed to the front in the Democratic platform. It may be that the war is approaching its end, and that the eight months still left in any event to Mr. Wilson will cover the pre- liminaries of the rearrangement of the world. That possibility makes our whole presidential campaign more than usually a gamble. The end of the war will neither be advanced nor deferred to suit either of our campaign committees. It will come when it THE DIARY OF A NATION 283 comes, but we shall probably know before November whether the war is going over another winter, and that will affect votes here. Next to the war the influence most liable to affect the campaign and election is a possible disposition of the North and West to resume control of the coun- try. The South has had it now since 1913, and has brought out some good men and some very poor ones. Bryan, not a Southerner, was the most mischievous. Daniels, a Southerner, the most offensive. If the West is through with Bryan, and the Republicans and Progressives really get together, Mr. Wilson may be beaten. But he will not be easy to beat, and he will not sit still between now and November. It is a little too soon to say that Kitchener died as Nelson did, in the moment of victory, but something like that is the feeling about him. Nelson did not go till he had done his work, and one feels that Kitchener's work was done also. If anybody saved England it was Kitchener. He had not wasted a minute since the first of August, 1914. Nowadays Great Britain abounds in character, developed and hardened by the war. But when the war began, trained character of the requisite temper was scarce. That was when Kitchener was invalu- able. He had it, and had it ready, and every one knew it. Technically, he was worth a vast deal, for he knew what was wanted and how to get it, and had great powers of application, ^iorally, he was worth, perhaps, even more. He stood up like a beacon. When Britain cried, "We want soldiers," she was able to continue — "but we've got one, any- way." And in Kitchener she did have the nucleus of an army. 284 THE DIARY OF A NATION England is already fairly full of memorials to dead soldiers. From Waterloo to the Boer War the tab- lets tell of the heroic dead. When the present war is over, how many, many more there will be! And the tallest monument of all will be to Kitchener! So it seems now. If this v/ar has produced a third after Wellington and Nelson who was ready at the pinch for England, it was Kitchener. June 29, 1916. IF WE must have trouble by wholesale with Car- ranza, this is a good time to have it. Nothing is happening to us just at this moment in Europe that requires military exertions. We are much worked up about the duty of military preparation Mexico Our ^^^ have lately passed laws that look to Training make a more serviceable reliance of the Field militia. Now it is as though Carranza was offering us a training field for martial exercises. We shall find out, first, what militia troops we can really put into the field, what training they will need, and what equipment can be provided for them. We can practise transportation and all the details of spending money on an army. We can find out how many machine guns we have now% and whether the Mexicans (as is asserted) have several times as many as we have. One reads alreadj^ that Mexico can call out about half a million valuable, seasoned troops. That is doubtless four-fifths exag- geration, but we can find out about it, and that will be excellent practice. Considered as a preparatory exercise, this flurry with Mexico could hardly have come at a more suitable time. A drawback is that by the almanac this is summer, and Mexico is pretty hot. Nevertheless, this sum- mer is the best time for this exercise, because in this period between presidential nominations and election the zeal and patriotism of all politicians are at the hottest. The four months now beginning constitute the quadrennial season of appeal to the people; a season in which no administration that has put its 285 286 THE DIARY O^ A NATION hand to the plow can afford to turn back, and in which no out-party can hope to get in except by show- ing more zeal for the national welfare than the in- party. The campaign needed some enlivenment. The platforms were too much alike to offer any sharp issue of public policy, and it has seemed to be much the same with the candidates. In all platforms the points that are most emphasized are Americanism and preparedness. Democrats and Republicans as represented in the conventions seemed to think alike on these matters, and the contest was to see who could say so hardest. The most interesting novelty in either platform was the Democratic suggestion, transplanted from Mr. Wilson's speech before the League to Enforce Peace, that "the time has come when it is the duty of the United States to join with the other nations of the world in any feasible associa- tion" to insure due consideration for small states, guard the world's peace, and safeguard commerce. That is really a forward-looking declaration. Bro. Bryan says there is nothing in it because "only a ' feasible association ' is advocated, and no association will be found feasible that requires this country to entangle itself in the quarrels of Europe." But Bro. Bill is not a great political influence this year, and his mud-turtle conception of peace by pulling your head into your shell has had its turn and will not be dan- gerous again. Very different is the estimate of Mr. A. G. Gardiner of the London News of this suggestion which has now received the Democratic endorsement. He describes it as "opening a new chapter in the history of civilization" and giving Europe a hope to be saved from recurrences of self-destruction which by itself it cannot hope to avert. This is the biggest idea the conventions have yielded — the idea, not to force peace now on the THE DIARY OF A NATION 287 warring nations before they are ready for it, but to take a hand in world protection after this war is fought out. If we are to count for anything in that direction we must demonstrate that we have in us due ginger and due potentiaHties of destructive activity. No one who cannot demonstrate potential efficiency in destruction can hope to be much re- spected just now as a factor in averting destruction. That is the main excuse for mihtary preparation, which in itseK lacks attraction. There are better ways of having fun than soldiering, and more pro- ductive employments for time and strength, but so long as the world's peace continues to be a balance of destructive energies, we should stand in with due weight to restore and keep that balance. The inconvenience and fatuity and unprofitable- ness of habitual soldiering on any extended scale would dreadfully bore our people and make them want to have it over, and blow up all the war in the world, once for all. They would like military ser- vice no better than France or England like it, and if they once seriously set out to help abate it, the effort may be important. Switzerland drudges through her valuable protective w^ar exercises, and bears the bother and cost of it because she has to. But Switzerland is a little country with big neigh- bours. The United States is not, and never will be, in her position. Mr. Gardiner of London (above quoted), a publi- cist who is perhaps more interesting than authorita- tive, speaks very seriously of the United States. "Let us be done," he says, "with foolish sneers at America. Let us understand that in her the future has to reckon with the greatest power on the face of the globe." It seems to Mr. Gardiner that this country is waking up. He has seen his country, as unmilitary as ours, turn into a nation of armed men 288 THE DIARY OF A NATION in a few months. "And what England has done America can do." But behind our activities he sees "an idea so sane, so full of hope, that distracted Europe might be expected to seize its promise as a shipwrecked sailor a raft — the idea that the power of America should be used to deliver humanity from the toils" and win for the affairs of men the arbitrament not of force, but of justice. Perhaps Mr. Gardiner is dreaming; perhaps Mr. Wilson has been dreaming; perhaps the Democrats at St. Louis were dreaming when they put that "feasible association" plank into their platform. But at least it is a pleasant dream, and a good change from the prevalent nightmares. And all this matter of Mexico works in well with it. Everything that starts us along in our exercises and gets us working together; that counts us, disciplines us, and gets us used to duty; increases the possibility of our com- petence to do a really good rescue job of a tortured world. Mexico is nothing, except that it is a timely task. But for the United States to find its legs and stand on them, and be able to run on them if the time comes, is everything. Every one who is called to duty in Mexico should look beyond Mexico. Mexican rehabilitation is something to be taken in our stride (if we were not so out of form). It is a detail. It is most important now for its possibilities of training. Egypt trained Kitchener; South Africa trained the whole British Empire. Mexican per- versities may train us a little and help our prepara- tion to be serviceable with others to a world dis- traught. It is not, of course, that we need trained armies with which to intervene in Europe, but that unless we make ourselves safe and formidable at home, we can hardly hope to be useful abroad. July 6f 1916, THERE has been a kind of intermission of po- litical discourse. The colleges have been com- mencing, and that has been a distraction. What was necessary to say about the political con- ventions has been said, and at this writing there have been as yet no new disclosures of political attitude. Mr. Hughes has been talking it over with the chiefs of his parties, arranging his summer, bestowing his presence at commence- ment on the delighted university that bore him, and otherwise preparing to get ready. Mr. Roosevelt has been thinking it over, repelling or soothing his more belligerent friends, and (rumour says) pre- paring the letter in which he is coming out for Hughes. Mr. Wilson has been working on his job, which is particularly steady company for him since the Mexi- can complication has been running so much to fire- works. Every one else who takes a human interest in human affairs watches the headlines in the papers to see the last guess about what has happened across the border. Civil War memories are revived in the minds of elderly people by the sight of regiments marching through the streets. Younger people recall the Spanish War, and parents of sons in the ranks wonder how much safer their offsprings are than the recruits of '98. The calling out of the militia is dis- turbing both to business and to society. Youths leave their employments right in the busy season; honey- moons are interrupted ; engagements that were hang- ing fire come out with bangs; weddings are rushed ahead while bridegrooms tarry. In spite of Carrizal, 289 290 .- THE DIARY OF A NATION we cannot take our war prospects very seriously yet, but the mobilization of the militia is a fact and speaks for itself. The armories are full of business; there are men in khaki always in sight. To see so many able-bodied young men diverted from their bread-winning labours is a shock to the thrifty, but one to which it seems high time that we all got used. Let us hope the sight is going to be distributed over the country as evenly as possible, so that the cities of the East may not be the only ones to benefit by it. But it is not possible to spread it out anything like as evenly as might be done in a country which had universal military service. When our Federal Government calls on the militia to perform a national duty it has to take the necessary regiments where it can find them, from the States, that is, that have regiments that are approximately fit to go. In the present case that means predominantly the Atlantic seaboard states. And in those and all other States the militia includes not all the young men of a certain age, but only those who thought they had a military duty to the country and came forward to discharge it. So by our present system the burden of military service falls very unequally. It is sus- tained by the dutiful and neglected by the busy, the inconsiderate, and the selfish. The more credit to those who bear it, but the system is not fair. It in- volves very serious hardships to some men who are called out, and lets off thousands who might much more reasonably go. The defense of the country should not rest on so inequitable a foundation as that. People ask you if you think the war will end this summer. Not being in the confidence of the Al- mighty you don't know, but if the last impression you got from the newspaper was favourable to an early peace you say you think it will. THE DIARY OF A NATION 291 It is a subject on which thought does not help much. In such matters some rehef sometimes comes by betting. The Boston man who bet five hundred dollars even that the war will still be proceeding in November, 1917, should have had odds — don't you think? — at least two to one. July IS, 1916. COLONEL ROOSEVELT declines the Pro- gressive nomination and tells his late Bull- Moose brethren that Mr. Hughes "is be- yond all comparison fitter to be President than Mr. The Colonel Wilson," and that they must all get out and Declines work and vote for Hughes. Some of them will; a good many of them won't. But it is impossible not to smile at the Colonel's recommendation of another presidential candidate. What the Colonel does not know about picking Presi- dents would fill many books — indeed has filled them. The histories of American politics in the last eight years owe much of their content to this great gap in the Colonel's knowledge. He laiows all about birds; all about beasts; a great deal about plants, minerals, geography, and many other branches; he can box the compass, wield the big stick, make peace, make war, discover rivers, fascinate everybody, read everything and remember it all, but he is — and he must admit it — the worst judge of presidential timber that ever lived. He picked Taft, and repented with wails and execrations. To make amends he elected Wilson. No better suited! Taft, in his opinion, was most of what could be bad in the White House, and Wilson is the rest. And now he says that Hughes is better than Wilson! Go to, dear Colonel! You don't know anything about Presidents. You who have never loved but one will never love another. Name all the birds, physic the cat, instruct the growing plants, teach his business to the cop, or the sailor, or the sage, but 292 THE DIARY OF A NATION 293 when it comes to making Presidents, oh, please hold off and let Nature take her course. If we go and elect Judge Hughes on your recommend, what will happen? Whose legs will be sticking out of the ash- barrel back of your house within a year after the next inauguration? The legs, to be sure, of the wax figure of Judge Hughes, sent by him to Oyster Bay as a tribute of obligation and regard. Into the ash- barrel it will go, duster-end first. Can't you just see those poor legs. Colonel? It was a joke that the Colonel should recommend Mr. Hughes, but what else could he do? One may grin — how can any one help it.^ — but it was the only way. And now if the Colonel raises an army and goes off to Mexico to prove that Wilson is a mere lean Taf t and a curse to the country, who can blame him ! To have an army he would need a government license, and it is not certain our present administra- tion would give him one. But Carranza might, and he might be financed by the Bible Society or Mr. Perkins or the Church Missions, as a pacifica- tory influence in Mexico, and undertake as a de- tached philanthropist (with machine guns) details of regeneration which a formal government like ours could hardly compass without a preliminary war. The way to keep order in Mexico is to hire in all the bandits and make "rurales" of them. So Diaz did. But now they're all out of hand, and foraging, every squad for itself, to the ruin of the country. Somebody has got to round them up, hang the worst of the bad ones, and give a chance for useful service to those who are merely hungry. Somehow there ought to be a field for the Colonel's imquestioned talents in Mexico. He is out of a job, and that poor country is clean out of available statesmen. And he is a good man and loves righteousness. July 20, 1916. Y THE mobilization of the militia thousands of valuable young men have been dragged away from employments that were receiving their attention. Their parents sigh; their employers groan; their friends exclaim. But, after all, that is A Respite one good thing this poor Mexican war- fromtheJob scare has done. It has given all these youths respite from their jobs, and one more change of thought and scene before they harden into mech- anisms. Of course, there is danger in being mobilized; risk of sickness, and war perils. But there is also danger from one's job. In this country, certainly, in the last generation, where war has slain hundreds, thou- sands have succumbed to their employment. And, usually, the better a job is the harder it is to keep it in its place. A poor Kttle job that does not pay well and is not in much request, one may pick up and set down at will, and choose intervals in which to invite his soul. But a first-class job usually en- slaves its holder, especially in his earlier years. Young men in employments that have tolerable prospects are tethered with a short rope all the earlier years of their lives. Most of them, unless they sicken at their task, never get quit of it for more than a fort- night at a time between twenty-one and fifty. Everything else in life yields to the job. One needs his pay. The more it is the more he needs it. Pres- ently the wife needs it; the children need it. It must go on, and any real intermission of work is out of the question. All thoughts, all passions, all delights are 294 THE DIARY OF A NATION 295 subject to continuity of employment. If the sub- stance of the employed person degenerates and he takes to drink, or becomes worthless by some other road, then, indeed, he may get relief, such as it is, from the job. But as long as he is worth holding the job usually holds him. There will be gains for the young militiamen for whom the bugle has sounded; gains that in many cases will far more than offset their losses. Sud- denly they have learned that there is a bigger boss in these States than Business — obligations which all the ordinarj^ obligations salute and give way to. Suddenly they learn that there is a mortgage on their time and strength and skill prior to all the liens that it has been the effort of their young manhood to satisfy. Suddenly, after being hard fastened to a task for years, they find themselves shifted from their vocations to what has been their avocation, and with nothing to do but be a soldier. It is an immense change; a snapping of all the little chains that restricted life; a change of thoughts, duties, associations, and physical and mental habits; a chance to develop in new ways; a general revalua- tion of men and things. All men will not profit by it equally, and some will be hurt by it, but taken by and large, it will do lots of good. July 21, 1916. OF COURSE if the Prussian world-smash organization had not excellent abilities of a sort at its command it would not be so infernally dangerous. The arrival of the big Ger- man submarine in Baltimore was an advertisement A Submarine that the Germans are good navigators and Arrives excellent mechanics. And it was an in- teresting advertisement, but we hardly neededit, be- cause a lot of excellent surface-going steam-ves- sels at Hoboken and elsewhere attest the same thing. As a reminder the Deutschland better met a want, for we had almost forgotten that German ma- rine mechanisms had any use except to pose as har- bour ornaments. Aside from that, its coming, though interesting, does not seem vitally important. Such carriers seem only fit for valuables and commodities of small bulk, like dyes, drugs, and mail. It is un- doubtedly a convenience and advantage for Germany to have direct, uncensored communication with these States. Her new carriers may be so increased in size and number as to fetch her appreciable amounts of copper and rubber. If the war keeps on long enough and the British are not able to catch these merchant submarines, no doubt their trade will de- velop very much. Besides everything else, they bring in new diplomatic problems and may get us into controversies with England, and so cheer the Teuton spirit. But all these results are hypothetical. All we know is that a new factor has come into the war that may turn out to be important, but does not look so at first sight. 296 THE DIARY OF A NATION 297 Meanwhile one sympathizes heartily with Thomas F. Timmins, of Pearl Street, New York, who is dis- pleased because a tug named after him hung around for a week to meet the Deutschland and got his name in the paper. He does not like it. He is suing to have the tug's name changed. "I don't want any boat with my name," he says, "to go out helping German submarines." j_.. August 3, 1916. THIS week the great war enters its third year, still going strong and no end in sight. It is not yet popular. People have got hardened to it, and if they are far enough off, like us, most of them take more interest The War in Its in the other details of life than they did Third Year when the War was new, but nobody is pleased with it. Few people were pleased with it when it began. The French were not, nor the British, nor the Rus- sians or Italians or Turks. It did not look good to the mass of the Austrians, nor even to the mass of the Germans. Apparently it did look good to the German general staff, and to some Hapsburgers in Austria, and doubtless to the exalted German House of Hohenzollern. But by now it must have lost even those friends and admirers. Undoubtedly, Kaiser William II, who is fond of soldiermg, has had the time of his life in these two years just finished, but undoubtedly he wishes he hadn't had it. It has been almost too much of a spree even for so voracious a soldier as the Kaiser. Ditto the Crown Prince. He was generally credited with wanting the war and welcommg it with enthusiasm. Maybe so; maybe not; but it seems quite safe to credit him now with sincere regret that the war ever happened. It has been so overdone! It was to have been another six weeks walkover for Germany, and then home with all the world shown, and finally convinced, that to stand up to Germany meant annihilation, and that the all-con- ie98 THE DIARY OF A NATION 299 quering Teuton must have his way, whatever it was, and be roundly paid, and repeatedly repaid, for the trouble of taking it. But alas! Belgium made her foolhardy objection to being a road; France scrambled to arms; such troops as England had ready were ferried over; there came the great retreat, and then the miracle of the Marne, and in six weeks Germany was ditched, and not in Paris, either. The wonder of all that must still impress the mind that goes back to it. It has been a long two years since then; long, fearsome, tremendous years, in which the struggling nations, gathering every power they could command, have shaken the very earth, and filled great areas of it with graves and scarred fields and triple trenches, and peppered the sea with mines. Of course the nations all want peace; want it desperately. And they are striving desperately to bring it to pass. But there is only one way yet visible — to fight out the war. Talk of stopping the war by any other means than by whipping the Kaiser as soundly as he deserves and making it plain that the world wants no more conquerors, and insists upon having law- abiding kings or none, is rank nonsense. So, the Courier- Journal. It can be put less bluntly, but that is the sense of the situation as the third year of the war gets under way. According to our reliable sporting contemporary, the Springfield Republican, the month of July, which opened with odds of two to one against Wilson, has seen them decline to six to ^yq. The reason given is that the Progressives have split, and that Hughes will get by no means all of the Progressive vote. But what about the Roman Catholics.^ One reads 300 THE DIARY OF A NATION an extract from the Guardian, sl ^oman Catholic paper described as the official organ of Little Rock, which speaks of frequent prophecies that the whole ballot of its co-religionists "will be used to punish the Presi- dent for his policy involving Catholic interests." In reading "the publications which seek to form the public opinion of the Catholic body," the Guardian is "struck with the sameness of the sentiment that everywhere holds President Wilson up to scorn." It fears imprudent action from the conventions of the great Catholic organizations in August, each of which, it says, "has a threat for President Wilson, either be- cause of Mexico or because of the European tur- moil." " God give our people sense," says the Guard- ian, which is not pleased with what it thinks it sees, and prefers that Catholics should not join hands to beat a presidential candidate. Most readers, we believe, will receive these intima- tions with surprise. Of course nobody is going to get the whole Catholic vote, but if religious considera- tions are going to influence a larger proportion of the Roman Catholics in the coming election than usual, of course it is interesting. But what is the matter .^^ Carranza and the revolu- tion generally in Mexico, no doubt, and (since most of our Catholics are Irish) some defect, perhaps, of mediation or interference with England in Irish af- fairs. Then there is a good deal of Irish anti-Eng- lish sympathy with Germany to reckon with, though the bulk of the Irish in this country, as elsewhere, are believed to be pro- Ally. What our Catholic brethren v/ould gain, however, by turning out a Presbyterian like Mr. Wilson to put in a Baptist like Mr. Hughes is something one would like to have expounded. Mr. Hughes' ad- vantage is that he has not had to do anything, so nobody is mad at him for what he has, or has not, THE DIARY OF A NATION 301 done. If any Catholic whose usual political affilia- tions would incline him to vote for Mr. Wilson finds religious motives for voting this year for Mr. Hughes, our machinery of election will enable him to vote that way, but whether it will be an advantage to Mr. Hughes to have the Catholic vote added to the Ger- man vote in his support is a more complicated ques- tion. August 10, 1916. WE TALK about Germans, British, or Rus- sians in the mass as though all Germans were alike, all Russians had the same minds, all British the same intentions. In the war the Germans, as fighting men, are still all together in Two Great ^^^ group, and the British in another, and Conceptions the Russiaus in another. For war purposes Opposed ^jjjg grouping of these peoples according to nationality is right enough, but for other purposes it is very misleading. You hear it said, "The Russians are cruel." Where do they get the reputation for cruelty.'* Mainly from the harshness of the Russian bureau- cracy to the Jews and revolutionists. But it is absurd to think of Russia as all bureaucracy. The rising power there seems to be democratic. When we say ''Russia" we are entitled to think of a great mass of people struggling towards education, liberty, and representative government. Neither are the British all of one mind, except about the need to fight Germany. Pro-Germans here cite the war in the Transvaal as an example of the British spirit, but a large proportion of the British disapproved and opposed it, and their influence told in the settlement. There are two spirits in England, and they both have a voice. So, undoubtedly, there are, or will be, two spirits in Germany. There are two great conceptions of government and national behaviour struggling together all over the world. Just now the Allies are all counted on one 302 THE DIARY OF A NATION 303 side in this struggle, and the Teutonic powers on the other. But be sure the struggle is going on behind all the lines as well as between them. A visible division between the forward-looking people and the backward lookers cannot be made even in this coun- try, where both our political parties include both kinds. But the mental struggle never ceases. In every thoughtful mind goes on the daily discussion — Is this way the world is being run the best way practicable.^ If not, how can we better it.^ The great war's purpose is not to determine whether Germany or England or Russia shall dominate Eu- rope, but to settle this question, how to manage the world so that orderly people can live in it. August 17, 1916, THE country was heated to the pomt of tor- ment. Judge Hughes made his speech of acceptance, and the land immediately cooled off. Let us hope the Judge will speak often while the summer lasts. We have sweltered a-plenty. Hughes The specch gave all but universal satisfac- Speaks tion. All the Republicans, except the Tribune, said it was sublime, a real speech at last, and were delighted. All the Democrats said it was vague and empty, and were equally pleased. The exception was the Tribune, which said it did not hammer hard enough in the right place, but would have to do. It was a "Hey, Rube!" speech to rally the circus men to rescue the Elephant. What the Judge said, in real effect, was that the Democrats are Rubes and don't know how to run the country, and have run it very ill. His main com- plaint was about Mexico, where, he said, the present administration had undone everything it had done, and had been always wrong, both coming and going. There is no doubt about it that the Democratic party has abounded in Rubes, including some in office, and there is very little doubt that the Mexi- can job has been entrusted to some unsuitable agents and boggled, first and last, a great deal. Neverthe- less, the country turned cool the next morning after the Hughes speech. Millions of voters who were thankful to sleep again under a blanket remain apathetic about the presidency. There is no real excitement yet about the perils that beset the Elephant, and not very much about those that beset S04 THE DIARY OF A NATION 305 the country. There is no visible, general eagerness for a change of administration, except among persons who have lost power and would like to regain it. Neither is there confidence that a change from Wilson to Hughes would amount to much. The professional circus men would recapture the circus, but there is little assurance that they would run it any more to the taste of the country than they did before. It almost seems as if the voters had lost interest m Presidents and were disposed to look on them as necessary evils. The great war absorbs attention. An issue con- nected with that would get notice, but no such issue has come, as yet, out of the presidential campaign, and as between the candidates a good part of the country seems to be neutral. August 2Jf, 1916, AT THIS writing there is as yet no railroad strike, and probably there will be none. A general strike that would tie ap all the rail- roads would be altogether too bad. It will be neces- sary to avert it, and no doubt it will be averted. Railroad To be sure, this same line of reasoning Strikes ^as employed two years ago to prove that a general European war would be too bad for all hands and could not be allowed to happen. All the same, it did happen, and, of course, the general railroad strike may happen. The fact that produced the great war in Europe was that Germany, under Prussian military organiza- tion, had come to be too strong and too cocky for the safety of Europe. So it is in these days with or- ganizations. They seem to keep outgrowing the limits of their safety. Our various trusts and rail- roads combined and compelled interference, and now we see organized labour beginning to be plagued with this excess of strength which is really weakness. It looks as if the Railway Brotherhoods, by the spread of their organizations, had come to be too strong and too cocky for the safety of the United States. To threaten a general railway strike is simply to take the country by the throat. With ordinary disputes between workmen and operators the concern of the country is hardly more than con- templative, but with a controversy that threatens to throttle it its concern is vital. It makes no difference whether the demands of the men are reasonable or not, the threat to choke the country into compliance 306 THE DIARY OF A NATION 307 with them won't do. The country will no more lie down and let the Brotherhoods walk over it than Europe would lie down and become a road for Ger- mans. If the Brotherhoods strike we shall all be against them. If they strike they will attempt far more than to withdraw their labour from the roads. They will attempt to hold up the operation of properties worth many billions of dollars, and to control those proper- ties until their demands are granted. That won't do. We all want the railway men to have their dues, but we don't want them to determine first what their dues are and then to get them by the pressure of their thumbs on our windpipes. If we should let that happen our windpipes would never stay long clean of thumb marks. But what can the men do except threaten to strike.'^ By what other means have they any chance to get more pay or shorter hours .^ We don't see any other effectual means. The upshot of the contemporary situation is that, since a general railroad strike is intolerable, there should be other means for the men to get what is coming to them. And the most natural means would be to go to court with their demands, and the most natural court to go to is the one that fixes the railroad rates. So it looks as though government were being gently but firmly led by the hand of events to go the rest of the way with the railroads, and having come between them and their passengers and shippers, to come now between them and their hired help. To forbid the roads to raise rates and then deny them protec- tion against a rise in wages is not fair. To permit the roads and their customers to fight out their dif- ferences has been considered unfair to the customers. To permit the roads and their employees to fight out 308 THE DIARY OF A NATION their disputes is unfair to everybody and intolerably inconvenient. So the threatened strike looks like another hard job for Congress, and possibly like a new issue in the campaign, a new subject of discus- sion for Judge Hughes and a new law to be submitted presently to the consideration of the Supreme Court. August 31, 1916. THE killing goes on in Europe at an appalling rate, and accompanied, as is not unnatural, by a rising development of hatred. In the newspapers and in private letters one reads of intense bitterness of feeling between the belligerents. There Rising has been, and is, enormous suffering, appre- Hatreds heusion, and bereavement, and its effect on temper is about what would be expected. Observers who are keen for signs of peace see none at present. It must be remembered that the efforts of the Allies on the West are directed to free France and Belgium from German invaders, and on the East also mainly to recover conquered territory. No doubt, for a price, the Germans would pull out and go home, but the Allies are m no humour to pay a price, except in blood. One reads that the Pope has instructed all the Cardinals in Italy to pray for victory for Italy and her Allies, the explanation being that no peace can be lasting unless the Germans are beaten. It may not be true that this is the sentiment of the Pope, but it is certainly the sentiment of all the Allies. Any one who can produce a plan that would assure permanent peace without first beating the Germans will confer a considerable favour on mankind. Meanwhile the Germans are doing little to win the kindly regard of their neighbours. The execution of Captain Fryatt was not an ingratiating action. The deportation of twenty-one thousand non-com- batants, mostly women and girls, from Lille roused deep apprehensions and indignation. Nevertheless, the newspapers report that these people who have 309 310 THE DIARY OF A NATION been moved from their homes have been well treated, and are better off and better fed than they were be- fore. After Belgium, one did not know what might happen to these deported people, but the evidence seems to be good that this deportation was not an act of frightfulness, but of necessity or convenience, and perhaps, in a way, of humanity. September S, 1916. HAROLD BEGBIE (English writer) says in the Hibbert Journal that Russia has a re- Hgion of love and England a religion of works, and that each needs the other. Everybody in Russia, it seems, is Christian, irre- Eussiathe spective of couduct. There is immense Great Gamble faith, but great latitude of deportment. The Russian harlot says her prayers and goes to church, but does not necessarily mend her ways. In England the sinners shy at religion; in Russia they reach out for it. England abounds in religious philanthropy. In Russia there is scarcely any or- ganized philanthropy, but there is universal faith, and the chief building in every village is the church. In England there are the forms of democracy; in Russia the spirit. Mr. Begbie would have England more Russian and Russia more English. It seems a good idea. If the suppression of vodka is maintained in Russia, conduct will take a great step forward, but the Rus- sians will get rich faster, and be more exposed than heretofore to the various drawbacks of large means, which have not failed of bad effects on English char- acter. Take them by and large, the bad with the good, the crooked with the straight, the English seem to have the best claim to be rated the greatest people now on earth. They combine more power with more char- acter, more vigour with more wise compunctions, than any other people. But the Russians are the rising marvel. For 311 312 THE DIARY OF A NATION goodness, for badness; for talent, for vigour; for number, for endurance, for undeveloped capacity they are unmatched — a vast aggregation of the raw material of human greatness. And they are keep- ing better company now than they have ever kept. They are in with the great democratic countries of Europe in a struggle that could hardly be won with- out them. It is a wonderful thing, this linking of Russia with France and England and Italy against Germany and Austria. One would have expected the despotic governments to hold together, and they tell us the Russian bureaucracy is pro-German. But not the Russian people. They are closer in spirit to England and France than to the Prussian- ized Germany that has come to pass in the last sev- enty years. But of all the huge speculations now being played out on the green table of earth, the greatest gamble is Russia; not her ultimate future, for that can- not miscarry, but her course in the next twenty-five years. It is a remarkable thing that the fear of Ger- many should have constrained to unite France, Britain, and even Japan, in a prodigious effort to develop, at great cost and as rapidly as possible, the immense latent possibilities of the Russian people. September 7, 1916. MR. WILSON is a guilty man; thrice guilty, the Sun says; but, depend upon it, he will be held to strict accountability for his misdeeds, and especially for this latest one of trying to prevent a railroad strike. It is quite of a piece, the Sun says, "Thrice with his two great previous malfeasances in Tested'' the Huerta and Lusitania cases. "Mr. Wil- son has been tested once, twice, thrice," so our good neighbour puts it, and is already holding its breath in anticipation of the coming poHtical fall- down and total cave-in of what was Wilson. Go, somebody, and hit the good though Munseyed Sun on the back and make it resume regular breath- ing. Admitting all these crimes, can the jury be persuaded to convict him.^^ He may get us off with- out a railroad strike by exercise of this same low cunning and delay which has cozened us out -of two nice wars which might have done some of us a lot of good. It will be lamentable, shameful, perfidious, anything you like, but can the jury be made to think so? As to that, the betting men are doubtful. The truth probably is that enough voters to decide the election are perplexed by Mr. Wilson and can't make up their minds whether he is a rogue or a statesman, and will prefer to keep him in office and under observation for another four years till they can come to some conclusion about him. He gets continually involved in controversies and constantly gets both disputants down on him, and that mixes the onlookers all up. The Hj'phens say he hasn't 313 i 314 THE DIARY OF A NATION been fair to Germany, and look to Hughes for their revenge, but the Hon. Robert Bacon, unneutral can- didate for senator, and friend of France, invites support on grounds of general dissatisfaction with everything Mr. Wilson has done. Stand up to op- pose this shifty President, and immediately you are crowded off your feet by the inrush of opponents who want to beat him for reasons precisely the oppo- site of yours. There is very little comfort fighting such a man. You can't do it and keep in good company. The Tribune says that Col. George Harvey has dis- cerned the seeds of ruin in the President he made, and is coming out for Hughes. But what company for George ! Daniel in with the lions is nothing to it. Who will be sure ever again whether Col. Harvey is, as heretofore, a Democratic prophet, or a carnivo- rous Republican .f^ As for the railroad fight, nothing final has hap- pened at this writing, and it looks as though both contestants were too exliausted by presidential con- ferences to go on with the war. It has got around in acceptable form that what the Brotherhoods are after is a lot more pay disguised as the eight-hour da^^ The disposition to have more pay and shorter hours of work, if possible, is so communis omnibus that we all have to sympathize with it, and the only drawback to letting the Brotherhoods have theirs is that the railroads say they can't spare the money unless we, The People, will raise their pay in turn. Speaking for us, the President says to the railroads: "Certainly we will raise your pay, too, if necessary, but please try the plan out so as to see how much it costs." Then the railroad men go away sadly and confer with one another, and the Brotherhoods wait around, deeply bored, and wonder whether The People will THE DIAEY OF A NATION 315 stand the rise, and all the Hughes papers cry bloody murder and insist that Doctor Wilson is at it again and dosing the patient with prohibited dope. It makes one laugh. The strike may be on before this paper gets to its readers, but it looks as though it had been talked to death. The time to strike is while the iron is hot. It cools during discussion. Moreover, to settle this clash of railroad employers and workers looks more and more like a highly ex- pert job. It won't be settled properly with a club. Neither is this a time when settlements by force are regarded with much favour. So one hopes the dis- pute will be talked out. If any one had had author- ity to summon the threatening contestants in Europe twenty-five months ago and make them talk it out it would have been very hard to have a war. September 21, 1916. MR. WILSON thinks he is a good President, and, no doubt, a good many voters are of his opinion. Mr. Hughes now describes himself as a friend of labour. " Out to Beat Oi course he is. the Rich" Both candidates are just now the friends of almost anybody who has a vote. Neither candi- date can do or say anything just now that is not interpreted to be a bid for votes. The campaign is warmmg up a little, which is cheer- ing to the sporting brethren, but it is not really buzzing yet. When the Hughes people get Wilson convicted of a long line of unpardonable offenses they have to meet the question, "But would Hughes be any better?" They reply, "Lots better, of course," but that is pure surmise. About the only thing that is certain about Mr. Hughes is that, if elected, he would not have Josephus Daniels in his Cabinet. In other particulars — in dealings with Mexico, in deal- ings with Europe, in dealings with labour — he would probably put on his rubber-soled shoes and tread softly, one step at a time. Miss Ida Tarbell has come out for Wilson, and Gifford Pinchot has come out against him. A gain for Wilson both ways. Miss Tarbell says Mr. Wilson is the first real pro- gressive leader this decade has produced. Mr. Pinchot says such things as this : We have all heard him (Wilson) tell Germany publicly that she would be held to strict accountability; and have learned 316 THE DIARY OF A NATION 317 afterward that he had actually let her know secretly at the time, by the mouth of his Secretary of State through the Austrian Ambassador, that what he said he did not mean. There is not enough truth in that to do Mr. Wilson harm, and there is enough truth in what Miss Tarbell says to do him good with the progressives. The truth is that Mr. Wilson comes more and more under suspicion of being the greatest American Progressive since Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was an exceedingly clever man, especially in the use of language, and he was out to beat the rich. Mr. Wil- son gives more and more the impression of being out on the same errand. Whenever there comes a choice of courses, as lately in the threatened railroad strike, he shows himself the same man who was president of Princeton, and at outs with most of the nobility and gentry on his Board of Trustees. He is an astute, shifty, formidable person, driven all the time by an innate and sleepless indisposition to knuckle down to the power of money or to any one that stands on it. He is perfectly willing to use the rich to beat riches and aristocracy. The Jews are not well received in the polite world in this country, and are readier than Gentiles to beat it up. They do not mind incurring the disfavour of the powers of society, because dis- favour is all they will get from them, anyway. Ob- serve Mr. Wilson's sympathetic relations with power- ful Jews! Who is nearer to him, politically, than Mr. Brandeis, Mr. Morgenthau, Mr. Untermeyer.? Why these close bonds with these rich, dexterous, and able Israelites.'^ Because none of them has any unmanly weakness in favour of our current Gentile civilization and the bankers and lawyers who run it. They are all quite ready to scrap as much of it as is convenient, and so is Mr. Wilson. The rich, as representatives of the vested interests, are always and instinctively obstacles to political 318 THE DIARY OF A NATION progress. They are beneficiaries of the existing order and don't want it all mussed up. Also they have a say about the conduct of life and the manage- ment of affairs, and they don't want to lose it. The only power that can stand up against theirs and keep their grip on the human windpipe reasonably loose is the power of the people. Accordingly, ambitious spirits are always reaching out to grasp and use the power of the people. One can't complain of that. People who spend their lives having all the money they can and en- trenching themselves in it for the defense of their power, comfort, and ideas cannot reasonably snivel at other people who accumulate power in some other form and use it to blow the money power out of the ground. That is the way of the world, so human life goes on. Jefferson fought the Federalists, including most of the rich and respectable people in the coun- try; Jackson fought the United States Bank; Lincoln fought the slave-holding aristocracy and all its allies; Roosevelt fought — here and there — the trusts, the railroads, the bankers, off and on, but Roosevelt is an aristocrat and has compassionate bowels for his own kind. But Mr. Wilson is not an aristocrat. He is a Presbyterian professor. He has fought, according to his lights, against the exploitation of the bodies and energies of the common people to defend the interests and investments of the prosperous. At the start he would not fight in Mexico, to defend American investors; he would not take sides with Rockefeller in the Colorado strike; he helped reduce the tariff; he alleviated the domination of the money trust; he would not get us into the war, even after the Lusi- tania, though he did risk doing so, and though all "society" wanted to get in; and he would not side with the railroads against the Brotherhoods. THE DL\RY OF A NATION 319 So you see his bent. You may not care for a mongoose for a household pet, but a mongoose is a bully little animal to kill snakes. Mr. Wilson is a kind of presidential mongoose. The question about him is not whether he is pretty or havS afPectionate and endearing ways, but a question of snakes; how many, how big. This man is for the mass of the people. He really is a great democrat. He is a good hand to nip the tariff cobra, the banking adder, the railroad boa- constrictor when that is necessary. It is his nature to fight these creatures. It was not Roosevelt's nature to fight them. He could slash around among them on occasion, but he enjoj^ed their society. His notion of government was always government by aristocracy. Miss Tarbell is right. Mr. Wilson is a real Pro- gressive with the necessary bite, the indispensable wiles, and a remarkable gift of public discourse. Mr. Gifford Pinchot, an excellent gentleman with a gift for trees, is a political baby beside him. If we are running short of snakes and want to keep some to stock our zoos we ought to turn Mr. Wilson out. If we think the desires of the mass of the people are gettmg extravagant and that talent, leading, light and thrift are in danger of missing their wage, we may prefer Mr. Hughes. If we think organized labour is going to grab more than its due, that may seem a reason for bouncing Mr. Wilson. But, after all, the moment organized labour be- comes strong enough to ride over Congress it ceases to be the people and becomes a detail of privilege and a snake, as dangerous to the mass of us as any other, and as sure as any other to be nipped just where the neck begins by a conscientious presidential mon- goose. 320 THE DIARY OF A NATION Government is a sad affair, and being President is a sad duty which some one must undertake. Nobody continues very long to make a good job of it, but, other things being equal, a man with four years' ex- perience at it ought to do rather better than a green hand. Progressiveness is a very different thing from prog- ress. Progressiveness invariably consists in tak- ing something away from large means to bestow it upon small. But progress often adds to him who hath. It fights catch-as-catch-can and is much less scrupulous than progressiveness. There will come times, of course, when progress will sweep progres- siveness up into a pan and pitch it out of the window. October 12, 1916. THE leading events from week to week just now are speeches and political discourses published in the newspapers. September went out with a brisk fusillade of them. Doctor Wilson at Long Branch lambasted the Republican party, Doc- Does the tor Roosevelt at Battle Creek attacked Country Doctor Wilsou, Doctor Eliot put out, in the yvant the 4 ,i ,' i • p i • i Rejmblicans AUatitic, uis reasons tor keeping along Back? with Doctor Wilson instead of trying to swap him. Doctor Wilson is making excellent discourses. His address to the Young Men's Democratic League on September 30th was a real entertainment. Every- body knows that the Republican party went to smash four years ago. Doctor Wilson explained why it went to smash, and why it is quite unnecessary at this time to make any serious attempt to resuscitate it. It is now compomided, he said, of elements absolutely con- tradictory to one another. It has, therefore, no policies. What its leaders want is to get control and then determine policies in private conference. "A party that merely wants to get control does not have to have any policies." So Doctor Wilson said, and doubtless that is why there has not been more meat in Mr. Hughes' speeches. He cannot afford in this campaign to speak from his heart or have vital opinions. He does not represent a party that has vital opinions or vital intentions. He merely repre- sents a great hope — the hope of the gentlemen who know it all, who, as Mr. Wilson says, "have the abso- lute by the wool " and are sure that they ought to run 321 322 THE DIARY OF A NATION the country — that by hook or crook, by aid of the Germans and all the Adullamites they may be able to squeeze back agam into the seats of the mighty. Can they do it? Does the country want the Old Guard back, want Warren back as Chairman of Military Affairs in the Senate, and Smith of the Navy Committee of the House, and Smoot, and Penrose and all the tariff makers? Does it want them back badly enough to turn out an administration which. Doctor Eliot computes, has accomplished more that is worth while than the five preceding Republican adminis- trations? It may be that a skilful combination of animosities and aspirations will do the job, but if so, what is the Old Guard going to do with Hughes, and he with them? The process of co-ordinating the incongruous will not be rapid. It will take a good while to find out who's who, and what to do and how to do it. It will be a swap from a going machine to a lot of un- assembled parts, and not parts that have ever been together or were ever meant to go together, but a junk-shop collection gathered from several wrecks. It is not a change to be contemplated with much complacency with the world in its present condition. President Wilson said at Long Branch : From this time until the 7th of November it is going to be practically impossible for the present administration to handle any critical matter concerning our foreign relations, because all foreign statesmen are waiting to see which way the election goes, and in the meantitue they know that settlements will be in- conclusive. It is bad enough to wait until election day, but to wait until the fourth of March would be seriously worse, especially with none but seventh sons able then to forecast what sort of policy would succeed the one election had repudiated. THE DIARY OF A NATION 323 If the Colonel were running it would be different. If lie were elected we should know at least where we were. The Colonel changes his mind as freely as any one. He changed it about a third term, about Taft, about the impossibility of the Progressive chickens ever coming back under the Republican hen, but still we have a record of the Colonel, and can measure him^ and he will usually disclose what his mind is at any given time. He disclosed a good deal of it in his speech at Battle Creek. In so far as he could, he even put back in the Republican platform that discarded plank about Mr. Wilson having "destroyed our influence abroad and humiliated us in our own eyes." He sailed into Mr. Wilson good and plenty, not disguis- ing that he thought him a coward, a peace-at-any- price man, and an artificer of calamity. And he ex- plained what Mr. Wilson ought to have done in several instances by citing the exploits of a gentleman who was President just before Mr. Taft. But what did it all come to? It was as though he said, "Mr. Wilson is not a bit like me. He has not done what I should have done, his mind does not work as mine does, his conception of the proper regulation of human affairs is totally different from mine, and he has not got my grit. I am right, and he is dead wrong. Gentlemen, vote for Hughes!" But why Hughes, Colonel? Why vote for Hughes because Mr. Wilson is so un- like you? Do you really think Judge Hughes is materially more like you than Mr. Wilson is? Oh, no. Colonel. You can't think so. Leave it to any impartial observer. Leave it to Mr. George W. Perkins if there is any appreciable resemblance to you in Hughes, and whether your advocacy of 324 THE DIARY OF A NATION Hughes is not almost certain to turn out another horrible tragedy of misplaced political affection. If the Colonel could have wound up his Battle Creek speech with the demand "Vote for me; I am the Only One," there would have been real point to it, but there is nothing for him but futility and the seeds of disappointment in his idea of electing Hughes. It makes one feel that, after all, the Colonel is only an amateur in politics. He does not seem to understand people. He said at Battle Creek: I ask you to test the character and courage of Mr. Hughes and Mr. Wilson by comparing their attitudes as regards the demands of the railway Brotherhoods, which culminated recently in the miscalled eight-hour legislation at Washington. Let us do it. Mr. Wilson pitched in, took a big responsibility, stopped the strike, and made the rail- roads all mad by getting Congress to pass the experi- mental Adamson bill. Mr. Hughes, who was under no bonds of silent submission, lay low and uttered never a bleat till the bill was passed and the danger of a strike averted. Then, when insured against all dangerous consequences, he came out bold as a lion and proclaimed that the Adamson bill was the limit. In this case, then, certainly the prize for caution must go to Mr. Hughes. Mr. Wilson took some chances and great responsibility. Mr. Hughes carefully avoided taking either. It is obvious that the Colonel would be promptly disappointed in Mr. Hughes as President, and no true friend of Hoosevelt should accept his suggestion to vote for Hughes. He says that for a year and a half he tried conscientiously to support Mr. Wilson and never reviled him in all that time. That seems a long time, but for purposes of comparison the period when he was absent locating the River of Doubt, or occu- pied writing it up, should be deducted, just as the THE DIARY OF A NATION 325 period of his absence in Africa and Europe, lion- and king-hunting, should be deducted from the elapsed time between his retirement from the White House and the first vocalization of his displeasure with Mr. Taft. He gave the impression at Battle Creek that he had put up with Mr. Wilson longer than he usually puts up with Presidents, but it may be that he has forgotten to deduct his absences from the country, and so reached a mistaken conclusion. For of course it is no credit to any ex-President to put up with a successor when he is not in the coun- try. The truth seems to be that the Colonel is not so progressive as he supposes, but belongs to the old school of government that believes in knocking the block off of any nation that seems contumacious. He seems to suffer from that "insidious passion for prestige," which, M. Guyot says, has gotten Europe so deep into war. Mr. Wilson is very little affected by this ailment, and has indeed quite a valuable gift of meekness. But to the Colonel meekness is abhor- rent, and always was. He does not seem to under- stand about it at all, which is odd, because he is very kind and has a sense of humour, so you would expect him to understand everything. But, somehow, he is not on to meekness. It is too bad. And that is one reason why we must never ex- pect him to like another livmg President. As for Mr. Hughes' courage, no doubt he has cour- age, but after all it was he who gave as a reason for coming out for a constitutional amendment about woman suffrage his fear of the bitterness of the wo- men's fight for suffrage. Is it then so much less timid to advocate a constitutional amendment to avoid the bitterness of a fight with women, than to urge an ex- perimental law to avert the bitterness of a general railroad strike.'^ October 19, 1916. ISSUES continue to bubble up in this campaign and remind us that it won't be over until election day. There comes a brand-new big one as Life goes to press that may put Mexico and the Adamson bill quite out of people's heads. German Submarines Submarines are sinking ships off Nantucket off Nan- lightship. They have bagged nine, and iucket whether the incoming steamers will arrive and the outgoing ones dare sail, nobody knows. There is a compounded drink which, when all the ingredients have been put in, is brought to efficiency by plunging into it a red-hot poker. Something like that has suddenly happened to the campaign, for this outbreak of German submarines on our coast is an astonishing intrusion of hot metal. It makes all that Mr. Wilson has done go for nothing in the breathless concern about what he will do next. Stocks have broken under the shock; shipping in- terests are palsied; the chances of steamers due are matters of anxiety. The Colonel promptly announces that this is just another consequence of Wilson. Whatever the President does he will have, no doubt, the whole opposition pack yelping at him. As a maritime in- cident what has happened is notable. As a political incident it is crammed with explosives. It looks as though at last Mr. Hughes may have to discuss a crisis in the making and say what he would do. Heretofore he has looked back and criticized. ' 326 THE DIARY OF A NATION 327 Possibly this audacious German exploit will bring into the campaign the great issue of the year — our relation with Europe. October 19, 1916, A GENTLEMAN in Cincinnati who says he has been pleased with Life for its opposition to Prussianism has written to cancel his Lined Up Subscription because Life's attitude to- Withthe ward Candidate Hughes, seems to him. Hyphens ^q^ ^old. That's all right, of course, but what is hard to understand is how an anti-Prussian such as he is should insist upon herding us all in with the pro- Prussian Germans to beat Mr. Wilson. For our part we don't like the company this Ohio brother is keeping. The Germans in New Jersey beat the administra- tion candidate in the primaries and compassed the nomination of Martine, one of the most absurd men that ever sat in the Senate. In Texas there are counties that are almost solidly German and they went almost solidly for Colquitt the anti- Wilson man. In one of these counties Culberson, the administration candidate, got three votes. In another he got sixty votes to eight hun- dred for Colquitt. Culberson won easily because there were not Germans enough in Texas to beat him, but the German counties there told unmistakably the sentiments of the German voters. Everywhere in the country the Germans are out to beat Wilson and elect Hughes, and not for American reasons but for German reasons. If Mr. Hughes is elected it will be the German vote that will do the job. He will get it because Wilson has not satisfied the Germans. He has not stopped 328 THE DIARY OF A NATION 329 the export of munitions, he has not broken yet with England, and he has not pussy-footed with the Hyphens. He has been content to keep our government neutral. He has not insisted that it be pro-German. Therefore the Hyphens are all stacked up to run him out of office, and they may succeed. Certainly Mr. Hughes is not going to prevent them. Nothing is permitted to escape him, even in his most melted moods, that could detach a German vote. How do the pro-Ally and pro-American Republi- cans feel about that? How does the Tribune feel? How does Colonel Roosevelt feel? How does Mr. Bacon feel? Does he think he got many German votes in the Republican primaries? How does Mr. Wickersham feel — Mr. Wickersham who was for sending home the German ambassador in short order after the Lusitania was sunk? How do several million other Republicans and Progressives feel about hitching up in this fashion with the Hyphens to elect a candidate whose best bower in this campaign is the German vote and whose utmost care is to say nothing to scare it off? Our Ohio friend has had his remittance returned to him and his subscription cancelled. That much Life can do for him and does it willingly. More than that it offers him its sympathy because of the pre- dicament in which he finds himself, an anti-Prussian, convinced that so he should be, and yet lined up with all the Hyphens in Cincinnati to beat the can- didate that the pro-Prussians don't want. October ^6, 1916, ' MR. HUGHES as the Republican organist is doing his best, and nobody in the audience ought to shoot at him. The Evening Post, on October 14th, confejssed elaborately, to more than a column length, that his Hughes Is Campaign had been a woeful disappoint- Faithful ment to his friends and admirers. Its testimony to that effect made the most interesting newspaper editorial printed on that day. The Hughes failure, it said, was something like a calamity; a public loss that we have suffered, a national asset melting away under our eyes. Really, we had not thought of it quite in that light. At the time we stopped reading the Judge's speeches he seemed to be saying most of what there was for him to say. What was he put up for.f^ To unite the Republi- cans and win votes to fetch them back into power. Certainly he has been faithful. He has got the Republicans and Progressives not exactly blended, but tolerably mixed together, and he has faithfully mentioned and reiterated such things as seemed adapted to persuade the independent voters to vote them back into office. Is he Charlie Chaplin that he should be a public entertainer? Not at all. He is Charles Hughes, lately a judge; now a candidate, and constrained by the conditions of his new employment to avoid topics and ebullitions which would detach from the Republican ticket more votes than they would entice. Of course Mr. Hughes was out of practice; of 330 THE DIARY OF A NATION 331 course his mind for six years had been closely applied to cases in law, to the prejudice of his agility in con- temporary political assault; of course he has had be- hind him two different parties strongly bent only four years ago on cutting each other's political throat, and still advocates of opposed political theories; of course he had to be neutral in the big war issue or lose more votes than he could win by taking either side. All these circumstances were handicaps to him as a campaigner. He had been chosen can- didate because he had been out of the political melee for six years and had not disclosed any opinions. Not having known opinions made him available, but in order to make that availability productive in the campaign it was necessary to continue to a large extent the condition that produced it. Not even as a campaigner was it safe for him to divulge more than the minimum of specific convictions. Only on one subject could he let himself out. That was Wilson's incompetence and the mess he has made of govern- ment. Under the circumstances, has Mr. Hughes really done so ill? He has worked hard and talked as much as he could on the narrow range of subjects consistent with prudence. His latest speech at this writing was one at Lincoln, Nebraska. He denounced the sug- gestion that a vote for him was a vote for war. "I am a man of peace," he said; "I do not desire war; I do not desire petty wars; I do not desire war in Mexico. I believe in correct policies." He said Wilson's Mexican policy was not correct; that the Adamson bill was "gold-brick legislation" (as very likely it was), and that our present prosperity was a spree of economic intoxication. His disapproval of Mr. Wilson was hearty, and he said nothing offensive to the German vote. What would any one have the good man say? 332 THE DIARY OF A NATION If the amalgamated Republicans had a better can- didate, where is he to be found? Is Roosevelt making more votes than Hughes? Probably not. The Republican managers don't seem to dare to let the Colonel loose except in selected political jungles. Taken by and large, Mr. Wilson's record is very strong. Mr. Hughes would find it hard to tackle even if he was a real political Charlie Chaplin. In most cases he does not venture to sav that he would have done something different from what Mr. Wilson did, but merely that he would have done it differently. Hughes thinks, Roosevelt thinks, Root thinks, that they could have bettered the Wilson manner, but in the European concerns they seldom venture to de- nounce the Wilson fact. And when they do they are not convincing. They thunder in the index of the Democratic administration; they join the Wall Street Journal to warn the country against the risk of "four years more of the cowardice, incompetence, and mischief of the past" four years, but when one searches for a fact the single one forthcoming is a promise to raise the tariff. It has been a hard case for Mr. Hughes. The administration which it has been his errand to dis- parage and denounce has, on the whole, been very able and successful. It has had blemishes; some bad ones; but most of them rather absurd than serious. The main thing that has made it unpopular with many generous-minded people has been the fact and manner of its neutrality in the great war. There have been times since August, two years since, when many Americans have felt that we ought to be in with the Allies. Some still feel so, and one honours their sentiment, but the much more common disposition is to be reconciled to keep out, but indignant at being kept out. THE DIARY OF A NATION 333 The Republicans, in view of the general sentiment of the country, cannot afford to profess to want to get the country into the war, but they can afford, and do offer, a violent indignation at the manner of our keeping out. They are not a bit more likely to get into the war than Mr. Wilson is, but they are much freer to howl over the disgrace of the incidents of our neutrality. The voters seem loath to believe that there has been any such disgrace, or that any reluctance of the country under Mr. Wilson's leadership to do its inter- national duty will be cured by the defeat of the man whom German sentiment condemns and the election of the man whom German sentiment favours. The Germans are not solicitous about the honour of the United States. Their concern is for the advantage of Germany, and they are out to beat the man who, they think, impeded it. Mr. Hughes conciliating the German vote and talk- ing about the "miserable weakness and diplomatic misconduct" of the ins, is not a particularly inviting figure for the indignant to rally round. But we doubt that any Republican could have done any better. If the Judge is beaten it will not be because he is a weak candidate or a bad campaigner, but because the Re- publican party and policies are still nebulous and feeble, and the Democrats have not yet been foolish enough to warrant a change. Mr. Hughes has played the hand fairly well, but he has had mighty poor cards. November 9, 1916, AS ONE reads the last outcries of the campaign the impression strengthens that this issue of ^ Life will find a large proportion of the voters trying to forgive themselves for voting as they did. There were very persuasive reasons against voting End of the for either candidate, and most of them were Campaign presented. Most people voted as usual ac- cording to their hereditary political bias, without much regard to these objections, but a great many voters did regard them and were swayed first this way and then that as one or another phase of the situation came uppermost in their minds. There probably never was a presidential election in this coimtry in which so many voters voted for a man they didn't want. Thousands of votes were cast for Wilson not from any pleasure in Wilson but because the alternative was to vote for Hughes. Thou- sands of votes were cast for Hughes not from plea- sure in him nor from any desire to bring back the old Republican party into office, but because there was no other way to beat Wilson. So, however the election has gone, the country is not going to break out into any violent blaze of joy. The proper candidate this year would have been the Archangel Michael. People, uncertain themselves about the rights and wrongs of an unprecedented sit- uation, wanted a leader who they were sure was right, and who had the powers and the courage to make us all do what ought to be done. St. Michael not being available, we have had to make a choice of merely human and erring intelligences. But it has been a 334 THE DIARY OF A NATION 335 trial, and the path ahead looks so crooked and so stony that there will be many hesitations either to congratulate ourselves on the result of our efforts, or to congratulate the winner on having won. But at least all the flubdub and uproar and charge- and-countercharge of the campaign are over, and that is basis for a little solid joy. Whoever is elected, we can now get back to the business of living, and if Mr. Wilson has won we can adjust our minds at once to a prospect that will cover four years. If Mr. Wilson has won we know more or less what to figure on. If Mr. Hughes has got it we must flounder go vernmen tally for three months, and that w^ill be trying. But whoever is in we have got to take what comes, and most of the time have got to back the govern- ment. That being so we would do well, perhaps, to think more of ourselves as the nation and not so much of our government. After all, the mass of us and not the President is the main thing. It makes a difference what our government does, but it does not make all the difference. Other governments deal with our government, but they keep one eye on us. We are power, money, industry; we are public opinion, and in the long run we must be reckoned with. We have just delegated the most conspicuous of our governmental powers for another four years, but we have not delegated all our powers. We shall still help to run the country, and though we shall seem to be pretty helpless, and will get mighty little credit for assistance, we shall help and w^e shall count. ' What brought Mr. Wilson's stumbling and in-' experienced steps along through the last two years without disaster? We did. We are the horse-power that brings the national car along and keeps it moving when the going is bad 336 THE DIARY OF A NATION and the guidance uncertain. Look at all Mr. Wil- son's mistakes and delays — for good measure, take the late comprehensive Republican estimate of them — what is it that has overcome most of the ill-effects of them? What but the steady chug-chug of the en- gine which is us.^ We are a good engine; let us give ourselves that praise. Bad driving may send us to the repair shop, but we are a good engine, and if Mr. Hughes has got in he will have the advantage of our excellent ener- gies just as Mr. Wilson has had it. If Mr. Hughes makes mistakes we will still chug-chug up-grade and over the hill; if he gets off the road we will chug-chug back into it again. Presidents are all sorts; govern- ments are all sorts. Our national specialty is inex- perienced rulers. If they get us in wrong we are to blame, for we prefer them untrained. But we can stand some monkeying, for we are a good engine. Excuse these inflated remarks, but certainly it is time to make them. Whoever is elected President, come, brethren, let us feel better. Have we not had humiliation enough for the time being .^ For three months the Republican spell-binders have been telling us, as freely and frequently as they dared, that we were a disgraced people, delinquent at home and despised abroad. It was mostly a lie, but it has been rubbed in to beat the truth. Now, either the chief factor in our alleged disgrace has had notice of dis- missal, or he has had a vote of confidence and orders to go on. Either way, for the very land's sake, let us feel better and hold our heads a little higher. Whoever is elected, we have a great part to play in the world, and should make bold at once to play it, and give due backing and more to whomsoever is elected to lead us. If the Republicans are coming in, let us hold them to the task of repairing the injuries which they represent to have bruised the honour of the na- THE DIARY OF A NATION 337 tion. If the Democrats stay in let us insist that they justify their calling, and their guidance of the in- comparable mechanism which they are trusted to steer. Praise be, the weary job of electing a President is done, and we are out of the doldrums and can make sail again and get somewhere. Who is chosen mat- ters less than we think. What matters is the honour of the United States. Whoever has been chosen its guardian, let him look to his job. November 23, 1916, )iND so, after all, the Celestials won, and the /-\ Carnals went back to grass! -^ -^ It was a wonderful election; so close, so protracted, and (as yet) no fighting about it. It is a great credit to us to go through the agitations of so Mr. Wilson vital a matter so peaceably. A disputed Wilis Out verdict to drag on in the courts would be a very much greater misfortune than the defeat of either party. Happily, nothing serious in that line threatens. Victory, after hanging by the eyelids for three days, seems to have dropped into the Demo- cratic lap, there to abide. A very great advantage of having Mr. Wilson win is that his new administration begins at once. There will be changes, doubtless, on the fourth of March, but there is no need of waiting until then to start any- thing the administration has in mind. We have been invited of late to agree with the opinion that Mr. Wilson has gone off in quality since he was first elected, and is not the man he was four years ago. We prefer to believe that he is a man as good, physi- cally and mentally, as he ever was, and much better qualified to manage our concerns, especially our for- eign concerns, than he was in 1912. He knows far more than he did then; facts, as he has admitted, have put to rout various of his theoretical opinions; he is relieved of the embarrassment of having an un- suitable Secretary of State, and he comes out of the election with an accession of prestige which will enable him to put increased power behind any policies that he concludes to pursue. He is a much bigger man in ooo THE DIARY OF A NATION 3S9 Europe, and even in Mexico, than he was on Novem- ber 7th. Reviewing and discarding its opinions based on the early returns on election night, the Tribune declared two days later that the later returns constituted the most remarkable personal indorsement that had come to a Democratic President since the days of Andrew Jackson. The problem of Election Day, it said, was not whether Mr. Hughes or Mr. Wilson would be elected, but w^hether the public would accept or re- ject Mr. Wilson. It finds that it accepted him, and finds him consequently "the strongest man politically in the nation; a man to be reckoned with because of his hold upon popular imagination and public ap- proval." That is a very interesting opinion from a paper that has cursed out Mr. Wilson's performance with so much heartiness as the Tribune has. It does not necessarily imply any change of view as to Mr Wil- son's past policies, but it admits, with a candour to admire, that he has got the goods, got them to an extent that the Tribune finds astonishing. So he has. The country is behind him ; will be more and more behind him if it can see its way. He has the cards, and if it is in him to play a great game, there is nothing to hinder. There is very little need for him to think more of domestic politics. He can give his whole strength to the needs of the country and of the world. The great need of the country is for something to elevate its self-respect. It is not satisfied with its dealings in Mexico, nor quite with its attitude towards a distressed world. 'J'he miseries of Mexico distress it; the miseries of Europe wring its heart. It would willingly be used to abate them, if this leader whom it has indorsed could find a way. S40 THE DIARY OF A NATION That is Mr. Wilson's present problem. For weeks, and by necessity, the government has been marking time, while the dice have been rattling in the cups. Now the throw has been made. On with the game! Mexico, especially in the northern provinces, is in a bad case. There is a whole new set of U-boat smashes to pass on. The signs are that something important will be done in both cases, and, happily, now, whatever is done, it cannot be said that it is done to affect votes. The only motives for action that are now left to Mr. Wilson are the good of man- kind and the honour of the country. m November SO, 1916. HAVING re-elected Mr. Wilson at so much pains and expense, we are surely warranted in lying back, at least till Congress meets, and letting him run the government. If the gentle- men who write the leaded leaders in the papers are Eoves relieved for a short space of the charge Renewed of mankind, they will doubtless be glad to have a little spell of rest. After their vociferous labours in the campaign they are entitled to roll in the pasture lot and eat some grass. This is the hopefulest season for us that there has been since the battle of the Marne. Perhaps Life is oversanguine, but it has a feeling, which must be widely shared, that our dismal period of moral prep- aration is coming to a close and that the administra- tion, taught by tremendous experience and immensely strengthened by the issue of the election, is going to lead the country in paths by far more satisfying to tread than those we have had to lag in these last two years. The Mexican dispute, the U-boat inquiry, and the railroad-labour controversy have each the possi- bilities of a fight in it. They are all coming along to- gether, and we may get into all three fights at once. But nobody seems worried. All these troubles, if we should get into them, are within our means, and in each of them, if we got in, we should simply be mak- ing good on our plain obligations. And, of course, that very strength of our position will probably keep the peace for us. There is no fight visible in the Belgian deportations matter, no matter what we do, but it is the most ap- 341 S42 THE DIARY 0¥ A NATION pealing complication of all. Our government is bound to hear what Berlin has to say before taking any action, but the facts seem plain enough, and it may be that it is a case of Opportunity coming back and knocking a second time at a door that did not open in 1914. Belgium is one of the few remaining places where the present German Government can have its way completely, carry out its ideas of civilization, and make manifest how it would deal with the rest of the world if it got the chance. Whenever we begin to say to ourselves that the Germans are a brave people, and their methods have much merit, and that we ought to think better of them, along comes some new demon- stration in Belgium of the terrible incompatibility of the Prussian conception of the uses of power with the standards of behaviour that the civilized world ap- proves. It has been the awful fate of Belgium to be the object-lesson by which mankind has been taught the nature of the Prussian spirit. Perhaps some day the surviving Belgians will rejoice that the lesson was so thoroughly taught, but meanwhile the instruction is hard for all of us to bear, and we hope fervently that it is nearly over. As for us in this country, things somehow seem to be coming more our way in the great world mix-up. The aspect of Europe towards us seems to be changing. We seem to get more and more necessary, and to be regarded with less displeasure as Europe leans on us more and more. Conceivably we are going to be waked up and become of visible use to the world. There are those in Europe who think our reelected President is one of the remarkable characters — per- haps the most remarkable — of his time, and who look to see him make himself and the nation that is back- ing him extremely useful to the world. As to that, THE DIARY OF A NATION 343 we can tell better after we know. We have had a good many pipe-dreams since the war began and this may be another. But certainly the election has left Mr. Wilson in a position of great possibilities. Nothing like the prestige it has brought him would have accrued now to Mr. Hughes if he had won. December 7, 1916. THE best Christmas present the world could have this year would be peace; the next best, a new insight into values. The war makes one feel that many things men and nations have striven for these many generations are Christmas, trash, and that humanity needs new light, 1916 or a far better application of the light it has. There would not be this great war if enough people had been able to distinguish between what is valuable and what is not. It was due to a craving for material possessions and for world power to command them. One of the richest and ablest countries brought it on in a calculated attempt to impose its doctrines and its wishes on mankind, and take an increased toll from civilization. Resistance to this infatuate purpose has filled the earth with ruin and sorrow, bringing down on the chief offender an appalling retribution, bearing hardly less heavily on the instruments of justice, and involving millions of lookers-on whose wish was to keep out of it. A terrible job it has always been to break a strong nation of the craze for world dominion, but in the end it always has to be done, and is done. World dominion is so clearly foredoomed to crack and perish that one would think that human wisdom would re- ject it, and yet for thousands of years, ever since history began, peoples have had crazes to get it, or have been dragged into pursuit of it by their masters. The present plight of the world is due to a breach of the tenth commandment, and it is so bad as to make one wonder wdiether anything, whether life 344 THE DIARY OF A NATION M5 itself, is worth coveting. That wonder is the like- Hest symptom of improvement that appears. When enough people are agreed that life, as they know it, is not worth while, there is apt to come a concerted movement to improve it. Such a movement we may hope to see follow the war, and we must expect to see the war go on until most of the people concerned in it have got new convictions about what is valuable in this life. Every nation in Europe, most of all the great Culprit, is gradually changing its estimates about that, and edging towards the valuables that are compatible with peace on earth, and away from those which necessitate war. Europe's mind is gradually clearing, but our minds in these States are very confused. A great many of us are conscious of a dull dissatisfaction, to account for which we offer all manner of conflicting reasons. It appeared the other day in the election that about half of us believe that the trouble is that our govern- ment has not been equal to the situation, and the other half think that if our government had not been unusually able we should have been feeling much worse than we are. We do not agree as to what is good for us. We were never so rich, and seldom so disgruntled. We are by no means desirous to be in the war, and yet we are far from satisfied in staying out. We are getting in quantities of money, and are resigned to that, but have horrible misgivings that Providence is favouring us in the pocket at the cost of our souls. Some of us fear that the war will pass without our getting any adequate discipline. Others fear it will not. Many of us believe that we need dis- cipline more than money, but it is hard for a nation to embrace discipline by choice, and we fear that it will not be forced upon us soon enough to save us. Realh% the pith of much of the dissatisfaction with our Presi- dent is that he has not laid us on the altar of sacrifice. 346 THE DIARY OF A NATION He won't, if he can help it. No President will. It is not good politics to lay one's country on the altar of sacrifice if it can honorably be avoided. No one has the right to do it. We seem to lack troubles, but that is a want that is usually supplied in time, and we may get ours at any moment, and even in our Christmas stocking. But it is interesting that we should be so prospered and so disturbed about it; so fat and so unsatisfied. It argues a general suspicion that the spiritual things are the most worth, and no extent of material benefit makes up for spiritual shortage. We are invited to make ourselves so strong in arms and navies that Fate will not be able to call us to account. The ad- vice seems sound, but however perfectly we follow it. Fate will call us to account. Incessantly we sow; inexorably we reap; nor armies nor navies will pro- tect us from the harvest if our sowing is bad. Ex- ternal defenses are no protection against internal disease. Rules cannot save us, because circum- stances change and rules fail. But a sound spirit will save us, if not from mistakes, at least from destruction. That is our great need now, the leading of a sound and wise spirit, that is not rash nor truculent, but will not shrink from hurt or danger in a just cause; that will not lean on force in a bad cause, nor lack it in a good one; that loves his neighbour, big or small, and will help him in his necessity. That is the spirit of Christmas, and not by any other will the world improve. December SI, 1916. LLOYD GEORGE'S elevation to the top of the British Government is a wonderful thing. -^ Our papers tell us he is dictator in all but name. England needs a great man, for if the war is to be won for the Allies, England must do better. Lloyd France can hardly do much better than she George j^as douc. There is room for improvement in Russia, but the difficulty of achieving it is great. But England knows she must do better, is sure she can, and, with the help of Alfred Harmsworth, has picked out Lloyd George as the man to make her do it. We all know Lloyd George, and don't have to be introduced to him. We know he is the most active dynamo in England, and we all know how very much he differs from the typical British statesman. A good many bad ailments can be cured in England by a man who has enough brains and enough power. Lloyd George has brains — a wonderful understanding of his fellow-creatures, and sympathy with them — and he has marvellous energy, and now he has power almost without limit. England's Irish question could have been cleaned up long ago if any one who was com- petent had had the power to do it. Probably Lloyd George will do it. England's rum question could have been cleared up just as readily. Lloyd George is expected to attend to that, too. And the labour questions as they may come up, and so on, and on, and on, to and through the great question of getting all the power of England into the war. In the Temple Church (near the law courts) in London, on the Sunday after our election, the Master S47 348 THE DIARY OF A NATION of the Temple, when he had finished his sermon, paused and said to his astonished congregation that since it appeared to be quite certain that Doctor Wilson had been elected President of the United States and so seemed certain to be called to take part in the peace negotiations which would befall during the next four years, "I would ask 3^ou to pray for him for a few moments, that he may have the divine guidance in all that he may do." Surely that showed a wise spirit in the Master of the Temple. Here, now, is Lloyd George, chosen to cure the shortcomings of England, to strengthen her thews and extend her reach and help her to win a great peace that will bring new hope to a battered world. It is a load of Atlas that rests on the little Welsh- man's shoulders. Are any of the brethren hereabouts prayerfully inclined.'^ There is their man ! December 28y 1916, OF COURSE it was news of great moment that Germany had proposed negotiations for peace, and seemed to be ready to divulge the terms on which she would be content to stop fighting. Her proposals have been received with enthusiasm Peace by the pacifists and all the shorts in the Proposals stock-market. We have had prodigious slaughters of war-stocks, at which persons not implicated have looked on cheerfully. Otherwise no progress has been made up to this writing. Through Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, Germany's suggestion has been transmitted without remarks to the Allies, but in advance of that we have had a wild whurroo of comment from all quarters, belligerent and neutral, to the general effect that Germany must not hope to pull the leg of Europe. All the same, one would like to know what is Ger- many's present notion of a basis for peace, and also what the Allies will take to quit. 349 January ^, 1917. TO ONE of the fabricators of Life there came on December 12th the following letter: I wonder what would shake you up. Nothing but a few tiles from a falling building, I guess. . „, I'd like to see the inside of your mind. Do you, for Are We • . j • u • • e • j.- Ossified^ mstance, admire heroism m any lorm or is your cautious approval shadowed by a pious wish that such things may never be necessary? You are what I call a coward; at least in talking to two old gents on Sunday I told them they were saying just the sort of things you say. " So you think that half the men in America are cowards! " says one of them. Yes, indeed I do, more than half of them — they look like cowards. When they talk about the ad- ministration they cower. The thing is really the result of an extreme slowmindedness which cannot believe in danger, or doesn't trust death; a loss of the instinct of self-preservation; like the foolishness of animals which have been protected till they have no wits left, and let you knock them over with a stick. They clutch and shudder, but don't react. The inability of the American mind to grasp our relation to the war is, no doubt, simply a great, human, inevitable fact, due to our remoteness from Europe and to the tuppenny nature of our interests (either business or causes). We all seem to be under a spell. I've always felt this in America. The war only brings it out. The American is an ossified man. Here is a letter, timely in invective and useful, possibly, to receive. Its immediate recipient is glad to share it with all the American family. What ails us, brethren; what ails us? Are we ossified men.^ Are we like the Pribyloff seals, among which the 350 THE DIARY OF A NATION 351 furhunters walk and knock the selected bulls on the head with a club and carry them off? We have lived for two years and a half with the most cruel and destructive war in history, a war that by implication threatened and imperilled every nation on earth, yet we are scarcely any better fitted to protect ourselves, or help a weaker brother, or strike a blow for righteousness, than we were the day the war broke out. We have voted some money for ships that will be several years in building; we have tried out a bad plan of soldier-making and demon- strated its insufficiency, and we have had some camps in which volunteer students have had short periods of training in the duties of officers. Besides that we have manufactured some ammunition, and that is about all. We are not all fools or uninformed. Thousands of us perfectly appreciate that we have no means to make effectual resistance to any first-class power that takes a notion to attack us. Our little army would not furnish thread to sew our garment of defense. Our navy has been for nearly four years in the hands of an unsuitable man whom our President is too tender-hearted, or to proud, to displace. The ships we have cannot all be manned because men w^ill not come forward to man them. Our army cannot be in- creased to the limit set by law because the necessary men will not enlist. Our militia regiments are melting away after their service on the border. Bel- gium put to torture shrieks to us for succour. WTiat can we do.^ Germany breaks her submarine agree- ments with us. What can we do? As long as the war engrosses Europe we are safe enough, though impotent except to hurt our friends ; but now peace proposals have begun, and when peace comes and the armed nations have leisure again, who is going to protect us? 352 THE DIARY OF A NATION Are we ossified? Are we like those subjects of the Roman Empire who saw the empire crumble and the legions withdrawn, and hadn't it in them to do any- thing but flutter and die? January Ji, 1917, 4FTER all, our President has been lucky. /•\ The natural fate of an intervener is to •^ ^ catch it from both sides, whereas Mr. Wilson, up to this time of writing, has only caught it from one side. Mr. Wilson The Germans and their accomplices Asks for are pleased with him. They want the Peace Terms y^^j, j-^^ gl^^p ^j^^ seem not to care who knows it. That is the most impressive fact in the situation. The Germans can fight a good while longer — so the military sharps all tell us, and so it looks — but they don't want to. They have killed enough folks, invaded enough countries, smashed small nations enough, destroyed and defiled villages, chateaux, libraries, and cathedrals enough, and im- pressed their peculiar racial characteristics sufficiently on all the neighbours, and now, though they have not yet finished any considerable adversary, they don't mind admitting that they are tired, not to mention hungry, and would like to quit. They are much obliged to Mr. Wilson for suggesting it is time for all the belligerents to say what they are fighting for, and they are willing, it seems, to disclose the price they would be willing to pay, or accept, for peace. But the Allies, if they also are obliged, are all able to conceal their feelings. The British seem to feel in- jured by Mr. Wilson's action, the French attribute to him the kindest motives but seem not to think he has benefited them. The neutrals, we believe, except the Americans, approve his action. Holland and Switzerland in S6n 354 THE DIARY OF A NATION particular have had all the war they want. The Americans incline to divide into two groups, one which thinks that anything Mr. Wilson does is right, and the other, that it is wrong. In this case the latter group seems to have gained in size, and the former one to have shrunk. But after all, it may be that the office to which Mr. Wilson has been dedicated by Fate is to be the light- ning-rod of the belligerents. If it is ordained that their fires are to run through him into the earth, that is a destiny that Ajax would have envied him. It may be that after the Allies have heartily cursed out peace-at-this-time, they will begin to feel better about it, as folks sometimes do after they have thoroughly eased their minds. At any rate, this is Mr. Wilson's individual enter- prise. If it adds to his reputation, that will be pleas- ant; if it hurts his reputation, we can bear it. Repu- tations are no great matter in this world at this time. They swell like bubbles and burst like them. For our part we think rather better of Mr. Wilson for being willing to take chances with his. And there were good reasons why he should make a move. The Belgian deportations afford one reason; the German submarine exploits another. The sub- marines have been getting out of hand again. What is our government to do about it? That is a question that must crowd Mr. Wilson very hard, and make any means that would settle it indirectly look par- ticularly good to him, and well worth trying. The situation is not one that leaves him a choice whether to do something or nothing. He has got to do some- thing and the only question is — what.'^ If he can re- lieve the situation by acting as a lightning-rod it may save him from very complicated efforts to dis- charge the duties of international policeman. When Mr. Wilson had to meet a very difficult rail- THE DIARY OF A NATION 355 road situation and came out for the eight-hour day, he was reviled for knuckling down to the Brother- hoods. The Brotherhoods were pleased, but it does not look now as though he had knuckled dowTi so much. Gentlemen, Germans and others, who think now that he has knuckled down to the Germans, may not hold to that view in the long run. First impressions of Mr. Wilson's expedients do not always hold good. January 11 ^ 1917, THE fact about the Belgian deportations is that Germany, having committed a great crime, is obliged to do her utmost to get away with it. Belgium hangs about her neck like a dead fowl tied to a chicken-killing dog. Alas for She cannot get rid of Belgium. Germamj! Belgium has done her infinite harm. Bel- gium exposed, so that no one could mistake it, the atrocious spirit in which Germany went into the war. Her lands invaded in contempt of plighted word, her cities occupied and under ruinous tribute, her villages and factories pillaged, priceless monuments and treasures in some of her cities wantonly destroyed, her non-combatants shot in rows, her children mur- dered, her women worse than murdered — that is Bel- gium. German-swept, as all the world has seen her, and wept and suffered at the sight. The Germans know very well what their first dreadful outbreak into Belgium cost them. They know the hideous handicap their Belgian frightful- ness put on them. But what can they do? There is Belgium on their hands. It is ruin to stay in; it is ruin to get out. They have tried to placate the surviving Belgians and to scour their own reputation among the neutral nations by using more humane methods of occupation. They have not tried to ex- terminate their captives by wholesale as their allies tried to exterminate the Armenians. They have not fed them, but they have permitted their friends to do so. But there the Belgians are, six or seven millions of them, suffering what they must, unmoved by Ger- 856 THE DL^Y OF A NATION 357 man blandishments, fed by the Relief Commission and waiting for deliverance ! This recent deportation of the men by the hundred thousand is a sign of Germany's extremity. She has lost four million men, and the rest of her available man-power is very busy staving off destruction. She needs workmen. There are the Belgians in her power, and she feels that she must use them. Very likely she feels also that the more Belgians there are in Germany and the fewer in Belgium the safer it will be for her when the end comes. So she is transferring her hostages to a safer pen, and at the same time in- creasing her productive power. And of course in doing it she professes to be governed by benevolence and the desire to do better by her captives than is pos- sible while they stay at home. But no one is de- ceived by that. The chain that joins the slave to his master always binds both. Belgium has got Ger- many just as tight as Germany has got Belgium. Germany has got to a point where she needs to use to the uttermost all she has. Since she has got Belgium she must use the Belgians, no matter how much worse it makes her case appear before the world or how much it revives the horror of her first as- sault. Let us be sorry for Germany, chained to her crime and bound to drain its cup of bitter consequences. Belgium in her power is her greatest liability, a bucket in which the pitch for her defilement is perpetually renewed. Belgium ever forces her to act, and leaves her choice of two alternatives, both ruinous. "From the moment when Prussian cannon hurled death at a peaceable and inoffensive little country, I realized," said LloydlGeorge, " that a challenge had been sent to civilization to decide an issue upon the settlement of which will depend the fate of men in this world for generations." S58 THE DIARY OF A NATION That was it. When Germany burst into Belgium she defied civilization. But civilization took the challenge up. Alas for Germany ! Januafy 11, 1917. PEACE efforts have not yet got anywhere. The German suggestion that Germany has won a war that was forced on her and is ready now to stop fighting has been coldly received by the Allies. They call it "a sham proposal, lacking all substance The Allies and precision," and not so much an offer Reply of peace as a war manoeuvre. A mere sug- gestion without a statement of terms to open nego- tiations is not, they say, an offer of peace. In their joint reply they set Germany right about how the war began, remind her of many painful things that have since happened, of which she makes no mention, charge that her overtures are a calculated attempt to bring the war to end to German advant- age, and "refuse to consider a proposal that is empty and insincere." "Penalties, reparation, and guaran- tees " are what the situation calls for as the Allies see it, and they devote the last quarter of their reply to posting Germany on the bill-board of the nations as the treacherous despoiler of Belgium, who, "while proclaiming peace and humanity to the world, is de- porting Belgian citizens by thousands, and reducing them to slavery." It seems a very nice reply and correct in all its par- ticulars. It is the answer of the French seventy-five to the German seventy-seven — more of the same sort of exchange that is now well on in its third year of transaction. It is such an answer as was to be ex- pected, and brings very little help to peace prospects. Of course the Allies are not going to negotiate with a German statement of the causes and status of the war 859 360 THE DIARY OF A NATION as the basis of negotiation. Of course they are not going to have an armistice; nor a conference unless they have assurance beforehand that the conference will be worth while and its outcome probably satis- factory. What outcome would be satisfactory to the Allies is expected to be disclosed in the next chapter of this in- teresting peace serial, to wit: the reply to Mr. Wil- son's circular letter. It will be noticed that there would hardly have been a "To be continued" at the end of the first in- stallment of the peace serial unless our President had taken his pen in hand. People who are interested in the next chapter will please give him credit for it; people who are bored by it can blame him. For our part, we are glad to have the story go on. It is a little change from the war narrative that we have had so long, and with which every one, belligerents especially, must be sated. It is not wrong of us to hope that there will be peace in Europe before every- body there who is worth killing is dead, nor even wrong to hope that our President may be an instru- ment of assistance to that end. A great many people are in a state of chronic con- tempt for Mr. Wilson and displeasure with all his works, and when he practises to put a little salt on the dove's tail, they can't stand it at all. All they see in his efforts is the attempt of an objectionable char- acter to increase his own reputation by using the power of the United States to pull off a bad peace un- timely. They can't bear to have him get credit for anything; they think he has got already far more than he deserves, and the idea of his getting any more is gall and worm wood to them. It is doubtful if these brethren get it right. Heaven knows what goes on inside of Mr. Wilson's head, but it is perfectly easy to account for all his conduct by THE DIARY OF A NATION 361 other motives than self-seeking. What would the good man want of any more fame? He has lived a life stuffed with glories. He was pitcher on the Princeton nine, an instructor at Bryn Mawr, man- ager and coach of the Wesleyan football team. Presi- dent of Princeton, Governor of New Jersey, and is now President of the United States, with a second term in his pocket that he has not yet even nibbled. Why should he want the Nobel prize .^^ Why should he be chasing renown.'^ He hasn't cellar-room now for the glory he has salted down. We don't believe that Mr. Wilson is taking chances and playing busybody in order to make a name for himself. He looks much more like a man in a great place in a great world crisis, who is simply doing his best to make good. Perhaps he will, perhaps he won't; perhaps he will lighten the woes of the world, perhaps he will prolong them. But he is the leader and official representative of American democracy. If he can help the world he must do it, and if he can't it is better that it should not be for lack of trying. One would rather have him blmider than not try, for by adventure and mistake one may get somewhere, but not by being afraid to act. No doubt these overtures and statements and talk and back-talk are the beginning of the end of the war, but the space between may be anything you will, and may last according to taste and opinion. The great disseminators of prognostication in these days are the gentlemen who write the headlines in the newspapers, but about peace and when it is coming they know no more than the bankers, the tipsters, the diplomats, or the General Staffs. If any one knew just how much there was to eat in Germany it would help in calcu- lations, but nothing more than a probability could be computed even from that. We think Germany may be starved out, and we know the xAllies won't: we 362 THE DIARY OF A NATION know that time will tell, but not how much time, nor who will be left to listen. The venerable prophecy of Mayence, widely circulated two years ago, says: *' William the Second shall be the last King of Prussia and shall have no other successors, save a King of Poland, a King of Hanover, and a King of Saxony." The excellent prophecy of the Antichrist says: "Antichrist will sue for peace many times, but the three animals (the cock, the leopard, and the white eagle) will not be permitted to cease fighting so long as Antichrist has soldiers." Both these prophecies wind up the great war with a terrific final set-to in Westphalia. They cannot be considered reliable tips in this sceptical age, but they are as good as most of those that Wall Street uses, and they have lasted much better, and they serve a useful purpose in get- ting one's mind off the newspapers and away from the delusion that the net residue of many columns of con- flicting statements is information. Nobody knows how long the war will take to end, nor what will be the details of its ending, but most of us believe now that Germany cannot win, and that the only thing left for her to fight for is favourable terms. There is a good deal of talk about the alienation of American sympathy from the Allies, and some of our brethren in Europe, especially in England, seem wor- ried about it. The Tribune asserts that the mass of American opinion still holds to the idea that the evacuation of Belgium and France is essential to a just peace, but that it does not and will not go beyond that, nor "accept the British view that the war is a war for civilization and that the first essential to peace is the crushing defeat of Germany." There may be some truth in that. Our people know Belgium and France, but when it comes to the conflict of British, German, and Russian interests in THE DIARY OF A NATION 363 the Balkans and Asia, they are beyond thfe range of their information, and are slow to take sides. Their attitude, then, as the Tribune sees it, amounts to this : that in concerns that they understand they are pro- Ally as much as ever, and in concerns that they can- not fathom they are neutral. The war has changed, and Americans need to re- study it. That need may justify the President in asking for more light from the belligerents on their intentions. As much as ever the Americans detest the Prussian theory and method in human affairs. In Belgium they see it and hate it, and they will hate it elsewhere if it is revealed to them. January 18, 1917. THE most impressive detail of the world-view just now is the strength of Great Britain. She has had time to let out all of her tucks, and she has let them out until, nowadays, she makes B itish ^ truly wonderful showing. Strength For two years we have talked about and German France, and held up our hands to won- ^^^^ der. There was plenty to wonder at, and there is still. We haven't wondered so much at England, because the readiness and efficiency of her navy were taken for granted and excited no surprise, and her ready-made army was killed in the crush in the opening exercises of the war. That army has not yet got credit for all it did, but no matter. For some time after it was gone there was not much to ad- mire England for. Her ships were on their job with- out much noise, but it was France and Frenchmen that were standing off the Germans. Great Britain was beating the drum from London to Melbourne, making soldiers everywhere, making mistakes almost everywhere. Her calculations had missed out. She had thought that her navy made her safe and would constitute a sufficient contribution to any war game she might enter. She found out overnight that it was not a sufficient contribution to this game with Ger- many, and that besides ships and guns and money she mu^t furnish men by millions to fight on land. So she went about to make soldiers out of the raw material, with Kitchener to show her hoAV. That was truly a desperate undertaking — to make offhand a huge army to fight the immense levies of 364 THE DIAEY OF A NATION 365 Germany already trained, seasoned, and equipped! Of course without France, the wonderful stop-gap, it couldn't have been done. But as things were, it was done. It is two years and a half since that work began, and for two years England has been pouring out fighting men. She has sent out enough to have had nearly two million casualties; she is credited now with two million soldiers in France, and with three million more at home or elsewhere, and more mak- ing. And all the while she has been making munitions in enormous and increasing quantities, building new ships all the time, and raising and distributing bil- lion after billion of pounds sterling to be put where they would do the most good. And she keeps up trade, too, and being supplied with naval shells beyond her needs, allows one of her factories to put in a low bid to furnish some for our navy. Clearly, this breed of men that planted the United States has not yet gone to seed. The Pan-Germans computed that it had, but that was one of the German mistakes — perhaps the great- est of them all. The war in its present phase is largely between Germany and Great Britain. But it is to the advantage of civilization that it is not wholly so. Germany has swallowed her allies. If she should win, her will would dominate them all. But England has not swallowed her allies, and cannot, nor would if she could, and her will will not dominate them. She is fighting for her own hand, of course, but it is not a mailed fist. January £5, 1917. SINCE the war began we Americans have had all the emotions possible. We had them over Belgium, over Rheims cathedral and Louvain, over the Lusitania, and all the other submarine murders, over Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, American over poison gas and Zeppelin raids, over Apathy crimes without number against women, children, wounded men and prisoners; over Poland, Servia, and Armenia. About all these things we have had all the feelings possible, and expressed them as we could, mainly in words. Individual Americans who were free to act on their war impulses, and have had money or time to give, have given both freely. But the great mass of our people have been held to their necessary wage earning, and have kept busy at it. Out of our feelings as a nation not only has nothing more important than inaction come, but even our national capacity for indignation seems to have been exhausted. We have grown torpid, and look on, nowadays, dull-eyed at Europe, and sigh at the cost of eggs, and read the stock market. If Gabriel should sound his trumpet it is hard to say how it would affect us. One can imagine an astonished archangel muttering to himself, "Is it im- possible to start anything in that country .f^" Some- body once described Maine as so splintered up into sects and burnt over by peculiar beliefs that religion was as good as dead in it. So it is, a good deal, with us as a nation about the war. We are a graveyard of dead fervours, torpid even about ourselves. If in- vited by invaders to stand up against a w^all and be 366 THE DIAEY OF A NATION 367 shot, a good many of us might line up ahnost with a sense of relief. It would be something at last that we could do. Even our ardour for mihtary preparation is touched with apathy. We think we ought to arm and exer- cise for self-defense, but we are going about it with long rest-intervals, and leisurely discussion, and all the deliberation of a ship provisioning for a voyage around the world, hoping meanwhile that in the end it won't be necessary to start. We are a fire that is going out, leaving nearly all the fuel unbumed. It is a very curious condition. "All Wilson's fault," every second man will tell you. "If Roosevelt had been President the war would have been over months ago." As to that, no one can tell, nor whether we should be better off ablaze than as we are. But this one sees, that the majority of our people do not regret to be alive, unwounded and not in the war, nor even repine because they are not more excited and more of a factor in what is going on. They are not comfort- able, but at least they are not dead. Whether you like it or not, this is an impressive fact. If it was the Day of Judgment, and the mass of the Americans declined to attend the exercises, it would seem to be an affront to a great historical occasion. So American apathy seems an affront to war. But what is there, really, to say.^^ Most of us busy people would prefer not to attend the Day of Judg- ment, and would not, unless subpoenaed. We should be satisfied to read about it after dinner in the papers, and note what prominent people got. Most of us live in a state of servitude, linked to our employments and unable to break away from them unless there is a great convulsion that sets all the servitors free. Most of us could not get into the war unless our gov- 368 THE DIARY OF A NATION ernraent put the country in. It didn't, and we stayed out. In so far as we are apathetic about it, that is a condition produced by repeated overdoses of sensation combined with inactivity. We can't help it. We can only apologize. Our friends abroad have not been carrymg on the war for our edification, and they won't stop it be- cause we are inattentive. But they won't like our attitude. We are the most important section of their audience, and to have so many of us looking at our watches may seem to them to reflect on their per- formance. Not at all; not at all! No offence, gentlemen! What you see in us is just human nature. We can't help it. The performance is unparalleled, but we confess we are almost as anxious to get it over as you are. We can't get into it, and you can't get out of it. You have to fight, and we have to look on. We don't like our end of it much better than you like yours. For heaven's sake don't think of us as happy in neutrality. We are not happy. We are in the fry- ing-pan, and the pains of that position make us at times look enviously at you who are in the fire. We may yet be rekindled. It is not likely, but it is conceivable, and, at least, we are dry fuel, charred in places already, and the easier, for that, to start. January ^5, 1917. THE President's note inviting the belligerents to define their aims was popular in Germany and with the Hearst papers and other pro- German papers here. It was respectfully received by the pro-Ally papers here that support the ad- Q ^^^^ ministration, and denounced as meddlesome Avmds by most of those in the opposition. But A Show- Germany, though welcoming the President's down invitation, has not accepted it. Neither are Germany, nor pro-Germans here, at all pleased with the Allies' reply. "We are annoyed," says Mr. Hearst's American, "that such childish stuff should have found a place in a document that must be historical and that purports to deal with the real issues of this tremendous world war." And the Kaiser feels no better about it. "Our enemies have dropped the mask," he says, "and admitted their lust for conquest." All the same, the Kaiser, as yet, avoids a show- down. The Allies have been sufficiently explicit in declaring their intentions, but the Kaiser sticks to shopworn generalities which have lost even their glitter. " Our glorious victories and iron strength of will," our "burning indignation and holy wrath," " this glorious spirit of freedom in our brave people's hearts," will "give us full victory," he says, "over all the enemy's rage for destruction." So he whistles to keep courage up, but does not say what he wants. Perhaps he is grateful to Mr. Wilson for giving the Allies a chance to disclose the enormity of their desires, but it does not sound so. But Lon- 369 370 THE DIARY OF A NATION don, having read the Allies' reply with satisfaction, seems quite pleased with Mr. Wilson for calling it out. The New York Times^ correspondent declared (Jan- uary 14th) that whereas three weeks earlier Mr. Wil- son " was anathema throughout allied Europe, to-day he is stronger and America is stronger in England and France than perhaps at any time since the sinking of the Lusitania.'^ It looks so; and all because the Allies made so candid and so polite an answer to inquiries. Post- poning particulars of compensations and indemnities until "the hour of negotiations," they want the restoration of Belgium, Servia, and Montenegro, with indemnities; the evacuation of invaded territories of France, Russia, and Rumania, with just reparation; the reorganization of Europe guaranteed by a stable settlement framed to suit the people concerned and guaranteed against unjust attacks; the restoration of provinces wrested in the past from the Allies; libera- tion of Italians, Slavs, and Rumanians from foreign d( mination; relief of populations subject to Turkey and the expulsion of the Turkish empire from Europe. Besides these simple needs, a new Poland to be erected from designs by the Czar, and the liberation of Europe from " the brutal covetousness of Prussian militarism," but by no means the extermination or political disappearance of the German peoples. Certainly they could not well have asked for less, and what Berlin and Mr. Hearst and other sanguine souls expected them to say is a good deal of a mys- tery. Now it is for Berlin to define hopes and run boundaries around aspirations, and then, possibly, we shall get forward a little towards guessing how near the earth comes to being large enough to satisfy its claimants, and how manv more of its inhabitants must perish before its territorial insufficiency is cured. THE DIARY OF A NATION 371 Meanwhile, nobod^^ mentions Mesopotamia or posts a claim to Bagdad, the Allies being too polite as yet to say the Germans can't have them, and the Kaiser too modest as yet to point out that "Gott," who knows a pious man when He sees him, has awarded them to him. Neither does any one expound with much con- fidence the present state of Russia, where, behind the war, revolution and reaction continue active in the ring, and round follows round without a visible decision. As for our own concerns (so far as they are de- tachable from the affairs of Europe) , the observer of the big puddle must sympathize with a looker-on at one of the local ones, who writes: "In regard to questions that have arisen ... I merely sit still and watch with interest the vagaries of the human mind, and derive experience, if not solace and en- lightenment, therefrom." So it is when we regard the war; so it is when we think of our own matters, as to which there is always a lot to do and a lot being done, but which constantly furnish the regardful mind with astonishments. February 1, 1917. ZIFE^S good friend Jonas Picket writes from Boston to complain that Boston does not understand Wilson. He does not glory in that fact. He grieves at it. "What is the matter Establishment with the man?" he says. "He irri- vs.^ tates me as a man does a boy when he Dissent j^^g j^qj- niake the boy understand him." The world that I live in nowadays is a narrow one, and has its faults, but it has its virtues, too. Almost nobody in it likes Wilson. There is plenty of opposition to him that springs from small motives, but there is also much of another kind. We do not understand him, and we resent it, for we think well enough of ourselves to believe that we are not to blame for it. We bring some thoughtfulness, some reading and the political capacity of our kind to a consideration of the great tasks he is engaged in, and some charity, too, and a great deal of hot air, and then — then he gets our goats, and we don't like it. Certainly that is a hard case. It deserves sym- pathy, and will get it abundantly up and down the eastern edge of the United States, and appreciably in the other parts of the country and, indeed, of the world. For everywhere in the world people who think of the war and the future think just now of President Wilson, and try to understand what man- ner of man he is and what he is up to. And thousands of such persons are in just about the state of mind that our Boston correspondent describes. They can't understand him, and are mad about it. For what, in the pith of it, is this good Boston bro tiler's complaint.'^ What is it but the sore grievance of Establishment against Dissent? The 372 THE DIARY OF A NATION S73 old Beacon Street Boston that our good friend writes out of is the best stronghold of political and social Establishment that our country has left; better even than Philadelphia, because not so big, and set off a little farther to one side. This old Boston has char- acter. It has manners, traditions, fidelities. In any crisis of affairs, social, political, or sportmg, if you don't know what is right you can find out by applying on Beacon Street, a few doors from Joy. The old Boston knows what is right for all occasions, can cite precedents for every case, and, moreover, intends that right shall be done. And that is where this bitterness toward Doctor Wil- son comes in. The old Boston is urgent for the right, as far as it can see it. It will make it prevail, or know why not, and not count cost nor grudge sweat or blood in the effort. There is nothing m the country that is handier to have with you when you start out with a billy to beat up the devil than recruits from Boston. And here is a great world crisis, in which the devil is being beaten up quite unusually, and Old Boston can't get in to do anything adequate because Mr. Wilson is President and won't start anything. He does not see things as Establishment sees them. He has brains; that is admitted: but they are chapel- going brains. Doctor Wilson, like Lloyd George, is a political Dissenter. He has got the goat of the Establishment, and of course the Establishment is perplexed and sore. Establishments never like Dissenters. The Angli- can Establishment hated Cromwell and was not pleased even with Wesley. Nevertheless, in the progress of human affairs Establishment is bound at times to go afield and Dissent to have its turn at the bat. Doctor Wilson is not a puritan as Cromwell was, but he derives out of that school of rehgious dissent 374 THE DIARY OF A NATION whicli Cromwell stood for, and which gave back- bone to most of the American colonies. A minister's son and himself a ministerial character, his actuating motive is probably to do his share to Christianize the world. But Christianity made the common man important, and our modern democracy has grown out of it. The use of Establishments is to control and guide the common man, but the intention of such a democracy as Mr. Wilson stands for is to qualify and help the common man to control the Establish- ments. So between Establishments — whether they are the old Republican party, or the old traditional Boston, or the corporations, or the banks, or the la- bour unions — and Mr. Wilson's democracy there are bound to be clashes and misunderstandings. It has been said, and by one of Mr. Wilson's most impassioned critics, "The words of Christ dissolve the whole fabric of society." But the fabric of society \s> largely Establishment, and the words of Christ are the very basis of modern democracy. These are mighty hard times for the fabric of society. The war threatens to dissolve it if it keeps on, and the alterna- tive seems to be to Christianize it. Mr. Wilson, with his notions of democracy, seems to be the leading champion of the alternative. Seeing the fabric of society endangered by the war, he seems to practise to medicate it by an infusion of Christianized democ- racy. Some people see this aim in him, and some don't. To some Wilson looks Christian; to others, a great many, he looks merely yellow; others, another large company, cannot make up their minds which he is. Establishment instinctively looks upon him with sus- picion . Doctor Manning speaking for Trinity Church, Mr. Root for the Old Order and the Old Guard, Colonel Roosevelt for "My Poh'cies," Jonas Picket for Old Boston, all disclose the same distrust, indignant and THE DIARY OF A NATION 375 protestf ul. You get it in its most amusing form in the Wall Street Journal, which stumbles on from sputter to sputter, denouncing the inexorable democrat. Most of these good people are heartily in favour of Christianizing the world. Doctor Manning is, if you let the Church do it; Col. Roosevelt is, if you use "My Policies." It is not at all a new idea. When the world is in a bad pickle it is apt to turn to it. Constantine adopted it; Charlemagne encouraged it; the Crusaders were crazy about it; it was the great inspiration of the Middle Ages. Spain professed it as her motive in seeking to dommate the world, and accomplished something in the Western Hemisphere, lamentable as her errors were. Napoleon's vision did not include it, but he did his share to change kings from an institution to an incident, and to ad- vance democracy, and when he fell the Holy Alliance came back to the old idea with renewed ardour, and the resuscitated emperors and kings issued an address to mankind that was fairly saturated with Christian profession and ^anctification. The emperors and kings proposed to Christianize the world from the top down, and make it what it should be. But England would not sign the notice, and presently, with Can- ning's connivance, the United States put out the Monroe Doctrme to effect that this hemisphere must not be redeemed by force on the European plan. Now again out of the great misery of the world war has come a deep and general sense of the need of a plan to make the nations live brotherly together. All the belligerents have spoken, and while they do not express themselves in terms so sanctified as those of the Holy Alliance, they all virtually call for the Golden Rule as the basis of the rearrangement of Europe. They all profess to want such an issue of the war as shall make the little nations safe and happy alongside of the big ones, and the big ones safe 376 THE DIARY OF A NATION and happy alongside of one another. The lion and the lamb are to snuggle up to one another, and the linnet to roost secure between the eagles. Our great slogan — Give the people what they want! — seems to have swelled every belligerent heart, but still they keep on fighting, because they dare not trust each other's professions, because governments by will of people dare not trust governments by will of kings. Comes in at this point opportunely in the late pa- pers of this day of writing Mr. Wilson to speak for himself in an address to the Senate and to all the nations at war. He says it is taken for granted that when peace comes, it will be followed by some definite concert of power to make any such catastrophe as the present war impossible in future. He attempts to define on what conditions the government he represents would feel justified in asking our people to join such a con- cert. It would depend very much, he thinks, on how and on what terms the war ends. We should not wish to go in merely to secure a new balance of power, because no guarantee could secure it. The aim should be "not organized rivalries, but an or- ganized common peace." No peace can last, he says, or ought to last which does not accept the principles "that governments de- rive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. For peace to last, he thinks the war had better end without a victory for either side. For peace to last the seas must be free, and every great people assured of access to them, naval arma- ments must be restricted and great preponderating armies cease to be maintained. I am proposing, said Mr. Wilson, that the nations should adopt the THE DIARY OF A NATION 377 doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world — that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people; I am pro- posing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances; I am proposing government by the consent of the governed, freedom of the seas, moderation of armaments; all American principles, American poli- cies. "We stand for no others." There is a great deal to digest in these remarks of our President. The world government they aim to promote is government for all the world's peoples by themselves. That in essence is democratic, whatever the form of it. When Germany, Austria, and Russia agree to such a proposal, the Allies will have won. February 8, 1917. A CITIZEN who combines a high regard for Col. Roosevelt with a growing admiration for President Wilson shakes his head when he speaks of these two gentlemen. "Dog and cat!" he says; "dog and cat! They never agree; never see "Peace anything alike: never fight the same way. Without^ "It is always so with dog and cat. Dogs Victory j.yj^ ^^ bigger sizes, and can usually chase cats up trees; but a cat can lick his weight in dog, and more, and when you get to the big cats — why, they're symbols for efficient fighting." One can find in Mr. Wilson's address on world peace very much v/hat he looks for. The clashes of sentiment about it are illuminating. All the political minds reveal themselves by their reaction on that address. Col. Roosevelt says: Mr. Wilson asks the world to accept a copperhead peace of dishonour, a peace without victory for the right, a peace designed to let wrong triumph, a peace championed in neutral countries by the apostles of timidity and greed. In Mexico he has ac- cepted and is accepting such a peace, and by his Mexican policy he has brought disaster to Mexico and dishonour to the United States. His policies throughout his four years have brought woe to humanity and shame and bitterness of heart to all Americans proud of the honour of their flag. There you have very little about Mr. Wilson or his address, but a great deal about Col. Roose- velt. It is the canine attitude towards a feline prop- osition. "No good in it!" says the Colonel, and he unlimbers his Bible, and fires at Mr. Wilson the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the 378 THE DIARY OF A NATION 379 curse of Meroz, damned because its people stood neutral and "came not to the help of the Lord against the Mighty." The Colonel sees no good whatever in Mr. Wilson or his works. He would probably agree that as the Prussian military domination has proved to be Frankenstein's monster for Germany, so Mr. Wil- son's typewriter has proved to be Frankenstein's monster for us. He sees us caught in the toils of Mr. Wilson's rhetoric; disabled, discredited, dis- armed. The Colonel must be having very bad quarter-hours when his mind dwells on these mat- ters. But his views of the address do not get very gen- eral backing. The trouble is that people have read the address, and it does not impress most of them at all as it impresses the Colonel. A man of strong Republican propensities and anti- Wilson instincts said last week: "I thought the address was very interesting, and I was almost dismayed at the narrow partisanship with which our local Republican papers discussed it. It seemed to me about 85 per cent. pro-Ally and about 15 per cent. pro-German, and that's not bad for a neutral." People who have read the address with the in- tention of finding it impossible have succeeded, as Mr. Roosevelt did, but people who have read it looking for help in time of sore trouble have also found their reward. A good many old-time backers of the Colonel think hopefully of the address as a step towards the reordering of the world. "President Wilson," says Albert Bushnell Hart, lately a Roose- velt rooter at Chicago, "has revived the behef of many fainting hearts. To deny the world-public spirit of this significant speech would be unfriendly to the interests of mankind." Mr. Taft takes very much that view, saying that 380 THE DIAHY OF A NATION the speech "is an epoch in the history of our foreign pohcy," and rejoicing in Mr. Wilson's support of the idea of a league to enforce peace. Mr. Root comes forward as a critic, not destruc- tive like Col. Roosevelt, but one in full sympathy with the purposes of the speech and its "noble idealism." He does not reject the idea of "a peace without victory." "I sympathize with that," he said, but pointed out what seems obvious enough, that "the peace that the President describes in- volves the absolute destruction of the principle (of national aggrandizement and immorality) upon which this war was begun." If a peace without victory can enthrone justice, Mr. Root is for it, but if not, he is for a peace after victory by the Allies. And he emphasized with all his power the proposition that such a peace as Mr. Wilson pro- poses, resting on an armed force capable of main- taining it, "absolutely requires that we shall build up a force commensurate with our size and wealth and our part among the nations of the earth." The gist of the situation for us Americans seems to be that Mr. Wilson's remarks to the Senate have brought us as a people plumb up against two very momentous decisions. The first is, Shall we agree to go in with the rest of mankind for an organized peace resting on armed force, and involving more or less submission of our national interests and aspirations to some kind of a World Court.^ The second is. Have we got it in us to devise and maintain a sufficient army and navy to support the part assigned to us in such an organization? Over both of these questions we may expect earnest disputation. There will be impassioned opposition to any plan which draws this country into respon- sible co-operation with the political S3^stem of Eu- THE DIARY OF A NATION 381 rope. Senator Borah, a powerful representative Republican, has already come out against it. So, apparently, has Mr. Bryan. They will have plenty of company, including, probably, Mr. Roosevelt and all the Wilson haters, Mr. Wickersham, per- haps, and Heaven knows how many Democrats. And about military preparation, necessary if we are to co-operate with Europe and doubly and trebly necessary if we don't, there are immense disputes to come. The country has not yet appreciated the need nor accepted the idea of it. It merely gapes at it, and is apt to turn away from the column of the newspaper in which it is discussed to read about the "leak investigation," or the hunger-strikes, or the latest war news. It is probably true that the administration has let the psychological moments for war preparation go to waste, and it is certainly true that the Hay plan wasted a lot of time without producing any reliable system. Now we have got to work up a citizen-army plan in cold blood, and that's no joke. Whether we will do it, whether the country will back Mr. Wilson in his proposals, are questions which Europe, of course, has to consider. The first endorsement of the President's idea must come from these States, and we are now so much in the neutral attitude in which we have been schooled that it is hard for us to endorse anything. Mr. Wilson has practised us thoroughly in doing nothing. When our blood has been up he has bidden us be calm. When our near neighbours have raised hob he has bidden us watch and wait. We are now ex- cellent m calmness, and can watch and wait to beat the world, but whether we can stir about and provide for a large permanent military force to back our pre- tensions as co-operators in pacification remains to be seen. Our genie of aloofness is completely out 382 THE DIARY OF A NATION of the bottle, and it is going to be no small job to conjure him back into it again. We are cold iron. When we were hot Mr. Wilson thought it best not to strike. Whether now, without getting us into the war, he can heat us up to the point of necessary peace and peace-league preparation remains to be seen. And of course a vast deal else "remains to be seen." The Kaiser's brief birthday remarks made it look as though the Lord had hardened Pharaoh's heart again, and the war plagues would go right on to the end. They are very severe and getting worse all the time. If our Moses is to abate them at all he must win the people to support him. He must win more than the bare majority that re- elected him. He must have the real strength of the country behind him, and that means the backing of many men who voted for Mr. Hughes. Many such men approved heartily of his address to the Senate, and could be enlisted to stand behind it if their confidence in the administration could be increased. It might be increased, undoubtedly, by new appointments made next month when Mr. Wilson's second term as President commences, but appointments of that sort are not anticipated. The naval program, which is the most important, seems to be going along as fast as any one could send it just now, which is not saying very much. If we get an army program before Congress adjourns, well and good. We shall probably get something, but probably not universal service, which seems more and more to be what we must ultimately come to. But Mr. Wilson's address has to do, not with immediate affairs, but with the settlement that is to follow the war, and the war's end seems still far enough off to give us ample time to make up our minds. February 15, 1917, MUCH obliged to Germany for once! Nobody else could liave put us where we belong. It is a great relief — oh, very great — and everybody sighs and seems delighted. It becomes worth while Germany ^^^^ morc to read the papers, which, what to the with Belgian deportations and French de- Rescue portations — especially the recent herding off of thousands of French women — and other in- famies, had come to be weary work. We could do nothing about the lamentable things we read of, and as it is. Heaven knows what we can do, and things are likely to be worse before they are better. But at least, and at last, we are on the way to where we belong. And Germany did us this great favour! Thanks be to Germany for this mercy — the kindest thing she has done since the war began. George Viereck said of the German notice when it came: "It cannot fail to give unlimited satisfaction to the President as well as the American people." Just our senti- ment to a hair! Thank you, George! The Presi- dent, with a proper regard for propriety, has dis- guised the satisfaction which it must have given him, but he admits that it has done the business, and he has sent a full set of passports to Excellency Bernstorff, who receives them with resignation, but sadly, for he has tried hard to keep the peace. That is all, up to this writing, but all the rest seems to be coming down the road, and it gives a new flavour to life. S83 384 THE DIARY OF A NATION And what a thorough job. It was hard to get us into the war. We couldn't well butt in, and if we had, there would have been a great multitude of reluctants who would have hung back and pro- tested, but here comes this German notice, standing not at all on ceremony or manners, but seemingly bent on fetching us all in together. Democrats and Republicans, hyphens, pacifists, and everybody, with a great boot in our collective behind. Any way, so we get where we belong! The best way to get into a war is the way that makes the most people glad to be in. That was the thorough, Ger- man way. A wonderful people, the Germans ! The nations, first or last, have all done plenty that they ought not to have done. The people are not so bad, but the nations have all been hogs, and worse, according to their opportunities, and one can easily make out that they ought all to be in jail. The dis- tinction to make about the Germans under their present management is that the place for them is in the jail for the criminal insane. Considering what the habits of nations have been, and that all of them who have got much of anything took it away from some one else, it would not have been hard to make out a passable casus belli for Germany as against, say. Great Britain. But from first to last the Ger- mans have silenced exculpation and defense by their atrocious behaviours. They have insisted that no one with eyes should fail to see that to beat them in this war was the price of even a fair approximation to peace on earth. Our President, hating war, held out against this conviction to the very last. Now they have bagged him, too, and with him, at last, the United States. Glory be, and gratitude, for that result, but why did they do it.^ No doubt the German Government had to do it. TTTE DIARY OF A NATION 385 It is incredible that even Germans could have sup- posed that their notice would be accepted at Wash- ington. But dearth is crowding Germany hard. The hardships and even the cruelties of the war have doubtless revolted many of the German people; discontent must be very prevalent, and the dynasty looks like a cornered rat. There was this one weapon, the submarine, not yet used to its limit. Every other tuck being let out, this one had to go, too, to raise one more hope in the hearts of the German people. And they tell us that Hindenburg, the idol of the Germans, came slowly to believe that the new sub- marines might do the business for England, and sup- ported with his great influence the proposal to turn them loose. That is one explanation. Another is that the German Government wanted the United States in the war to save the German face when the end came. That is Admiral Beresford's idea, put out a year or more ago. At this stage there may be truth in it. ^ But after all, wasn't it just the German way;' another detail of the method that was illustrated by the rape of Belgium, and that has been steadily illustrated ever suice by one thing after another? A gambler, or a stock-speculator, is apt to lose in part the control of his mind. His judgment ceases to govern his action. He dreams of great winnings; every last chance becomes for him the opportmiity of a lifetime, and he goes on till he has nothing left. So Germany! It looks as though she could not stop, nor any one save her; as though her performance must go through to the end of the last appointed act, and the curtain be rung dowTi on the finish of that in her that has wrought her ruin, and brought the whole world to its knees. 386, THE DIARY OF A NATION To be sure, as Life goes to press we are not yet in the war, and if Germany suddenly wills that we stay out she may contrive to exclude us for a while longer. The accession to our demand for release of American prisoners captured by raiders is evi- dence of a disposition to appease our Uncle Sam. But the chances now are all against an effectual side-step. Mr. Bryan knows how we can keep out, and has issued a statement expounding it, the sub- stance of which is that if we mind our eye, and do promptly and precisely what Germany desires, we needn't get in. "Wire immediately," he says, "to the President, your Senators and your Congressmen. A few cents now may save many dollars in taxation and possibly a son." Brother Bill is a thrifty soul, but this time his advertisement gets no better place than the back pages of the papers, and there seem to be few who want to take his medicine. The situation is far beyond any capacity of his to affect. Indeed it seems quite beyond human direction. It is sur- rounded by huge, inexorable compulsions. Ger- many must fight on, for if she stops her government will collapse. The Allies must fight on or leave Germany victorious; we must get in if Germany wills it, or become an outcast among nations. What- ever this war is intended to effect must be effected before it can end, and cost what it may, whoever is summoned to lend a hand must respond. No one who is called is free to hang back. Barring some miracle of peace such as might result from internal revolt in Germany, the worst of the war is still to come. The Germans have given notice that they intend to run amuck on the sea. If they do, it is reasonable to expect that they will do the same on land. With our country drawn in, the last restraint on deviltry is gone. No neutral country will be THE DIARY OF A NATION 387 safe, nor any prisoner of war. We may look for massacres, and if the Allies finally break through into Germany, for appalling reprisals. This war has already yielded horrors unmatched for centuries. The Thirty Years' War was the worst preceding this, and that was mainly fought by Germans. If the Germans set out to convince their neighbours that the only good German is a dead one, it is safe to assume that they will make a thorough job of it as usual. So that seems to be the kind of war we are on the brink of. Probably it will soon be done with now — but we can't tell. Probably we shall not get into it very far — but we can't tell. All we know is what Mr. Wilson has recognized, that no one who is sum- moned to that war can refuse to respond. Our American Hyphens seem to see the case much as the rest of us do. They don't feel happy to have us in with the Allies, but their talk is very sober and loyal to Uncle Sam. It helps the case with them very much that we get into the war — if we do — by act of Germany. March 8, 1917. OUR ships and our flag are being excluded from the seas by the threat of death and destruction conveyed m Germany's declara- tion of war on neutral shipping. The need of the hour is to take effectual measures to safeguard Time to our shipping and our citizens, rather than Do Some- to wait for Americans to be murdered and thing then go to war to punish the offender. To refuse, or too long delay, such protection would be to acquiesce in the ] subjugation of i\merican rights to German domination. The time has come to assure the President that he will have the overwhelming support of his fellow- countrymen in taking effective measures to meet the intolerable situation with which the country is now confronted." So runs an advertisement in the newspapers of February 26tli, signed by William H. Taft, Joseph H. Choate, Alton B. Parker, Elihu Root, John B. Stanchfield, James Byrne, Charles C. Burlingham, Martin W. Littleton and forty others, who ask all those who desire to join in expressing these views to send their names to be communicated to the Presi- dent and the members of Congress. These views sound good and deserve support. Please, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Con- gress, give activity, give punch, to these sentiments! We would like, oh, so much! to have something done. Germany's hand on our windpipe does not feel good. We were willing to gurgle along a few days under it while necessary precautions are taken 388 THE DIARY OF A NATION 389 and preliminaries arranged, but it is not comfort- able nor is it soothing. We do not wish to get used to it. We wish to break this German clutch or know why not. To read of American Line steamers transferring their mails to British boats and discharging their outbound cargoes makes us feel sick. When New York is practically blockaded by German orders, assuredly it is time to do something. But it can only be done by you, Mr. President. You are not only the best bet in this matter, but the only bet. The President himself feels and realizes all these things. He said so in his discourse to Congress on February 26th, when he rehearsed, very much as above, what was going on, and asked the Congress, so near its finish, to give him "full and immediate assurance" of the authority he might any moment have to exercise. "No doubt," he said, "I already possess that authority without special warrant of law, but I wish to feel that the authority and the power of the Congress are behind me in whatever it may become necessary for me to do." Now the quality of the ginger in the Congressional flask is not rated very high, but if Mr. Wilson wants a nip of it, no doubt he ought to have it. Life goes to press without seeing the response of Congress to the President's requisition, but he asked it flatly to authorize him to supply our merchant ships with defensive arms and the means to use them, which is gunners. A Congress may be afraid or disinclined to back a President with that sort of authority, but presumably it will be still more afraid to refuse. So one expects at this writing to see the President get what he asks for. He assured Congress at length of his pacific in- tentions. 390 THE DIARY OF A NATION He need not have been at that pains. Anywhere — from Germany, from the AlHes, from every faction and every American in Mexico, from the man in the street, from Jordan, Bryan, Ford, and Villard, and especially from Bernstorff — he can get affidavits to his pacific intentions. He has an imperishable record as a hanger-back from war. When he calls for recruits, his spirit penetrates his periods, and the recruits stay at home. When he puts his lips to the trumpet, the sound that follows is the note of the flageolet. Mr. Wilson has remarkable brains and remark- able merits, but he is a bad hand at the tocsin. Here he is starting out on his second term, with the great war two and a half years old, and look at us! No army worth mentionmg, and no considerable increase of the strength of the navy. He was a year and a half late in starting to get an army. He should have gone about it in October, 1914. He wouldn't. He did not see the need of it then, nor for a whole year more. He kept Daniels in the navy probably because he hated all military establishment, and if he must have a navy, wanted the most pacific one he could get. He need not have assured Congress that he was not now "proposing or contemplating war or any steps that need lead to it," nor expressed his be- lief that the people will trust him to act with re- straint. Congress knew it: we all know it. Re- straint is his long suit. He is bold as a lion to speak a piece, but he hates war. If he ever gets into it it will be because he is crowded in. He says so, and it is true. If we are to have war we shall have to get it for ourselves, and fight it after we have got it. He will neither get us in nor get us out of it. He is not a Washington, nor a Jackson, nor a Lincoln. He is a i THE DIARY OF A NATION 391 Presbyterian Jefferson. If it is part of the doom of Germany to force us into the war and part of our doom to be forced in, Mr. Wilson will recognize it and will go in with us; but that is the most we can expect from him. But let us not repine. War is an abomination. Why should not a man hate it.'^ Armies and navies are a nuisance and a waste. What harm to Mr. Wilson if he has fizzled as an army-raiser, and will be best remembered in naval history as the patron of Daniels and Doctor Grayson.'^ He is a good exponent of democracy. He is a better President than we are entitled to have; abler, better trained, and probably a better character. We brag about democracy; offer it to Europe as a panacea; almost get into the war to demonstrate its great merit and save it. Mr. Wilson stands for our democracy. The people have twice chosen him, different people each time. Two sets of us, first and last, have approved him. His title has no flaw. He is now seasoned in office. If democracy is a crime, he is our punishment. If it is a virtue, he is our reward. Make your choices, gentlemen; call him which you like, but either way, he is our fate. He is to- day the valid expression of American democracy. It has laid an egg and he is that egg, and in sym- pathy with most of the hen. If she cackles some- what discordantly at having reproduced him, it is no fault of his. She is a discordant creature, and never cackles with a united voice over any eggy no matter how fresh. If we recognize Mr. Wilson's legitimacy, it may give us more courage and more patience to go on with him. We have got to go on with him anyhow. We cannot act except through him. He will not lead us any more than he can help, but he invites 392 THE DIARY OF A NATION us all to push him. He wants Congress to push him into putting guns on the merchant ships, he v/ants us all to push him into military preparation. We are not used to the job of pushing Presidents, but the pacifists are teaching us how to do it. And the Germans, who are teaching and pushing all the world, are going to help us. While BernstorflF stayed here, they pushed us for peace. Now that Bern- storff has gone home they are pushing us for war. Let us daily be thanldul that Bernstorff has gone home. But it was President Wilson who sent him. It came to look right to him that Bernstorff should go, and Bernstorff went. It will come to look right to him to put guns on our merchant ships, and get our navy on its job, and he will produce the guns and the navy. When we cannot make necessary action look right to him, Germany will do it. It is her destiny to doctor the world, and she has the needful medicines and is constrained to administer them even to us. So let us not worry about Mr. Wilson. It is doubtful if we can handle him, or he can handle us, but destiny can handle both of us, and will. March 22, 1917, BERLIN to Bagdad" was the German hope; an aspiration hardly less bumptious than "The Cape to Cairo." The Germans still hold Berlin, but the British at last have nipped Bagdad. It means more geography for us backward scholars in the United States and a fresh line of computation! about who is to be who in the coming world. ^^ After so much Map of Europe, it is a grateful and romantic change to turn over to the "Arabian Nights" and the Old Testament and commune geo- graphically with Joshua, Sindbad, Haroun-al-Raschid and Ezekiel. Basra, Bagdad, Ctesiphon, Jerusalem, Joppa — delightful names, full of flavour and associa- tion with the world before the Ford, all in the war now, and fetching to the tired imagination a hope that something out of the immemorial East will penetrate the incessant West, and make its exhausting activi- ties a little less strenuous. Bagdad was a good town in its day; a world metrop- olis for a time. No doubt it will have a new boom as a consequence of the war and new connections with the more pushing races of men. If the British are able to keep it, it will be less mussed up than if the Germans get it, and possibly it will remain in a better case to impart soothing influences to a world over-organized for action. A little of the 3,000- year-old Bagdad virus could be profitably used to inoculate our modern cities, beginning with New York and Chicago, but possibly excepting Philadel- phia. So much of the world will be made over after 393 394 THE DIARY OF A NATION the war that it will be unpleasantly new for a long time to come, and all that part of it that Turkish rule has kept in a backward state will have art values and rest-cure uses, which gainful persons will, doubt- less, cultivate to their profit. Happily the Asiatic flavour seems to be ineradic- able, and will stick to these old cities, no matter what. March 29, 1917, IT IS a serious matter to be a week behind iii remarks with history making so fast. Will the reader please notice that at this writing nothing much has happened, except that the Czar has got the blue envelope, the Germans on the western front The Czar have gone back to the rear of Bapaume Is Out and Peronne, the U-boats have sunk overnight three American ships, and the President has called the railroad strike off because of the im- minence of a state of war. What Russia wants is to get rid of Germanized misgovernment. Bismarck once said that the top and bottom of Russia were all right, but the bureau- cracy was the devil. Czars have been good and bad, but the great mischief of recent times has been the reactionary office-holding crowds, who found their profit in power, and upheld the Czar because they could use him. It is no news that Nicholas is a weak brother, but when the war started he was for beating Ger- many, and probably sincere in that desire. But Russia had to be reorganized to carry on the war. The reorganization gave power to some men who were fit to use it, and proportionately dislocated the unfit. That frightened the bureaucrats, who saw in a reorganized Russia a bad outlook for themselves. They were Germanized anyway, many by blood, and the rest by association and policy, and added to their German-made politics, immense rascalities and brutishness of their own. Their hope came to be for a German victory, or at least the retire- 395 396 THE DIARY OF A NATION ment of Russia from the war, and in their labours to realize that hope they captured the Czar and used his power to defeat the war-policy of Russia. The revolution that came to a head on the fifteenth of March had been going on for months. Its cul- mination seems to have been remarkably peace- able. The Czar is out; his legatee is waiting to hear what is the will of the Russian people as to their government. Meanwhile Milukoff is the leader, the government is the Duma and its ministers, with a republic or a constitutional monarchy in prospect when there is time for these details. What further explosions are to come in Russia is not yet clear. How the army will take these changes, and how much hob the bureaucrats and reaction- aries may still avail to raise, is not yet disclosed. But one of the great jobs the great war was ex- pected to do is far on the way toward accomplish- ment. Russia has reached out and grasped self- government, and there is good hope that she will be able to hold on to it. At any rate German influence in Russia and Ger- man hopes generally have had a hard blow. The Russian people believe in this war and want to win it, and this new government in Russia is the government of the Russian people and the expres- sion of the national desire, and its first purpose will be to carry on the war. The Kaiser has now seen what may happen, and all the Germans have doubtless noticed what may be done, when a country becomes dissatisfied with its leading. One hears that the agents of the German Secret Service in America have surveyed Milwaukee, New- port, and other places, and are still looking around to see whereabouts a high-bom German exile could best expect to be happy. There was significance in THE DIARY OF A NATION 397 Von HoUweg's admission in the Tteichstag that these are dangerous times for folks who can't see what is coming to them. Brother Charles of Austria doubtless also has his thoughts! The "cataract of thrones," anticipated by an Englishman who w^as quoted in the papers, has begun, and the redemption value of crowns in hock is visibly sinking. Brother Ralph Adams Cram reminds us that Jerusalem is about to fall again into Christian hands after being for nearly seven hundred years a spoil of Turks. He says we are all to ring our church- bells when it happens, and that we will be no better than infidels if we don't. And Bagdad, held by British troops, is invited by proclamation to enjoy again the liberties of which Turkish-German domination had deprived it ! Truly, events are moving fast in these obstreperous days. April 5, 1917. LET us not hold with the Christian Endeavour Society, which, the newspaper says, has be- gun at Chicago "a movement to oppose the custom of display of new attire on Easter. The paper says the Endeavourers deplore the custom Easter in oTi general principles, but especially this War Time year, because of the European war. The Endeavourers are off the track in this matter. It is perfectly suitable to break out in new clothes at Easter. It matches the spirit of the day. It may, of course, be overdone, like everything else, but gen- eral principles are all for it. If you are pagan and Easter is no more than the great spring festival, does not spring re-clothe the earth in fresh garments and shall not you do like- wise .^^ And if you are Christian, the Lord has risen, and it becomes you to decorate not only your church and your house, but your person, and, especially if you be a woman, your blessed head. As to the war as an argument against Easter glories, of all times it is in war-time that Easter comes best, the day of most hope to the desolate, of most consolation to the bereaved. If the Chicago friends think our Easter should be frumpy because we Amer- icans have not done enough in the war to warrant us in any great bravery of raiment, there is basis, of course, for that opinion. If they hold that with so much distress in the world we Americans can do better with our money than spend unnecessary dol- lars of it on dress, that also is true. But if there is to 393 THE DIARY OF A NATION 399 be new garb, there is no occasion it can better honour than Easter, and no Easter fitter so to be honoured than Easter this year. For, pagan or Christian, the great spring festival stands for confidence in life in spite of death. It brings anew the eternal message annually reiterated. It says that: -manhood is the one immortal thing Beneath Time's changeful sky — That length of days is knowing when to die. Without confidence in that principle, how can people get along with war that gathers the young to its untimely reaping; with this war especially, which gathers all the ages with a pitiless voracity that shows, as yet, no sign of satiation? It must go hard indeed with any one who does not feel that life is something to be spent; not hoarded, but given in purchase when the treasure that is worth the price of it comes to market. In a day that cannot now be very far distant, this heroic period we live in will reach its further limit, and there will be peace again. But what kind of a world will follow, and who will make it, the living or the dead.^ Be sure the dead who have died for it will make it in great measure for a generation to come. The coming world will come pledged to them; pledged to be worth the price they paid to save it, pledged to realize their costly hopes for it. It cannot be the world it was. They have paid to change it, and change it must. People who reckon that the future will be another installment of the past, reckon with- out the dead who have died to make it different. Human life is receiving an enormous new con- secration. Not in the time of any one alive three 400 THE DIARY OF A NATION years ago will this world be again what it was then. The living are trying, and with mighty efforts, to shape its course, but every day and week and month they deal more and more with a world held in mort- main, that proceeds not as they will, but as the dead decree. The world that is coming will belong to those who paid the price of it. This is their Easter; theirs who have emulated the sacrifice whereof at this time Christians celebrate the glory. Not them shall we see come back to earth, but we shall see a res- urrected world, and it will be theirs. April 12, 1917, I AD VISE 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 Into the War has thus been thrust upon it, and that aiLast 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 re- sources to bring the government of the German Em- pire to terms and end the war." So the President to Congress on the evening of April 2d. That is the message that we have been waiting for. It falls on grateful ears, and there is no doubt of the endorsement that the country will give it. It is a momentous message, but more than wel- come. To have Congress and the President agree that we are now at war with Germany is a great advan- tage and satisfaction. It is hard to carry on a war when the enemy is so remote, but it helps very much to have our authorities acknowledge that it is our duty to try. It is, by all odds, the most specu- lative enterprise we have started on for half a cen- tury. Only seventh sons venture to predict how far we shall get in it, what it will do to us, or where we shall come out. But when one jumps in on a pressing errand, he does not stop to measure how deep the water is. The important thing is — can he swim.f^ 401 402 THE DIARY OF A NATION We think this country can swim enough to ven- ture into war with Germany at this time, but we are all curious to know how it will feel and what we can do; curious also to discover what, if anything, can be done to us. Germany is so busy that we cannot reasonably expect much attention from her, except as we go after it. Doubtless we will do that very thing. To stand on the shore of the Western Hemisphere with thumb to nose and fingers wagging will hardly seem militant enough. The immediate job is to keep open communications across the Atlantic, and keep supplies moving eastward. Senator La Fol- lette is of the opinion that we cannot do it, ought not to do it, and should not try, but he and his comrades count for very little now, either as fore- casters or as obstructionists. We certainly will try to do everything they deprecate. Being in this war we are in it for all we are worth, and, with all our defects, w^e are as well qualified to devise means to accomplish the impossible as any people implicated in the existing troubles. There is no country less ambitious than ours to be a great military or naval power, but there is no country that, at the bottom, more aspires to do its duty to humanity, or will go farther to qualify itself to understand that duty and discharge it. This war is our school of duty, where we are to learn what our obligations are and how to meet them. In both these branches we are very untaught, but the instruction ahead of us promises to be efficient, and we are not unintelligent or unruly under dis- cipline. It was good to hear our President at last unloose his mind on the behaviour of the German Govern- ment and declare before all the world that in such a government, following such methods, we can never THE DIARY OF A NATION 403 have a friend, and that "in the presence of its or- ganized power there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world." Those words Hne us up at last where we belong. We are in with the best people in the world to give the Hohenzollerns and the Prussian Junkers to the kites, and backward as we are in military mat- ters, in a good cause we are worth counting. April 19, 1917. THERE has been a good deal of doubt about President Wilson's qualifications as a fight- ing man. War with guns and soldiers has seemed not to be his line. Mr. Gilbert, who wTites from W^ashington to the Tribune, remarked not Mr. Wilson long ago that "War is the most primitive as a thing in the world, and Mr. Wilson is Fighur ^j^^ least primitive man who ever sat in the White House." Very likely that is so. Mr. Gilbert thought that IVIr. Wilson had all the primitive lust of physical combat refined out of him and could not make up his mind to go to war, and so his Cabinet was making his decision for him. Mr. Gilbert recalled Vera Cruz, and how hard Mr. Wilson took it that some American bluejackets were killed there. We often think of that. AH the same, he makes his own decisions. It seems a hard case, the scholar face to face with war, and no appetite for it, and his blood running against it! And yet Mr. Wilson is not alone in having had "all the primitive lust of physical com- bat refined out of him." That is a common condi- tion. Never was war so abhorred as this war is abhorred, and the people who hate it worst are to be found among those who are fighting in it and have dedicated themselves to fighting it through. They see in it a war against war, and they feel that they must win it or perish. Mr. Wilson has never been backward in doing what he wanted to do. His backwardness has all been about working against his will. His will has 404 THE DIARY OF A NATION 405 been against war. But now it is for it. A great change in his deportment may be looked for as a consequence of this change of mind. He is not an ineflScient man: far from it. Neither is he timid. Mr. Gerard declared the other day, after seeing him, that he would make a great war President. That is what we want him to be, and what we hope to see him become. His will is now for war, and he will work to wage it. May 17, 1917, IN THE observations in Life on the sinking of the Lusitania two years ago, a curious investi- gator, if there should be one, would find it written: Of all the lives that have been poured out m the great war. Two Years ^*^^^' ^^ ^^^ confident, will prove to have been ex- j^fl^j. pended to more fruitful purpose than those of the six- score Americans who died when the Lusitania went down. . . . This is the greatest disaster that has befallen the German arms since the retreat from Paris last Sep ember. Not one of those thirteen hundred lives — not a baby, not a woman, not a stoker, nor a millionaire — will be wasted. It is sad about them, but at least these non-combatants — and especially the forty babies — have done a feat of great military value. By their death they have shocked the moral sense of a nation that needed a shock of terrific penetration to jolt it into action. The shock was a long time in demonstrating its full effect. It took two years, lacking a month, to get us actually into the war. The Lusitania lit a slow match. At times it glowed and threw out sparks; at times it seemed to have gone out, but it reached powder at last and our country's flag is flying on the Eiffel Tower, and triple cross and tri- colour hang in every street in town and Fifth Avenue is double-decked with them. Providence is never short of means, and there might well have been, and doubtless would have been, some other way to bring us into the war if the Lusitania had not done it. But as it was, it was under pressure of that shrieking crime that our 406 THE DIARY OF A NATION 407 government riveted itself to a position that was dead in the path of the last German hope of victory, and compelled the Germans to run over us or quit the war with terrors still untried. They took their time and that was very trying. We and our Allies would have been gainers apparently if we had got in eighteen months sooner. But who can tell.'^ There might not, in that case, have been so many German U-boats as there are now, but on the other hand, Russia might have missed her medicine, some other great results of suffering might not have come to birth, and our own performance might have been much more difficult to handle than it is at present. For we have done a great deal in eighteen months; have held, for one thing, an exceedmgly important election. And all the time the pathway of democ- racy has been opening plainer and wider before the nations, and stronger and stronger forces have been compelling them into it. It was a slow match the Lusitania lit, and it did burn sluggishly, but no one can be sure it was too slow, unless he has looked over the shoulder of Destiny, and read what is written in her book. Let us be thankful that our long night of waiting is over, and that the ghost of the Lusitania no longer stands reproachful at the bedside of a supine people asleep to duty. 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