AMERICAN

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llfEUTRALITY

S^S CAUSE AND CURE

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JAMES MARK BALDWIN

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AMERICAN NEUTRALITY ITS CAUSE AND CURE

XX X.. E R I C A N NEUTRALITY

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

BY

JAMES MARK BALDWIN

Ph.D., HON. D.Sc., HON. IX.D

FORHERLT PROFESSOR IN TORONTO, PRINCETON, AND JOHNS

HOPKINS tjNrvERsrrrES, and the national university of

MEXICO ; HERBERT SPENCER LECTTJRER (1915-16) AT OXFORD

UNIVERSITY, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTB

OF FRANCS

1 >-

NEW YORK y LONDON

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

1916

First published, March 1916

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION

The conditions under which these lectures have been prepared are so special that a word explaining them may not be considered out of place.

The subject was one assigned to me* as being of interest just at present to audiences of university people in the provincial cities of France. I felt that an opportunity was offered to point out to the French not only the real feeling of the American people toward them and their cause, but also to explain to them the internal conditions which hinder

* Assigned, that is, by the Paris Committee of the Harvard Foundation, for which the lectures were written. In view of the circumstances created by the war, it has been decided to pubHsh and circu- late the lectures in this form, instead of delivering them in the Provincial Universities.

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PREFACE

the free expression of the American national conscience and will in this great crisis. This has been my object.

I speak as a loyal American citizen telling ^the truth as he sees it. If this seems to reflect upon the present American Government, it should be remembered that it is only upon the existing government — ^which every good citizen has not only the right but the duty to hold to account — not upon the Nation nor upon the institutions which the office-holders of the moment happen to administer. This has been one of the great lessons of the war : the reality of the distinction between a people and its government. Greece and Bulgaria come at once to mind. The French Repub- lican Constitution has been criticized, in view of the place without authority it assigns to the President. Events show that the Ameri- can Constitution is open to the opposite criticism, that it reposes in the President an authority in some respects too great. Such an authority may on occasion fail to make itself felt in the direction in which the true sentiment of the nation would express itself. 6

PREFACE

May one say fully — it may be asked — what one thinks, when abroad ?

The distinction between what one may say at home and what it is proper to say abroad possesses, in this day of the cable and the interviewer, no longer any relevancy. Mr. Roosevelt and President Eliot speak to London, Paris, and Berlin as well as to New York and Cambridge ; there is no reason in this that they should not speak. The same is true mutatis mutandis of those who speak in Paris or London.

The subject of these lectures is of such actuality that it is impossible as yet to make statements fully documented with statistics and citation of texts. For this reason, no less than that of lack of time, I have avoided topics open to dispute and omitted statements requiring exact statistics. Apart from the theoretical interpretations, which are my own, the historical and other positive statements made are, I believe, only those to which competent students of American affairs would generally subscribe.

J. M. B.

Paris, February, 191 6.

7

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

These lectures have been left substantially as they were prepared for a French audience and published in French {La Neutralite Ameri- caine^ Paris, Alcan, February 191 6). Certain short passages have, however, been added as foot-notes.

This will explain sufficiently to British and American readers the allusions made to France and the French, who are taken to stand, with England and the British for the Allied Nations. Much might have been appropriately said, had I been addressing a British audience, on the subject of Anglo-Saxon opinion as it exists — both fio and con — in the United States ; also on that of the feeling of the Americans as to the place of Russia in the war. Both of these subjects are of such importance that the mere allusions possible

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ADDITIONAL NOTE

here would have been too inadequate. Besides this, I hope to tojch upon both these topics in another publication.

I trust, however, that the opinions actually expressed in these lectures will be sufficiently clear. I am an Anglo-Saxon American first and foremost — an American who believes in his England and who also loves his France.

J. M. B.

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CONTENTS

LECTURE I

THE CHARACTER OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THE PRESENT CRISIS

sBcr. rAoa

I. The Internal Political Situation 17

II. The American Citizen as he is 24

III. Absorbing Internal Problems 28

IV. External Policy of National

Isolation : Washington and Monroe 32

V. Pacifism and Non - resistance

Theories 40

VI. Party Politics and Legislation 47

VII. What is Needed in this Crisis 49

II

CONTENTS

LECTURE II

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON AMERICAN OPINION

SECT. PAOB

I. Negative Effects : The Low State

OF National Sentiment Revealed 55

II. Foreign Cultural Influences : Ger- man Educational Invasion 57

HI. French Influence in Art and Lite- rature 63

IV. The American's Understanding of

Neutrality 68

V. Positive Effects : The Reaction of Popular Sentiment against Ger- manism AND THE Demand for Mili- tary Preparation 74

VI. New Admiration for France and

England 79

VII. New Conception of Democracy :

Illustrative Cases 81

Vni. The Panama Canal Tolls Question 82

IX. The Ship Purchase Bill 85

X. The Exportation of Munitions of War 87 12

CONTENTS

LECTURE III

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON AMERICAN LIFE

SECT. PAOB

I. Effects on the Population : Immi- gration AND THE Settlement of Foreign Groups 97

II. Industrial Effects : Changes in Industry and the Conditions of Labour 113

III. Effects on Foreign Trade and

Transportation 117

IV. Effects on Finance 124

V. The Balance Restored : American

Liberality 126

VI. Moral Effects: A Changed Pacifism 128

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LECTURE I

THE CHARACTER OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THE PRESENT CRISIS

LECTURE I

THE INTERNAI. POLITICAL SITUATION

The Internal Politics of the American Commonwealth present certain peculiar fea- tures, which are due to the historical condi- tions of the origin of the Union and to the peculiar provisions introduced into the federal Constitution. The historical conditions need not detain us, since it is with the actual theory of democracy, as embodied in the Constitution and infused into the life of the country, with which we are concerned.

Undoubtedly the characteristic feature of American democracy, as embodied in the Constitution, is its federal character. The nation is not simply a State, it is a group of

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AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

United States. The principles of the Declara- tion of Independence had to be embodied in the form of a federation of existing colonial establishments, each having its old-country traditions and each jealous of its relative position in the new Union. The Constitution was the result.

This fact, that the United States was to be a " sovereign union of sovereign States," gave the United States its motto, E pluribus unum. The one State which resulted per- petuated the many ; it did not destroy them : and both the interpretation by the courts and the practical administration of the duality have given rise to the most subtle judicial controversies, to the most violent sectional and party divisions, and to one of the most destructive and dramatic civil wars of modern times.

The theory of " Federalism " held to the fundamental unity of the nation its national sovereignty, to which, on occasion, the rights of the several States might and must be subordinated : there can be no division or delegation of a nation's sovereignty ; it is one and supreme l8

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

The theory of " States Rights," on the other hand, held that the individual States, on entering into the Union, did not lose or convey their sovereignty ; each voluntarily submitted to the Hmitations stated in the national Constitution ; but each might re- assert its separate nationality and withdraw from the Union. The war of 1861 was one of " Secession."

It required only a question of enough importance to show that a true sense of federal nationality was not born in the Ameri- can people with the adoption of the Constitu- tion. The powers reserved to the States as such were so broad and fundamental that they each still retained the degree of national consciousness developed in its colonial history. This became evident before the crisis of i860. The question of negro-slavery was a sectional one — the slaves being held in certain States only, which formed the so-called " black belt," extending from Maryland southward to Florida and westward to Kentucky and Louisiana. The States of the " black belt " asserted the right to harbour the institution of slavery, and denied the right of the other

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States, or of the national government, to interfere with it.

It was on this poHtical issue, not on the moral one of the justification of slavery itself, that the Civil War was fought. The emanci- pation of the slaves was, it is true, the result of a great moral upheaval ; but the measure was imposed upon the southern States ab extra, and its imposition involved what, in their view, was a violation of the rights of the slave-States.

The sense of nationality inspired by the Union came into direct conflict, therefore, with that inspired by the individual State.

This duality of sentiment and allegiance, in the American, has not been yet removed, despite the great reinforcement of national sentiment produced by the Civil War. Every citizen of the United States may be called upon to decide whether in some question of importance he will follow the leading of his State or renounce this in view of his higher allegiance to the nation.

That this is not merely an academic dis- tinction I may make clear by citing certain recent cases of conflict or threatened conflict 20

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

between State and Federal authorities. The State of California proposed to exclude Japa- nese scholars from the public schools of the State. This was protested against by the Japanese Government, on the ground that the treaties with Japan guaranteed to the Japa- nese the same rights as those enjoyed by other nations in the entire territory of the United States. While this contention is true, still the Constitution of the United States reserves the control of primary education to the State authorities. Here is a real conflict, and a most grave problem, temporarily adjusted by compromise, but threatening to tax the country's wisdom and patriotism in the near future.*

Other recent questions of practical urgency concern the military and police powers of State and Nation respectively. Practical situations have required the use of the State

* Great interest attaches to a decision of the Supreme Court rendered on November 2, 191 5, de- claring unconstitutional a law denying certain privi- leges to foreigners in the State of Arizona. The principles would seem to be the same as those involved in the California school case.

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Militia for national purposes, with or without the consent of the State authorities : situa- tions demanding the suppression of riots in other States. We have also seen the use of national troops for police purposes in a State which did not give its consent to this use. Recently there have been grave complications of the kind — that of the demand for the use of national troops, for example, to suppress the disorders in the coal-fields of Colorado.

That this state of things may involve inter- national complications is illustrated in the case of the refusal of the United States to give an indemnity for the deaths of certain Italian citizens killed in local riots, on the ground that the affair fell not under national but under State jurisdiction.

Moreover, the several State constitutions, now forty-eight in number, differ very widely on matters of social and political importance. According to the National Constitution they may differ in respect to all those affairs which that Constitution itself does not reserve for federal control. Marriage and divorce laws, suffrage in local elections, judicial procedure

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ITS CAUSE AND CURE

in the State courts, labour laws within the State (such as child-labour regulations), the control of vice, laws respecting the manufac- ture and sale of alcoholic beverages — a thou- sand things of the first social importance are differently regulated according to the tradition and preference of a section, of a greater or lesser community, within the larger whole of the Nation. The constitution of each State has been passed upon by the Congress, but its supporters have seen to it that the national inspection of it at Washing- ton was not a revision of it. The case of an actual revision is presented when the national Constitution is actually violated by some pro- vision in the proposed State constitution — as in the case of Mormonism in the State of Utah. I find in this fundamental character of American politics something which differen- tiates the United States from other countries and notably from the great European re- public, France. It produces in the average American citizen two attitudes or habits of mind, both of which are strikingly in evidence at the present crisis.

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II

THE AMERICAN CITIZEN AS HE IS

First, there is the American citizen's exclu- sive interest and preoccupation with internal, domestic affairs, with his consequent apparent indifference or ignorance as respects essential foreign questions. And, secondly, there is his extreme docility and leadableness, his sugges- tibility and ready obedience, in matters of positive governmental restraint and control. He is the most submissive and docile demo- cratic citizen in the world.

The second of these characteristics I shall not dwell long upon ; I have enlarged upon it in another lecture also given to a French audience.* It results from the fact that the citizen is controlled from two sides, in two ways, possibly in the same matter. That

* " French and American Ideals," Sociological Review, April 191 3, and Neale's Monthly, April 191 3 ; in French, in Les Etats-Unis et la France, Bibliotheque " France-Am6rique," Paris, Alcan, 1914. 24

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

which is admitted in his State may not be allowed by the Nation, or the reverse.

For example (to cite instances in one field only, in which a recent statute has brought out the discrepancies), a man may keep a mistress in either of two adjacent States, but he becomes a national criminal if he takes her from one State to another, or even if he pays for her transportation across the dividing- line between them (results following from the provisions of the Mann " White Slave " law). He may be legitimately married in one State but find himself living in concubinage if he moves to another. He may be married with all proper formality, only to find that his earlier divorce does not hold in his new residence and that he can be charged with bigamy. He may be a free and honourable citizen, in short, in one State, and be arrested as a criminal if he crosses the invisible line that separates the disparate State juris- dictions.

Besides giving the legal profession a hand- some living, this has a twofold effect upon the citizen : it makes him afraid of law, fearful of doing something forbidden, captious

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and hypocritical alsoinhis judgments of others. There are too many categories of offence ; and the moral fault becomes sadly confused in his judgment with the legal crime. Besides this he becomes a devotee of law, of legisla- tion, or social control, of paternalism in government. Instead of revolting against too much control, against the restraint upon his liberties, he himself adopts the same weapon and seeks the cure of all the ills of life by easy, superficial, unenforceable legisla- tion. As I shall show further below, the artificial and impossible neutrality of many Americans in this crisis results from this habit of mind, re-enforced, as it has been, by the injunctions of the national govern- ment.

It is interesting to note, however, that there is one sphere — that of industry — in which this predominance of legislative control, with its resulting habit of mind, had not until recently begun to penetrate. The almost lawless growth of American industries has permitted extraordinary abuses and acts of personal misconduct, and has resulted in colossal industrial malformations of the character of 26

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

combinations, trusts, and products of high finance. The recent capricious and more or less " galvanic " attempts to correct these abuses by one of the two jurisdictions, the national, has brought out schemes from the other, that of the States, which sane and prudent authorities have frequently pro- nounced not only stupid but crazy. The resort to direct legislation, according to the habit of mind just mentioned, to cure this evil or that, to reform this abuse or that, to produce this virtue and that, has never been so clearly in evidence as during the ten years preceding the outbreak of this war.

But up to the last decade it was true that commercial individualism had its home in the United States. There was no limit to specu- lation, no bridle on " big business," no hero like the industrial hero, no career like that of the " petroleum king " or the " steel magnate." While a collectivist and " puri- tan " in moral and social matters and a " paternalist " in his view of governmental functions, the average American up to 1900 was a radical individualist in commercial and

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AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

industrial affairs. Strange as it may seem, American life combined with the strictest possible moral and social censorship an un- heard-of industrial licence.

The other fact mentioned above — that of the American's exclusive interest in domestic matters — is of still greater importance to us. Its causes and justification may be considered in some detail ; its bearing on the present situation is taken up below.

Ill ABSORBING INTERNAL PROBLEMS

Among the great internal problems to which the Americans have been obliged to give constant attention we may enumerate those which present most interest just now.

The " negro problem " involves a series of questions attaching to that of the political status conferred upon the enormous popula- tion of negroes or " coloured people " living in the southern States. In certain States the 28

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

predominance of the negro vote has led to crises approaching in gravity those of actual revolution. Certain of the southern States have practically disfranchised the negro, in contravention to the Fifteenth Amendment to the national Constitution. The problems of the assimilation of the blacks, of their fran- chise, their social status, their education, have absorbed much of the social interest and political wisdom of the country since 1865. As a fact, the act of enfranchisement has never been everywhere enforced.

Problems of population, arising from free immigration and the segregation of foreign- born peoples, have been of equal urgency. The possibility of the formation of foreign groups working for their own interests, sup- porting their own candidates at elections, exercising a " solid vote " in favour of certain measures and policies, both local and national, influencing more or less legitimately the opinions of candidates and shaping the party platforms — all these dangers have been forced upon the attention of the nation in concrete and alarming cases. Never has the question of the control of foreign influences, operating

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AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

in domestic affairs, been so acute and critical as in the present generation.

Added to these, certain chronic questions of national importance in the economic realm have never ceased to trouble the public mind. The tariff question has been not only or mainly one of economic, but one of sectional and class controversy. The southern States en bloc have advocated free trade up to the development, in the last twenty years, of manufactures in these States ; while the industrial centres of New England and the east have been determined in their support of high tariff legislation.

The development of class interests, as between agricultural and industrial localities, the spread of labour agitation in view of the abnormal growth of capitalistic and manu- facturing combinations, disputes within the labour organizations over questions of nation- ality and creed — all these things have pre- vented the public from taking the wider outlook upon the world and entering into the questions in which Europe was interested.

The result has been a condition of national isolation. To this isolation thus produced 30

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

many minor influences have also contributed. There has been in American education a surprising neglect of historical study. The schools have themselves felt the lack of unity of policy from State to State, and sectionalism has crept into the instruction and even into the text-books of English and American history. The school boy and girl have studied the American Revolution and the Civil War, not always presented from an unbiased point of view — a state of things stimulating to American patriotism, perhaps, but not produc- tive of breadth and sympathy in respect to the greater movements of international for- tune. The instruction in the English lan- guage— that great symbol of national unity and vehicle of historical tradition — has been insufficient and too often uninspired. Added to this, the actual geographical isolation, reinforced by a political policy in the same sense, has tended to encourage a sense of unconcern and safety, which is reflected in the national defence. A small army, and until recently a quite inadequate navy, have borne witness to this public insouciance. All this fully justifies us, from the considera-

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tion of the nature and history of American pubHc life, in saying that at the commence- ment of the war there was in the country no general interest in foreign questions, but, on the contrary, a pronounced preoccupation with matters of industry and domestic politics.

IV

EXTERNAL POLICY OF NATIONAL ISO- LATION : WASHINGTON AND MONROE

The national isolation of the Americans is not only a geographical fact, supplemented as this is by a moral atmosphere well con- formed to it ; it is also an explicit political doctrine. Such a counsel of prudence ema- nates from the " father of his country," George Washington.* To him is attributed

* " 'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." " Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote, relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns." — From Washington's " Farewell Address."

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ITS CAUSE AND CURE

the maxim enjoined by his successors,* which has remained the foundation-stone of Ameri- can policy, to the effect that " entanghng foreign alliances " were to be avoided. It is the spirit of this maxim, born of prudence and foresight, that has inspired the series of great American Secretaries who have presided over the Department of State.

The formulation, however, of this policy became much more explicit in the " Monroe doctrine." President Monroe, in his Message to Congress in 1823, and other Presidents who followed him, although differing as to the applications of the " doctrine," have aimed at securing that the international status quOy the equilibrium of the European Powers, in their possessions in the American hemisphere, should remain unaltered. This is the substance of the declaration of policy of the United States, whether or not it is to be enforced by actual war. If the European Powers once recognized the " doctrine," a pause would be given to their rivalries, aggres-

• " Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." — Jeffer- son's Inaugural Address, 1801.

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sions, etc., in which American interests were sure to be continually involved. As a matter of history, everybody knows that this policy has been recognized in fact, if not always in theory, by the Powers of Europe. No one of them has driven its dissent to the point of actual armed opposition.

The United States has never had occasion to defend this thesis by force. Whether it is to be considered " international bluff," as it has been called, or long-sighted and prudent policy, it has accomplished its end ; for since Monroe there have been no military expedi- tions to the Americas from Europe having territorial expansion in view.

This policy, negative in its character, is still the one positive doctrine of American foreign policy. Its effect upon the people has been to confirm them in an isolation which, while in the first instance political, is also moral and social. It has removed from actual politics the host of questions that would otherwise have arisen in the affairs of the nation. This is generally recognized by writers on American affairs.

But there are two other more subtle and

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ITS CAUSE AND CURE

psychological consequences of Monroeism to which I would call attention.

First, there results the feeling, quite honour- able and loyal, that such a doctrine carries or implies its reverse — that is, the engagement of the United States in turn not to undertake any sort of adventure beyond the domestic province thus established, that is outside the Americas. If, as I have heard it said, we ask Europe not to meddle here, do we not in turn agree not to meddle there ? If the interests of America, of which we reserve to ourselves the guardianship, forbid the inter- ference of other Powers, are we not thus our- selves shut up to the Americas, finding here, and here only, our sphere of influence ?

As a matter of fact, this is not merely a sentimental effect of Monroeism in the minds of many Americans ; it is understood by very many to be part of the doctrine itself. Monroe himself said m his " Message " that the United States had no intention of taking part in the internal affairs of Europe. Those who do not know the subsequent history of the doctrine accordingly say : " certainly, it must be re- ciprocal ; it must act both ways."

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This by no means follows, however. The Monroe doctrine formulates a policy with regard to American territory and interests exclusively ; it has nothing to say, either in form or meaning, as to American policy in regard to Europe or to American interests in other parts of the world.

Nevertheless, it is easy to see the force of this natural confusion in the public mind. So far from finding European politics of vital interest, so far from needing an excuse for shutting themselves up in domestic affairs, the wider interest, so far as it exists, is actually discouraged and suppressed by the operation of the one public international policy they have. Why interest ourselves in what does not concern us and in what, in any case, we are bound to take no active part ? — these are the queries which the American brought to the consideration of European questions before this war broke out. And this accounts also for the strange phenomenon, so striking to the foreign observer, presented by those Americans who, reading war reports, acclaim this man one side's victory, that man the victory of the other side, all with common

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ITS CAUSE AND CURE

good nature, all united in their sense of security and isolation ! What a screen of asbestos hung before the scene ! What a barrier to be overcome before the tide of deeper conviction can reach and carry away these men and women !

Another, the second of the effects to which I have referred, is the attitude engendered by Monroeism toward the American Govern- ment itself. If the people have no vital interest in foreign affairs, if the Government itself must " steer clear " in principle of all interference in things non-American, then the handling of all such matters becomes a matter of routine to be managed at Washington. The Department of State is there for that pur- pose— to warn off foreign aggressors from American territory and to inform foreign appHcants for aid and comfort that their quarrel among themselves is no affair of ours. This has been the American state of mind. The Secretary of State is competent to act in matters of foreign concern ; and even the poHtical parties, the agents or representatives of what it is vital for the country to vote upon, do not concern themselves with the

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foreign views of the candidate who, if elected President, is to choose the Secretary of State. Compare with this the interest taken in France or England in the views and careers, past and future, of possible Ministers of Foreign Affairs.

In this we see a striking illustration, in a new form to be sure, of what I have called the docility of the Americans, their attitude of confidence in legislative and executive authority. They are ready to accept the decision of the one who is placed by the popular mandate in the position to inform and com- mand. A most notable case of this in the realm of foreign affairs is that presented by the popular response to the call to arms in the war with Spain — the latest American war and the most illuminating as to the present- day sentiment of the country. It may be safely said that but for the explosion of the battleship Maine in the harbour of Havana there would have been no war, apart from possible later complications. It is further to be said that the explosion of the Maine was not a sufficient cause for war, and would not have been so considered in the minds of

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the American people, apart from the influence of the national Administration.* The causes of the explosion were not known, the respon- sibility was not fixed. The real questions at issue were not affected by it. But the destruc- tion of the Maine was made a casus belli by the Administration, which was carried away itself, no doubt, by the first wave of popular indignation. But it was the Admini- stration that led. The people followed the leader.

How many Maines have been destroyed in this war, not always under ambiguous circum- stances ! But popular indignation without leadership has so far not sufficed to put an end to the national hesitation. What would not America be doing to-day if the McKinley administration, not to mention other govern- ments less cautious, were at the helm of State ? And what indignities without number have the American people endured, hiding their confusion under the cover of a national policy of isolation ! t

* Including the Houses of Congress, t " Had the United States lived up to its moral traditions and fulfilled its duty, if only to the extent

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PACIFISM AND NON-RESISTANCE THEORIES IN THE UNITED STATES

This feeling of national isolation has been made more conscious by reason of certain other movements, noticeable in recent years. Various motives mingle in what passes, in a large sense, for " pacifism." The spread of legitimate, though extreme, pacifist doctrines was the greater and the more thorough because

of protesting its indignation and expressing its horror, many if not most of these unspeakable crimes would not have been committed. And — what is more important still, perhaps — the other and weaker neutral States would have found leadership and rallying-place in the country to which they naturally looked for guidance.

" The exaggerated requirements of political neu- trality, combined with an extreme legalistic and inflexible correctness at Washington, produced in the people of the United States a condition which appeared to Europeans to be a sort of moral lethargy. It also exposed them fatally to the charges of com- mercialism and falsity to their national ideals." — From the author's article " La Neutralite," Foi et Vie, Paris, July i, 191 5. 40

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of the absence of any actual reason, political or moral, for not accepting them. If pacifism and internationalism had spread in France to a degree to endanger the national defence, what might be expected in America, where there were no foreign complications to be feared ? Yet it is an interesting commentary upon the isolation of the United States that even the forms of foreign interrelation pro- posed by the " internationalism " of labour were little understood or advocated in America. The detachment of the country extended even to the schemes to assure international peace. The working classes welcomed unionism and certain militant kinds of syndicalism at home, and class feeHng was extremely high, notably as between capital and labour ; but the organi- zation of the working class in international forms, together with the programme of inter- national union for economic warfare, had not made great headway.

Pacifism had its ally, moreover, in certain forms of semi-philosophical thought prevalent in America. The non-resistance theory of the Quakers was historical, dating from colonial times in certain States, Pennsylvania particu-

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larly. But the Quakers themselves had shown, in times of storm and stress, that their blood was redder than their doctrine would lead one to suspect. The newer forms of sentimen- talism current in the United States, however, have a far different effect on the national character. They advise a life of abstraction, from which the contemplation of evil and suffering is banished, a sort of auto-suggestion of ease and happiness, a softness of feeling which refuses to recognize pain and the need of struggle and effort, a moral dilettantism passing by the name and posing in the form of religious sanctity. " Christian Science," "New Thought," "The Glad Philosophy," the revival of certain forms of Indian mysticism, the theories of mental healing and Christian therapeutics, all have in common this teaching of withdrawal from the strenuous life — the palliation, by a sort of moral narcotism, of personal and moral ills. A philosophy of life is taught moving between the two poles of a pragmatism which suppresses all absolute ideals, and a mysticism which counsels life without pain and contemplation without effort. As result — the peace at any price, combined with

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the complaisant religiosity, of Mr. W. J. Bryan.

In all this the apostles of pacifism — often sincere and robust enough themselves — ^have had a less worthy ally. Appeals to high motives of duty and honour, to ideals of universal value, seem to meet with less sponta- neous response than formerly, at least in certain sects ; while reaction against insult and affirmation in support of high moral obligations of an international sort seem less pronounced and less implacable.

Entertaining such a feeHng, it is not strange that the Americans have not realized the signi- ficance of their own recent poHtical history. The nation has found itself committed by the course of events to a foreign poHcy that goes far beyond Monroeism. The diplomatic pro- gramme of the " open door " in China, the conquests of the Spanish War in the PhiHp- pines and Porto Rico, the interference in Cuba, altruistic as its motive was, the acquisition of the Hawaian Islands, the participation in the Algeciras Conference, and above all the extensive and creditable part taken by the United States in The Hague conferences and

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conventions, all brought upon the country new duties and obligations of a positive sort. Inten- tionally or not, the foreign policy of the nation, embarked on smooth waters, has drifted into unexpected breakers. It is, of course, too late to undo all this with honour ; what self- respecting American would wish to do so ? * But it is a result of the general unconcern and apparent indifference as regards foreign affairs that its import is not at all realized — apart from one or two noble voices that have pro-

• It is surprising that statesmen should suppose that a poUcy of commercial expansion is possible along with one of political isolation ; as if the great interests of the national life could be separated in any such way. Commercial interests require political sanctions, treaties, agreements ; they encounter rivalries and engender jealousies. Economic forces play in and through most international controversies. Foreign enterprises must be supported, foreign invest- ments made secure, the lives and property of foreign residents amply protected by their own Government. Yet in the midst of the paralysis of foreign diplomacy — due to the policy of isolation carried to the point of the utter abandonment of American lives and property as in Mexico — the President delivered an address (at Columbus, December lo, 1915) on Ameri- can " provincialism in business " !

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claimed the binding and reciprocal character of The Hague Conventions. Why are such conventions signed, and what is their force, if no obligations are involved in respect to their observance and enforcement ? There is no answer to this question.

There were, further, before the war, other facts which contributed to the general ten- dency to what may be described as a certain moral neutraHty. While the foreign elements in the American population are very greatly in the minority, still they are grouped, some- times locally, more often morally, in a way which reveals itself even in a most superficial review of the whole. The bitterness of certain groups against the countries from which they have been driven by persecution, by some form of ill-being, by intolerance, by bad government, or for whatever other sufficient reason, is kept aHve by associations, leagues, newspapers, plots — a hundred means which, to say the least, do not contribute to the unity of national feeling. The hatred of the Polish Jews for Russia, that of the Irish " patriots " for England, the rancour of Armenians and Syrians against Turkey, the bitterness of Socialists of

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all types against absolutism, and of anarchists against all government — all these make them- selves heard in the country of free speech. Every sort of race and interrace prejudice has its agents, and many have their bureaux of propaganda in the United States. The Russo- phobists and the Anglophobists disport them- selves beside the alarmists of the Yellow-peril and the Black-menace, among the ill-assimi- lated foreign and naturalized populations. To these we now see added the most powerful and most disturbing group of all — the pro- German or so-called German-American. A large part of the foreign population shows itself to have a second country ; and the anxious question as to many of these groups is : does America really come first ?

Is it surprising that one finds very wide- spread the sentiment : surely we have diffi- culties enough at home, without meddling in the affairs of others ! This sentiment takes on many forms, from those of ignorance and preoccupation to that of the cynicism of the Administration, which, confessing at Indian- apolis the bankruptcy of its diplomacy, declared in effect : " Let the Mexicans fight

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it out ; they have the right to kill one another ! "

VI

PARTY POLICIES AND LEGISLATION

In the realm of the poHtical, more narrowly defined, the evidence is the same in character. The poHtical parties in the United States, since the Civil War removed the great issue of human slavery from the sphere of discussion, have devoted themselves to domestic questions. The Democratic party, inheriting the tradition of " States Rights " and Free Trade, have claimed to represent a poHcy of democratic enfranchise- ment, over against capitalism, bureaucracy, special privilege, national expansion. The RepubHcan party has advocated the rights of the negroes, constitutionalism, federalism, pro- tective tariff, conservative -legislation. The tendencies of the Democrats have revealed themselves in sporadic, capricious, and more or less futile measures, often lacking historical precedent and faihng to carry the conviction of the voters. We may cite among the latest

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of these : free silver, referendum, the recall of officials, woman's suffrage.

Besides these opposed parties others, such as the National Prohibition, the Labour, and the Progressive party (the last being the newest and most extreme in its proposal of untried novelties, looking to " reform "), have advocated each the measure of its choice which had not yet been taken up by either of the two great parties. The elections since the Civil War have been contested practically, however, by the Democrats and Republicans.

The point to note is that in all this party struggle there is scarcely a note of international policy, no demand for or against any departure in the matter of foreign relations. Save vague allusions to the Monroe doctrine and cautions against " foreign adventure," there is practi- cally nothing. Since the acquisition of the Phihppines, there has been more or less dis- cussion as to the ultimate fate of these islands, and public men have found it necessary to disclaim any but generous intentions regarding them ; but so slight is the interest excited that I doubt if half the voting population can tell where the Philippines are, or what exactly is

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their standing as part of the territory of the Union. The ever-recurrent tariff question is discussed ahnost exclusively from the point of view of national economy, revenue, labour, balance of trade ; hardly at all in its inter- national bearings.

VII

WHAT IS NEEDED IN THIS CRISIS

We are led, therefore, to certain general conclusions, confirmed alike by the history and the social psychology of the American people.

The popular philosophy of life, speaking for the mass of those who represent public opinion, while assuming the moral principles of Christian ethics, and for the most part enforcing them, have found themselves unprepared for any prompt evaluation and decision in the face of the extraordinary crisis that is now before Europe and before them. What we may call the " forms of thought," necessary to a truly international point of view, have not been created. Thanks to their national and moral isolation, there are none of those " national

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aspirations " which have been the rallying- point of legitimate patriotic sentiment in other countries, and also for that sort of bargaining which finds the price of intervention in the war in the cession of territory or the recovery of estranged populations. " National aspiration " is too often the euphemistic translation of " enlightened self-interest " ; and so far as the American's enlightened self-interest goes, it hes too evidently on the side of neutraHty. It is too much to expect that any nation, separate from others and busy with its own internal problems of extreme urgency, its own internal enemies of extreme vigilance, and its own internal maladies of extreme gravity, will turn at once into paths of unknown issue, however strong its desire to see others succeed in reaching the goal of their ideals.

What such a nation needs at such a crisis, and needs the more the greater its humanity and the more sound its sympathies, is the great leader. The Americans have the humanity and the sympathy ; they are fit for great resolves. But this is not enough. It is to the exceptional individual, not to the people at large, to whom we look for the wider vision

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by which their humanity and sympathy are to be guided. If the Americans have lacked in this crisis until now, it is in the wider vision which only the great Leader could present to their eyes with sufficient force and persuasion.

SI

LECTURE II

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON AMERICAN OPINION

i

LECTURE II

NEGATIVE EFFECTS : THE LOW STATE OF NATIONAL SENTIMENT REVEALED

At the outset certain consequences of the war, more or less negative in character, impress us. The war has put in evidence, in a most striking way, the state of mind and the direc- tion of poHtical poHcy pointed out in the preceding lecture. It has revealed in the American people a low level of national senti- ment, if that sentiment is to be measured by sensitiveness in the face of affront, high ideals of national honour, and readiness to recognize international duties.

The same condition of things was evident during the long and weary diplomatic con- troversy with Mexico — or rather with Huerta

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and the other Mexican " generals." We have found the causes of this in the operation of two factors : the preoccupation of the country with certain inherited domestic problems, aggra- vated by new social conditions, and the tradition of political isolation, formulated in the dictum of Washington and the doctrine of Monroe.

The outbreak of war found the country largely free from bonds, save those of inter- course and commerce, with other nations. Existing treaties, generally not known in detail to the people at large, concerned matters of commerce, immigration, extradition, property, tariff, etc., except for the increasing body of agreements looking to the introduction of arbitration in international disputes. The effect of these latter was, of course, in the direction of making the assertion of the national will in miHtary terms more and more remote ; and they in so far confirmed and justified, so far as international politics were concerned, the popular feeling of security and self- sufficiency. The effect of the proclamation of The Hague Conventions subscribed to by the American Government was of the same character.

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II

FOREIGN CULTURAL INFLUENCES : GERMAN EDUCATIONAL INVASION

On the side of the internal life itself, what we may describe as the cultural side of the national consciousness, we find a similar state of things : on the whole a healthy indepen- dence, combined with a tolerant and intelligent cosmopohtanism. In literature, English models and English readers were held constantly in mind, with French a good second in the taste and appreciation of the intelligent. In science England, France, and Germany held about the same place and prestige, according to the department of work. In art France stood, as she had stood for a long period without inter- ruption, pre-eminent, both as concerns the production of art works and as the home of art instruction. Particularly is this true of painting, sculpture, and architecture, not to mention the minor arts of life, in which the unrivalled French taste imparted to the commonplace its refinement and grace.

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In two domains of culture, however, one artistic and the other practical, German influence has been marked during the last twenty or thirty years — music and education. Of the former I cannot speak with authority ; of the latter much might be said.

The introduction of German methods and the cult of German masters in the realm of higher instruction began to show itself about 1870. It reached its height fifteen years later, let us say in 1886. The occasion of it was the emergence of the American university into its stage of adult stature, ready to assume its place as over against the small coUege, which was generally theological in origin and which had hitherto filled the demand for higher training. The growing freedom of American thought, the lack of trained instructors, and, later on, the demand for research with the call for original investigators, found in the German system its most ready satisfaction. There was a stampede to Germany of American advanced students eager to secure the Ph.D. degree in two years. This degree became, if not the sine qua non, at least the most impor- tant qualification for the professor's chair.

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Almost all the present generation of American scholars and teachers of university grade have been through this German apprenticeship. The present writer speaks here from his own experience, the normal one at the time of his graduation in the United States (1884).

In the last fifteen years, however, things have changed. The tide has turned ; and at the outbreak of the war it was flowing in non- German channels. The American Universities have declared their independence, and offer to students facilities equal to those of any other country ; American scientific men and scholars are the peers of the Germans, EngHsh, and French ; methods of instruction have been developed which are adapted to the needs of the national Hfe.

Apart from these intrinsic reasons, moreover, there has grown up in America a body of positive criticisms of German methods and aims in education which has impaired the prestige of German scholarship. This latter has been characterized as pedantic in its apparent thoroughness, lacking in construc- tiveness in its minuteness, intolerant in its assumption of superiority, imadaptable in its

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nationalism. The German fault of obscureness penetrates all its products.

In view of these criticisms, German influence, we may fairly say, was permanently diminished before the war came on.

This open criticism and latent dissatisfaction with their scholarship and culture accounts for the lack of sympathy for Germany among the American scholars and teachers which has so astonished and angered the Germans since the war began.* The men who have worked in Germany and who should best know that country are now the foremost in their con- demnation. The exceptions to this, among American professors in the institutions of higher learning, amount only to 2 to 8 per cent, (according to a recent statistical inquiry made

* The new regulations (reported in Vorwdrts) governing the admission of foreign students to German Universities show already a certain spirit of retaliation. Among them one finds the rules that no single foreign group in any institution shall in number exceed 15 per cent, of the entire foreign attendance, and that no foreigner shall be named assistant or famulus unless there are no German applicants. These, together with the new financial requirements, seem aimed to hit the Americans. 60

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by Prof. MacCook and printed in the New Tork Evening Post), those with sympathies for the Allies being 92 to 98 per cent. This result is the more striking, seeing that the professors of German birth found in some of the faculties were not excluded from the inquiry.

This decline of German influence in matters Intellectual and Hterary was accentuated by the widening knowledge of French and English literary history. Visits of leading men from both these countries were arranged at various university centres. The French visitors were very notable.* M. Brunetiere came to the Johns Hopkins University,! Baltimore, in 1897 and lectured in other cities. He was followed

* A series of leading English authorities have brought reinforcement and aid to the British entente with the United States from a much earlier date ; among them one thinks at once of such names as those of Kelvin, Poulton, Li. Morgan, A. Wright in science, Lord Bryce and Sir F. Pollock in public affairs, and Matthew Arnold — not to go back to Charles Dickens — in literature.

t The Turnbull Foundation. There are numerous lectureships of the same sort in the United States, such as the Trask Lectures at Princeton University, the Lowell Lectures at Boston, etc., which have often

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by a series of writers and critics of the first rank — from R. Doumic in 1898 to E. Bou- troux in 1907 — who were invited by the " cercle frangais " of Harvard University and later on by the Hyde Foundation, a lecture foundation whose activities have been developed by the establishment of the regular annual exchange-professorship at the Sorbonne and of the lecture courses given by American scholars in the universities of France (Harvard Foundation) — the latter under the direct patronage of the Ministere de 1' Instruction publique.

The advantages which France and England presented have also become better known to American students, whose devotion to origi- nality and clarity draws them to the French, and whose admiration of sober empiricism, combined with high scientific imagination, brings them to the British.

been held by Frenchmen. Such authorities as E. Picard, P. Janet, and, quite recently, H. Bergson have accepted these appointments.

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III

FRENCH INFLUENCE IN ART AND LITERATURE

In regard more particularly to the French influence in general in America — not speaking of scholars, but of the people — one is struck both with the general lack of information about the French and also by the positiveness of certain impressions which have been current. The lack of information extended to practi- cally all the serious sides of French life, except fine art and certain branches of Hterature. The respect for French art, including those manifestations of taste included in the realm of modes, cuisine, manufactures in the domains of luxury, etc., was unbounded and undivided. The stream of art students to Paris matched that of students in the philosophical and Hte- rary faculties to Berlin. The notable compe- titions open to the world (such as the plan of the proposed constructions at the University of California) were often secured by French- men ; and French portrait-painters and sculp-

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tors were always sure of an enthusiastic welcome and remunerative stay in the United States.

The American's knowledge of French litera- ture was limited practically to the -pages choisies from the classics — Racine, Moliere, Montaigne, Bossuet — set for study in the courses in French in the schools and universities. This introduc- tion to French was curtailed in recent years, moreover, by the necessity, which came in with the wave of Germanism of which I have spoken, either of dividing the student's time with German or of making French alternative with German in the student's choice. Even in the southern States, where before the Civil War the tradition of literary culture was embodied in French models — a tradition going back to the French culture in Louisiana — the " modern languages " taken together have succeeded French, and the student reads " Hermann und Dorothea " along with his " Athalie."

In the larger circle of readers outside the universities a more unfortunate impression of French literature has prevailed — an impression giving body and confirmation, unfortunately, 64

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to the tourist's reports of the lightness, the frivolity, of the French. This impression was gathered from the books the tourist brought home from his visit to Paris, and the accounts of what he had seen and heard in Parisian theatres. The tourist when in Paris sees the museums and attends the art salons, then turns to the life of the Capital. He employs perhaps the guide who accosts him on the boulevards and engages to show him the true, the secret, Paris. One may imagine what he sees, and with what reports he returns to America, to tell of his adventures in France I

Fed on such reports, which had no serious correctives, it is no wonder that the Americans generally have considered the French frivolous and light. The subjects treated and the manner of treating them, in many of the romances and theatrical pieces of recent years, taken to America and received as representative of the best talent and highest workmanship, did not remove this impression. The field of literature, including the romance and the play, is, to the American as the Englishman, one for all classes of readers ; it is not a field

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divided between low green pastures laid out for the lambs, where the virtues grow and the innocent regale themselves, and the high storm-swept steeps reserved for the psycholo- gist and the student of life — ^where the rugged plants of thorn and heather struggle to live in the blasts of the weather of passion and crime. In American and English literature there are no special classes of books or objects of art meant for young girls. The theory and practice alike are that the young girls are to be found everywhere, and that they have the right to see everything in art. Life, it is claimed, is broader than art ; much in life has to be covered and hidden from the eye of modesty and inexperience ; and it is not the part of art to reproduce and expose to view this hidden part. Art has not the right to be indecent.

It results that the Americans have too often supposed these things to be the chosen things, the preferred subjects — to reveal an unrestrained licence. Not knowing the distinctions of clien- tele which are present in the mind of the French writer — the separate classes of people for whom one or the other author writes — 66

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the American reader supposes his studies of abnormal psychology or of passional crime to reach the public generally, old and young, men and boys — as would be the case with them.

The Americans say that if this sort of material is used by the best masters of Hterary art, and if it meets the demands of current literary taste, then the French life must be more free, more " advanced " in certain direc- tions, than the Anglo-Saxon.

Whatever may be said on one side or the other, from the point of view of ethics, social psychology, and philosophy of life, the fact is as I have stated it. I do not pass judgment ; I should make many reservations on both sides if I did. I only state it in order to include it among the things which seem to have hindered the proper appreciation of French culture in America. A great liberalizing of American standards in literature and art is in progress, and the war has produced a revelation of French virtues to the entire world. Already the Americans begin to see that they have listened to the voices of the ignorant and have taken too seriously certain superficial aspects

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of the French character. These are the true correctives.*

IV

THE AMERICAN'S UNDERSTANDING OF NEUTRALITY

So far as foreign affairs go, still speaking of the more negative effects of the war, one thing appears in a strong light : the American's way of looking upon and preserving neutrality. I have pointed out elsewhere f the necessity of

• Cf. the author's appreciation of the French in " France and the War," New York, Appleton, 1916 (also in the Sociological Review, London, April 191 5 ; see also the same Review, " French and American Ideals," April 191 3).

t See the journal Foi et Vie, Paris, July i, 191 5. From this article, which has not appeared in English, I quote the following passage: "It is plain that the condition of political neutrality involves certain reciprocal engagements. A neutral nation should expect, and should be ready to require, due respect, on the part of belligerents, for the rights attaching to neutrality. The international rules which define neutrality also establish the rights of neutrals. In so far as submarine warfare, for example, is conducted 68

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distinguishing between the political neutrality which is decreed by a neutral government, and which properly extends to every loyal citizen, and the personal or moral neutrality which finds it necessary to suppress personal sympathy and to conceal individual opinion. This latter is to my mind not only dangerous and futile ; it is also impossible in fact and immoral in idea. One may do nothing to embarrass his

in a way to interfere with neutral traffic, the obliga- tion of neutrality is lessened or annulled ; and the question of the enforcement of its rights becomes urgent to the neutral State.

" Again, political neutrality cannot condone the violation of positive covenants of any sort. Such violations at once destroy the basis upon which the pledge of neutrality is given ; and the neutral State is again called upon to consider the question of the suspension of its neutrality. This case is presented by the violation, in the present war, of The Hague Conventions, to which, in certain instances, both groups of States, those now at war, and those hitherto neutral, were signatories. So much, at least, may be said, even though we leave out of account the moral obligations of neutral States to the principles of humanity and right, even when they do not happen to have signed special treaties or conventions embody- ing these obUgations."

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government in its policy of neutrality, but he cannot surrender his feelings of right and justice nor suppress his sympathy for the peoples who are struggling to maintain these things.* At the outbreak of the war the Americans

* " In the case that the individual suppresses his impulses of sympathy and his acts of preference in favour of the cause which he considers right, he makes himself, it is true, a tool of political neutrality, but he does so under a sustained personal and moral pretence. On the other hand, if he cedes to the State his right of individual judgment and moral preference, accepting its decree of poHtical neutrality as morally binding upon him, he then, at least for the time, gives up his moral autonomy and ceases to be a free citizen — just at the time perhaps when the Executive of the State is most in need of the direction of popular sentiment.

" The first of these alternatives is illustrated in the case in which a Government enjoins upon its citizens to refrain from all expressions of preference. Taken seriously, this would mean that the people are to maintain an insincere indifference to the questions of such gravity as those involving war and peace — to chafe under an intolerable self-repression, the more difficult as their patriotism is the more ardent and their humanity the more catholic. If 70

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were enjoined by their Government to main- tain a careful neutrality. They accepted this injunction with the docility which charac- terizes their attitude toward the national Government ; and endeavoured to conform to it in the moral no less than in the political sense. They have mistakenly considered it their duty to express no opinion, to show no preference, to limit themselves to impartial and platonic declarations of a vaguely humane sort. Hence it is that their acts have gone so much further than their words ; for their deeds of sympathy and succour have built for them a monument in the hearts of the AUied Nations. It would not be in place here to criticize

it deceives nobody, it is useless : if it deceives any- body, it is hypocritical and base.

" In the sphere of morals, these complications become acute ; since whether the neutral State is to assert its rights and defend the conventions signed in good faith depends in democratic countries upon the sentiment of the people and upon the free expres- sion of their will. Here one sees the pernicious effect of efforts of a government to control or suppress the expression of public opinion in such a crisis as that now upon the civilized world." — From the article cited in the last note.

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the American Government's policy. There are great differences of opinion on the subject among the Americans themselves. My object is not controversial. I wish to point out, merely, that this understanding of neutrality, mistaken as I believe it is, accounts for the apparent moral inertia of the Americans' response to the hideous and damnable features of the German methods of warfare, and their apparent callousness to injury and insult. In this, as in other national crises, they have waited to be led, taking their cue from the Department of State. As long as they are advised to be morally neutral they wiU endeavour to appear so. They are taking the same attitude, indeed, toward the indignities, the crimes, committed against themselves — the shameless violations of their country's neutrality itself by German agents — that they show at the commission of the same sort of crimes against others. If this is a fault, it is a fault of excess of patience and generosity ; it is less a fault than a lack — a lack both on the side of political education and on the side of moral independence. It is the defect of their political education that they do not see the world-character of the issues at

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stake In this war — issues in which the United States is essentially interested — and it is the defect of their moral independence that they do not lead their Government, themselves determining the kind of neutrality they wish and its limitations, instead of tolerating repeated verbal promises of vigour, which lead to no fulfilment.

Those who followed the movements of American opinion during all the period of the recent Mexican troubles * under the same Administration at Washington, know what to expect now, as I have already intimated — the same popular docility and the same official

• It may be added that the writer's allusions to Mexican affairs here and on other pages are not mere hearsay or second-hand impressions. Having been Professor in the National University of Mexico since 1910 — after previous official visits during the Diaz rdgime — and present in Mexico City during much of the disturbed period, he has had more than the ordinary opportunity to form an opinion. Com- petent judgment on the Administration's Mexican policy will be found in the articles by G. L. Seeger, New Tork Times^ January 3, 191 5, and G. Harvey, North American Review, September 1915.

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futility. The German Foreign Office has not been mistaken in its reading of this page from the diplomatic notebook of General Huerta.

POSITIVE EFFECTS: THE REVOLT

OF POPULAR SENTIMENT AGAINST

GERMANISM AND THE DEMAND FOR

MILITARY PREPARATION

The positive effects of the war upon American opinion are evident in many ways. There has been a reaction all along the line — a reaction of revolt against both the internal hindrances and the poHtical trammels of which I have spoken.

We note, in the first place, a growing restless- ness and impatience in respect to the German and Austrian intrigues against the neutrality of the country and against its laws. In view of the extent and variety of these crimes, one has wondered indeed whether the patience of the Government and of the people had no Hmit. They have suffered the passport, sacred

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symbol of citizenship, to be travestied, counter- feited, and bartered in, the rights of American citizens to travel and attend to their business to be interfered with and annulled, the proce- dure and organization of domestic industries to be undermined and endangered, the employ- ment of the means of intercommunication at home and abroad to be interrupted and abused, the hospitality of diplomatic residence to be compromised and betrayed. The meanest crimes against property, personal security, and life have gone unpunished and often un- reproved. The world has been about as much surprised at the toleration of these crimes as at the unblushing insistence and turpitude of their perpetrators.*

All this has destroyed every vestige of sympathy or good feeling for Germany and the Germans in the minds of most Americans. They are no longer personally or morally

* See Gabriel Alphaud, V Action Allemande aux Etats-Unis (August 2, 1914-September 23, 191 5), Paris, Payot, 191 5, a book which contains the official documents and letters of Dernburg, Dumba, etc., together with the notes exchanged between Washing- ton and Berlin.

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neutral. How can one nation continue to have any relations of scrupulous neutrality and reciprocity with another when the second party to the relation is silently waging underhand and treacherous warfare on the first ? The demand for the recall of Dumba was received in America with the greatest delight ; it was hoped that the Administration was beginning to see that not the dignity alone but the safety of the country was endangered by these abominable Austro-German intrigues.*

Nothing would more unify and rejuvenate the American sense of national unity than a

• Since these lines were written the American Government has demanded the recall of the two German attaches, military and naval, of the German Embassy at Washington. This action, although in the right direction and tending to quiet public opinion, really accomplishes nothing, because it strikes only the agent and not the principal. These agents can be replaced, as in the cases of Dernburg and Dumba, by others sent to continue the same procedure under the same chief, while they them- selves return to Berlin to receive the iron cross ! With the evidence the country now has, it is a disgrace to continue diplomatic relations of any kind with the German Government.

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decision to sever relations altogether with peoples to whom diplomacy is a means to treachery and its channels those of perjury and fraud.

Other effects of a very radical sort are to be expected from the exposure of the lamentable abuse of American hospitality by a group of people who pretend to have adopted the country as their own. The entire body of legislation and statute law on immigration and naturalization, on the exercise of the franchise by naturalized persons, on the penalties and sanctions of disloyalty — even the very definition of disloyalty — must be revised and made more exacting. Some more binding proofs of allegiance to the country than mere oaths of fidelity must be exacted ; for there are people whose conduct speaks louder than their oaths. What could be more significant than the frequent violation of their word of honour by German officers released on parole in the United States ? Already these demands are being heard in the country. Every new outrage upon the dignity of American citizenship increases their force.

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

The same reaction of the national self-respect shows itself in movements of a more general order. The demand for immediate and ade- quate preparation for defence, and for the provision of war equipment in general, has become pronounced. Leagues * for all sorts of patriotic purposes have been formed — for the increase of the army and navy, for coast defence, for the improvement of the State militia in view of the possible demand for its use by the nation. The Secretary of the Navy proposes to supplement the regular army by a conti- nental army of a half-million men, made up of volunteers giving certain months for a term of years to military exercises. Actual encamp- ments of volunteers — the most important that at Plattsburg, New York — eager to be trained for use if war should come, have been estab- lished, having details of army officers as instructors. Added to this there is the demand for a propaganda to instruct the people as to the significance of the principles for which the Allied Nations are fighting : the sacredness of

* The " National Security League " and the " Civic Federation " are the most important of these.

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nationality, the rights of small nations, respect for treaties and international guarantees of every sort, the authority of The Hague Conven- tions, the elimination of the barbarous and inhuman in war.

VI

NEW ADMIRATION FOR FRANCE AND ENGLAND

These positive movements in the body of American sentiment must give a vigorous impulse to the sturdy sentiment of nationaHty. It has already produced a new respect and veneration for those nations which are giving their best manhood for the maintenance of poU- tical Hberty and public law. The Americans feel that the ideals of all free self-governing peoples are endangered as never before, and that France and England are fighting for what their own fathers fought for. They feel already the renewing of the historic bonds which bind them to France, the land to which they owe the achievement of the individual rights of equaHty and brotherhood, and to

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England, that to which they owe the Magna Charta of constitutional government.

These positive sympathies show themselves in the American work of relief and aid, both public and private, of which I shall speak on another page. The relief of Belgium is a work of pure humanity ; both the absolute need of the Belgians and the equally absolute justice of their heroic defence appeal to all men of conscience and humane feeling. The response made to France, however, by the Americans has another meaning. It is not so much because France needs them as because they need to show their love and sympathy for France. Hospitals, physicians, nurses, ambu- lances, funds for every possible need of the troops, gifts to the treasuries of the French ceuvreSy personal effort by act, word, and pen, volunteering for the army — all this expresses not sympathy alone, but a sense of the majesty of France and the sublimity of her effort for the highest ideals of civilization. This has shown itself in the spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm on certain occasions, such as those of the opening of the French section at the San Francisco Exposition and the unveiling

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of the statue of Jeanne d'Arc at New York. In all this we see the true movement of the American heart, an expression which no poli- tical cautions of neutraHty and no internal suggestions of prudence have been able or will be able to prevent or diminish.

VII

NEW CONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY: ILLUSTRATIVE CASES

The great result of the war, however, upon American opinion is the appearance of a higher conception of democracy — a democracy which recognizes its kinship with its fellow-democ- racies of the world, and its duties to the prin- ciples of such democracy whenever and wherever they are assailed. After this war the United States will feel as never before its alliance in spirit and ideal with those other nations which are founded on principles of freedom and constitutionalism ; and it will have a new abhorrence for autocratic and militaristic governments and institutions. Its inter-

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national obligations will be recognized and its treaties and conventions will be conceived in the spirit of binding rights and duties.

That the Americans are capable of taking the point of view of international right is shown in certain recent cases in which the interests of the Nation seemed opposed to those of others. I may cite three questions which have been settled with due regard to the rights of foreign nations, one before the war commenced and two during the course of hostilities : the Panama Canal Tolls case, the Ship Purchase Bill, and that of the proposal to place an embargo upon the exportation of munitions of war to the Allied nations.

VIII

THE PANAMA CANAL TOLLS QUESTION

I^The Panama Canal Tolls question involved the terms of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty made with England, which secured to the United States the right to construct the canal on the 82

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Isthmus of Panama on certain terms — terms upon which England conditioned the abandon- ment of the rights secured to her by the older Clayton-Bulwer treaty. One of these condi- tions was to the effect that the United States should give to all nations the same facihties and rates of toll for passage through the canal. This proposition was construed by the United States Congress to refer to foreign nations only, their contention being that the United States was at liberty to allow to American ships rates below those granted to the ships of other nations or to exempt them from all payment of toll. It is evident that such a construction, while placing the mercantile marines of other nations on an equality with reference to one another, still placed them all at a decided disadvantage with reference to that of the United States. For under such an exemption the American ships could charge lower trans- portation rates than any other vessels, and so secure the carrying trade through the canal. Again, a second result in favour of the Ameri- cans would be that there would be a movement of transfer of foreign ships to American register, in order to secure the advantages of reduction

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or exemption of tolls. This would in turn, it was claimed, enormously stimulate and develop the American mercantile marine.

On these grounds of American interest and advantage, the Bill to exempt American coast- wise vessels from the payment of tolls was passed by the Congress, despite the remon- strance of the British Government, backed with practical unanimity by that of the other mari- time nations. It was signed, however, by President Taft. But in time the public, becoming better informed as to the negotia- tions preceding the signing of the treaty and as to the contents of the British and other protestations, became more and more convinced of the injustice of the American contention. This seemed to have been prompted by commercial and other unjudicial considerations, principal among which was the project to grant an indirect subsidy to the American mercantile marine. The demand for the repeal of the measure became insistent, and the President, the Administration having in the meantime changed hands, appealed to Congress to alter this provi- sion of the Act. This reconsideration was secured and the British contention finally prevailed.

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IX

THE SHIP PURCHASE BILL

The Ship Purchase Bill was a measure initiated by the present Administration at the outbreak of the war or early before. It was a scheme to extend the American mercantile marine by permitting the purchase, for entry into American registry, of ships built in other countries, thus modifying the provision before in force to the effect that all ships, to secure American registry, must be of American con- struction. The discussion of this measure in Congress during the early months of the war was complicated enormously by the fact that a fleet of German vessels formerly engaged in transatlantic passenger traffic (belonging prin- cipally to the North German Lloyd and Ham- burg-America Lines) were detained in the United States ; and it was anticipated that if the Bill became law these ships would be sold, possibly indirectly, to the American Government, or at least would pass into American hands and American registry. The

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Germans would receive full value for the ships. The Bill was supported with frenzy by the pro-Germans in Congress, and by the pro- German newspaper press. But so great was the popular feeling and so pronounced the demand that no loophole be given the German steamship lines to recoup themselves that the Bill had to be withdrawn, despite the Presi- dent's formal assurance that the Government would not purchase the German ships.

The fact that German agents in America are ready for any subterfuge by which to take advantage of American registry and the Ameri- can flag is shown by the case of the steamship Dacia, which took out American registry in the name of an American citizen said to be of German descent, for the transportation of cotton to a neutral port. It was only justice that the ship became promptly a prize of war of France on the high seas. Its seizure has been declared legal in the Prize Court. The actual destination of its cargo of cotton was an open secret. The same suspicion attaches to the ship Hocking, recently seized by the British, which is one of eleven vessels placed under the American flag by the same owners. 86

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THE EXPORTATION OF MUNITIONS OF WAR

A third case, or rather a third situation, in which the Americans are showing themselves quite capable of taking the international point of view shows itself in the matter of the manu- facture and exportation of materials and muni- tions of war. It is, of course, clear to everybody that this commerce is in fact one-sided. The British and French have cleared the seas of all German means of transportation. If Germany and Austria bought munitions in America they could not transport them across the sea. The result is that America supplies the orders of the Allies while none are supplied to the Central Empires.

The pro-German party in the United States have seized upon this fact to demand that the United States forbid the manufacture and sale of munitions of war for foreign use. They make much of two principal arguments.

First, they say, it is a violation of American

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neutrality thus knowingly to supply one side with essential aid while not supplying the same aid to the other side. This is, of course, specious in the extreme, since the American market is equally open to the Germans, and it is their inability to enter it that causes the discrepancy. Furthermore, the present state of things is due directly to the effectiveness of the navies of the Allied Powers ; the request to remove it is the equivalent of asking the United States, if that country were in a position to do so, to discredit and embarrass the German army or its air-craft. The Allies have shut off the German market in America ; that is the whole case : this is legitimate warfare — and so much the worse for the Germans !

But the pro-German party have another argument, one that is much more effective with a certain class of Americans, those whom I have spoken of as being " soft philosophers," " false pacifists," persons who say " Stop killing ! " — as if that were the end to all argument. The pro-Germans insinuate to these people that the American munitions maintain the war. " You Americans," they declaim, " are continuing the bloodshed, you are making peace impossible, 88

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you are responsible for the horrible condi- tions in Europe ; but for American munitions and supplies peace would already have been secured." This is a real argument to the class of people I have mentioned. They shudder at war and carnage, they hope and pray for the peace of Europe ; and to have it said that they are doing all in their power to main- tain the war seems to them scandalous. The result is that there is a widespread movement of opinion in the United States in favour of influencing the Administration to forbid the exportation of munitions of war. It is said that there is Hkelihood of a Bill to this end being introduced in Congress, which would have a certain support, principally from members coming from German constituencies.

It is the opinion, however, of the great body of the people that there could be no more gross departure from neutrality than the passage of such an Act. It would be a grave step in direct support of Germany. Moreover, as the Department of State has explicitly pointed out in its reply to the protest from the Austrian Government, it would be in contra- vention of the usages consecrated by inter-

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national law and of the stipulations of The Hague Conventions.* Besides, in this the Germans and Austrians are protesting against a position upon which they have themselves acted in recent wars, notably in that of England against the Boers. When, one may ask, has the house of Krupp refused to sell cannon to any nation ?

Furthermore, as to the actual value to the Allies of the munitions secured in America, it is folly to suppose that the war would not be prosecuted just the same without them. A peace short of victory would be to America, as to Europe, a calamity for the present and a crime against future generations. The United States should want no such peace.

In this again the Americans have shown a straightness of vision and an inflexibility of purpose worthy of their best traditions. There is no doubt that the exportation of munitions will be continued.

These three instances, cited from very recent questions in American politics, show sufH-

* This is admitted by German authorities, such as E. Zimmermann, Berliner Lokalanzeiger, June i6, 1915. 90

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ciently both the mood of the people and their essential rectitude in international affairs. It is only the more desirable that their sound judgment should be more fully informed as to the fundamental issues at stake in the war, and that their large sympathy should be officially directed. If they were convinced that they were in honour bound to defend The Hague Conventions or that the principles of liberty established in common by the French, the English, and themselves were in danger of subversion, they would not shrink from the sacrifice involved in war. It is one thing to submit to effront and insult — ^to turn the other cheek, as it were — ^when one's own dignity and interest alone are involved ; one can under- stand the meaning of the words attributed to the President — " it is possible to be too proud to fight." This is true, no doubt, if the appli- cation of the statement be Hmited to circum- stances in which the essential functions of Government toward its citizens and its territory are not involved. But it is another thing to allow the small State to be crushed, the valiant defenders of liberty to be assailed and their territory invaded, to see the formula of " beyond

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good and evil " enforced upon half the civilized globe by methods of savagery, to hear unmoved the cries of drowning men and women of neutral countries — all this admits of no alternative and allows of no choice. The principles of chivalry and honour for a nation cannot be separated from those of the individual exer- cising his rights and performing his duties in the social organism. It is, then, a question of seeing that American national sentiment and its ofHcial expression really and fully reflect the moral feeling of the people.* It may not

* " The President of the United States is reported to have said in his address on the occasion of his review of the Atlantic Squadron : * The navy of the United States represents our ideal. A great thing for America is that she does not seek to acquire territory. She defends humanity and does that which humanity demands.' Noble words ! As hollow as they may sound to those who have longed to hear some note of ' humanity ' from Washington during all these racking months, let us believe that now the heart of the country feels the beat of the greater human heart which is labouring in the titanic struggle in Europe, that the ghost of moral neutrality is laid, and that the Executive is reading aright the un- mistakable signs of an aroused national will and an 92

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be actually incumbent upon the nation to depart from its neutrality, but its readiness to do so, its recognition of its international obliga- tions, should be made clear beyond dispute.

inflexible national purpose. May the Nation still retrieve the loss, the veritable loss, of the greatest opportunity to ' defend humanity ' since the emanci- pation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln ! " — Citation from the article " La NeutraHte," already quoted.

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LECTURE III

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON AMERICAN LIFE

LECTURE III

EFFECTS ON THE POPULATION: IMMIGRATION AND THE SETTLE- MENT OF FOREIGN GROUPS

The first result of the war is one which Americans share with aU the other countries : a remarkable effect, or series of effects, upon the population. In the European countries, of course, the population suffers directly from the decimating effects of war. The best man- hood of the belligerent nations is exposed to death. In America, supposing the neutrality of the country to continue, this result is not to be expected ; but another, due to its peculiar position, may be. The increase of the Ameri- can population is due in normal times to an extraordinary immigration, amounting to one

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million persons per year. The statistics show changes from year to year in the points of origin, no less than forty countries being repre- sented. The nations sending the greatest numbers to America are largely the same, and with all the changes, the number maintains itself with remarkable consistency. The coun- tries from which the largest immigration has proceeded in recent years are : Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, the Balkans, Greece, and the Turkish Empire. The great streams of people thus crossing the sea are the Germanic, the Scandinavian, and the Southern European. It is to be noted that while enor- mous numbers of Italians emigrate, they do not settle permanently in America, but cross and re-cross, carrying back to sunny Italy in the winter the wages they have earned in America during the summer months.

It will appear from this general and super- ficial indication that the Latin nations are not prominent in this peopling of America. The Germanic (among them vast numbers of Jews, as there are also among the Slavs), the Scandinavian, and the Slavic races may

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be said, roughly, to contribute the bulk of the new population.

As to the occupations and the distribution of these peoples in the United States, there are certain outstanding facts.

The Germans and Austrians are, for the larger part, city people or at least villagers who enter into commerce and industry ; they are not in the main agriculturists. They cluster in groups, establish small centres of their own " Kultur " (a brewery being the nucleus in many instances), maintain a Lutheran church, and give themselves up to permanent estab- lishment in the country. They are disposed to take out naturalization papers, and seem to be contented and well-to-do citizens. They support newspapers published in German, continue to speak German in the home, organize Germanic societies, which keep them in touch with the Fatherland. Their American settle- ments often go by the name of " Little Germany."

Besides their " Little Germanics," however, there are not a few large Germanics in the United States. Certain cities have become by preference centres of the German population ;

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and these cities are among the most populous German cities in the world. Germany does not contain many cities having a greater German population than Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Milwaukee, and San Francisco. In these cities the German group is often controlling — or seeks to be so — in municipal, educational, and local affairs of all sorts, and has a considerable influence in State and National politics. The " German vote " in many States is formidable ; in the nation at large it is important but not dangerous.*

The statement is made by German writers that one-fourth of the American population is of German descent.t They conclude from this

* A careful estimate, based on the census of 1910, makes the number about i^ millions of those voters one or both of whose parents were German or Austrian (the total vote of the country is about 15 millions), The " allied " vote, similarly calculated, would be double this number, while the " native " voters would also oppose any foreign group which voted " solidly." This was shown in the recent local elections at Chicago, where the conditions were most favourable to the " German vote," See the next note.

t This statement is based upon the estimate, itself vague and uncontrolled, that 25 million 100

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that it is a mistake to say that the United States is an Anglo-Saxon country or that the British tradition of New England reflects the present national sentiment.* It is needless to say that nothing could better bring out and fortify the Anglo-Saxon tradition and sentiment than the revelations now made of the Germans' aims in America and the methods they are ready to adopt to secure their aims.

The Austrians are hardly distinguished by the Americans from the Germans proper ; they are all alike. On the other hand, the

members of American families have one more or less remote German ancestor. Besides not distinguishing between the real Germans and those who have merely a Teutonic strain, this number does not exclude the non-naturalized Germans, who are the most out- spoken but have no vote. These have no rights in the country at all, save those, so easily abused, granted by a too generous hospitality.

* Designating as German and Austrian all those who claim one foreign-born parent, the number is 8| millions, while the British alone are lo millions {see the North American Review, October 191 5). This shows that Britain has contributed more than Ger- many to the nation even in the two last generations, to say nothing of those which preceded.

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Hungarians are quite a distinct element in the population.

As to the other racial groups, their distribu- tion is also characteristic. The Irish congre- gate in the large cities, where they aspire to minor positions of trust. Apart from the enormous number who go into domestic service, especially among their women, a sort of work for which the German seldom applies, the Irishman courts the civic in every capacity, from policeman to alderman. An Irishman loves a uniform. In certain instances the larger city governments (New York, Phila- delphia, Boston) have been controlled and often corruptly administered by Irishmen.

As to the Scandinavians, they have settled in the vast unoccupied farming lands of the north-west. They go direct to the country on landing and establish themselves as land- owners and farmers. The movement of immi- gration of Swedes and Norwegians into the agricultural north-west in recent years has been one of the marked phenomena of Ameri- can population. They are considered as being among the best elements of the foreign population.

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As to occupation, a little more detail may be found interesting. The Italians are of two classes. They let themselves out in great numbers (as they do also in Switzerland) by day-labour under a contractor for special pieces of work, such as railroad construction or irriga- tion works. In this way, they drift from place to place, do not establish homes in America, but return to their own country. Another type of Italian immigrant, on the other hand, settles in a city, opens a small store for the sale of certain articles (most often fruit, in reminiscence of Italy), has a boot-shining parlour, or conducts a barber's shop. Add to this a vast number of Italian waiters in caf6s and restaurants and a great many boot- makers and travelling musicians and the list of Italian activities is about complete. Much the same may be said of the Greeks ; they are mostly found conducting small businesses in the cities.

The Germans, besides settling in their own chosen localities, show also the penetrating activity which characterizes them elsewhere — notably in France. They are everywhere in evidence in the hotel business as proprietors

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and as waiters, in the hairdressing trade, and especially in the retail sale of beer, wine, and spirits ; a large proportion of the bar-keepers and bar-tenders (the small proprietors and con- ductors of liquor establishments) are German.

But, unlike the Italians and Greeks, the Germans do not stop with small business ; they establish and conduct large establish- ments and engage in enterprises of great variety. Their influence in finance is witnessed by the important banking and financial houses, many of international standing, in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. They are influential also in musical enterprises of all sorts, both as patrons and as performers.

It will be noticed that I have hitherto said little of the French and the English. It is because there is little to be said. The French do not come to America in sufficient numbers to permit a general statement. Those who do come have generally a special trade or expect to have a special position. They are found in the establishments of dressmaking, millinery, perfumery, manicuring, etc. The French chef is in demand in the large hotels and in rich families ; elsewhere he is too expensive a 104

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luxury ! In the country at large the French- man is almost a fable. In my native town, for example, a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, capital of an eastern State, I never during all my youth saw a person who spoke French, while a German shopkeeper or bar-tender was to be found on every second street corner. The French are practically unknown, except as they are caricatured with other foreigners in travelling theatrical troupes.

British immigration has been greatly reduced, relatively speaking, in recent years — that is, apart from the Irish. The Scots, too, come more than the English proper relatively to their home population. The British who do come are so promptly assimilated in the population by marriage or by a quick scatter- ing over the country in good positions of trust and responsibility, that one cannot distinguish them by any external marks, save their accent. They are predominantly of the middle and well-to-do educated classes — clerks, engineers, foremen, etc. There are also English domestic servants, but not in numbers to rival the Irish.

Coming to speak of the effect of the war

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upon this mass of distinct national groups, the first thing to be noted is the immediate and almost universal cessation of immigration to the United States from certain important nations. Here is the counterpart in America of the decimation wrought by the war in the home population of these States. If certain of the European countries lose vast numbers of men, certain of them gain a great number also by the cessation of emigration to America. America loses this withheld body of immigrants, but the deficit * seems, from what statistics we have, to have been made up by refugees, fugi- tives, and contingents of " alarmed " persons of various classes from other centres — as, for example, Belgians and Armenians. Whether the deficit is a real loss or not one may be allowed to express one's scepticism. Possibly it might be suggested to certain of the European

* That is during the first half-year ; for the entire year ending June 191 5, the deficit was enormous. " The total number of United States immigrant aliens fell from 1,218,480 in the previous year to 326,700 in the period ended June 30 last, the lowest number for twenty years." — New York Herald, December 29, 1915. 106

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countries after the war that for a time all emigration to America be suppressed, in the interest both of the mother-country and of the United States !

The reason of this partial cessation of emigration is plain. In the belligerent coun- tries the mobilization retains the men of middle age, which is also the age of emigration. In certain countries, also, the alarm over the European crisis is so great — notably in the small countries which remain neutral — that the able-bodied men are held at home in a state of preparation for possible military service, as in Holland, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries. This accounts for^ the diminution in immigration from these countries.

Another direct effect — taken with that pro- duced by the rush to secure naturalization — is a diminution in the United States of the non-naturalized foreign population. For the call for reservists and for volunteers is heard by citizens of half a dozen countries — England, Italy, France, Bulgaria, Servia, Belgium, not to mention Germany and Austria. These men rush homeward — ^when they can find trans- portation ! The result has been very one-

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sided, however, for not all the reservists have been able to go home. Hundreds of thousands of Germans and Austrians of fighting age remain in America — not always sorry, nor very un- grateful to the British Navy (I have talked with some of them). It would have been better for the United States if this mass of mobilizable foreigners had left the country ; their presence is a care and a menace. Yet the United States may well add to her marks of friendliness to the Allies the care of a half- million of their prisoners. For it is not usually remarked that all the German and Austrian reservists thus kept away from their countries are legitimate prisoners of the British Navy ! America is, in a sense, an extension of the Allies' prison camps.

Certainly this cessation of certain kinds of immigration is not permanent ; the current will swell again after the war. But the United States will have been given a certain lesson, and will have sufficient time to take the measures which the conditions require. It is a very grave problem for the Americans ; its gravity is put in evidence anew in view of the revelation the country has had of the real io8

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disposition and interests of certain groups of the foreign-born population.

A certain disproportion in one of these effects works, it would appear, to the disadvantage of France. While other belligerent countries can recoup their population during and after the war — in a relative sense — by stopping the current of emigration to America, this is not to any extent true of France. The French emigration has been too sHght to matter. But in Germany and Austria this is a resource that is not likely to be overlooked. One would not be surprised after peace is declared to see laws passed in Germany forbidding workmen of certain trades leaving the country. They may be retained to diminish the loss of those killed or crippled by the war. Chemists, mechanics, metal-workers, skilled labour of all kinds, will be in demand. Possibly the great mass of reservists now held in America will then be given the chance or the order to return to the Fatherland. Many will go, willingly or not, if we may judge from the notice issued by the German Embassy in the United States calling attention to the Law Delbruck, which subjects to very severe penalties all' Germans, even

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naturalized American citizens (who by the terms of this law still remain German ! *), who have taken work in any way connected with the manufacture and sale of munitions to the Allies. Once a German always a German ! But it is not necessary, once having escaped, to return to Germany and to jail.

As to German immigration into the United States, it is impossible to see as yet what the result will be. Possibly, as suggested above, the German Government will restrict the emi- gration of certain classes of workmen ; but the important factor will be the condition of the German Empire in respect to colonies.

* Article 25 of the Law Delbriick, July 191 3, coming into force January 1914. By this law Germans naturalized in other countries remain German citizens for ten continuous years thereafter. But in counting this period of ten years, every visit to German soil, for however trivial a purpose or for however brief a time, sets a new date for the beginning of the ten continuous years. In the administration of the law, moreover, other technicalities, such as those of formal notification, etc., are discovered which make it practically impossible for a German by birth to escape reclamation as being still a German citizen. 1 10

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If the greater colonies remain permanently in the hands of the Allies, undoubtedly a larger proportion than formerly of German emigrants will go to the United States. If, on the other hand, Germany retains her colonies, these latter will continue as before to share in the movement of emigration.

Another and kindred result of the war on American population will no doubt be a re- distribution of the centres of influence, and of the groupings of the foreigners. The trades and fields of labour formerly held by the negroes, for example, in the United States have been much encroached upon in recent years by the Italians, Hungarians, and South Euro- pean immigrants. The negro is being driven to the wall. This movement is likely to be accentuated by the war, in view of the arrival in America of numbers of true refugees. Already movements are on foot in certain of the southern States to welcome the Belgians, even to give them inducements to settle and establish colonies. This current will no doubt be only temporary, and its results not at all equal to the probable loss in immigration in general ; but it will be significant in certain localities.

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It may also have the happy effect of restoring in a measure the character that American hospitahty had at the outset, and which Americans would like to see it retain — that of offering a resort, a refuge, to worthy people who are unfortunate or oppressed. If such people could replace the Fenian, the anarchist, the foreign plotters now so prominent, great would be the gain to the country at large.

There is likely also to be a sharpening of race-feeling, and a subsequent definition, even locally, of the limits of the foreign colonies. Milwaukee and St. Louis will, no doubt, become more German than ever, while the cities of anti-German sentiment will harbour fewer of those who find it hard to breathe the atmo- sphere. The Italians will fraternize less with the Austrians, and the Poles will hate the Boches with a new hatred. Serbs and Bulgarians will spit at one another in the streets. All this will, let us hope, react healthfully upon American national feeling.

I

I

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II

INDUSTRIAL EFFECTS

Industrially speaking, this state of things — the modification of immigration, together with the recall of large numbers of reservists — may seriously affect certain industries and the conditions of labour in general. There will probably be a great reduction in the ranks of skilled labour, the same in kind, if not in degree, with the similar reduction in Europe due to deaths on the field. This common reduction will act, as it usually does, to increase the demand and diminish the supply the world over. This in turn will affect the wages of the skilled labourer in America.*

* " Labour is now fully employed, and doubtless at the highest average wages ever known. Although the number of foreign reservists returning to their native lands has been [partially] offset by immi- grants, the net gain of population by immigration has been much below other years and for the fiscal year ended June 30, 191 5, was but 50,000 against 765,000 in the fiscal year 1914. There can be no great expansion of industry beyond the present rate

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In other realms, the intellectual and pro- fessional, this consideration will have less direct force ; but it is difficult to believe that the frightful decimation of the professional and literary classes in Europe will have no effects in America.

Another result is a dislocation of the normal channels of industry and in the demands for labour. The immediate result of the European orders for munitions of war has been the transformation of establishments of the most varying kind and equipment into auxiliaries to the munition works. Not only steel com- panies, foundries, machine-making establish- ments, but motor-works, electrical companies, concerns engaged in the manufacture of railroad equipment and locomotives, companies capable of turning out " parts," such as the bicycle and sewing-machme factories, all go in for this new business, where profits are enormous. Furthermore, the auxiHary agencies for supply- ing raw material — iron ore, copper, rubber, petrol, etc. — all feel the impulse, and requisi-

of production without more workers to man the machinery." — " Bulletin of the National City Bank of New York," January 1916. 114

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tion in turn an enormous number of tributaries still more remote from the immediate require- ments of the war factories proper. All this requires new adjustments, both industrial and economic, new adaptations of labour no less than of capital, new enterprises and new organizations.

We may add to this the ext^ensive establish- ment of new industries. The need has already- appeared, and is being rapidly met, of extending American manufacture to those things formerly brought from Germany and Austria, and which are no longer imported. American manufac- turers have imported from Germany great quantities of products essential to their busi- ness, and these importations have not been limited to things which could not be obtained or made in the United States, such as potash. The importation of dyes from Germany, for example, has been an enormous business. Other articles, such as toys of all descriptions, certain classes of buttons, lead-pencils and erasers — a host of small but necessary articles — ^have been wellnigh monopoHzed by the German makers.

The Americans are rapidly occupying all

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these fields. With their native inventive talent for designing and transforming machinery, and their abundant resources in mineral and agri- cultural products, it will not be long before all these products of overseas importation will be made at home and even exported abroad — as has been the case with a great many manufac- tures already in the history of American industry (boots and shoes, dentists' appliances, furniture, etc.). One of the most important of these new fields of manufacture is that of delicate instruments of precision, laboratory and surgical apparatus, in which the Germans, although rivalled by the French and English, have largely held the American clientele.

This will no doubt result in diminishing the importation to the United States in the future of many manufactured articles which Europe has hitherto exchanged for American raw products.

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III

EFFECTS ON FOREIGN TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION

A further effect of the present state of things is seen in the sphere of foreign trade. This is aheady making itself felt in two ways. First, the chance arises of occupying the markets which were closed to the belligerent nations — especially to Germany — at the opening of hos- tilities. Germany has lost, for the time being at any rate, both her carrying trade and her export trade. The German colonies are pos- sibly to remain in new hands. The other nations at war, and the neutrals to a less extent, have felt the restraining effect of their preoccupation, their activity being limited to the lines of industry connected with the war. The result is that the United States has the opportunity to extend her foreign commerce indefinitely. South America, for example, lies before her. The United States is the nearest and now practically the only source of supply, for South and Central America, of manufac-

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tured articles of all sorts, both necessities and luxuries. Resolutions of Boards of Trade and of organizations for advancing exporta- tion, and articles in trade journals, are already urging the American business man to take advantage of this great opportunity.

But another matter is brought to the front by this state of things, a matter which now assumes great importance, the weakness of the American mercantile marine. Despite many abortive schemes and many untried proposals, the United States has never built up a body of ships sufficient to carry its products to foreign markets. It has had less than one-eighth of its foreign freight transported under the American flag. Three-quarters of the goods imported into the harbour of New York come in under foreign flags.* It was in view of remedying this defect that the Bill per- mitting the Government to buy and register foreign-built ships, to which I have already referred, was proposed. The alternative would be the abrogation of the law, passed in the

• The latest report (191 3-14) of the traffic through the Suez Canal shows that American tonnage amounted only to one-tenth of I per cent, of the whole. 118

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interest of the American working man, which requires that all ships of American register be built in the United States. Even this latter course would not meet the present urgent requirement of a vast number of ships to conduct the new American foreign commerce.

For there is another embarrassment. The demand for the ships of the beUigerent nations is greater at home than in normal times. England, the nation having the greatest carry- ing marine, has requisitioned the ships for transport from the colonies, for the importation of munitions and necessities, for auxiharies of all sorts in the war. German ships in turn have been destroyed or are interned at home or abroad. The Dutch are busy extending their trade in their own bottoms. Here, then, has arrived the day, predicted long ago, when American commerce would be essentially handi- capped by the lack of an American mercantile marine.

This necessity of ships has been seen to be pressing since the completion of the Panama Canal. It is evident to what an extent the opening of the canal extends the coast-wise commerce of the United States. Vessels escape

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the long sea voyage around the South American capes and remain practically within reach of port all the journey from east to west coast. Here is a field for the development of a carrying trade from the eastern sea-board, as well as from foreign countries, to the Pacific, and vice versa, since many cargoes coming from abroad are in any case reshipped at an American port.

This is only one of the economic and com- mercial questions made urgent by the opening of the canal. The relation between the trans- port conditions by way of the canal and those by way of the transcontinental railroads is a matter of debate and discussion. The canal would undoubtedly feel the effects of the war seriously but for the fact that enormous land- slides have chosen this propitious time to take place, and the canal is all too frequently closed.

The broader effects of the opening of hos- tilities upon American commerce and industry may be indicated in the light of certain general phenomena. The outbreak of war paralysed the financial market and Wall Street (the New York Bourse) was closed for several months. The greatest alarm prevailed in

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financial circles, in view of the condition of foreign exchange. The customary purchases and expenditures, running into tens of millions of dollars, had been made in Europe, but the customary credits, due to the sale abroad of American staple articles, such as cotton, were made impossible by the interruption of trans- portation facilities and the blockade of many of the ports of Europe. The war found the United States threatened by an enormous debtor balance. The country was embar- rassed by the inability to dispose of an over- abundant cotton crop. The cotton-planters of the southern States, known as the " cotton belt," saw ruin staring them in the face ; and the whole south appealed to the nation for help. This unfavourable condition of foreign trade was shown by the fall in the value of the dollar in London and Paris to 5 and 2 per cent, below par.

This condition of things was, however, only temporary. Certain positive forces began to work, among them the new orders from abroad due to the war, and the measures taken at home to secure safe and sufficient transporta- tion. The American Government announced

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a scheme of marine insurance, and the English navy swept the German corsairs from the seas. Furthermore, the foreign market for cotton, while seeming to lose the large customary sale to Germany and Austria, gained about a corre- sponding amount in sales to neutral countries bordering these empires ; and it was soon evident that America was indirectly supplying to Germany a sort of munition as important as the fire-arms supplied to the Allies. Great Britain and France at last overcame their reluctance (a reluctance due to consideration of American sensibilities) and declared cotton contraband of war. The results of this measure, too long deferred, have not justified either the fears of the Americans or the hesitations of the Allied Governments ; for the special measures taken by the American Government to relieve the cotton interests of the south have been found unnecessary, the sale of the new crop of 191 5 giving practically no apprehension. This illustration shows the complete recovery and revival of American commerce from the paralysis due to the war.

The American Department of Commerce has recently announced the formation of a

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" trust " to manage exportations to neutral countries, under Government supervision, to see that the goods do not indirectly reach the warring nations.

The same result appears in industry generally and also in finance. American exports have increased enormously in the last six months. The factories are overtaxed to fill the orders for war material,* with the results on industry generally upon which I have already remarked above.f The recent statements of the unfilled orders on the books of the United States Steel Corporation (statements which serve as an index of the industrial condition of the country) are among the best in its history. Companies which had passed their dividends for a period before the war are

• Exports of war material alone have reached an average of a million dollars a day, according to the " Bulletin of the National City Bank," November 6, 191 5 — a great New York bank which has just estab- lished branches in several South American cities.

t From the beginning of the war to July 30, 191 5» the country sold to the belligerents thirty-eight thousand motor vehicles costing one hundred million dollars. — The Scientific American.

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resuming their payments from earnings. And the statistics of internal and inter-state trade show the same revival and extension.

IV

EFFECTS ON FINANCE

In finance similar conditions show themselves. The national exportation, so far from being balanced by the debt of the United States to Europe incurred before the war, has turned the balance of trade enormously in favour of the Americans. Importations have dimin- ished little,* a fact which shows that the people are not restricting their purchases of things brought from abroad. Moreover, the millions usually spent by American travellers during the summer months, which generally serve to reinforce the paying power of Europe as against purchases made in America, have stayed at home. This sum has been held in reserve or set to work in domestic channels.

* The reduction of importations has increased, however, since this was written. 124

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The balance in favour of the United States has become so great that the exchange rate in pounds sterling and francs has reached a level never before known. The American dollar has lately sold for six francs in Paris, as against a normal of five francs fifteen to eighteen centimes, showing a premium of about 1 6 per cent. Furthermore, the ship- ments of gold from Europe to America to pay for war orders have resulted in a condi- tion of easy money in the States and have produced some speculation. The price of American securities on the New York stock market has undergone a steady advance in spite of the sale there of millions of bonds held abroad, the stocks of munition and war- supply companies being much inflated.

All these indications — industrial, commer- cial, financial — point in the same direction : the United States is not suffering financially — quite the contrary.*

• This makes it seem surprising to Europeans — and not to them alone — that the United States Government should lay such stress upon the inconve- niences and small losses occasioned to trade by the Allies' blockade of Germany. Why should more

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THE BALANCE RESTORED : AMERI- CAN LIBERALITY

It is a pleasure to recognize, however, that this gain is off-set in certain ways. The Americans have done much to show where their sympathies are, by financial as well as by other undertakings. The recent report of the " American Commission for the Succour of Belgium and the North of France " will be read with pleasure by Americans generally ; it shows appropriations for relief amounting dur- ing the first year to $57,600,000 (£11,500,000), spent for supplies and necessities alone. The regular expenditure it is expected during the

heat be engendered in protesting over some delays in the delivery of a cargo of sugar than in demanding the cessation of acts of dastardly murder directed against American citizens ? Europeans are right in saying that the President seems to forget, in addressing England, that that country — in the words of an eminent scientist, Prof. E. B. Poulton — is " at war, not at law.'* See the vigorous remarks of this writer (Poulton, " Science and the Great War," Oxford University Press, 191 5, pp. 34-38). 126

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present winter will amount to $2,000,000 to $2,500,000 per week. This is only one of the agencies of American relief. Another very striking way in which the Americans have shown that they know what to do with their money appears in the subscription to the Anglo-French war loan to the extent of 2,500,000,000 francs. It is well known also to Americans living abroad that many of these residents, especially in France, have brought over considerable sums from their private fortunes to invest in the internal loans of France (the Obligations de la Defense nationale of 1 91 4 and the Emprunt 5 pour cent of 1915 *). All this shows sympathy on its practical and effective side, and restores the " balance of trade " in a very actual way.

In the United States these measures have not remained the exclusive privilege of the rich. The desire to assist has penetrated into the most humble circles. There is a pathetic spirit of sacrifice abroad in the poorer classes ; men, women, and children bring their mite to

• A single American company, through its Paris branch, subscribed to the latter loan for more than 30 million francs.

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the relief agencies of France, Belgium, and Serbia. The result has appeared in certain interesting forms of fellow-feeling, such as that shown by the gift of dolls and toys as Christmas presents to the children of France, and the sending of special ships of foodstuffs from individual States. All this has cultivated in the Americans, we may well believe, a spirit of generosity and self-sacrifice which has required economy of living and care in personal expenditure of all kinds. It is the more remarkable also in view of the continued rise in the cost of living, which is more difficult to meet in America than elsewhere, since the scale of expense is always higher there than in other countries.

VI

MORAL EFFECTS : A CHANGED PACIFISM

In the moral life the effects of the war will no doubt show themselves to be very marked ; we may discern already, in a measure, their nature. There is a revolt against the vague 128

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and softening theories of life which enervate the citizen and impair his manly character. The example of the heroic armies batthng on European soil, of their deeds of bravery indi- vidual and collective, the revelation of the constant dangers to which even the most peace-loving peoples are exposed at the hands of predatory and deceitful neighbours, the elevation of the ideals of chivalry and sacrifice on one side over against the exposure of so much that is base and ignoble on the other — all this, seen and felt by the Americans, must stimulate their enthusiasm for the nobler ideals it exemplifies. The " mollycoddle " and the " Miss Nancy " will have less place and tolerance in the future.

This hardening of the manly virtues, so to speak, wiU show itself, I imagine, in certain special and definite modifications of the national point of viev/.

Pacifism in the United States as elsewhere will bear the scars of the shock to which it has been subjected. No reasonable American, as no reasonable European, can henceforth fail to qualify his pacific theories of life in two directions. First, he will distinguish it,

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on the side of theory, from the various forms of Utopianism in which pacific sentiment tends to clothe itself. He will see that the world- problems, the racial contentions, are not all settled ; that the national emancipations are not all achieved ; that the rights of life and liberty are not yet everywhere established, and are not likely to be by this war. Nations considered enlightened and liberal, pacific in profession and proficient in the arts pf peace, turn out to be predatory and contentious, and force upon other peoples their purposes of conquest and subjugation. The Utopian and the dreamer who would plan the new map of a world suddenly converted to uprightness, and distribute righteously the fields of the planet to those who deserve to cultivate them — these men have lost their calling. As long as one State, great enough to draw the sword with any chance of success, still believes in the " will to power " and prepares to exercise it, the world is committed to war as the inter- national arbiter, lamentable as this prospect is. There has been recently founded in the United States a " League for the Enforcement of Peace " ; in the title of which the word 130

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" enforcement " suggests the limit set to Utopianism by the hand of force. In all projects of the kind — projects to institute an inter- national police strong enough to compel the military nations to obey the decisions of inter- national courts — it is overlooked that such enforcement would itself be a war like other wars, perhaps longer and more bloody than others ! Is not the Quadruple Entente at this very moment acting as just such a league — a union for the enforcement of treaties and con- ventions, and ultimately of a durable peace ? In this war righteous peace is being enforced ; why an academic league to talk about it ? The only role proper to such a league — for the present, at least — ^would be that of instructing the citizens in their international duties and teaching them to count on fulfilling these duties.

The situation cures our Utopianism, in fact, and tempers our optimism. The future pro- gress of the good and the just among nations will have to be secured, it would seem, as it has been in the past, by struggle and blood. There is no other way to " enforce " peace.

The other Hmitation on the American's

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pacifism, in the future, will be that to which I have already referred : he will refuse to be led astray by a sentimentalism based on immature religious and humane considerations. France has suffered from this, as well as from the more theoretical forms of Utopianism ; for France is the country of ideals and of a practical life planned in the light of ideals. The Ameri- can has been going the same way, though less consciously, for he has been led in his non- resistance theories by feeling, not by reasoning. His reaction should be the easier. He should not need the shock that France has had to rouse him to the realities of international politics. His sentimental love of peace will have to adjust itself in the future to the lessons this war is teaching him : the need of a foreign policy resolute and armed to support its claims, the definition of the national position in respect to the controversies which tear the world, the acceptance of the obligations of a great people to take its place in the family of nations and to shirk none of the duties which such a place involves and imposes, the readi- ness to support the national signature and to defend the national honour by all the means 132

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at the nation's disposal, the resolve to have in hand the means of defence not only of its own territory and rights, but of those of other nations which make appeal to its generous support against national piracy and aggres- sion.*

These are the lessons the war will bring home, let us hope, to every American, pacific as he may be. He sees the impossibihty of a neutral moraHty, the cowardice of failure in the duties which his own moraHty imposes, or in the acts to which the immorahty of others compels. He must find his voice and take his place when the world's precious accumulations in years of peaceful effort and generous labour are imperilled by a Power reaching its ends by the means that gave to the Phihstine his

* Americans should recall the fine response made by President Monroe, and re-expressed in the eloquent words of Webster's address to Congress, to the appeal of Greece against the oppression of the Turks and the pretensions of the Holy Alliance, in 1823. {See Morton Prince, " From Webster to Wilson, the Disintegration of an Ideal," reprinted from the New York Times, November 21, 191 5.) Monroe is the President upon whose " doctrine " the present- day politicians base their unconcern !

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reputation and to the Vandal his name. The shudder that passed over the country at the news of the execution of Miss Edith Cavell showed that in Americans, as in other civiHzed peoples, the lowest strata of moral repugnance had been touched.

In all these respects we will expect the Ameri- can to be less yielding and tolerant in his patriotism, more cautious, better informed than formerly, though less proud. He has seen what other nations can do by standing for large truths and great rights — ^what England can do for Belgium, what France for Serbia. He realizes that economic prosperity is after all the least concern of a nation ; for it pre- supposes the maintenance of those relations of human organization on which all economy, political and social, must rest. He realizes the fragility of these common things — details of international finance, travel, communication, literary and artistic intercourse — as well as the insecurity of treaties and conventions. Much that is interwoven in the tissue of his everyday life appears fragile and insecure, exposed to the outbursts of national rapacity and "will to power."

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It is not too much to expect, moreover, that the great body of enlightened American opinion, instructed as it is by a remarkably intelligent newspaper press,* will imderstand the theo- retical issues involved in the war.

On one side there is the Democratic theory of government, which looks upon the state as a means, an instrument of the Nation, not as an end in itself — a means to the realization of the personal and social values which are weighed and chosen by the free opinion of the citizens of the Nation, in their free development, and for their free enjoyment. The state itself has merely an instrumental value ; it is in its form the embodiment of the moral principles and civic beliefs of the personal and individual agents who inform and direct it.

This is the foundation of all democratic and constitutional government — this maxim that the state is a means, not an end, an instru- mental, not an absolute value. The state reflects and is bound by the morality of the

* Segj for example, the volume of collected edi- torials from the North American of Philadelphia entitled " The War from this Side," Lippincott, 1915.

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Nation, which is the same as that of a person ; it has no moral code of its own distinct from this. The word Nation, not the word state, should be spelt with a capital letter.

In opposition to this we find the Autocratic theory, restated in the terms of modern German philosophy and politics. It holds that *' over- individual " and absolute values reside in the State and give to it the value of an end in itself. The State alone is the bearer of the principles of " eternal value " ; it alone secures to the individuals of each generation their welfare and lays down to them their duty. The values attaching to the German State include the " divine right " of the Crown, the mission of a " chosen people," the possession of an " over-morality " which is " beyond good and evil," and in the execution of which means are chosen and employed suited to further the " will to power " of the rulers of the State. In this theory the word State is written with the capital.

Here, then, in the German State there is a political authority confessedly not responsible to the moral principles which rule in individual conduct — ^humanity, veracity, justice, contrac- 136

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tual obligation — an authority representing a divine call, asserting itself in the members of a dynastic house, determining by itself alone the inferior value of all other cultures and all other States, and appeahng to physical force as the final instrument of its will to dominate.

The issue as between these two theories is not new ; its familiar meaning is obscured by the pretentious terms of the HegeHan and Nietzschian philosophies. Between the two there can be no compromise in practice now, as in history there never has been. The gage of force once placed, by force alone can the issue be decided. If the outcome of genera- tions of enlightenment in Germany takes form in a retrogression to the tribal conceit of a chosen people, to the dynastic pretension of divine right, to the claim to moral exemp- tions combined with the irresponsible power of the robber barons, and to the vulgar licence of animal brutality calHng itself the " master- moraHty " of the " superman " — then it is time that civilization, ceasing to talk theory to these people, forthwith take to arms !

This is not a European conflict, it is not an un-American war ; it is a human conflict, a

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world war — ^for the preservation and extension of what is of eternal value, the right to self- government and the maintenance of public moraUty.*

Finally, let us hope that the war will have drawn together the three Great Powers of the Atlantic that love justice and the life of peace — France, England, and the United States. Could these Powers but form a Pan-Atlantic League to enforce peace, inviting other nations to join them, a long step would be taken toward a more rational Utopia, and the spiritual interests of mankind would have a permanent and powerful Advance Guard.

* See the writer's Herbert Spencer Lecture, ** The Super-State and the Eternal Values," Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1916.

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