American neutrality : its cause and cure

AMERICAN

:l>-

llfEUTRALITY

S^S CAUSE AND CURE

CO

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.

5

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

9

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.

10

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

13

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

B 17

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

J9

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

21

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

22

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.

23

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

25

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

27

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

29

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-

31

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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."

3*

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.

c 33

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

34

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."

35

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

36

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

37

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

38

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

39

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

1

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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-

41

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

4^

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

43

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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 " !

44

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

45

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

46

ITS CAUSE AND CUREj

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

47

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

48

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

D 49

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

50

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

55

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

56

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

57

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

58

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

59

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

61

AMERFC AN NEUTRALITY

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.

62

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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-

63

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

E 65

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

67

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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."

69

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

71

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

72

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

73

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

74

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

75

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

16

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

78

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

79

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

do

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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-

F 8i

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

83

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

84

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

8s

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

87

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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-

89

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

91

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

93

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

G 97

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

98

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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 ;

99

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

lOI

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

102

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

103

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

105

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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-

107

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

109

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

m

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

112

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

H 113

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

115

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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.

ii6

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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-

117

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

M9

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

120

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

121

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

122

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

" 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.

123

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

125

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

127

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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,

I 129

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

" 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

131

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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 !

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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."

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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.

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

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

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

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

137

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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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