America's day; studies in light and shade

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AMERICAS DAY

STUDIES IN LIGHT AND SHADE

BY

IGNATIUS PHAYRE

■\

What hath this Day deserved?
What hath it done

That it in golden letters should be set
Among the high tides in the calendar?

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

91

ASTOR, L*

TILDE N

R L

COPTRIGHT, 1918

Bt DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

TO

AMERICA

ENSHRINED IN MY OWN HOME
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATE

A smile among dark frowns, a gentle tone
Among rude voices, a beloved light,
A solitude, a refuge, a delight!

THE FOREWORD

BEING A NEUTRAL VISION OF THE WAR

My aim is to lift the note of the United States above the
clamour of a world-war, its man-killing, restoration, and
rearrangement. It shall be throughout an impersonal aim.
I teach nothing — I only relate, conscious of a certain in-
sight into America's music, though the sound of it be in-
congruous as a Bach fugue on the guitar. After all,
more than a hundred million souls dance to this tune and
try to make new harmony by inspired violation of the
old.

The Great "War affected this looser continent in various
ways: business and bosom were searched with many-sided
appeal. "Keep your harvesters and ploughs," Chicago
heard with dismay. "What we need are thermite bombs
to burn the growing crops. Or send us pedrail tractors
to dig a ditch for the living and the dead." It was the
shriek of madness in American ears. Forty million men
were flung into the furnace of war. Europe was seen
shaken and distorted, like a reverend friend that foamed
with sudden epilepsy. I cannot speak of America's won-
der, for the sight so dazed her that "Keep Away" was
a compelling instinct which quelled all the rest. . . .

The live light of Christ was eclipsed with cave-man
vengeance. The olden pillars tottered; our common sanc-
tuary was soon a smoking heap involving the United
States in the wicked futility of its fall. These people
were aghast; they were also confirmed in their own ways
— "Et voir autrement que les autres, c'est presque tou-
jours voir un peu mieux que les autres." America was

vii

viii AMERICA'S DAY

strong and sure in this perception of her own good. Who
had seen it more clearly than her own First President,
whose "Keep Out" policy in regard to Old-World tangles
took a new lease when the rape of Belgium began with
headlong fury? The prairie farmer gave Woodrow Wil-
son a second mandate on Washingtonian lines — the lines
of Prosperity and Peace which reseated "that proven man"
in the White House — the first Democrat of double term
since Andrew Jackson's day.

Europe had run amok. America's millions stood far
off in dim espial, deafened with partisan cries at home,
where German bombs went off and the German Embassy
was organized as a focus of conspiracy and crime. It
was all so crude, this vengeful welter; startling as the
flash and clap of storm out of a cloudless summer sky.
So unaccountable to the naive American mind; so unex-
pected of twentieth-century man, who rode the clouds
and made the ether speak without wires. . . . Old seats
of grace were gruesomely transformed. Rheims Cathedral
was ablaze, Venice and the Isles of Greece were rained
upon with fire like Sodom and Gomorrah.

America shed her youthfulness in those dreadful days
and developed an impulse to save herself. No longer
diffident, she was now mature and grave, surging with
pity and timid ministration. How should it end, when
would it end? The older and once-wiser world was be-
come a slaughterhouse, crashing with satanic gear. All
flesh was as grass over there; each levy of men mere
Kanonenf utter, or meat for guns that were great as factory-
shafts, with godlike youths high in the heavens guiding
them. There was a waste of money beyond any Wall
Street telling. The massed wealth of nations was now
turned to devastation, with malign Science directing all —
under water, in the air, and across tortured lands, black
with refugees whose prayer to God sank into sullen

THE FOREWORD ix

blasphemy and bloody vows of vengeance. Such was
America's vision of the calamity. . . .

At the same time, she reflected, the London poor con-
tinue to live like dogs. Trench heroes, pictured in the
papers for glowing deeds, returned from the King's Palace
to homes unimaginably vile. The Children's Hospital
was pawning its last security and advertising the fact:
"Unless help comes at once we must close our wards."
America could only stare at it all, and reckon the cost of
each day's killing which would surely heal a world's woe.
She heard of girl-babies collecting for the blinded and
maimed with an empty bomb as a money-box. Mother's
fur coat was officially branded as a crime against the
nation. Why? Because the cost of it would give the
hidden sniper sixteen thousand chances of shooting his
German brother!

Alas, that Bellona's robe should be the only wear in
Merrie England — "0 moissoneuse des premices du ciel!"
And America turned away from this shearing of the
human race. Bright streams of joy lay stagnant ; the fra-
ternity of man was but a memory, known by its tribute
of tears, like the Shrine of Pity in Athens. In the glare
of war our striving frailty was a baleful thing; our di-
vinity an august lie, our efforts to rise mere twisting of
a rope of sand, "which was a task, they say, that posed
the devil." Depressed and bemused by it all, America
took comfort in the better part which was unmistakably
her own. Therefore the philosophy of George Washington
was taken down from its dusty shelf and re-read as the
gospel of salvation.

"We are reasonable creatures," America insisted with
Grotius. "Therefore our works may be moral or unjust,
even in the rough grapple of war." It was a hint to all
the belligerents. For by this time grief had given place
to grievance as the United States steered a worried course

x AMERICA'S DAY

between the German devil and the deep sea where Britain
was enthroned. America blamed both sides with biting
impartiality. Why were they so "national" and not ra-
tional at all? America's creed was the reasonableness of
man, and this she preached to exasperation. It would
yet transmute the greed and guile that loosed this wither-
ing blast. Scoffed at now, it would yet lure Evil from its
lair into a shadowless White House day.

America was moved with Pauline sense of duty: "Ne-
cessity is laid upon me." She must somehow try to heal
humanity, long rent with hate and bloody aberration.
"Let us keep our heads," was Wilson's counsel — as a man
might urge when caught in a maniac surge and swept
away. "America is about to be thrust into the economic
leadership of the world." Let her stand clear of the
wreckage if she were to serve and rebuild when this Eu-
ropean brain-storm was overpast. The genial Bryan (most
typical of all Americans) laid stress upon the spiritual
side of this future. "Some nation," he felt, "must lead
mankind out of the blackness of war into the light of
day. Why not make that honour ours?" Here was the
voice of America in her neutral time. One caught it in
all keys, from the Executive Mansion to the sod-shack
of the Nebraskan plains.

From Vienna to Van, America assuaged the misery of
war with grain and meat and shelter. From Douglas to
Dantzig she mothered the prisoners of war, hearing the
plaints of all and marvelling how God saw eye to eye with
each belligerent. "The Throne of the Most High," Amer-
ica thought — distracted enough herself — "must be like
Jove's whispering-place in Lucian, where prayers criss-
crossed in conflict, some for rain and others for shine"!
And so, deafened with contending claims, the big Republic
turned away from them all. She was ill at ease and angry
to find that her neutral role was in Allied eyes that of the

THE FOREWORD xi

grafter and poltroon, battening upon the world's woe and
cursed from every side. . . . On the whole, she thought,
Europe was best left to the God that watches over the
afflicted and cares for drunken -men in the murderous traffic
of city streets.

Then lust of cruelty, America feared, was a very real
passion. Witness the Turk with his victims — say at Tre-
bizond on the Black Sea, where a whole nation was to
be destroyed. They were taken out in shiploads and
scuttled in a wholesale way. . . . Cruelty! The child
with a worm, the boy with a wounded bird — what flower
of evil blossomed here in dark abysses of our nature?
It was no sacred flame that moved the white hunter in
Uganda and made him drop the elephant-gun for a
Service rifle and the greatest game of all, which was the
killing of men. Why, the very curates ''had to be held
down," as the Bishop of London announces. "I should
like to get back quick," Charles Lister wrote from Gal-
lipoli. "I've seen just enough to tantalize. . . . And
there's no sound like the scream of enemy shrapnel through
the sky." Or hear another paladin — young Julian Gren-
fell, "when the burning moment breaks" —

"And all things else are out of mind
And only Joy-of-Battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind."

Such is the lure of war. This fever was not infectious
in the United States, though sporadic cases were to be
found: I mean American volunteers in the French and
Canadian Armies. "It is well that war is so terrible,"
mused Lee, the Confederate leader; "otherwise we'd grow
too fond of it." Washington himself could revel in the
bullet's song — "There is something charming in the
sound!" It is an acquired taste which present-day Amer-
ica had thought outgrown in a more enlightened age.

xii AMERICA'S DAY

She tried to understand it — to say of modern war what
Shelley said of the Medusa's head: "Its beauty and its
horror are divine." But only the horror emerged. Messrs.
Swing and Swope, America's privileged correspondents,
wrote of trench scenes discreetly glozed over by their Eu-
ropean rivals. The dry-land drowning of the gassed
Canadians, for example. The wild-beast rattle of their
end; their purple faces and starting eyes with blood and
tissue welling from dying mouths in torment that broke
down the veteran nurse and surgeon. Here was Science
enlisted in the war; it was the wraith of Science that
hovered at sundown over the gas-graveyard of Poperinghe.

There came a time when America yawned over the war.
News from the Great Ditch became drab and samely. So
did cries from the sea where ships were shattered and the
crews took to leaky boats amid German jeers. There was
no longer a public for wolfish fights between the wounded
and the dying out there in No Man's Land. Nor for the
suicide of crazed men who exposed themselves deliberately
on the parapet "to get it over." Haggard scenes in the
dug-out hospital ceased to fascinate the American reader,
with sweating surgeons cutting and hacking amid eerie
screams or the cigarette-smoke of resignation from rows
of stretchers on the floor.

There were ghouls that robbed the dead, it seems. There
was a crash and din of shells that robbed the living of their
reason, so that they bombed or shot the pals at their side
until these in turn destroyed them, as they might the
swarming vermin of the trench. There were few horrors
left in the inkwell when the American reporter was done,
so adept was he in sounding the horrid crannies of our
nature.

Custom can (and does) brass us all with ease. The
widow's tears are quickly dried; her mourning passes
from harsh crepe to dull decorous silks and serge, to shine

THE FOREWORD xiii

at last in pearl and gold. It is the way of the world; it
was America's way when she knew the worst of war that
her Swings and Swopes could tell her. And then, like
Tommy in the trench, she developed a talent for forgetting.
From over the water I caught the carol of Prosperity; it
was care-free as a dug-out serenade :

"The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you — but not for me."

The stupidity of war became a fluent theme when the
horror of it no longer made the American cables burn.
"Who's going to profit?" was a query that rose from
President and car-conductor. "The Cause," they were
told, was in every case "My Country." 0 the conse-
crated curse that put the State before humanity and made
of each nation's flag a shroud that meant more than dia-
dem and robe to those damn-fool patriots! So this was
the lay-religion of the Old World ? It put America in mind
of a noble fane reared in a pagan land; the light of it
streaming vainly, like a lamp in a sepulchre.

"When shall I do a decent day's work?" asked the
pruner of vines of a New York reporter on the Marne.
When would his mother do a decent day's work? — that
patient soul in lace cap and clogs. She was now stamping
steel and filling endless shell-maws out of dread alembics —
sticky stuff brewed pour les Boches by the learned Turpin,
and tried upon silly sheep in waste places of the Saone.
America mourned with the peasants of France, who saw
the very earth defiled by stinking warrens in zigzag rows —
thousands of miles of them, with deep galleries here and
there in which half a division could assemble and defy the
guns. Then there were enormous craters and shell-pits
in which you could hide a house. The patient fields
were turned inside out; the vineyard churned to chalk
by ceaseless drum-fire, and little homes ground to dust

xiv AMERICA'S DAY

and rubble under the leprous moons of war. . . . Look!
There was the white-haired cure trying to trace where his
village street had been.

"We must send over implements," America said in her
cheery way. "We'll ship you a lot of frame houses.
We'll renew your farm-stock, too — we'll send you seeds
and pigs and poultry." It was no use. The top-soil of
the Somme was swept away. Just as it was an army's
job to make them, so it would be an army's job to level
these lunar landscapes, scooped out as they were and
heaped up like a frozen sea. They might grow forest seed-
lings— beech, and the like. But God help the cultivator
who tried to wring a living from vengeful hectares in les
regions actuellement liberies de I'ennemi — say, in the Oise,
the Meuse, the Vosges, or Meurthe-et-Moselle.

This slaughter of the soil was a phase that shocked
America in a new way. It was abhorrent to every instinct
of the United States, now thrilling with regret that she
had any art or part or profit in this crazy surge — that
her Texan cotton, kneaded and nitrated, should fill the
war-head of German torpedoes. Why, in her own waters
half a dozen ships were smashed on the Lord's day, and
terrified souls cast upon stormy waters sixty miles from
land!

Then American steel — fine stuff for rails and bridges —
was being frittered in gun-tubes and armour plates. A
British artist (in khaki, of course) was cutting new masks
and faces for the hideously maimed out of Arizona and
Montana copper. America's wheat and meat were too
often snatched from starving Poland and Syria to feed the
poison-gas fiend and peeping assassins of the Turkish
trench. America was abased at her own trade, haunted
by dim eyes of women that outwept the clouds with an-
guish.' Who could grasp the totality of it in this war-
time world? Here is Emma Wilkins, the white-haired

THE FOREWORD xv

widow, who begins life over again as a cook in far-off
Winnipeg. Her husband fell at Modder River, in the
Boer War. Six times in succession had the British War
Office wired to this woman to say that a son was killed.
To these add three stepsons and a brother-in-law, as well
as a sister who "became a raving maniac before my eyes
when she heard her husband was lost in the Jutland fight. ' '

Acres of print were published in the United States about
the twin arts of killing and curing until America was
stultified with a sense of crime. She lost interest in those
surgical miracles: how bone was taken from the rabbit
and grafted on the pet of the hospital ward; how blood
was transfused, and the calf robbed of nerves for the
sake of the V.C. bomber, or the palsied lad who had ripped
up a dozen Huns in a minute's "haymaking" with the
bayonet. Such wonders grew more than stale. So did
pictures of the Hughes balance; the electro-magnet and
the microphone for locating steel fragments in the living
tissue.

Against these America set the German flame-projector
that burns men alive as they face the foe. How perverse,
when all was said and done; how revolting to men of
sense was this endless game of hurt and healing! Here
was Dr. Barthe de Sandfort who made a sound job of the
flayed poilu — "barely recognizable as a human being"
when brought in for the ambrine treatment to the famous
hospital at Issy-les-Moulineaux. America had no en-
thusiasm for this wanton mending. Nor had she any
pride in her own undoubted skill in the production of
artificial limbs. It was an added reproach, indeed, being
primarily the result of her own industrial speed-up, whose
casualties vied with those of Verdun and the Somme.

You will gather from my Foreword that America was
an unmilitary Power, with a policy diametrically opposed

xvi AMERICA'S DAY

to the Might before Right of Bismarck. "We are a very-
rich people," Theodore Roosevelt reminded them. "We
are a fat, untrained, and helpless people. We have treated
money-getting, soft ease, and vapid pleasure as the all-
sufficing ends of life. We have let our Navy run down,
we have refused to build up our Army. We have acted
as if wealth and wordy sentiment atoned for the lack of
those stern virtues upon which alone true national great-
ness rests. There is no surer way to court disaster than
to be opulent, disliked — and unarmed!"

But that reproach has passed in a Day of violence of
which no man can see the end ; it was passing when Roose-
velt wrote those words. For the first time nationhood was
being born in the United States. New seeds and sparkles
glowed in the melting-pot, and all eyes were fixed upon its
ferment. For the older nations were now pale with the
sickness of war. They were indeed "among the graves,"
as the prophet said, "and broth of abominable things is in
their vessels."

Having said so much, let me light my candle at the
cannon's mouth and show the Land of Opportunity, its
striving castes and problems, together with the perils which
beset the people's chosen path, and for the first time thrust
them into a mighty struggle overseas.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

The Foreword vii

I "Keep Out" and "Keep Off" 1

II Revelation from the Hill of Mars .... 14

III The Setting Forth of Strange Gods .... 28

IV "States' Rights" versus the Nation .... 40
V America in the Making 50

VI The City of Cities 68

VII "Dare and Do" 94

VIII The Militarism of Money 114

IX Adventures in Success 138

X Pay-Dirt of the Plains 159

XI "An Helpmeet for Him" 181

XII Publicity and the Press 206

XIII The "People of Now" 228

XIV Thinking Pink as a National Outlook . . . 247
XV The World Must Be Safe for Democracy . . 273

XVI The Watchman and the Sword 298

XVII Germany and America in the "Empty Conti-
nent" 334

XVIII "Our Own Eastern Question" 359

XIX The New Anglo-American Understanding . . 398

AMERICAS DAY

AMERICA'S DAY

CHAPTER I

"keep out" and "keep off"

The apostle of Preparedness was early abroad in the
United States preaching the god of war to Stoics and Epi-
cureans of capricious hearing. For these, their President
feared — with relucting mind, you understand, forced to it
by the press of fact — had been too long aloof "in provincial
isolation." It was a revolutionary saying. The many
Americas debated it back and forth — here with assent,
there with dissent or discord, dying away to complete in-
difference in the great food-acres of the Middle West.

In the United States we have the hugest assembly under
any civilized flag. They muster well over a hundred mil-
lion souls scattered through sixty degrees of longitude, and
they include every race upon earth. "We are to play a
leading part in the world-drama," Dr. Wilson announced,
"whether we wish it or not." But the last election showed
no crusading zeal among the masses. America, her Chief
Executive told us, was vitally interested to secure universal
peace and save the smaller nations from violence and
wrong. But there are many Americas : who knew this bet-
ter than Woodrow Wilson? Knightly champions there
might be along the Atlantic fringe ; there were none at all
in the intermountain States east of the Rockies and west
of the Mississippi Valley. Here Freedom's pibroch had a
soothing sound; the price of beef on the hoof was more
than all the tortured Armenians.

When you mentioned war down in Texas or Arizona, it

1

2 AMERICA'S DAY

was Mexico that became the fluent theme. On the Pacific
Slope the Japanese bogey brooded as an abiding menace.
So that each America was immersed in matters of its own ;
it was the Federal Government's affair to unite them all,
and call a country's pride out of the continental immen-
sity. The prime purpose of the United States, as Dr.
Wilson reminds us, was to crystallize — "at any rate in
one government, the fundamental rights of man." . . .
"America," he said again, "must be ready hereafter as a
member of the family of nations to exert her whole moral
and physical force for the assertion of those rights through-
out the earth."

So did the President prepare his people for that "leap
in the dark" which Senator Lodge and many others con-
demned. Certainly Wilson was throwing to the winds of
war the great principles of his predecessors, above all, the
"Keep Out" counsel enshrined in Washington's Farewell
Address, and handed down as America's gospel! "Eu-
rope," the Liberator explained, "has a set of primary in-
terests which to us have none, or a very remote relation."
Again and again the First President warned the infant
State against foreign wiles. "Our detached and distant
situation," he was glad to say, "enables us to pursue a
different course." America might extend her commerce,
but she would do well to have "as little political connection
as possible" with the older Powers, their devious unions,
quarrels and intrigues.

Such was the advice of the greatest American. To the
"Keep Out" of Washington, James Monroe added his
famous "Keep Off" in 1823, thus completing America's
aloofness. It was with vague unrest that Monroe heard
the pious vows of Prussia, Russia, and the Holy Alliance.
Those precepts of Christ, those principles of justice, char-
ity, and peace were thought to hide the devil's own designs
upon Spanish America.

"KEEP OUT" AND "KEEP OFF" 3

"We owe it to candour," Congress was told in Monroe's
famous message, "to declare that any attempt on the part
of the Allies to extend their system to this hemisphere will
be considered dangerous to our peace and safety." With
existing Colonies in the New World the United States had
no concern. But any fresh adventure would be viewed as
an unfriendly act.

"Keep Out" and "Keep Off" were the guiding politics
of the United States down to the fateful year of 1914.
The Great War put an end to this isolation, though the
masses would not admit as much. America was so secure
in the old days, so free to develop herself in ways of her
own choosing. For nearly a century each Administration
sang the praise of this policy. On the 4th of July silver
tongues (like Bryan's) blessed the care-free hugeness over
which Old Glory waved. What happiness was here, what
lofty theories of life and man's duty to his brother!
American envoys abroad were set apart from their col-
leagues. They were glad to be mere crows amid the para-
dise-birds around a throne; black-coated democrats in a
gorgeous rout, decked with the gold lace and jewelled
orders of a guileful and secret service.

The election of 1916 altered the political map of the
United States, to the confusion of the Old Guard. For
the first time something like a nation's voice was heard,
but not even a Quixote would construe it as that of a
champion of the world's woe. "He kept us out of war,"
men said of Wilson. There were wonderful times ahead,
with America thrust into leadership and Europe a chaos
of mourning and spilt blood. The election revealed the
strength of the "Keep Out" tradition. Wilson's first term
was full of it — though he veered and changed with every
beat of the storm. His Message to Congress in 1914 op-
posed preparation for war. That of 1915 called upon the
people for whole-hearted efforts "to care for their own

4 AMERICA'S DAY

security and that of the Government they have set up to
serve them." Twitted with inconsistency, Wilson owned
to a receptive mind, ever alive to fresh streams of thought.
He was serene as Lincoln under these anxious digs. "Yes,"
said the Emancipator calmly, "I've another opinion now.
I don't think much of a man who isn't wiser today than he
was yesterday. ' '

"Always learning" was Wilson's motto, as it was Michel-
angelo's. But could he impart his knowledge to the de-
votees of Prosperity and Peace? WTould his people accept
his prompting before it was too late? "We can no longer
indulge our parochialism," the President told them plainly,
with no hint of his own regret for the old American way.
They must pile up ships, he urged. They must patrol
their coasts with aircraft, and not play the foolish virgin,
caught unprovided in the stormy dark. So said the cau-
tious Wilson to the States of the Union — those easy-going
sovereignties which to the average Briton are "something
like our own counties." America's vastness is seldom
grasped, though most of her problems spring from it. Cali-
fornia alone is bigger than Great Britain and Ireland.
So is Montana — though its population is not much more
than Bristol's.

In Texas — the Lone Star State — you could stow all
the kingdoms, principalities, and Grand Duchies of the
German Empire, leaving room for Holland and Belgium
in the semi-arid Panhandle, which is now a field of corn.
Unless this immensity is borne in mind, with its range
of climates, crops, and races — European, Asiatic, and Afri-
can— no attempt to reveal America is of any avail.

Isolation was over. The "Keep Out" counsel of Wash-
ington was well enough for three million settlers strung
out along the Atlantic coast. But now — ! And even
Washington had something to say about Young America's
risks and liabilities. These, it seems, grew with "our rising

"KEEP OUT" AND "KEEP OFF" 5

prosperity." "There is a rank due to the United States,"
her first President declared, "which will be withheld, if
not absolutely lost, by a reputation for weakness." So
the pursuit of peace might become an abject aim — far
worse, indeed, than any lust of war for its own sake on
Clausewitz lines.

Slowly, then, conviction crept through the United States
that God was on the side of big battalions, and that Jus-
tice, in the last resort, spoke with giant guns and bombs.
I say the conviction "crept," for it was not a welcome
thought. The "Keep Out" advice died very hard in spite
of urgent warnings. It survived the Lusitania shock and
many another, bobbing up serenely with all the toughness
of a timber-laden derelict. A word from the State De-
partment, and "that easier feeling" supervened, as it did
after the Nebraskan, the Arabic, Hesperian, Persia, Silius,
Sussex, and Marina.

Beyond question the desire to Keep Out delayed the
"strict accountability" of President Wilson's First Note
to Berlin. Two minor tragedies — the Falaba and G id /light
— came before the Lusitania and involved American lives.
As the list grew longer, fury rose in the Eastern States —
only to die away in vast spaces west of the Alleghanies.
On the other hand, New York and Washington laughed
at the prairie politics of Hickory Creek, where the cowboy-
statesman started a war-withering simoon in his local pa-
per, comparing the American soldier to a watchmaker on
the Congo— a man who should change his job at once lest
society turn upon him as a useless drone.

We are all familiar with Roosevelt's fulminations against
Wilson, the man of peace.

"Nothing permanent," he told the people in one of his
early moods, "is ever accomplished by force." Then how
were the British expelled, the dissentients asked. TIow was
this continent won from the Indians 1 How was Secession

6 AMERICA'S DAY

crushed, and the Union saved in the Civil War? . . . Wil-
son was hedging at last, and changing his tune: "The
United States can never be the same again." Here was
the new note. "From across the Atlantic, from across the
Pacific, we feel in our heart new calls and currents that
touch our very life. ' ' .

No wonder the professional soldier increased his demands.
Here was the Federal Chief of Staff, General Hugh L. Scott,
proposing a standing army of 250,000, expanding to three
millions in war-time and drawn from the whole manhood
of the continent. General Leonard Wood, Commander-
in-Chief of the American Army, was equally blunt in an-
swering Mr. Bryan. "No wolf was ever frightened by
the size of a flock of sheep. ... If you have ideals worth
defending, then words alone will not avail you. . . . We
have far too many orators — too many Fourth of July
flowers about a million citizens leaping to arms between
dawn and dark. We of the War College sat up all night
for three weeks in 1916 hoping to see thirty thousand
volunteers take that leap for service on the Mexican border
at the President's call. Take my word for it, it was a
heavy jump they made with seventy-live per cent, of fail-
ure among the athletes we had counted on. ' '

The President's party was well provided with answers
to all reproach. Elihu Root accused them of not making
timely provision "to back American diplomacy by actual
or assured naval and military force." But Mr. Root and
his colleagues, the Democrats said, had had twelve years
of control in which to make this very provision. Not even
Roosevelt, the most forceful of Presidents, could rouse en-
thusiasm for his Big Stick, which America was to carry
and speak softly if she were to win her way and command
the world's respect.

"Is our nation one, or a discordant multitude?" Mr.
Root flung at the State Convention in New York. "Have

"KEEP OUT" AND "KEEP OFF" 1

Selfish living, factional jars, and love of ease obscured our
spiritual vision? Has the patriotism of a people never
summoned to sacrifice become lifeless?" Here were search-
ing questions from a great American. They went to the
very source of a continental apathy which has long been
the despair of statesmen in a loose federation of sovereign-
ties. "Here's a hoop to the barrel!" was the bitter toast
of General Washington's officers long ago. It was a caus-
tic allusion to the disruptive tendencies of the thirteen
original States. This lack of cohesion persisted until 1916,
baffling and obstructing the national government.

It is no easy matter to make a nation with three thou-
sand miles between two of its capitals. The ideals of Ire-
land and Albania are no further apart than those of New
York and Nevada. Far more than distance divides sub-
tropic Florida, its orange-groves and palms, from bleak
Montana, where the very wolves perish in their winter
lairs. As for social contrast, let me set on one hand the
Babylonian splendour of Newport, and on the other hand
negro squalor in the "Black Belt" of Mississippi, where
the white man is in a minority, and racial hatred is for ever
smouldering.

I hope I convey some idea of the problems confronting
the Federal Administration in 1916. President Wilson's
appeal for unity to the League of the Foreign-Born had
high significance. "A man or a woman," he said, "who
becomes a citizen of the United States is not expected to
give up his or her love for the land in which they were born.
But we do expect them to put their new allegiance above
all others." Nor should the foreign-born (Dr. Wilson
hinted) continue to live by themselves — using their own
language, having their own newspapers, and passively re-
fusing to merge with America, where the "good mixer"
has the best chance in opportunity's arena. It was the
foreign-born who warred upon their adopted country in

8 AMERICA'S DAY

a season of strange malignance. Infernal machines wrecked
American docks and Allied ships. About the factories
were set barbed wire; armed sentries protected the plant
from citizens whom the President, in a famous Message
to Congress, "blushed to admit" as Americans. They
"poured poison into the very arteries of the United States,"
the National Assembly was told. It was an onslaught of
which America had never dreamed: "And we are with-
out adequate Federal laws to deal with it." Here was a
frank confession of impotence. The judgment of crime is
a matter of States' Rights. A fugitive murderer must
needs be extradited, as from a foreign land. It was so with
the notorious Harry Thaw, whom New York could only
arrest after long and costly litigation with the States of
Vermont and Maine.

There are, indeed, myriads of American laws, most of
them easily evaded because framed by amateurs and in-
operative beyond the State line. Thus the bachelor in
Reno (Nevada) fresh from the "nisi-mills" of the Desert
State, may find himself a bigamist in Spartanburg — for
South Carolina has no divorce law at all. A girl child of
twelve can be a wife in Kansas and Kentucky. She must
be eighteen in Idaho and New York. It is hard to imagine
the chaos made in this way by forty-eight Parliaments
electing over four thousand members, all of them anxious
to please local supporters in a novel field. At the last
legislative session in Sacramento (Cal.), 2877 new Bills
were introduced, and 771 were added to the Statute Book.
The Sessions Laws of Arkansas for 1915 fill a volume of
1046 pages, those of Massachusetts one of 1100 pages. I
write of a New World isled in its own immensity, and im-
possible to grasp in a single coup d'ml. It is a politico-
social experiment on the hugest scale, preferring its own
mistakes to our experience. America is a noisy pakestra
of sleepless wit and unresting hands. Its strenuous aura

"KEEP OUT" AND "KEEP OFF" 9

is best felt in the personal formula of George W. Perkins,
the insurance magnate, who retired at fifty to devote him-
self and his wealth to public welfare, education, and art.
"My own method," Mr. Perkins says, "has been to live
every day as though it was the only day I had to live, and
to crowd everything possible into that day. I gave no
heed to the clock, nor to what I was paid. I worked and
lived for all there was in it."

Here is business efficiency defined by a master, with the
speed-up focussed into a burning spot of corrosive power.
For many years this was America's gospel, but today it is
questioned for the first time. The colossal waste of life
in Europe set up waves of constructive sympathy in the
United States. "Over here," says Mr. Darwin P. Kings-
ley, of the New York Life Insurance Company, "the hu-
man machine begins to go to pieces at fifty-five. It is the
price of our peace, and nobody counts the cost. So marked
is the death-jate increase that all the companies have re-
vised their rules for accepting lives at fifty-five and over."

Physical unpreparedness was hailed by professional sol-
diers as a factor in their favour. They argued that a
stiffish course of training in early manhood would fit the
American for every emergency of modern life, whether in
peace or war. Governor Whitman of New York declared
that compulsory service was in no way inconsistent with
American tradition and aims. The revered head of Har-
vard University, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, also defended this
step, since "the oceans are no longer barriers but high-
ways inviting the passage of fleets." Besides, a citizen
army on the continental scale was America's duty towards
the peace of the world. Force was still supreme. And,
reviewing the Great War, the old scholar reminded his
people that: "Neither religion nor popular education has
shown any power to prevent this lapse to savagery."

The American masses not only loathed war; they mis-

10 AMERICA'S DAY

trusted the panoply and ritual of it. Congress has always
suspected soldiers and placed them under a ban. The Gen-
eral Staff — a recent creation — was not loved in Washing-
ton, where the War Department has thus far been in
civilian hands. ''Keep away from Congress," General
Wotherspoon warned his colleagues on his retirement. For
he also was an alarmist; a man of conscience and plain
professional speaking about a small and dwindling army,
and a system of State militias worthy of the comic stage,
and all the anathema heaped upon them in the report of
Generals Wood and Barry.

There was something unmartial in this New World at-
mosphere. American history shows an inveterate reliance
upon citizen levies, from Bunker's Hill to the Mexican
Border of 1916. The army was abolished — re-established,
reduced to 6000 men, and throughout regarded as a nui-
sance. One result of this was a war of seven years against
the Seminole Indians, who, with 2000 braves- in the field,
called for over 60,000 American troops to put them down,
at a cost of $70,000,000. The larger war in Mexico, the
Rebellion of the South, and the clash with Spain — these
taught America little in the way of armed preparation
suited to the needs of a growing Power. "It is unhappily
true," says Major-General W. H. Carter, U. S. A., "that
in none of our wars has the Government been able to count
upon the active support, or even of the good-will, of all the
nation . . . even when the very life of the Union was at
stake."

It was ignorance of these facts which made our own
newspapers ask "What will America do?" after each new
affront put upon President Wilson by Germany. What
else could he do but "Keep Out" if that were the wish of
his people? When he pictured them as champions of the
weaker nations — quick and ardent custodians of the world 's
peace, "with every influence and resource at their com-

"KEEP OUT" AND "KEEP OFF" 11

mand" — Dr. Wilson was careful to add: "But the war
must first be concluded." He showed marvellous insight
into the many-sided Republic. No doubt he hoped to edu-
cate the masses in preparedness, with wasted Europe before
them, and a growing power in, Asia fast closing the
once "Open Door" in China, and heaping up fighting
forces by sea and land and air. But in the flush time of
1916 Wilson admitted frankly that America had no world-
policy at all. "To carry out such a program we need
unity of spirit and purpose." And the "unified strength"
upon which the President harped was not as yet in
sight.

The New World was wholly misunderstood in Europe.
Why, it was asked, had not the Big Neutral given a moral
lead to the rest? Why had she fussed over her cotton
and grain; why had she taken up Prussia's catchword
about "the freedom of the seas"? It was because (one
heard) of that trade neutrality which made Sweden protest
so sharply over her mail-bags, Holland over her herrings,
Spain over her oranges and cork — bulky cargoes in a time
of tight tonnage and ruthless submarines. If America had
only thrown her segis over Belgium when the scrap of
paper was torn, and the German hordes began to martyr
the most innocent of all nations! So ran the reproaches
on this side, whether expressed or implied.

European poets and scholars scathed neutrality of every
shade, from the Pope 's to that of American people. ' ' The
world is watching," Maeterlinck called across the sea, "to
judge if the strength of your fathers is also yours." But
America was not aroused; she was not in fighting trim
at all. She would feed the hungry and care for the father-
less and prisoners of war. Beyond this she was power-
less. "What can America do?" asked the German papers,
with an easy contempt that was almost incredible, ad-
dressed as it was to a continent of a hundred millions — ■

12 AMERICA'S DAY

the richest on earth and the most insistent upon moral
claims and covenants. America must needs win her masses
to whole-hearted preparation if she were to be among the
guarantors of universal peace. "It is inconceivable,"
President Wilson told the Senate, "that we should play no
part in that great enterprise." For if peace were to en-
dure, it must be secured by "the organized major force
of mankind." And in the same address Dr. Wilson dwelt
upon the limitation of armaments by sea and land as "the
most intensely practical question connected with the future
fortunes of nations and mankind."

It is plain that America has strong views upon this
subject. It was the piling up of weapons which menaced
' ' the sense of equality among the nations. ' ' Therefore the
President favoured a reduction, advising the world's rulers
to "plan for peace and adjust their policy to it." But he
could not be consistent in this matter. He was plainly
in a strait between the ideal of disarmament and the de-
fence of the United States, which was an urgent affair upon
all grounds.

Wilson, indeed, went further than Roosevelt in his naval
aims. He declared himself in favour of "incomparably
the greatest Navy," since America's coast-line is so exten-
sive. The Cabinet's new five-year program called for an
outlay on ships of $661,000,000, with twenty per cent,
above specified prices for speed in building and general
efficiency of all craft. Professional advisers of the Gov-
ernment insisted upon these measures; the masses either
resisted or were listless and unconcerned. It was the in-
terplay of these active and passive forces which gave rise
to so much confusion. Official Washington had to walk
very warily, doling sympathy and blame to all belligerents
with the apathy of the larger Americas ever in view.

Britain was aghast at the detachment shown in the Presi-
dent's early speeches. So was France, where Freedom

"KEEP OUT" AND "KEEP OFF" 13

blazed in the very heart of desolation. And she signalled
mute reproach to her sister Republic across the seas :

"I am she that was thy sign and standard bearer,
Thy voice and cry ;
She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer,
The same am I ! "

Still there was no sign, and the amazement of Paris
broke into open reproaches. "When England tried to op-
press you with the help of hired Hessians, the peasants
of France came to your aid. They fought by your side,
they died for you. And yet, today in our agony. ..."
It roused nothing but vexation, as the memory of a debt
so often does.

As a well-wisher, the New York Tribune was sorry to
record this sentiment. However, there it was, faintly mov-
ing America in the mass. It would be well for the Allies,
the Tribune said, "to renounce all thought that America
is a sympathetic county, or one in which community of
ideas exists with regard to the present clash." It was
true that both France and Britain had warm friends in
the United States. "But they are in the minority; they
have not been able to mould American feeling." The old
French alliance, ties of British race and of language —
these were but frail exhalations from history 's page. ' ' The
sooner the Allies think of America as a foreign country —
not necessarily friendly, and certainly not of their way
of thought — the better for all concerned."

It was "reparation for the American lives lost," that
Dr. Wilson demanded in his first Lusitania Note. And
if in his next he warned the sea assassin "with solemn
emphasis," it is well to remind British readers of hot
American protest against the "vexatious and illegal prac-
tices" of our own blockade. All nations were foreign when
viewed from neutral Washington, whose outlook may be
expressed in the mild phrase of Lincoln, "With malice to-
wards none, with charity for all."

CHAPTER II

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS

A quaint episode in American history is the offer of a
crown to General Washington by the officers of the Revo-
lutionary Army. It was almost a mutinous army, ill-clad
and ill-fed ; dismissed at last and scantily paid in paper
worth two per cent, of its face value. Only Washington's
influence prevented an open revolt. It is curious to survey
America's dislike of the "standing army," and later on
of a navy — that added evil due to crescent power and the
new duties that came with it. It has always been a point
of honour with Congress to lop and prune these noisome
growths of the State; it was at one time a moot point
whether they were necessary at all.

In 1810, when Europe flamed with the Napoleonic wars,
John Randolph of Virginia rose in the Lower House with
the familiar motion "to reduce our naval and military
establishments." "With respect to war," cooed that
Bryan of his day — poet, orator, and wit — "we have in the
Atlantic a force wide and deep enough to ward off peril
from the land." Two years later that moat was crossed
by a hostile army ; before the war was over the very cham-
ber in which Randolph had spoken was burned by British
soldiers. But nothing altered the traditional mistrust of
Congress for an armed host; the consequence is seen in
America's unreadiness for all her wars.

What alarmed her advisers in 1916 was that the first
onset of a modern enemy might be a lightning stroke, like
the German sweep towards Paris. Leisurely war was a
thing of the past ; so was the raising of levies by bounties
or reluctant drafts, as in the long-drawn Civil War. "The

14

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 15

records show conclusively," says Major-General W. II.
Carter, the military historian, "that the theory of citizen
volunteers ready to march in our defence is wholly falla-
cious." When the nation's fate hung in the balance, only
46,626 men over twenty-four years of age could be found
for the Union Army; the vast majority were boys of six-
teen or less. It took two years to train these troops and
develop a Gettysburg from the dangerous rout of Bull Run,
where disaster was only averted by eight hundred regulars
who fought a rearguard action. In the war with. Spain the
volunteers, with few exceptions, were unfit to embark.
Their lack of discipline, the failure of supplies; the disease
and chaos at Chickamauga and Key "West Camps — these
are today as ghastly as they are fresh in the memory of
professional soldiers.

The Commander-in-Chief, General Leonard Wood,
warned the House Committee on Military Affairs in the
usual way. "To send our troops into war as they are,
without guns or ammunition, would be absolute slaughter."
It was the Federal Army to which the speaker referred.
Of the National Guard, or forces of the several States,
called out on the Mexican Border, General Wood reported
to the War Department that "only 25 per cent, of these
can be reckoned as reasonably instructed soldiers." The
Kentucky and Georgia Guards showed 50 per cent, of
physical rejections. Of the 8th Ohio Infantry, 500 men
were unfit. It was no wonder, therefore, that on the
march Virginia lay down in companies ; New York shed
90 men in 6 miles of the open road. Thousands had no
uniform; thousands more had never fired a service rifle in
their lives.

But why were such troops employed in a national
emergency? In order to give the Regular Army a chance
to recruit and make ready; it was at that time 34,307
men below its peace strength under the new law. On the

16 AMERICA'S DAY

other hand, the Navy was 2000 officers and 60,000 men
short, so that when the Arizona went into commission
she retired three older battleships, absorbing their crews
and putting to sea short-handed herself. Such is the mo-
notonous story of both Services.

The Washington Bureaux are full of secret reports
pigeon-holed by a genial sin of habit. Here is one such
warning from Secretary of War Dickinson and his Chief
of Staff: "A foreign country," the House Committee was
informed, "could land 200,000 veterans on our Western
Coast in thirty days. To meet this invasion the three
States west of the Rockies (California, Oregon, and Wash-
ington) could only muster 3000 Regulars and 5000 Mili-
tia; these last of little use, and all lacking transport and
munitions." Still more alarming were reports upon the
coast-defence artillery. The whole continent was more or
less defenceless, although millions of money were spent,
and the Washington Bureaux issued rosy reports to the
papers.

The condition of the Navy was very bad. A Committee
of Congress was its real ruler; the fighting Staff could
only report defects and hope for the best, though with no
illusions about promise or performance. Five battleships
of the Kentucky class and five destroyers of the Alivyn
class were accepted with defective machinery. Admiral
Fletcher found the submarines in a "deplorable condition."
At times not more than five were ready for duty. They
could not reach their assigned stations 75 miles south of
Nantucket, nor could they maintain their surface speed
in moderate weather. Some of them leaked, others broke
cylinders and cranks, or else they could not submerge at
all. Rear-Admiral Grant assured the Naval Committee
that "twenty-two of our K submarines are about equal to
three of the German U-39."

Target practice by the larger ships brought bitter com-

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 17

ment from Admiral Winslow and Captain Sowden Sims,
two of the ablest officers in the Navy. Admiral Edwards
pointed out that there was not a dry dock in the South
Atlantic or Gulf coasts capable of taking a superdread-
nought. Nor was there a single crane there that could
install or remove a heavy gun. It may be taken for granted,
on the best professional authority, that both Navy and
Army were at all times unready for active service against
a modern enemy. To America, war was a preposterous
thought. Therefore soldiers and sailors, guns and ships
existed only on grudging sufferance. They ate up mil-
lions, America was ashamed to say ; so the wise thing was
to keep these dragons as feeble as possible by denying
their demands. "Ten of my twenty-one 5-in. guns can-
not be manned," mourns the captain of the New York dur-
ing manoeuvres. Shortage in the engine-room staff of the
Arkansas caused a serious explosion. It crippled the ship,
and caused the admiral to declare himself unable "to meet
on equal terms similar types in foreign navies."

It was this repressive rule which made Roosevelt say
that "the whole Service is being handled in such a way
as to impair its fitness and morale." But the American
people would have it so ; their whole complexion and quality
of life was rosed over with peace and strenuous joy. Only
the statesmen and professional fighters were anxious over
the new era of armed sanction. Elihu Root impressed upon
the Yale students that "while democracy has proved suc-
cessful under simple conditions, it remains to be seen how
it will stand the strain of those vast complications upon
which the country is now entering." In other words,
America was at the parting of the ways, and her men on
watch had a delicate task to break the unwelcome news to-
gether with the sacrifice of comfort it would entail.

This accounts for President Wilson's vacillation and his
slow abandonment of the "Keep Out" policy. After all,

18 AMERICA'S DAY

Washington himself foresaw a sweeping change ; there was
comfort in that for the present "White House occupant.
The first President traced young America's growth along
inevitable lines. He dared not hope that his impress would
remain for ever, or his guidance "control the usual current
of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the
course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations."

America's new destiny was soon the insistent theme of
President Wilson. "The business of neutrality is over,"
he assured the farmers. This war of peoples was the very
last from which America could hope to refrain. As things
chanced, however, Fate was kind-1— kind to the United
States, equally kind to stricken Europe, who looked over-
seas for a friend on the grey morrow of her dreadful orgy.
"They will need us," the Ohio folk were assured by their
President. His hearers agreed, recalling how King Albert
asked the late Jim Hill, of the Northern Pacific, to rebuild
the Belgian railways when all was over.

There would also be Russia and East Prussia to renew,
with Northern France, the two Polands, Serbia, Rumania,
Bulgaria, and Montenegro. Here were wide marts, and
with them high mission to comfort the sore and scattered
races. It was a lattermath of service which appealed with
peculiar force to America. Already she felt the fires of
war falling away. Uncle Sam would yet be the hierarch of
a nobler altar, one built of Vermont marble and Nevada
gold, overlaid with silks from the New Jersey mills ! Busi-
ness first, and with it Samaritan ministry for all the bel-
ligerents. There was "infinite prosperity ahead," as Dr.
Wilson assured his people in election speeches. "We have
bought back two thousand million dollars' worth of securi-
ties. In the first two years of war we amassed one-third of
the world's gold."

And yet — ? This riot of riches seemed to bring anxiety
in its train. Official Washington, as nerve-centre, felt auras

EEVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 19

of fear chilling the wide elation of the continent. Military
weakness was no longer a joke, neither was the endless
"war" between Committees of Congress and keen officers
of both Services who had America's honour and safety at
heart. Even the State guardsman, a purely political figure,
disappeared from the comic papers upon whose coloured
covers he had capered with a javelin and a stone ax. "We
must Prepare," men told each other — without any alarm,
however, for there was no hurry. This was the new note
that flickered from Bar Harbor to San Diego — which is
now an aircraft station on the Pacific. "We shall be called
upon to defend this Prosperity of ours." It was at once a
nuisance and a novelty. There was talk of Preparedness —
just talk and little more — all the way from Puget Sound
to the Florida Keys.

Out at Sheepshead Bay the New York police manoeuvred
with bombs and maxims before an admiring crowd. Naval
Secretary Daniels invited likely citizens to take a three
weeks' cruise on a warship with a view to increasing the
Naval Reserve. But when all was done, it was a languid
campaign. To the Slovak farmer twelve hundred miles
from any sea, Preparedness for war was pointless babble.
In the Atlantic tier of States men were awake and aware ;
they were also carping at ways and means, like the rich
burgess of other days who peered from the coach and spied
robber horsemen in the chilly dawn. There were "Get
Readys," and there were "Let Bes. " Between these and
the anti-British and pro-Germans, the President steered a
precarious and troubled way. Plis position reminds one of
the Pope's own, with the gentle Mercier of Malines upon
one hand and Cardinal Hartmann of Cologne on the other,
rolling out a very different tale of the Herrenvolk and their
ways in a conquered land.

" 'Tain't easy, bein' Pres'dent, I guess," was a sympa-
thetic hazard flung at Lincoln in his darkest days. The

20 AMERICA'S DAY

great man agreed, with gaunt simplicity. "I feel like the
Irishman," he explained, "who was ridden on a rail and
tried to keep his dignity all through. 'Ef 'twasn't f'r the
honour o' the thing,' Pat called to his friends, 'I declare to
God Oi'd rather walk!' " With the queerest of wars in
Mexico, with German defiance at sea and rabid hyphenism
at home, centring in the Imperial Embassy at Washington,
Dr. Wilson's was indeed an unenviable lot.

There was much to be feared from the German- Ameri-
cans. Nationalism had lain dormant in these exiled
millions; it woke to frenzy the whole world over at the
Fatherland's call.

"Don't you dare declare war on us," panted the Mil-
waukee German to his half-brother, the American. "If
you do, you '11 have the Japs on your back and ourselves in
your guts ! " It was not a pretty speech, but it was charac-
teristic of the hyphenate in his early heat. Military weak-
ness, then, as well as mixed races and unconcern for the
issues, account for the humiliations heaped upon America
during the first two years of the war. Her newspapers —
those of the East should be understood — fretted and fumed
afresh over the havoc wrought by U-boat 53 in home waters.
How Gay of the Benham was waved aside by Hans Roze,
who smashed ship after ship, leaving the American to pluck
his citizens from a watery grave if he chose. "Here is
congenial use for our warships," wailed the New York
Herald. "They shall pick up women and children, while
these German sea-wolves blockade our coasts and wreck
our commerce. A noble task for the successors of Oliver
Perry and Isaac Hull; Stephen Decatur, Farragut, and
Dewey ! ' '

Comment of this kind had as yet but little weight. Presi-
dent Wilson expressed his views in an identic Note to the
warring nations, and subsequently to the Senate in Wash-
ington. The calamity oppressed him : " Every part of the

KEVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 21

great family of mankind has felt the burden and terror of
this unprecedented contest of arms." In that contest
America would take no part, but so ardent was her concern
for the ensuing peace, that she was (her Chief Executive
said) willing to forego her isolation and join an over-
whelming coalition to preserve the sanctity of a new era.

The President spoke pontifically, and raised a great to-do.
He had no censure for the submarine, no condemnation of
chlorine gas or liquid flame ; no abhorrence of the Zeppelin
airships, nor of torture and killing from Louvain to Lake
Van, where the Kaiser's Kurdish allies had done their
damnedest to wipe out a nation. None of these things did
President Wilson condemn, but there was pointed allusion
to "the freedom of the seas" which was clearly intended for
Britain. The presence of her cruisers was "vexatious and
uncourteous to the United States." The observer is struck
by the different treatment meted by America to the two
leading belligerents in this war. Mr. Lansing's Notes to
Von Jagow contrast oddly with the sharp ring of protest to
Sir Edward Grey over the stoppage of mails and the like
non-vital issues.

The British Minister, Crampton, was given his passports
in '55 for no greater offence than enlisting soldiers for the
Crimean War. Sackville-West was dismissed for replying
to a decoy-letter, to which he replied advising Americans of
British birth to vote for Grover Cleveland. Whatever be
the cause — clever propaganda on a great scale, homage to
success, or hyphenate influence in Congress and the coun-
try— it cannot be denied that German and British trans-
gressions were judged by two different standards in the
United States. Count Bernstorff could boast of his
"Army" — an army of crime that terrorized industrial
America. "They have formed plots to destroy property,"
was the President's own plaint about them. "They have
entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Gov-

22 AMERICA'S DAY

ernment; they have sought to pry into confidential trans-
actions in order to serve interests alien to our own. ' '

But for the time the hyphenates were able to baffle that
Government. Their violence had a longish run because, as
the President reminded Congress, "We are without ade-
quate Federal laws to deal with it." It was a German
axiom that "Frightfulness paid" and that German insight
into national motives was superior to that of any other.
There was much to support this view: for example, the
astonishing spectacle of a pro-German Spain, with an
officer of the General Staff drinking to the victory of the
Central Powers. "Many people in Norway," said M. Nils
Vogt, a well-known publicist and brother of the Norwegian
Minister in London, "admire Germany's power" — the same
power, you will recall, that sank fifteen of Norway's ships
in a single week to the tune of $4,200,000, to say nothing of
drowned men, or of lingering death and torment in the open
boats.

Beyond question America was impressed ; millions ad-
mired the German machine, and at one time backed it to
win. Consider the gifts and banquets offered to Captain
Koenig of the subaqueous liner, Deutschland, which offered
to carry the American mails. "There's nothing like Suc-
cess to win over these people," said the Muenchener
Zeitung. The writer went on to purr over the ' ' atmosphere
of victory" with which Deutschtum enveloped itself in all
lands, but especially in the United States. It was a solid
asset, one invariably neglected by that ponderous dunce,
John Bull.

I know nothing so curious as the rousing and regimenting
from Berlin of German forces overseas. In Bismarck's day
they were despised expatriates. "America," the Pan-Ger-
man stalwart, Hasse of Leipzig, used to say, "is the grave
of Deutschtum." There was a big army there, but it was
an army of deserters, which had to be organized by the

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 23

Pan-German League. So far back as 1896 the Emperor
was appealing for help in the matter of linking these lost
forces. There was at first no more enthusiasm for this than
for the Navy League, whose mission was to convince the
Empire that ''Our future lies upon the water." German
opinion had to be educated to these movements. It was to
the adhesion of learned men that Pan-Germanism owed its
rise at last. There was a time when Mommsen dismissed
members of the League as "our patriotic madmen."' Yet
the cult continued to gain, even in the Reichstag, where it
won men like Ilahn of the Agrarians, and Bassermann, the
head of the National Liberal Party.

It was Pan-Germanism that informed with new fire the
local Liederkranz of American cities; the Saengerbund, the
Verein-for-this, and the Gesellschaft-for-that. Devotees
were soon raising schoppens and steins to "Der Grossere
Deutschland," which would one day stretch from the
Scheldt to the Persian Gulf, embracing the "Kaliphate of
Berlin," which Sazonof outlined in the Russian Duma. As
a dream it was magnificent, and of course it meant war.
What mineral treasures lay in those Taurus depths ! Assy-
ria and Babylonia should rival Oklahoma* California, and
the Caucasus as producers of oil. Cilicia and the Syrian
plains were to grow cotton for the German Empire. There
was to be wool from Anatolia, seas of wheat from the Meso-
potamian flats; flocks and herds beyond count upon classic
pastures now given over to the rascally Bedouin. The
whole face of Western Asia was to be changed. German
States were to be erected well out of Britain's reach and
beyond that hated "Seegewalt" which hampered Deutsch-
tum's every move.

In 1900, when the German-American "Army" was organ-
ized, Von Holleben was Ambassador in Washington. A
very truculent envoy — no willow-back man like Bernstorff,
who succeeded him— Von Holleben defied Roosevelt over the

24 AMERICA'S DAY

Venezuela dispute until the President massed his fleet at
Cuantanaino, and gave the Germans twenty-four hours to
clear out. It is interesting to follow the German- American
in those days, and watch him develop into the rabid hyphe-
nate of 1914-15, whom the serious New York press styled
"The most disappointing symptom of our national life since
the disloyalty of the South in the ' 'sixties. ' ... No nation
has ever been called upon to suffer so seditious a press as
that published in the United States in the German tongue."

Yet before the present war no citizens were more es-
teemed. Germans and men of German descent had enor-
mous influence. You found them in Congress and in the
State Legislatures; they were bankers and railroad kings,
manufacturers and traders on the largest scale.

The German- American Alliance had over two million
members; Herr Hexamer, its President, wore the Red
Eagle Order conferred by the Emperor "for diffusing
German Kultur in the United States." But What was the
part which Bernstorff's "Army" was to play as citizens
of the divided allegiance? America was their home, but
the Fatherland must be "over all"! In the first place —
as Bernhardi pointed out — "the German element forms a
political centre of gravity in our favour." They were
really missionaries. The National Alliance was charged
with the task of introducing the German language into
American public schools; and how this is done is told by
Dr. H. H. Fick, of the Cincinnati Education Service. The
cities were bombarded with circulars urging the elect to:
"Speak only German in your home, in your club, and in
the stores. And speak German loudly in the street cars."

Political power was also sought. Herr Weismann, of
Brooklyn, set the hyphenate machine in motion to defeat the
election of a New York Congressman, and a Judge. In this
he succeeded, and set out the moral in a rescript to all

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 25

concerned. "The returns have proved that Deutschtum is
armed and able, when the word goes forth, to seat its chosen
men." So Germanism was already a menace to America's
peace. Reckoning all enemy races, all shades of Teutonic
sympathy and descent, I suppose there are nine or ten
million adherents, beginning with the newly arrived Posen
Poles and going on to State Governors and mayors, chiefs
of police, and members of Parliament, whether of the Fed-
eral Assembly or the State Grange.

It was startling to see an ex-Cabinet Minister of the
Roosevelt Administration — the late Von Legerke Meyer —
prancing as a priest of Deutschtum, and warning America
not to goad "his Fatherland" to extremes! This frenzy
was a crippling disability in the body politic — especially
so when joined with the Irish forces, and those of pure
pacificism in farming areas of unrealized vastness. Here
was a trinity which, consciously or unconsciously, hindered
all preparation for national defence. And that this was
the aim of Pan-Germanism is shown by the correspondence
between Professor Appelmann of Vermont University and
Dr. Paul Rohrbach, the protagonist of the Berlin-Bagdad
"Kaliphate," which is Germany's dearest dream.

The Professor wrote ''home" to ask a question that
troubled him : ' ' Was Deutschtum in America justified in
supporting these movements for a big army and nay}''?"
To this Dr. Rohrbach sent an emphatic negative. "It is
quite possible," he wrote to Appelmann, "that in an Ameri-
can-Japanese war we might act as benevolent neutrals to-
wards the Asiatic, thus making it easier for him to defeat
the United States. Therefore I cannot believe that our
ends are in any way served by German-Americans lending
themselves to domestic schemes of armament."

Well might the New York Tribune describe the rise and
reign of the hyphenate as "the most shameful period of our

26 AMERICA'S DAY

history." "One thing is certain," said the powerful Her-
ald, as stroke followed German stroke at home and abroad
— "the tide of popular wrath is rising higher." But the
journal was mistaken. There was as yet little trace of any
such tide beyond Herald Square. America had grown ac-
customed to the horrors of war. She quivered a while after
each shock, and then was still, just as parted water reunites
after the waving of a wanton hand.

Frightfulness furnished table-talk; and this was excited
or mild according to the zone and temperament of the
America discussing it. "We shudder at it the first time,"
as Goethe said of the Merseburg beer, "but after we've
drunk it a week or so we can't do without it." I know
nothing so strange as the detachment with which grievous
national insults were discussed, from the Great Lakes down
to the Gulf.

Meanwhile Johann von Bernstorff, as director of an
internal "war," went his way with wonderful unconcern.
Not Hangman Peters in the heart of Africa ever pursued
a policy of crime with less regard for "the natives."
Washington itself might have been Windhoek; the Presi-
dent and his State Secretary, a couple of influential chiefs
whom it were well to conciliate with suavity and the beau
geste of a good-humoured boss. To this unique Embassy
the Americans were of no account, as we know from Von
Papen's captured papers. "I always tell these idiotic
Yankees to hold their tongue," this apostle of Deutschtum
wrote to his wife.

What could the President do in such a welter? "Amer-
ica has never witnessed anything like this before," he told
the hushed Houses of Congress. "Never dreamed it pos-
sible that men sworn to her allegiance . . . would ever turn
in malign reaction against the Government and people who
welcomed and nurtured them." But new purpose glowed
in Wilson's moves to filch power from the States and con-

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 27

centrate it in the national authority at Washington. For,
after all, if democracy was to be saved, the President must
needs become a "despot" as Lincoln did in his darkest
hour.

CHAPTER III

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS

Neutral America, uneasy and beset, hoped that Prepared-
ness was not a very urgent issue. And, whilst endorsing
the theory, she put the practice from her, feeling sure that
the world's Peace would hereafter enforce itself through
vivid memories of tedium and terror drawn from these
ghastly years.

Meanwhile, unpleasant truths were swallowed with a
meekness entirely new. Girding and goading became the
order of the day. Even the Hearst papers scolded the
Americas, from Boston to Los Angeles. That odd farrago,
the New York American, examined external dangers and
rejected them all as negligible compared with the native
lethargy that stifled military effort. It was not the yellow
man nor the black man who was to be feared ; there was a
more insidious foe than Germany or Britain, the Hearst
paper found. "The great white danger is here at home —
the danger of national conceit and heedlessness of all things
outside our continental circle" . . . "We cry out against
the barbarism of Europe 's war, well knowing that an army
is only a mob. At the same time, our own mobs catch men
and burn them alive. We call ourselves a Republic, yet
any one can name a dozen rich men who have ten times
the power of all the officials in the United States, because
the Big Dozen stand for organized Money, which is the real
ruler in our midst."

"Our abiding peril," the American concluded, "is not
in this or that bogey overseas, but in the home-bred hydra
of extravagance, self-satisfaction, inefficiency, and military

28

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 29

weakness which will make a walk-over of any foreign at-
tack.'' In this vein was the new literature of Prepared-
ness conceived ; it flooded the continent, and then receded,
apparently without leaving a lasting trace. It brought
the dreamer back to earth ; it killed the high hope of a new
social order handed down by the early New England set-
tlers. For a season you could scarce open a book or a
magazine, a pamphlet or a newspaper, without finding the
national fear shivering up and down the page. "The
American people is today in the plight of a man with a
dull knife and a broken cudgel in an ever-growing circle of
wolves." Statecraft pulled this way and Pacifism the
other; the listless masses pulled no way, but wanted to be
let alone.

"We implore your help in humanity's name," was
agonized Belgium's cry, cabled to the Great Neutral by M.
Carton de Wiart, the Minister of Justice. But official
America was powerless. Her own citizens called in vain
as they drowned, nearly two years after the Lusitania
crime. "Roosevelt is right," you heard men admit in the
Eastern States. "We've relied too much upon moral sua-
sion. What fools we were to throw his Big Stick in the
ash-barrel! Now here's Europe dumping her devilry at
our door, and no doubt perfecting trans-oceanic aircraft for
an invasion." Pacifism was weakening at last, even in
States of the Central West — those exuberant Edens of beef
and grain. Here orators became shy of painting a divine
dawn when "the lion shall eat straw, and dust shall be the
serpent's meat."

Those orators had many jars in the new day and found
the old pose derided; their platform flags and water-
pitchers, their stuffed doves and rolling periods about "citi-
zens leaping to arms," and licking a leagued world of
wicked aggression. It was embarrassing to have "Get
Ready" leaflets showered from an armed plane upon beati-

30 AMERICA'S DAY

tude like this. Shortly before the war, Friederich von
Bernhardi appeared on the Pacific Slope, having come from
Japan and the Far East on a secret mission to the German-
Americans. Dr. David Starr Jordan, a Californian paci-
fist of note and Chancellor of the Leland Stanford Uni-
versity, was invited to meet the famous General, who was
instructing Bernstorff's hyphenate army.

The German visitor was business-like and curt at these
private meetings. "Law is but a makeshift," he told his
hearers: "the only reality is Force." And quite as frankly
Bernhardi dwelt upon the tenuous nature of international
treaties when the first shot rang out and German pledges
melted like a dicer's oath. "Not kennt kein Gebot" —
which is to say that need covers any deed ; and reasons of
war excused all things, from the poisoned well and the
sinking of a hospital ship to slave-raiding and extortion
among the heart-broken peasants of a conquered zone.

Upon these tenets America brooded in wonder and dis-
gust. The people grew bored with all the prompting.
Preparedness lost its edge: surely the thing was overdone
by these politicians! Practical men put aside alarmist
leaflets and turned again to the literature of power, such as
drops like dew from the Department of Agriculture in
Washington. On the Value of Muck is a worth-while guide
to the worthy farmer. On Tlog Cholera and Grain Smuts,
The Best Number of Hens in One Pen, Black Rot of the
Cabbage, Fungus Troubles of Fruit Trees, and The Toad
as the Farmer's Friend. There was more for humanity
here, it was argued, than in shrill appeals for machine-
guns and bombs.

The conversion of President "Wilson to militarism came
as a real shock. So did the echo of German taunts in
Democratic mouths that were trying to rouse the nation:
"You have no Army. And such Navy as you have — a
costly collection of ships— must stay at home." "It is our

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 31

wooden sword," the people were told afresh, "that is the
source of all dispraise, all flouting of our pride and hon-
our. So it behooves us to arm, and to arm now ere the night
of our undoing be upon us." It was a strange turn of
Fortune's wheel that would heap weapons upon the Land
of Peace, just as Germany, the Land of "War, sickened with
surfeit of that ''drastic medicine," which her Saxon his-
torian prescribed for a sluggish world. And how radiant
Prussia's war appeared in 1914, with its dazzling dementia
of overweening! What flaunting and flapping there was
in pedlar Britain's face, what fanning of Deutschheit to
white flame of passion by virtue of the sword !

"If you sink," cried ecstatic Fichte to the Fatherland,
"all humanity sinks with you." Hence the cocksure onset
of the German Michael in shimmering armour. But war-
weariness stole away his fire ; the trampling mania grew
tamer until Wir halten durch (We're holding out) was the
master-word of the German masses' iron time. Last Christ-
mas saw no cards sold in the Wertheim store showing the
Christ-Child knocking nails into Hindenburg's wooden
boots. All had changed, and from war's abyss nothing rose
but plaint and rue. For in the depths no shining milliards
of indemnity showed, but only trainloads of beloved corpses
tied with steel wire in stark naked fours, ready for pitching
to hell in the blast-furnaces of Seraing.

It was the creep of this cure in the very shrine of war
that America watched as one under a spell. She read
letters from mutinous German mothers; she weighed the
world's torment, and meted its tears all the way from the
Somme to the Tigris, and from African trails back to Ver-
dun where Prussian macht lay like a broken moth, self-
shrivelled in its own flame.

An unlikely season, one had said, in which to bid America
pile up arms. And how did she take all the urging? Very
variously. Here excitedly ; there disputatiously or feebly ;

32 AMERICA'S DAY

with a shrug elsewhere, or a blank stare across seas of corn
where "God an' Natur' " for ever wars against the farmer.
The "Get Ready" goading was often resented as treason
against the summer mood of a people concerned with out-
put and results, and beyond these with the uplift and the
better life of man as they conceive it.

"It behooves us to keep our heads," said the Western
stalwart, whose feelings I want to interpret. And, mark
you, he was a power in the land, as President Wilson was
aware throughout. "Let us hug the real American hero,
lie's no bomb-and-bayonet butcher; no gas-masked Thug
who lies in ambush where broken men sway and drip from
the barbed wire. No, sir. He's a benefactor to the race;
he's the lad who brought out of Switzerland the alfalfa-
seed which has transformed our empty West."

America's new Civil War was one between the "Let Bes"
and the "Get Readys." These last were stern realists
entrenched in the hard angularity of facts. "Human na-
ture," they owned sadly enough and with due disrelish for
the fact, "is the same now as in the first Olympiad. We
love war as little as you dreamers do, but we see it now as
an immedicable sickness — one that must endure until God's
own artillery shall blow away the stars. We're forced to
accept the Fichtean maxim that Right has no reality unless
fenced by Might." Between the two schools passed the
men of graft and "pork," mainly concerned with petty loot
and local power.

It was therefore a time of parry and thrust, of plain
words and sharp exordium, that withered America's olden
pride. Her wealth was no longer extolled as a shield or
an agent of defence at sudden need. Rather was it now
a flaring lure, one that called down destruction as careless
lights will do when the airship rides aloft in the dark.
"America is an undefended gold-mine," was the note of the
National Security League. And from both oceans (to say

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 33

nothing of the air), with Science in diabolic ministry, claim-
jumpers were pictured closing in upon piled-up treasure
worth $250,000,000,000. Meanwhile ten million citizens,
untaught in arms, stood idly by, with the ghost of Lincoln
renewing his reproaches of the Civil War and all his lonely
desperation.

"Are we degenerate?" the Emancipator flung at citizens
who refused to defend America in her darkest day. "Has
the manhood of our race run out?" Equally blunt were
appeals from the statesmen of 1916, yet the martial spirit
remained anaemic and cold. "Look at China," was a hint
from the Security League. "That unmartial giant is now
the helot of Japan." "Look at ourselves in the 'sixties,"
urged the Navy League, which took up the call. "We
had to let the Monroe Doctrine lapse in the chaos of our
Civil War. And see how France took advantage ! She
marked out Mexico as a sphere, just as Germany fastened
on Brazil in our own day. The Third Napoleon set Maxi-
milian on that tragic throne, and we had to wait till our
naval arm was free before we could reassert our authority. ' '

All this should have been moving stuff at such a time.
Yet Preparedness fell upon listless ears. "Speaking in all
solemnity," said President Wilson at Kansas City after his
conversion to the cult of force, "I assure you there is not
a day to be lost." Within twenty-four hours of that speech
a vote in the State Grange put two million farmers en
record as being dead against a single dollar of increase in
the Army and Navy appropriations. Sea-power had little
meaning for the inland cultivator. What cared he for
shadowy foes, Asiatic or European, when he wrestled night
and day with "God an' Natur"? There is never any truce
in this war with the soil ; no rest, no decisive victory, but
eternal grappling with mysterious, elusive hosts of heaven
and earth. There are cyclones and hailstorms, drought
and floods; frost and snow, wild beasts and poisonous

34 AMERICA'S DAY

plants. A single family of Montana wolves will destroy
$3000 worth of stock in a year. The State of Colorado
fought in vain to keep down the costly loco-weed that
withered her horses with a slow, incurable marasmus. One
campaign against this weed cost $200,000. There are also
the fruit and grain-eating birds — plagues like the sand of
the sea for multitude. There are rabbits and rats, bob-
cats and "bugs," or insects. Of these last the American
farmer faces a monstrous host — a hundred thousand differ-
ent species, and of each kind legions beyond any counting.
These scaly foes exact a toll of $700,000,000 a year from
forest and farm, so that Prosperity calls for a valour of
its own if it is to win and maintain its tide.

This peculiar valour the American possesses in a high
degree. Moreover, he adds to it a rugged joy of battle
which turns every obstacle into hope. I would call this
strength the very mainspring of American character; it is
the test by which all men are weighed and appraised in
that strenuous land. "Ef our woes had a Million Club,
the same as 'Frisco has," a grim Texan put to me in Gal-
veston, "they'd be out o' business in no time. As it is,
they jus' sharpen our wits. Wha's the boll-weevil to me,
man? Why, he's a noble inseck boostin' the price o' my
cotton! As f'r the green-bug, he's an angel in disguise
that forces the farmer to vary his crops. I tell ye tha's
the true Amur 'can sperit." And so it is — a spirit of gem-
like hardness and nimble flame, focussed on the day's work
and oblivious of all else.

Men upborne by this force are naturally slow to add
fellow-workers in other lands to the crowding pests that
prey with devilish ingenuity upon labour and life. Here,
it seems to me, is the secret seat oi' that languor in the
matter of America's defence. In the election of 1916 Wil-
son ruined his rival's chance with a simple phrase, followed
by a damning question : "He wants War ; what other

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 35

alternative is there to the policy I have pursued?" Upon
this a political revolution was wrought, soothing the unrest
of a prosperous people vaguely impelled and drawn against
their will into the seething vortex of the older nations.
But the cocksure days are over, the days of beaming and
spread-eagling, with happy assurance that potency and
privilege lurked in the American name. During the war
newspaper envoys were sent abroad to seek counsel and
guidance in all quarters, from Vatican halls to Verdun it-
self, where democratic Joffre (that saviour of France) was
asked to judge between America's men of peace and those
who would "Prepare" with ships and guns and men for
some tremendous Day.

In burly silence the soldier heard the case for Peace and
War. It was the old dilemma of a demos swayed by every
wind of words; a people fatally fond of its own ease and
now tossed with dim dismay.

There was a frank parade of this before the French
Generalissimo. Misgivings were quoted, from those of
Hamilton to Wilson himself. . . . Now had he any fetters,
Joffre was asked, to put about these free-footed fears?
No, he had not. That captain of hosts had nothing to say
about the people's control of foreign affairs, or the demand
for russet Yeas and honest kersey Noes, instead of gold-
laced guile in chariots and grand saloons, with princely
precedence at Court and table. The great soldier was not
to be drawn into a "story," any more than the late King
Oscar of Sweden, whose aid the American editor sought "on
the exceptional terms of twenty dollars a word." On the
whole it was a meagre interview. All that fell from the
Gallic oracle was quiet insistence upon "the quality of self-
discipline!" There was need for it, this man of few words
explained, in a Republic where the claims of liberty and the
individual were unduly loud. Joffre extolled the suppres-
sion of self — L'ouUi de soi pour V ideal — which all the

36 AMERICA'S DAY

world saw in the stricken heart of France. After all, what
was the love of country but the white flame sprung from
the mystical union of race and soil — Par V immemorial et
severe hymenee. . . . Discipline — just that and no more.
The stifling of weedy caprice; the calm O France, tant que
iu voudras of young poets and painters, already swallowed
in the ditch of deadly eyes. And what artists they were,
what ministers of grace and high gifts ! Of these lyric
souls — ecrivains morts pour la Patrie — France had a shining
legion. They left the sunlit heights for a vile sewer of
butchery; they chose a bloody death before the Chopin-life
of beauty, incense, and dreams. . . .

After all, that lovely spirit and unswerving choice was
not peculiar to Europe. It glowed in George Washington's
life as the American caller was reminded by his soldier-host.
It was seen in Lincoln's faith when his friends fell away in
the night of terror. There was little need for the United
States to seek advice abroad, for she had heroic voices of
her own. "A nation is not worthy to be saved," President
Garfield told the Lower House in '64, "if in the hour of its
fate it will not gather up its jewels of manhood and go
down into the conflict, however bloody and doubtful, re-
solved upon measureless ruin or complete success."

Nevertheless, Joffre's "quality of discipline" proved a
hard saying to the prosperity of the United States, where
military service was ever a hateful thing. In the stormy
'Sixties it was called "unconstitutional" — an attack upon
liberty which inflamed the mob to murder and madness.
Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago ran red with riot against
the Lincoln "drafts"; the New York streets were full of
furies carrying firearms, iron bars, and knives. Federal
troops were clubbed to death with their own muskets; and
when Colonel O'Brien drew a pistol to defend his men he
was hanged upon a lamp-post and his body beaten by the
outraged proletariat. Yet one and all knew America's

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 37

future was at stake on that fateful April day when Beaure-
gard's guns opened fire upon Fort Sumter.

Down to 1917 the panoply of war was decried by the
zealots of moral suasion, of whom Mr. Bryan was the great
exemplar. At dove-and-brotherhood meetings these men
deplored the genius wasted in war devices and proposed a
more rational use for them. Thus aeroplanes might locate
the forest fire — that summer curse of the wilderness — and
warn American settlers in the path of the flames. The
submarine was given a clear commercial future up and
down the Alaska coast, where the winter floes prevent ordi-
nary craft from landing Uncle Sam's mails.

So the first idea of a national army vanished, and with
it went War-Secretary Garrison, whose plan the President
would not openly endorse. For Woodrow Wilson, with
perfect knowledge of his people, was a slow and cautious
convert to the ' ' Get Ready ' ' creed. He knew that America
in the mass was indifferent to a huge army, if not actually
hostile to it.

His attitude to the notorious Haj^ Army Bill was a seri-
ous error. It was a deplorable measure ; the largest and
most recent looting of the Federal Treasury by politicians
who love "pork" — America's name for graft which use
and custom have made respectable, especially in the State
centres that profit by it. Never has Washington seen such
flagrant lobbying in both Houses of Congress as that which
marked the passage of the so-called Army Reorganization.
Never were the meanest of provincial interests arrayed so
cynically against the nation.

The forty-eight States have armies of their own. I shall
not dwell upon the performance of these troops, for the
story is tedious as well as grotesque. As soldiers they were
all but entirely negligible — untrained, unequipped, ill-
disciplined, and physically unfit. They were a social as
well as a quasi-military body ; on festal days they gave the

38 AMERICA'S DAY

Governor's estate a certain figure and equipage. The
Militia or National Guard could be called out to quell riots,
but they were not under national authority, and swore
allegiance only to their several States. The Dick Law of
1903 brought a certain measure of Federal control, and
this was carried further by the National Defence Act of
1916. But the State Militias were still forty-eight easy-
going armies. They served the local politicians, but were
of little use to Federal officers worried over the problems
of invasion and all-American defence.

"Could anything be more scandalous," asked General
Butt, "than to take green men off the streets and send
them down to the Border half-equipped, or with no equip-
ment at all?" The men of Arkansas left with umbrellas
and straw hats. Minnesota had "everything but uniforms
and guns." The Illinois cavalry had no horses. Iowa
boggled over the Federal oath ; so did New Jersey, Mary-
land, and Massachusetts — whose Guardsmen were presently
poisoned by their own rations ! It was an aggrieved citizen
army that kept watch on the Rio Grande and wrote letters
to Colonel Roosevelt, of which the burden was "Never
again !" . . .

The Hay-Chamberlain "pork" Bill was jockeyed through
Congress by parochial lobbies and local champions, who are
the worst enemies of their country, and are now thoroughly
discredited. The idea underlying ' ' pork ' ' and political loot
is that the Federal authority exists, not to be loyally served,
but to be milked and plundered whenever possible; that
Federal taxation of the States is really a system by which
money flows to a common centre, and is — or should be —
piped back again for distribution in "our district." A
typical case was a bill to appropriate $75,000 for a post-
office in McKee (Ky.) . This turned out to be a village with
a population of two hundred souls! But the appetite for
"pork," like other ugly symptoms, is not so keen as it was.

THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 39

There is everywhere a desire and demand for decency and
social service among the mixed communities of this vast
land. Thus the little town of Bipon (Wis.) renounced an
appropriation for a public building that was to cost $75,000.
Ripon's Commercial Club asked to have that sum applied
to Preparedness for national defence, preferably in the
matter of aircraft.

CHAPTER IV

"STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION"

It is no easy matter to present in brief a clear idea of a
"country" whose frontier has advanced two thousand miles
in a single life-span. Let me take that of Colonel W, F.
Cody, better known as "Buffalo Bill," because of his task
of feeding with buffalo-meat the trackmen of the Kansas-
Pacific Railway. Advancing in years, the Colonel settled
down at last as farmer and irrigator in the dry lands of
Wyoming. But the man's real nunc di mitt is came in 1883,
when he put his big Show on the road and knew the Wild
"West for ever tamed.

Dan Boone, Dave Crockett, Kit Carson, and Bill Cody —
here in four dare-devil names is evoked the fascinating
story of pioneer conquest in the United States. Her epic
period is strangely near to us. The figure of Lincoln has
all the magic of myth for America's younger generation,
yet their fathers knew the Slave-emancipator in the flesh.
Colonel Cody's life saw the passing of the Redskin, with
his teepees, and squaws and scalps. Today the Shoshone
brave wears a billycock hat and a Semi-Ready suit by Kup-
penheimer "as advertised for dressy College men"! The
Five Civilized Tribes — Choctaw, Chickasaw, and the rest —
are now demurely herded and taught in the Reservations.
Black Hawk and Sitting Bull of 1918 are flourishing den-
tists and attorneys: the smaller fry accept bread-and-
blanket doles from a paternal Government in Washington.
The big chief, once lord of the lonely horizon, now scuds
abroad in a Ford car hunting a drink of bad whisky in
some corrugated iron cave, far from the omniscient eye of
Prohibition. Sic transit gloria mundi!

40

"STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 41

Many States, like Texas and California, are potential
empires in area and natural resources. All of them lay
claim to sovereignty, and this is clearly defined in the orig-
inal Constitution. When the Peace of Paris closed the War
of Independence in 1783, there were thirteen autonomous
States with no common bond at all, and certainly no thought
of Federation. New York especially opposed the idea.

To the eloquent Hamilton, the early Continental Con-
gress presented an "awful spectacle" of stormy disunion
and jealous watch upon State prerogatives and rights.
Delegates eyed each other as foreigners, alert and wary as
Prussian envoys at a Hague debate upon Disarmament.
None was a patriot whose aims outsoared the boundary of
his own State: Federation, Government from a common
centre for the common weal — here was a notion long and
violently resisted. A "League of Friendship" was put
forward instead, as between striving nations of a virgin con-
tinent, beset with dim perils and engaged in a sauve qui
pent.

Washington and Franklin, Madison and Hamilton, had
an all but impossible task, but at length they won the States
to a Federal Constitution. It soon fell into utter chaos.
Congress alone could decide upon war, but it was powerless
to raise or equip an army. In case of dispute, Congress
was to arbitrate between the States, but either party could
(and did) flout the Federal decision. It rested with Con-
gress to make foreign treaties, yet any State might violate
these with impunity. Washington himself wrote to the
autocratic governors urging the need for a national revenue
to be raised by Congress. To this there was only a stinted
and grudging response. Some of the States pleaded pov-
erty, and fell into arrears. Others offered their own woe-
fully depreciated paper. A few declined with wrath until
delinquents had paid their share.

It was a phase that could not last. "We are labour-

42 AMERICA'S DAY

ing hard," wrote Alexander Hamilton, "to establish in this
country principles more and more national ... so that we
may be neither Greek nor Trojan but thoroughly Ameri-
can." The task is not yet complete, for States' Rights have
always had their champions, of whom the most noted was
that sturdy Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, the third Presi-
dent of the Union. A more formidable advocate was Jef-
ferson Davis, who, in a dramatic Senate speech, announced
the complete severance of his own "nation" from the
United States. On February 9, 1861, Davis was elected
President of the seceding Confederation. He desired to
live in peace with the older Union, but there was a growing
menace in his professions. If he were not "let alone,"
Davis at length declared, those Yankees should "smell
Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Which, in-
deed, they did during the four years of America's domestic
war.

I shall not venture far into the maze of American politics,
but I must show both parties warring in the several States,
whose internal affairs are beyond the control of the Federal
Government. The result is confusion and much frittering
of the national spirit in unworthy ways. Each State is the
battle-ground of unseemly forces, and there is call for a
Man, as there was for Hughes in New York and for Taft
in Ohio, against Boss Cox and his evil works. It is in State
crusades of this kind that national careers are made.
Twenty years ago "Wisconsin was in the clutch of the
brewery-ring of Milwaukee and the railroad ring of Madi-
son. In this case Robert La Follette was the liberator of
the State. New Hampshire broke the bonds of her railroad
ring through Robert P. Bass; and, after many years of
shameless corruption and misgovernment, the great Key-
stone State of Pennsylvania threw off boss control with the
aid of Governor Brumbaugh.

But the most notable instance of the oppressed State and

"STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 43

its champion is California and Hiram W. Johnson ; he was
twice Governor, and is now a Senator in Congress. For a
generation the political rottenness of this glorious land
was beyond belief. In municipal looting the San Francisco
gang out-Tammanied Tammany Hall even in the classic
reign of Boss Tweed. Under Abe Ruef and Mayor Schmitz
(who wound up in gaol) the great city sank to sordid
depths unparalleled in the history of American robbery and
graft. The Pacific State had long ceased to be a republic,
far less a democracy. It was ruled by the Southern Pacific
Railroad with a tyrannous grip which is difficult for the
European reader to realize. First Huntington and then
Harriman was absolute "Tsar" over a country three times
the size of England, and iron rule was directed from a
"Wall Street office three thousand miles away.

The State Legislature in Sacramento was made up of
voting machines nominated by the Southern Pacific. Cali-
fornia's laws were matters of bargain and sale. It was the
Railroad that appointed judges, and broke them, too, when
they disobeyed. . . . Here enters Hiram Johnson. How
that Quixotic orator captured the Republican nomination
and smashed the preposterous machine is too queer and
tedious a tale to tell fully here. First of all he got in
touch with the farmers, as the reform party did in Kansas.
There were times when the young Governor despaired of
success, so securely were the Southern Pacific interests en-
trenched, so lavish and unscrupulous were their agents in
the doling of bribes. Ignored by the press, Johnson set out
like a religious revivalist, spouting at the street corners and
haranguing 'wayback farmers under the shadow of Mount
Shasta, where railroads and politics were all but unknown.

It was a typical American crusade, but at long last the
prophet found honour in that sunny land. At his meet-
ings there were now reporters and advance agents. And
from citrus-groves and fields the cultivators came running

44 AMERICA'S DAY

at the sound <>f cow-bells on the Johnson cars. They heard
him gladly, if a little dubiously at first. "Will you keep
faith with us?" the people asked of their new apostle, when
lie showed the way to brighter things, and the crippling of
the Corporation autocracy that ruled them all. Johnson
said he would — and he did. The reformer led his democ-
racy against the big business and overthrew it. Today
California is the freest and most progressive State in the
Union ; its new Senator in Washington is even hailed as
"Presidential timber" for the 1920 election.

Such are the issues and interests that draw men from
really national affairs. The central Government is well
aware of this weakness; and there is a quiet but forceful
tendency to break down State control and merge more and
more authority in the Federal Congress. It is recognized
that forty-eight sovereignties working at cross-purposes
must hamper America's development, both internally and
in foreign affairs. Industrial justice is not possible with
forty-eight different codes governing accidents in factories
as well as sanitary conditions, old-age pensions, and social
welfare in general. A trading company may register in
one State and operate in another, with serious results alike
to debtors, creditors, and customers. A valid marriage in
one State may be held null and void in another. There are
thirty-five different causes for absolute divorce recognized
by the various States of the Union. But not one of these
is recognized by all !

Nor is there any uniformity in the per capita taxation,
which ranges from $9.47 in Nevada down to $1.72 in South
Carolina. In some States the Judges are elected by the
people, in others by the Legislature ; or again, they may be
appointed by the Governor. In Texas and Arizona the
Mexican vara of thirty-three inches is used in land meas
urement; of course it is unknown in the North. Legal
holidays vary in all the States. Jeff Davis's birthday is a

"STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 45

holiday in Virginia, but Good Friday is ignored in New
York. In fact, each State is a law unto itself, and looks
harshly upon its neighbour when that neighbour is stricken
with a deadly disease. The old days of shot-gun quaran-
tines disappeared with the yellow fever; but during the
mysterious plague of paralysis in New York in 1916 there
was a panic over the water in New Jersey, where boats and
trains full of convalescents were turned back with senseless
cruelty.

Inter-State quarrels crop up at times, like that between
North Dakota and Minnesota over the marketing of wheat.
But far more serious are the conflicts between individual
States and the Federal authority in Washington. The
gravest of these was the stand which California took (and
still takes) over the penal laws which she passed against
the Japanese settlers in her midst. This brought the shadow
of secession again, and even the menace of international war
with this I deal elsewhere. But the cleavage of States and
peoples was a condition which could not last. Berlin was
aware of it; the German Embassy in Washington traded
upon it for two years of the Great War. Thus far the
national consciousness showed no flame ; the far-flung States
were immersed in problems of peculiar diversity. Thus
Iowa was warring on her rats, Nevada on her mad coyotes
and the rabies in her flocks and herds. Louisiana was con-
cerned with the hyacinth that choked her waterways.
Rural Minnesota talked of model farms, West Virginia
defied the Supreme Court to collect her ante helium debt of
twelve million dollars. And that mountain fastness, Wyo-
ming (it is larger than Britain), was forming a game pre-
serve for the greater antelopes and bears.

These things were real ; the world-war came as a tiresome
yarn to be swallowed on the Tertullian principle: " 'Tis
impossible, and therefore to be believed!" These people
praised Lord Fisher and shut his genius from their Hall

46 AMERICA'S DAY

of Fame. But there we shall find Lord Lister, the gentle
healer who "with one gentle stroking wiped away ten thou-
sand tears out of the life of man."

It was curious to see how America grew tired of war in
war-time, and fell back upon her own isolation. The great
topic was now tabu, being a source of social friction and a
business bar. "Leave it outside!" became an office door
appeal in New York City. One heard hyphenates dilate
upon the German primacy in war, its novel engines and
twisted technics of destruction. But these speakers were
quickly tamed ; there seemed no prospect of universal serv-
ice even on the Swiss lines, except after some invasive coup
such as was planned by Von Edelsheim in 1901, and de-
bated in the Army and Navy Club of Berlin. In this
scheme stress was laid upon the fact that Germany was,
of all Powers, the one best fitted to conquer America. Ref-
erence to the weakness of the Regular Army, to the un-
trained Militias, and "the inexperience of the American
Staff" showed how well informed the Baron was when
outlining this adventure.

It was the State patriot who all but defeated the idea
of a unifying Constitution; and after sixty years he all
but ruined the national structure over the questions of
Secession and Slavery. States' Rights have been pleaded
to delay or defeat urgent laws relating to pure food, child
labour, transportation, and the conservation of natural re-
sources. These Rights have also been invoked to rally and
shelter anti-social forces and to arouse sectional bias and
local prejudice. But they have no place in the new Ameri-
canism of 1918. In the Supreme Court the utterance of
Justice Hughes in the Minnesota and Shreveport eases lays
down the all-American law in a classic decision: "There
is no room in our scheme of Government for the assertion
of State Right in hostility to the authorized exercise of
Federal control."

"STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 47

Serious thinkers and leaders of public opinion are every-
where alive to this peculiar danger. Thus in the Senate
Mr. B. R. Tillman of South Carolina, Chairman of the
Committee on Naval Affairs, condemned the State patriot
in forcible terms: "It is as though men were crazy over
local affairs," he declared, "and had no broad national
grasp at all." Each State has its own floral emblem:
Alabama, the golden-rod; Florida, the orange-blossom;
Mississippi, the magnolia ; Wyoming, the gentian ; Utah, the
sego lily, and so on.

Before the Great War the ablest thinkers were afraid
the United States was less of a nation than it was when
Washington wrote his political testament over a century
ago. Senators, professors, and social reformers pointed to
alien forces that were fast corroding the finer traditions
and setting up standards that clashed with them. ' ' You
have in a common cause f ought and triumphed together,"
the First President wrote in his historic Address. The
new-born nation's independence was "the work of joint
councils and efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and
successes. ' '

But many of the newer States know nothing of such
bonds, largely peopled as they are by Europeans of every
race, intent upon material success and the good time denied
them in the older lands. These settlers also tend to become
State patriots. They show little or no interest in foreign
affairs; they have Jeff Davis's own desire to be "let alone"
by the Federal Government in Washington. ' ' We are still
sectional," Senator W. G. Harding of Ohio was sorry to
say. "Not divided on the old Mason and Dixon line, but
by East and West, North and South, coast and interior;
financial and industrial on the one hand, and agricultural
on the other."

This parochial spirit survived the dismissal of Bern-
storff and the rupture of relations with the Central Powers.

48 AMERICA'S DAY

It was the despair of men of larger grasp who would have
had the President take a bolder line and fling at the masses
the calm Lincoln-query: ''What is our Duty?" They
pointed to France, their sister Republic, just then "a-tingle
with grief and glory," as her prose-poet said. What a pity
"Wilson was no incendiary of souls, voicing the jeunesse
endiablce of Verdun and the Somme to a quick-witted,
warm-hearted people like the Americans! A man of apos-
tolic fire would have pictured the women of France up-
standing in the nave of Notre Dame with streaming eyes
and rapt senses on the burning appeal of Pere Janvier; it
rang like a challenge to the eternal Throne: ''Justice for
France, 0 God ! ' ' This appeal the organ lifted with stormy
splendour to storied windows and darkling heights above
the swordecl statue of the Warrior- Virgin in the apse.

But Wilson erred on the cautious side. The world-war
was to him a mystery in these neutral days. "Its origin
and objects," the President said, "have never been dis-
closed. ' ' The Wilson of that time was a shocked spectator
of the scene, with Mediation in his left hand when returning
sanity should prompt an exhausted Europe to sue for it.
. . . "With its causes and objects we are not concerned.
The obscure fountains from which the stupendous flood
burst forth we are not interested to search or explore."
How different it was when the rising waters threatened the
speaker's native land!

It was this incuria which made America reckon the Allied
cause in headlines and press sensations. The European
battles were at length no more than "movie" features.
They eclipsed the home-made thrills of colliding trains and
men who leaped from sky-scrapers or tackled sharks on the
sea floor. But it was mainly on business lines that the
colossal struggle was judged. "War films faked" was an
urgent telegram from Little Rock (Ark.) to an agent for
the Somme pictures. "No smoke and soldiers laughing."

"STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 49

. . . "Sending another," was the prompt reply: "Clouds
of smoke and men sobbing. One dollar a foot — guaranteed
American make!"

CHAPTER V

AMERICA IN THE MAKING

For two years or more, a lively press and a listless people
were discrepant features of the United States. They were
also the subject of puzzled comment on this side. The New
York Herald, the Sun, Tribune, and Evening Post expressed
themselves impeccably throughout, and with due wrath
against German methods. Yet the American masses were
but faintly moved. If they were stirred at all it was only
between editions, so to say. One should not forget that the
New York papers spoke for the cultured East alone. They
did not reflect the masses at large any more than the Lon-
don Times may be said to speak for Tyneside, or the Morn-
ing Post for the Norfolk farmer or the mechanics of Wool-
wich and Canning Town.

I am aware of the paradox which maintains that a me-
tropolis is unrepresentative of its own nation. One hears
this of London and Paris, of Rome, Vienna, and Madrid.
Whether it be true of Europe is here immaterial; but let
me say with all emphasis that no intelligent American can
be found who will claim that New York City is in the
smallest degree "American." It is, in fact, the most for-
eign of all the world centres; a native of Manhattan Bor-
ough is by no means easily found. Foreign names pre-
dominate in New York. All the races of Europe and Asia
live here and labour in vortex rings of nationality. Over
in Brooklyn you may lose yourself in a new Naples. Wil-
liamsburg is wholly German ; Washington Street is Syrian,
and reads a Daily Mirror in the Arabic script (Meerat el-
Gharb). Mott Street and Pell Street are Chinese, with

50

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 51

throngs of yellow men slipping past each other like eels in
a tub.

In a thousand night-schools English is taught to new
citizens who have formally "asked for their first papers."
But these hordes are all apt to lapse into their own tongue ;
or they take no interest in study after a day's work at the
highest tension. It is above all New York which deserves
the name of "the melting-pot." It contains nearly a mil-
lion Jews — a type of immigrant who will not be lured out
on to the farms. The Jew loves New York City, where
ninety per cent, of America's money is. Here in truth is
an Israelitish camp to awe the modern Balaam: "Who
can count the dust of Jacob?" One person in every four
is a Jew whom you meet on Manhattan Island.

It is largely in her make-up, then, that the secret of
America's apatlry must be sought, apart from causes that
are more obscure. If the special correspondent from Lon-
don would take the ferry over to the Ellis Island Immigra-
tion Station, he might see America in the making and
understand the swamping of the United States by alien
stocks which became a problem so far back as 1885. It is
astonishing that this Door of Hope has been neglected by
British editors and enlightenment sought from the "men
higher up" who live in wholly different spheres. Let me
present the rushing of these foreign floods, for surely no
such human portent, no politico-social factor was ever so
strangely staged.

I shall go no further than the Franco-Prussian War,
when the population of America was less than that of
Britain at the last census. And Britain is smaller than
the single States of Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona. Today
America musters over 105,000,000 souls, white, black, yel-
low, and red. It is a welter of contradictions, a riot of
inconsistency ; and yet there is something in the very atmos-
phere which makes for national traits — the clash of races,

52 AMERICA'S DAY

immensity of area, "States' Rights," and local patriotism
notwithstanding. In thirty years America doubled her
population, such was the spate of foreign peoples tumbling
in by the shipload. The Immigration Commissioner was
once expecting two million new citizens a year.

Ellis Island, out in New York Harbour, was well named
"Uncle Sam's Sieve," and I shall show it in pre-war opera-
tion. It is a breezy, emotional place, with vistas of spar-
kling waters ; great ocean ships and fussy tugs, scows carry-
ing railway-cars, ferry-boats, black with passengers, and a
procession of double-decked barges plying between the island
and the latest arrival of the immigrant fleet. There are
sea-noises and land-noises, shrill whistlings and distant
boomings. The roar of the city drifts over from Manhat-
tan, with its sky-line of pinnacles and deep canons full of
fierce endeavour. Behind is the Statue of Liberty, whose
torch is now ablaze in the dark ; the colossus by day has a
background of factory shafts and trailing smoke.

Here is the first barge-load from the ship, and a fantastic
crowd pours out to the tune of "Presto!" from a cheery
American inspector. The big red building yonder is the
gateway of the United States. Go in with the awestruck
rabble and ascend to the gallery. Now look down into the
vaulted hall where future Americans are sorted in two and
twenty pens, with high steel railings in between. All are
examined by doctors and the unfit weeded out ; the rest pass
from fold to fold, answering questions at each official desk.

Listen to the languages in this busy hive of citizenship.
In these pens are races that have never met before ; people
far apart as the Sicilian and the Hebrew patriarch from the
Russian Pale. Three-fourths of the crowd' are from south-
eastern Europe — from Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia,
Poland, and South Russia. Seventy-five per cent, are farm
and village folk, with an average of twenty dollars between
them and that "dependency" which means deportation.

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 53

The men are mostly under forty, pioneers in tins magical
land; their families will come on later, when Fortune's
trail has been blazed, and the father is doing well. They
are not pretty people to look at, these of the Ellis Island
cages. They are primitive creatures, coarse and crude — too
often illiterate, and on that account not so acceptable to
America in her day of doubt. . . .

A Polish dwarf is prompting a nervous giant near the
inspector's desk. A Magyar girl in a dull red shawl, with
a guitar under her arm, stares up at the Stars and Stripes
of the gallery. On the seat beside her is a cane hamper,
with a pillow, a blue teapot, and other belongings. There
are muffled fights between the Greek and Irish children.
Picturesque dudes of Bessarabia and the Bukowina are busy
with mirror and comb, oblivious to all else. There are
burly Finns and Bulgars ; gaunt Armenian women, Syrian
maids of real beauty from the Lebanon, odds and ends from
the rayah races of the Kaliph in Europe and Asia Minor.

Steady streams of immigrants are passing out. A wait-
ing-room is raucous with relief in many tongues; shrill
inquiries are made for the Jersey City ferry, and the New
Citizens' train in the Pennsylvania station. Their baggage
is quaint or mediaeval; humpy sacks, boxes of tin, and
gaily painted wood secured with rawhide strips. Hundreds
of them have no heavy baggage at all. These are mere
straws in humanity's tide; sad-eyed waifs with all their
worldly goods tied about their persons, and rattling oddly
as they pass to and fro. There is one cage marked "Tem-
porarily Detained"; telegrams must be sent to friends
about the occupants of this place.

They may be young girls, to whom Uncle Sam stands
in loco parentis. His officials are very suspicious of "do-
mestic agency*" men, who may be White Slave raiders
doing a big home trade as well as exporting victims down
to Rio and Buenos Aires.

54 AMERICA'S DAY

The telegraph operator has at last a sheaf of messages to

send: "Detained Ellis Island, steamer . Need ten

dollars. Also proof of your ability to support." For
America has a horror of paupers and prostitutes. The pen
of the "Detained" is at onee a gay place, and a sad. Boys
and girls are merry enough, buying cakes from a Polish
pedlar; but in shadowy corners sit the old and weary, in
every attitude of dejection. Some of these have been de-
tained for days, well enough lodged and fed by the author-
ities. Before the week is over they must go before a Board
of Inquiry. . . . Haply there is no answer to that appeal
flashed into great American spaces. If the immigrant be
old and feeble, he is deported — a word of damnation in the
Ellis Island pens. . . .

An official in uniform calls names from a list, and the
hall seethes with excitement. Four or five nondescripts
step forward, tremulous with glee. These pass down a
corridor into the "Lovers' Lane," which an inspector tells
you "holds more kisses to the square inch than any other
spot on earth." Here in a room walled with wire-netting
the "American" pioneer, incoherent and overdressed,
greets his people from overseas. He has already prepared
a home for them in the jostling arena. Over-ardent swains
are not allowed to claim their sweethearts when these young
persons arrive alone. But the Island has a marriage-
bureau of its own that works all day and makes love re-
spectable from its outset on American soil.

Three judges hold session upstairs in the Board of In-
quiry, and before them sit doubtful cases — red-eyed or
listless folk, indignant or full of dread. In the Deportation-
Room are some contract labourers — Bulgarians hired for
the anthracite mines. They were marked down at Varna
by an official of the American Federation who advised
Ellis Island by cable of this infraction of the law. For

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 55

such cases there is no hope ; all are sent back to Europe at
the steamship company's expense.

Now ' ' a wise man 's country, ' ' as Zeno says, ' ' is where he
finds happiness," so it would appear that this migration
flatters the United States. But sentiment in the matter
has long since flown. It stands to common sense that many
of these people are not the best citizens of the nations they
have left. Think what it means to tear up home by the
roots; to leave one's own land and sail across the ocean to
begin life anew in a continent of strange ways and foreign
language, with extremes of climate which are very trying
to the European.

It is depressing to watch the bitterness of the disinherited
in these sorting-pens; the surliness of outcasts and trade-
fallen failures — yet no sooner do they step ashore at the
Battery than they fill their lungs with American air, which
has a marvellous effect. Giani or Pietro, from Ajaccio or
Messina, is soon a transfigured man ; a hustler — a devotee of
America's dare and do, poring upon success-books or study-
ing law between each pair of boots he shines (at five cents)
outside the corner saloon. At home in Corsica, Giani
dreamed his life away in a hot sun with no more fortune,
no more future than a few goats and a crop of chestnuts
that dropped into his lazy mouth as he lay in the shade.

What is the secret of this sudden aspiring — of this young
Rodin-passion — haunted day and night with the idea of
doing quelque chose de puissant f It is the mysterious
American element that favours the transmutation. One is
reminded of the trout which in a Scottish burn may never
exceed a fingerling size, yet when placed in New Zealand
waters attain a weight of five-and-thirty pounds. All the
same, America's pride and satisfaction in these hordes has
long been jarred, especially when the million-mark was
passed in 1905.

56 AMERICA'S DAY

The insistent theme of thinkers was that, as immigra-
tion grew in volume, the quality of it fell off until the
"men (and women, too), who are to vote" were eyed in
the mass as questionable Americans. Statesmen began to
discuss and classify the various races in the throng. Some
were more industrious than others; some more ambitious,
more assimilable. Others, again, would not respond to
the American challenge. They herded together ; they lived
doubtfully, even calling for special police and secret agents
of the law in polyglot squads, such as one finds in New
York, Chicago, and San Francisco. This falling off in
quality may be said to coincide with the rise to power
and wealth of the German Empire, which checked and with-
held the most desirable of immigrants.

So early as 1885 Teutonic and Celtic sources were thin-
ning out; a prosperous Ireland could only spare 20,000
of her sons in 1914, whereas she sent 60,000 in 1891. As
Northern and Western Europe began to keep their people,
there was an abrupt migration of Iberian and Slavic stocks
from the South and East; and these, America tried to tell
herself, would be at least a passable substitute. The sta-
tistics of the change are remarkable. Thus in 1885 Ger-
many showed an immigration percentage of 31 ; by 1900
it had dropped to 4. The Scandinavian nations fell from
14 in 1880 to 4 in 1905. Meanwhile the "ramshackle em-
pire" of Austria-Hungary was readjusting the balance
with Magyar and Czech, Ruthenian and Serb, Croat, Ru-
man, Slovak, Slovene, and Jew. Here the American table
shows a percentage of 1 in the year 1870, leaping to 13
in 1895, and a decade later to 27. Italy's percentage was
2 in 1875 and 22 in 1905. In the same period the Russian
influx rose from 4 to 18, whilst Britain's contribution
crumbled from 30 or 40 to 13.

Applying the dollar test, it was seen that the German
or Dane brought with him twice as much money as those

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 57

stagey figures from South-Eastern Europe. The average
Sicilian or Greek or Jew who landed at the Battery with
$15 in his pocket was voted poor American stuff.

Worse still, out of a million aliens more than one-fourth
could neither read nor write. Accordingly, the restriction
screw was given further turns, and the steamship com-
panies responded, having grown tired of taking back to
Europe undesirables whom America refused to admit. It
is beyond question that, in spite of all precautions, thou-
sands of aliens have invaded the country who were on the
verge of dependency, defectiveness, and crime. Then
came the perplexing task of distribution, so long the crux
of statesmen and social students; of professors of eco-
nomics and sociology, the press and pulpit, the learned
and industrial bodies, and the Labour Unions. At Immi-
gration Conferences evidence of shocking congestion in
the cities was produced. The Jewish immigrant especially
will go no farther afield than New York, where his race
has enormous power. Out of 694,172 Jews landed at Ellis
Island, 504,181 remained in the city and settled there.
Out of a million foreigners admitted, the Census Bureau
shows that well over one-third claimed the State of New
York as their "ultimate destination."

Most of that million were bound for the cities or suburbs
of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston. Amer-
ica was vexed to learn that seven-tenths of these citizens-
to-be settled in centres already thronged, instead of "going
"West" which has long been held classic counsel for the
ambitious. Five years of residence is the term for citi-
zenship. It is preceded by a declaration of intention "to
renounce for ever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign
prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty; and particularly
to the one of which he may at the time be a citizen or
subject."

Here let me note that there is much changing of names

58 AMERICA'S DAY

on the part of the new American. The Magyar and Pole
must not be unpronounceable among his fellows, so Rab-
binovitch is neatly trimmed to Robins. There is whole-
sale shedding of "skis" and "offs. " Jangling consonants
of Bohemia are dropped, so are smooth vowels that mark
the "Dago," and whole slabs of syllables that show the
Greek: Spyridon Paraskevopoulos is a serious handicap
in the hot American race for Success. The Jew will often
drop a too" "Sheeny" name — and with it much of the
olden faith, which his children frequently lose. Aliens
who take to prize-fighting adopt Irish names — Murphy,
Sullivan, or O'Brien.

The last census showed altogether 13,515,886 persons
of foreign birth in the United States. To this one may
add ten or twelve million negroes in order to gauge the
hugeness of elements that clash with, or merely hamper,
the true American ideals.

One learns casually that Norway has in the United

States a population nearly as large as its own, and that

M. Paderewski forwarded a Polish protest from America

representing 4,000,000 citizens banded together in societies

.and organizations.

Altogether over five hundred journals are printed in
foreign languages, thus fostering "national" feelings which
conflict with the new citizenship. America shows an in-
creasing dislike of the many quarters in her midst, ruled
as they are by the padrone and the ward boss. Some
reformers would press compulsory English upon the newly-
landed immigrant. He should be guided and taught, they
say, as one teaches children; for it is in the intelligence
of these people that the future of democracy lies. On the
other hand, to neglect them means a listless electorate and
weakness in the body politic.

"Americanization Day" was last year celebrated in 150
cities. The women's clubs take a hand in the process of

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 59

moulding new citizens ; and a Forward-to-the-Land League,
with experimental tracts in Florida, tries to coax the Ellis
Island hordes out of the Eastern cities into the real Amer-
ica beyond. But the immigrant question bristles with
difficulty. The labour market is in chronic rebellion
against a flood of workers who compete with the native
on un-American bases. And those interested in the purity
of politics see in these docile mobs a new supply of cor-
ruptibles upon whose votes (often secured with forged
naturalization papers), ''machines" may be reared and
supported for the purpose of municipal loot. So serious
a matter had immigration become that America was glad
of the respite given her by the war. During the second
half of 1915, there were only 169,291 arrivals. As against
these, there were 166,899 departures for Europe, leaving
a net increase for the half year of only 2392.

It was one of war's few blessings, this abrupt exclusion
of unskilled labour. Restrictionists were glad to see there
was less unemployment than ever ; fewer claims upon pub-
lic and private charity through the checking of a human
tide which had become a danger. Of course, America dis-
cusses immigration after the war, and that with renewed
anxiety. Some thinkers contend there will be a great mi-
gration from the "militaristic" nations; that men, heart-
sick at the very thought of war, will turn eagerly to
the land of peace and the serener uplift of life. Others
are that the older nations will need all their sons to repair
the wastage in man-power and material; that all the won-
drous gear bought and built in America, and long em-
ployed upon munitions of war, will in the Old World be
turned to productive labour, so as to reduce the enormous
debts under which the warring Powers must groan for a
generation.

Nor is America sorry to see her supply of Jewish citizens
cut off. Jewish influence permeates the United States,

60 AMERICA'S DAY

and is pacific to the point of emasculation. Jews own
great newspapers like the New York World and Times.
Jews are elected Governors of States. There is "Honest
Mose," the reformer of Idaho, who once sold cheap togs
in a wooden shack of Boise City; and Simon Bamberger,
the first Democratic Governor of Utah, who is still a "Gen-
tile" in the Mormon State. A Jew — Louis Brandeis —
sits in the Supreme Court of the United States. As for
ambassadors at foreign Courts, one has but to mention
Oscar Straus, Henry Morgenthau, Abraham Elkus, and
Lewis Einstein. But it is in the realm of finance that the
Jew is supreme; a notable exemplar is Jacob Schiff, the
philanthropist, who played a leading part in the League
to Enforce Peace.

My point is that Hebrew pacifism is opposed to vig-
orous measures of national defence. "Over yonder," the
generous Jews were told in Carnegie Hall, "Despotism
rallies its victims to a bloody death. Here in America
we set in motion vastly different armies. Behold our
20,000,000 school children laughing as they go. See yet
another army of 20,000,000 stalwarts who march out each
morning to the anvil, the forge and the loom." So what
with Jewish and Gentile pacifism, the influence of the
women, and German intrigue from Cuba to Colon, and
thence to Mexico City, Preparedness for war had "hard
sledding" indeed in its early days.

It was this feebleness of the national will which engaged
the ablest American minds. It also accounted for the feel-
ing of relief when immigration stopped, and the alien tor-
rent was shown to be a factor which the country could
do without. For many years American students of this
problem have been of three schools — restrictionist, selec-
tionist, and exclusionist ; these last weighed police reve-
lations of unexampled crime, as well as horrible crowding
in the slums. But the demand for cheap labour, for il-

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 61

literate, non-English speaking serfs, was both insistent and
fierce. Beyond doubt the poor devils of aliens were cruelly
exploited. Until quite recently (and the change of spirit
is startling to one who knows the facts) no nation on
earth held human life so cheaply as the United States,
in spite of professions to the contrary which were conven-
tions and little more.

"The casualties of our peaceful industries," wrote Pres-
ident Roosevelt to Josiah Strong, the statistician, "exceed
those of a great and continuous war." In round figures
they amount to 50,000 killed and 500,000 injured every
year. Such is Prosperity's toll; this is the seamy side of
America's speed-up. According to Dr. YvT. II. Tolman,
"the Pennsylvania coalfields alone furnish a Bull Run
Battle of deaths year by year." And so reckless are the
railroads that their foremost expert, Mr. James J. Hill,
remarked to a Cabinet Minister: "Every time I take a
journey I expect it to be my last, so uncertain has the
thing become."

"Ah, Bawss," said the negro brakeman to me at Fort
"Worth, "w'en soldierin's as deadly as switchin' I guess
we'll have disarm 'ent at hand!" The railway havoc for
one year was 10,046 killed and 84,155 injured. Angry
protest appeared in the papers about this, but public opin-
ion was never roused. The Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion collected almost incredible facts and figures. The
Sunday journals had whole-page articles on "The Price
of Peace" — "Every time the second-hand circles the dial
of your watch, an American is slaughtered or maimed."

"It's cheaper to kill men than to protect them," said
the disappointed inventor to Dr. Josiah Strong, who gave
his whole career to preventive work in this direction.
"When I produce a thing that saves time and labour, it
goes off like hot cakes. But directly I make a device
to save human life and limb, I've only wasted energy;

62 AMERICA'S DAY

and I can't give the thing away!" It is undeniable that
the alien immigrant was no more than raw material,
cheaply held, mere unconsidered gun-meat in America's
eternal war.

I saw an Armenian arrested for begging on Third Ave-
nue, New York. The man had both hands destroyed by
the machinery of a harvester concern in Chicago, and he
was soon thrown on the community as a public charge.
The fiesh-and-blood havoc of bursting fly-wheels in the
factories is another reckless tale. So also are the casualties
in lead and copper mines; in city subways and in the
streets, where motors and trams take a fearsome toll.
Chemical works and quarries, laundries, foundries, and
textile-mills — the slaughter and crippling of workers in
these places has long been the despair of social pioneers.
The farming and lumbering trades had awesome records of
their own; so had construction-work, especially in bridges
and skyscrapers. "Count the storeys," your guide told
you impressively in the down-town tour of New York, "if
you want to know how many human lives the So-and-So
Building cost." And truly, from the deep caisson to the
fiftieth tier of windows, these towers have a dreadful rec-
ord in killing and crippling for life.

It is for this reason that America became proficient in
the making of artificial limbs. And here we found her a
useful ally in the aftermath of war, offering the Carnes arm
to Roehampton Hospital, as well as mechanical legs and
jointed feet that hid all deformity. "Success is a fine
goal," says that typical American, Mr. Darwin P. Kingsley,
of the New York Life Insurance Company, "but in our
eagerness to win it we lash out right and left, trampling
and wounding in ruthless concentration. We destroy far
more than we afterwards redeem by our public and private
beneficence." Mr. Kingsley heads the "Safety First"
leagues of America, which now preach a saner gospel of

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 63

values, and point out "the brutal and costly inefficiency
of a speed-up that defeats itself." The last ounce of out-
put is exacted of the worker — and then the bit beyond,
which brings disaster on so huge and frequent a scale
throughout the American sovereignties.

I have explained how the laws are made by forty-eight
Parliaments, laws which are not uniform and are quite
beyond count. In this connection I may quote Secretary
Trefz, of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. "In the last
five years," he says, "our national and State Legislatures
have passed 62,550 laws, as compared with 1500 laws
passed by the British Parliament in ten years." It is not
so much new laws that America needs as what Elihu Root
calls "the organization of the nation." Lincoln himself
had this at heart when he conferred with General Dodge
about the new trans-continental railroad — "not only as a
military asset, but also as a means of holding the Pacific
Coast to the Union." To foster a really national spirit
came before all else in President Wilson's war-time plans.
"What I am striving for," he told Labour delegates at the
White House, "is to blot out all the lines of cleavage in
America. To sweep away groups and camps, and caste
distinctions; to close up our ranks and kindle fresh unity
of purpose." This was the foundation of Americanism
in 1917.

There should be less exuberance and more reflection in
an era that broke with the past before all men's eyes —
that rollicking past when Macaulay found "all sail and
no anchor" in the Constitution of the United States. I
know no symptom of this effort more striking than the
new relations of capital and labour — of master and man;
even of the helpless alien who was so lightly regarded in
the heedless America of yesteryear. I heard a Pennsyl-
vania coroner, Mr. J. C. Armstrong, of Allegheny County,
express himself sadly in this matter. "The number of

64 AMERICA'S DAY

alien deaths in our furnaces and mills is truly distressing.
But nobody cares — they're only Hunks or Dagoes. Why,
there's more fuss made over the loss of a horse or a
mule!" Thirteen Hungarians were killed in Pittsburg
by one blast of molten metal. The furnace was known
to be defective, and some of the men were wary enough
to leave their work in time. At the inquest the foreman
explained that "a rush of orders had kept the company
from making repairs in time."

What did it matter? — They were only Hunks. That
day an Austrian Llo}'d steamer landed a thousand more at
Ellis Island from the port of Fiume; the morrow or next
day would see groups of them squatting at the gates, glad
of $2 a day and a life of withering hardships. I suppose
the valley of the Monongahela from Pittsburg to McKees-
port (where the Hungarian colony is) shows industrial
America in its most terrifying aspect. There are no words
for the vileness and flame of this hissing Gomorrah. Fif-
teen thousand factory-shafts spout smoke and soot. In
the vengeful reek of this place the dead Hunk is buried
in an unceremonious ditch to a dirge of psalms, oddly
confused with the crash of steam hammers and blast-
furnace roars of imminent menace.

The half-naked Hunk, wrinkled and wan, half-blinded
by the glare of liquid steel, gasping and scorched, stream-
ing with sweat as well as half-gassed with the poisonous
reek — this is no picture piled up for effect, but a fact
from which the onlooker turns away. No negro, no Chi-
nese coolie would undertake this foundry and rolling-mill
work; it is too heart-rending. But the Hunk is dumb;
he knows no English. Fifty per cent, of these indus-
trial slaves are Ellis Island pioneers. They come over
alone, and do not send for their families till they have
a pittance put by. I called upon these outlaws in their
shacks by the drear churchyard. Here they lived like

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 65

swine, in an atmosphere of murk and damnable tumult.
Their patient acceptance of it all was to me more moving
than any rage. Was not this America — the only Amer-
ica they knew? The joyous Old-World days were over;
the blue Adriatic, and fair Carpathian valleys, too un-
real now for any dream. Between Transylvania and
Pennsylvania, hell's own gulf was yawning — and this was
called the Valley'of the Monongahela! . . .

Yet even the worm, we are told, will turn. These
aliens have shown fight in murderous strikes, especially
where they see miniature standing armies maintained by
employers for their own repression, as in the coal mines of
Colorado. An affray of this kind broke out two years
ago at the big plant of the Fertilizer Trust in Roosevelt,
N. J., barely twenty miles from New York's City Hall.
At the first volley fired by the private guards eighteen
unarmed strikers fell dead or wounded. But here again
they were only Hunks and Dagoes ; and tradition of Amer-
ican capital rates these below the beeves and porkers of
the stock-yard. Tradition of this kind dies hard in a land
where business has become a god. But such conduct is
bound to react upon the community. The criminal rec-
ords of these aliens are of peculiar flagrancy ; they call for
police-squads and special agents, like those of the famous
Petrosino, who had a detective bureau of his own in La-
fayette Street, New York. Petrosino was murdered in
Sicily whilst following up a Black Hand trail.

Here I touch those secret societies which the immigrant
floods bring with them from Europe. I refer to the Ar-
menian Henchakist, the Chinese Tong, the Athenian blood-
pact, and Neapolitan vendetta; as well as the Mafia, Ca-
morra, and La Mano Nera or the Black Hand. One hesi-
tates to mention the exploits of these murder-clubs, for
they surpass the crudest fiction and reveal fatal flaws in
the civilized polity upon which they prey. There are over

66 AMERICA'S DAY

half a million Italians settled in Greater New York, and
the Black Hand Society had extraordinary license among
them. In four months fifty-four persons were killed or
maimed by pistol, knife, or dynamite: the victims had
ignored the usual Black Hand letter demanding money
under pain of death.

Big corporations, like the United States Steel, have de-
tectives of their own to protect their industrial army. At
one time $25,000 a month was extorted by threats from
the foreign workmen of this huge concern. But the Se-
cret Service agents crippled the system by seizing the
bandit leader, Pagnato, and ten of his assassins at the
pay-office of the Hillsville Quarries. It is remarkable what
license all classes permit themselves in the slack immen-
sity of this New World. Even the city police are apt to
consider the brothel, the gambling den, and saloon as law-
ful sources of income. It is a point of view very difficult
to deal with, based as it is upon custom and a peculiar
ethical code.

New York City has for many years tried to reform her
police, pointing out the scandal of the lowly officer who
could advertise the loss of his $1500 diamond ring. Then
there was the discovery of forty-three bills, each of $1000,
in the desk of a captain who fell dead in the West 47th
Station. And a corruption fund, was raised by the force
at large to defeat the Anti-Graft Bill in the State Legis-
lature at Albany.

It was strange to see sober journals in so great a city
as New York referring to their police as "a semi-secret,
semi-criminal association that fosters and battens upon
crime, and will not stay its hand at murder." But all
such crudity is passing, as well as the docility and uncon-
cern which has long been a marked trait of citizenship.
This was glaringly shown in New York's acceptance of the
ruffian rule of Tammany Hall, its thugs and thieves, and

AMERICA IN THE MAKING 67

criminal ''Grand Sachems." Inaugurated long ago as a
"friend of the poor," this singular body turned to politics
under Aaron Burr and bossed New York for generations.
Tammany Chiefs were brigands of incredible boldness and
absolute sway. Boss Tweed died in gaol, after looting the
city of millions. But the hateful dynasty was far from
extinct. It began to decline in 1901 ; entire control of
the New "World's greatest city passed from Tammany
with the evil days of Van Wyck. Under Mayor Mitchel —
a typical crusader — New York was not only "free," but
aspired to be America's model municipality.

CHAPTER VI

THE CITY OF CITIES

The intelligent immigrant has a great desire to survey
New York from the Singer building, which is forty-seven
storeys high, and towers six hundred feet above Broadway,
between Liberty and Cortlandt Streets. It is an awesome
experience for the simple soul, rapt heavenward in the
"Observatory Express." And the panorama below him
at last is overpowering. It makes real all the wonders
that glowed in those letters from America, which were read
aloud to neighbours at cottage doors in the Black Forest,
where toys are made, or in hot Sicilian steppes where the
slaves of the sulphur-mine hear the Statue of Liberty call-
ing them in their sleep.

A glance at Lower Manhattan from this height shows
the difficult building problem of New York, and how the
skyscraper has solved it with characteristic daring. Busi-
ness interests of enormous range are here squeezed into
an area less than two square miles, bounded on the
south, east, and west by the waters of the Bay and the
Hudson and East Rivers. Here huddle the offices of the
trans-continental railways. Here is the stronghold of the
Standard Oil — that giant among the giants of American
.trade, with mysterious claims reaching from California
to Rumania, and from the Black Sea to Siam. Here the
Steel Trust is financially at home beside famous corpo-
rations with skyscrapers of their own. On this narrow
tongue are the big exchanges, the banks, trust companies,
and brokerage offices. Land has fetched as much as $700
a foot in the Wall Street district.

The only outlet was gained by the steady pushing of

68

THE CITY OF CITIES 69

non-business dwellings to the north end — and by going up
in the air. Hence the skyscraper, a cage of steel beams
carried on sixty or eighty legs which are thrust down to
bedrock, ninety feet or so below New York's famous
Broadway. These legs are the wind-anchors of a land-
lighthouse which is without a peer in any nation. If thero
were no wind, a skyscraper of a hundred storeys would be
possible. As it is, there is talk of a tower a thousand feet
high and a hundred feet square, swaying with perfect
Safety in a gale of a hundred miles an hour. This is the
estimate of Mr. Ernest Flagg, the architect of the Singer
building; he has no love for these monstrosities, by the
way, though he admits the necessity for them. The steel
skeleton is weighed in advance — every beam and bar and
bolt; the furniture, too, and the safes, together with the
population of a country town. Upon the legs of the
Singer tower rests a weight of 86,000 tons.

It is these tremendous buildings which make New York
unique, and turn the streets into profound chasms, with
dizzy troglodyte walls that blaze at night with dim and
weird effects. The progress of the skyscraper, as one
might suppose, was bound up with the elevator, which
dates from 1870. The vertical cylinder hydraulic lift was
developed in Chicago with an eye to safety and certainty
of control ; a speed of 600 feet a minute was soon demanded
in the twenty-storey structure. Real estate values rose
with the height of these new buildings. Owners and ar-
chitects, engineers, builders, and inventors hailed the steel
construction, for it increased the price of sites prodigiously.
It also produced a new race of workers from the "sand-hog"
of the pneumatic caisson deep in the bowels of the earth,
to the reckless riveter who would pose for a "stunt" por-
trait on a swaying, crane-fifted girder, seven hundred feet
above the curb of Lower Broadway.

The skyscraper is a complete city under one roof, with

70 AMERICA'S DAY

racing elevators carrying sixty thousand passengers a day.
.Such a pile has its own electric light and gas plants, its own
waterworks and fire brigade; a police-force, mail-chutes,
telephones, telegraphs, banks and clubs. A business man
need never leave his lofty suite. Here are restaurants
and bedrooms; bathrooms and barber-shops, news-stands,
safe-deposits, and all professional aid — manicure, medi-
cine, and the law, together with minor stimuli ranging
from candy and chewing-gum to cigars and soft drinks.
The aura of the skyscraper favours exact and continuous
concentration. Nevertheless responsible men foresee -dis-
aster to the swarming cliff-dwellers of New York, and
also to the city itself — especially since San Francisco was
destroyed by earthquake and fire. The Board of Alder-
men have a Building Codes Revision Committee, and this
body met to consider the limitation of the skyscraper in
view of repeated protest from experts of undoubted stand-
ing. Architects, builders, and insurance men were invited
to state their views. An important witness was Mr. G. H.
Babb, President of the New York Fire Underwriters.

"San Francisco has taught us," Mr. Babb declared,
"that our so-called fire-proof buildings will not resist an
uncontrolled wave of flame. We know that these lofty
shafts nurse the fiercest fires of all. And we do fear
an outbreak in that down-town nest. It would beat and
drift across the narrow streets, involving other pinnacles
at their topmost floors. The firemen could do nothing;
no system of sprinklers would avail, nor all the attempts
at fire-proofing. We dread a blaze involving whole blocks,
and therefore menacing the city. The money loss might
amount to billions, and so cripple the insurance companies
that they could offer no more than twenty-five cents on the
dollar to owners and mortgagees."

But America will not stay to consider these things:
heedlessness is a trait peculiar to the genius of the people.

THE CITY OP CITIES 71

Risks are ignored, so that present ease be assured. A lurid
morrow there may be, but it lies ou the lap of gods who
have always been kind to America !

It is New York that sets the pace for the continent.
Here notions are born with abrupt caprice that alters a
woman's gown or the income of her man. Or even the too
orderly topography of the trees, which are torn up and
pulled down with uproarious glee. There were no new
aliens, as it chanced — no Ellis Island Americans to witness
the moneyed invasion which marked the New York of
1016-17. Nothing like it was ever known, even in a land
of freak spending and mushroom millions. Of course, it
was war money. October promised a fairish season with-
out any hint of the orgy ahead. Giant hotels, lavish
restaurants, and cabarets made ready for the election
crowds; for dancers and skaters, for lovers of the theatre
and music-hall, who sup at two in the morning and cry,
"What's a hundred dollars?" with their whole heart.

Those election throngs remained in the city, and to them
were added visitors from all the States, until New York
swelled and sang with carnival. Families from Buenos
Aires piled in; from Rio, Havana, and the Central Amer-
ican capitals. For Paris was now an unattainable goal.
There were also the idle rich who are, I must say, a di-
minishing caste ; there are signs of penal laws against
them. There were brokers and speculators, celebrating a
revival with "any-price" dinners and Neronic gifts to the
ladies. There were quite new types seen in this invasion:
families from the Central West, farmers, contractors, and
manufacturers intent upon circulating some of the money
which deluged America, and now taxed even New York
wits to devise new ways of melting it.

The city's floating population was more than doubled.
Seven hundred thousand "purses" came into New York,
asking for genial robbery and a good time therewith. The

72 AMERICA'S DAY

hotels overflowed; a mattress in a bath-tub fetched five
dollars a night ; rich men lay on the floors or sat contorted
in the corridors awaiting the dawn of new delights. Grad-
ually guests were driven out of the city. They might sup
on Broadway, or in Fifth or Madison Avenues; but for
beds they were billeted afar off — in Yonkers or in New-
ark, in dingy Hoboken, or Long Island City, and the
other "nowheres" of New York. It is not possible to
exaggerate the nightly riot, nor the outrageous prices
asked and gaily paid for food and wine, amusements, and
souvenirs bought in shops which in normal times are the
most expensive in the world.

Money appeared to have lost its value. There were
yellow-back tips (of $100) for the bowing maitre d'hutel,
five dollars for the boy that "boosted" an overcoat and
handed out a hat from the cloakroom. Two dollars was
paid to enter a noisy cabaret ; here one sat down exhausted
to a supper-dish of eggs at one dollar a plate. Cham-
pagne poured freely as ice-water on a sultry night. The
men who speculate in theatre tickets got fifty dollars
for a stall. Beggars of yesteiyear were now telephoning
madly to order banquets in princely suites at ten dollars
a plate. . . . The manager would put the receiver down
and dwell with wonder on the meteoric rise of men whom
no fate could floor, since they "came back" with unquench-
able elan to astonish the natives — an all but impossible
feat in sated New York.

I am bound to deal with this tiresome phase; it was
a phenomenal reflex of the Great "War, and one which
American thinkers would be glad to forget. Moreover,
New York, though voted un-American by all, is yet Amer-
ica's playground, and therefore an index to flush or tight
times throughout the continent. Above all others this
city is sensitive to the drift of European affairs. Dra-
matic events of the war were calmly received elsewhere;

THE CITY OF CITIES 73

only New York was really excited in the early days, and
crowded to the bulletin-hoards debating belligerent chances
the whole night long. This is the American metropolis.
Washington, the political capital — the Westminster of the
United States — is 220 miles away in the south. It is a
beautiful, uncommercial city of sleepy avenues and broad
sunlit leisure, contrasting sharply with New York. The
Federal seat, in its brief and vivid season, is a wholly de-
lightful centre of sets and cliques and aristocracies. Wash-
ington is, in fact, America's "Court," at once informal
and prim — not to say rigid in rule; hospitable, witty, and
sown with American salons of surprising and diverting
range. If it were possible to unite New York and "Wash-
ington, the result would be a capital of unique allurement
and zest for a brief stay.

The note of New York is impermanence ; it never is,
but always to be blest with civic and architectural per-
fection. Last season's hotel, with an amusement-annex
that cost a fortune, is this year already under a cloud.
For another is projected — one of fifteen hundred rooms
and the soaring splendour of eclipse. It will cost fifteen
million dollars. Before it opens a still more attractive
palace is planned and talked of — not necessarily larger —
but with novelties that take the town and are flashed for
thousands of miles to maintain the siren fame which has
been New York's since Revolutionary times.

It is a city of noise, of course, with electric railways
borne upon iron pillars over tram-laid streets paved with
granite blocks. The passion for altering is everywhere
seen. Great pits yawn here and there — perhaps for the
leg-rests of yet another skyscraper. Or the hole may be
part of a city tube. Bombs explode ; there is quarrying
in the building lots — erection, demolition, carting away of
debris, and the dumping of new and costly materials.

The "Great American Novel," so long expected and

74 AMERICA'S DAY

discussed, lies here ready made, expansed for every nation
to read, each in its own tongue. The glamour of New
York invades the prairie farm; it fires young ambition
in the cross-roads store thousands of miles away in the
Oregon sage or Nevada sands. There is but one Fifth
Avenue, only one Broadway, and no room in either for
the ill-dressed or glum; they would be out of place as a
bully would be in the nursery.

New York is a city of late hours, a temple of airy intoxi-
cation, where the drunken man is a rare bird indeed. Ex-
travagance is a game in this place, haply encouraged
in the young folks by dad, who beams amid the nightly
glitter recalling the day he landed at Castle Garden with
all his worldly goods in a ragged handkerchief. Quaint
tales are told of spendthrift "stunts" that vied with one
another, until folly fell exhausted for a space of new
germination. There was the hostess who bought boxes
for three plays, that her guests might choose according
to their after-dinner mood. There was Mrs. So-and-So's
ball with costly jewels for cotillion favours; the banquet
with dancers on the table, and stocks and bonds folded
in the serviettes as little gifts. There were ballets on the
Long Island lawns brought en masse from the Metro-
politan Opera, with Caruso himself to sing "Hail Colum-
bia" at the close. There was the special train from Los
Angeles to New York which enabled young love to keep
its tryst ; there were the famous monkey-and-horseback din-
ners, with many another prank and curvet to outshine all
the revellers from Caligula to Louis Quatorze:

"Why should the gods have put me at my ease
If 1 mayn't use my fortune as I please?"

The answer is that today this riot is voted bad form. It
is a crudity of jaded senses which the best people leave to

THE CITY OF CITIES 75

the unsophisticated newly-rich who block Broadway at
night with a tangle of sumptuous cars.

It is for her invaders that New York displays electric
signs so glaring that the native citizen cultivates blindness,
hoping tc save his soul alive and keep his limbs from the
mercy of Broadway joy-riders. For here night shineth
as the day. There is blazing publicity for all manner of
wares. Ebullient rainbows leap and race, flicker and
flash, as for a Fourth of July that never ends. Fabulous
glow-worms crawl up and down. Zigzag lightnings strike
an acre of signboard — and reveal a panacea for over-
eating! A four-storey Highlander dances a whisky-fling;
another pours out a highball, with a hundred feet between
his bottle and the glass. Household words race with in-
visible pen across a whole city block. An electric kitten
plays with a mighty spool of Somebody's silk, then jumps
at a bound to the top of a skyscraper. The man does not
live who could clearly record his impressions of New York 's
phantasmagoria.

"More light" is the city's motto; the blaze of it is
another form of idealism which dispels the gloom of life.
It is certain that restaurants, theatres, and shops have
been dragged out of ruin by sheer glare. "Do it electric-
ally" is now a familiar exhortation, and the thing is done
with ferocious glee — not alone on the Great White Way,
but also in countless homes that cook and clean at five
cents per kilowatt-hour. New York has a mania for this
unseen force. Her missionary fervour carried an Elec-
trical Week into fifty-nine other cities, passing thence to
the farms, where 108 new applications of electricity were
speedily found. Thus- the milkmaid is an electrician ; the
prairie goodwife runs a mysterious churn and chats at
her work with a lonely neighbour twenty miles off by
means a£ a telephone visor on her head. It is a country

76 AMERICA'S DAY

of marvels, of tip-toe expectancy, and impatient scorn
for all the older ways of "dad an' the ox-cart."

Liberty's torch blazes electrically above the bay. All
manner of irksome tasks grow easy when done electrically.
In this way is the baby's bottle heated and mother's
curling-iron made ready once a day for two weeks with
one cent's worth of wired magic. Another cent makes
ten rounds of toasts, a third runs the sewing-machine for
two hours. The electric range produces a tempting din-
ner; and there is a dishwiper to deal with the plates
in the scullery and coffee is served from an electric per-
colator on the table. A washer and wringer makes short
work of the week's linen; electric irons follow it up the
same day and give languid maids a "boost" which there
is no resisting. In this manner is the domestic problem
solved in New York where menial service is hateful to a
joyous democracy. "Rare as an American waiter" is a
phrase of high significance.

The matter of hired help has driven city folk to live in
hotels, apartment-houses, pensions, and tenements. It is
hard to imagine the range of these communal dwellings,
from the alien squalor of Avenue A to the ultra-Roman
magnificence of the Plaza by Central Park. In middle-
class buildings the janitor is an autocrat collecting his
rake-off from tenants and traders according to custom.
The American inventor busies himself with household
chores, knowing that even moderate success in a labour-
saver will mean a fortune. These domestic aids bring
comfort to a woman's life in a land where home service is
only for the rich.

"She's leaving you!" is a poignant thrust printed in
huge letters in advertisements on the servant question,
issued by electrical concerns. "Leaving her job disgrun-
tled; leaving you discouraged and down." It was a true
enough statement of pre-electric days. The sick-at-hcart

THE CITY OP CITIES 77

mistress would tramp Third Avenue in search of "help."
She rang Sullivan's bell and went up — and down she came
again with a flushed face. She climbed four dirty flights
to a frowsy room which had Dienstmadchen on the door.
Within sat Frau Schmidt, a female bully with an odd
platoon before her of Finns and Swedes, Poles, Italians,
and Syrians. "Jus' landed alretty," the Frau explained,
waving a plump hand at the menagerie, and adding a
warrant that all in the squad were free from kitchen vice.
The crudest of these asked five dollars a week, although
more familiar with a spade or a plough than a saucepan.
And to this demand the creature would add (through the
Frau interpreter) conditions and privilege of unexpected
guile.

Another agency tempted the mistress with "real South-
ern help." But first of all there was first a matter of
$20 rail-fare to pay the coloured mammy in the corner.
That savage grinned engagingly, and praised her own fried
chicken and waffles. ... If they only knew of her at the
"White House. . . ! Alas, she turned out to be a dope-
fiend given to cocaine; a notorious "rounder" of the
agencies well-known at The Island — which is not Ellis
Island at all, but another place of penalty and shame.
On the third day it took three policemen to remove this
Ethiop from a stricken kitchen and strap her in the sta-
tion wagon outside.

No wonder the true American housekeeper is the most
efficient of all, though you will not find her in New York.
She relies upon her own wit. She is without any servant,
and quite likely runs a prosperous business into the bar-
gain, apart from her husband's, or else in partnership
with him. Of course the telephone is a great help, alike
in the hot weather and on zero days; in fierce New York
gales, torrential rains and snowstorms, such as London
and Paris will never know.

78 AMERICA'S DAY

As a developing agent the telephone has played a vital
part in the United States. Here in New York you meet
middle-aged men who remember the birth of it. They
tell you how, on a March day in '76, Alexander Bell spoke
to Tom Watson over a few feet of wire in the top floor of a
Chicago office building. Today America has twelve mil-
lion telephones, a smooth and perfect service of astonish-
ing range. Portland, Me., talks to Portland, Ore., over a
continental stretch equal to that between Stockholm and
Stamboul. This New World chatters electrically; you can-
not escape the telephone in New York City. It is to
an instrument you speak in your hotel bedroom. The
receiver is rarely out of a business man's hand; the Wall
Street titan, the Trust, or railway king is photographed
"on the 'phone" with millions of money in his rugged
frown, for the 'phone is the sceptre of American sway.

My lady has a telephone in her boudoir. Here she can
shop in cosy peignoir and slippers. She gossips with her
friends in this way; she orders opera tickets, or calls her
husband from the office dictaphone to speak of a change
in the dinner-hour or measles in the nursery. At the
smart restaurant the ever-ready mouthpiece peeps at you
from the roses and lilies of a silver-set feast. There is a
telephone in the smoke-room of the luxurious limited train
going down to Palm Beach, or across the continent to Los
Angeles in California. It is a habit in this wide-awake
land where things happen as the avalanche falls, and
market panics leap and race like forest fires at the merest
whisper. Witness the result of leakage from the White
House over the President's famous Peace Note.

I would even call the telephone a New York instinct;
the "Hullo-girl" knows this to her cost as she sits at the
switch-board watching the tinted bulbs glow with endless
inquisition. "Where's that big blaze? ..." "Say — is it
really true that Senator Smith is dead? ..." "Would

THE CITY OF CITIES 79

you mind calling me tomorrow at five-thirty? My alarm
clock's busted, and I've a train to catch." There are
schools of politeness and patience for the young ladies who
receive these impetuous calls. But the telephone service
is seen at its best in country districts, far from any rail-
way— perhaps in a region where no roads exist, and the
trails are impassable through bad weather and furious
storms. Here the farmer is "neighbourixed" by the
friendly wire. These rural lines have a* regular news serv-
ice supplied by a general call after supper at night.
Widely-scattered subscribers gather round in their own
homes, whilst the far-off Central first of all gives out the
correct time — a greater boon to these lonely folk than the
city dweller might imagine. Next comes a condensed re-
port of the day's home and foreign news; then the current
quotations for wheat and cotton and corn, oats and eggs,
butter and all sorts of live stock, from the Jersey eow to
the laying hen. Country teachers give lessons over the
'phone to pupils who are blizzard-bound in their own homes
for days together. The deaf have telephones in their
church pews; even the marriage ceremony has been con-
ducted over sympathetic wires, with a lady reporter as
bridesmaid and the press photographer as best man.

Electricity is the god in America's car, solving every
crux of today and tomorrow. She regards Thomas Edi-
son as her greatest genius. Her editors never tire of
sending star men over to that wizard's den at West Orange,
N. J., to hear the latest miracle — actual, potential, or merely
desired for humanity's sake. . . .

"The future of electricty ?" echoes the mage; he is old
and very deaf, yet America made him chairman of her new
Naval Consulting Board. "Why, the sky's the limit!
One day everything will be done by electricity. Our rail-
roads will be electrified, so will the labour of farm, factory,
and fireside. The miners will turn their coal into current

80 AMERICA'S DAY

at the pit's mouth. The sea's tide will be harnessed to
our needs; we shall call down nitrates from the air to
fertilize our fields. Hydro-electric engineers will take hold
of water now running to waste, and evoke from it the
strength of sixty million horses."

The Athenian appetite for "something new" is a keen
American trait, and keenest of all in New York, which is
the most inquisitive and acquisitive of cities. She expects
Europe to serve her, and is lavishly served, with every art
and craft and inspiration. Few foreigners realize how
New York combs the earth for luxuries, paying a princely
price for each flash of conceded rule. Every cult and
whim comes here — an Eastern faith, preposterous frocks
and Paris follies, like diamond heels and the torpedo
toque.

Or it may be the Houses of the Children; tenement
blocks on ideal lines for parents with large families only.
Here we touch the "race suicide" question which Mr.
Roosevelt has at heart. Married couples with a big brood
are hard to find among the New York natives; landlords
and janitors will have no truck with people thus encum-
bered. The native birth-rate has declined since the Civil
War. In 1860 there were 634 children under five years for
every 1000 women of child-bearing age. By 1900 the fig-
ure had fallen to 424; and flush times, as the Central
Bureau shows, result in a still greater decline. The South-
ern States have a better record in this respect than the
North; New England has the lowest birth-rate of all.
On the other hand, the Mormon State of Utah is unique,
for it has 233 children per 1000 women more than Colorado,
and 309 more than California. The contrast between
town and country in this respect is very striking. Out of
160 cities of 25,000 population and more, 390 children
under five were found to every 1000 women; whereas in
the rural districts outside those centres, the proportion

THE CITY OF CITIES 81

was 572 children for each thousand possible mothers.

The causes contributing to this state of things are four-
fold: the migration from country to town, the facilities
with which divorce is granted, the increase of wealth
and luxury, and the constant vying to maintain or exceed
one's social position. A mortgage on house or farm for
the motor-car's sake is a symptom of these times. But
in the matter of birth-rate, lavish New York deserves a
space of her own, so curious are the facts. In eleven
months only thirteen infants were born in the four-and-a
half mile stretch of Fifth Avenue, from Washington
Square to Ninety-Fifth Street. This magnificent Avenue
houses the fewest children of any residential quarter in
the world. In the section observed, there were over seven
hundred rich homes and four immense hotels. In strik-
ing contrast with this is the record of teeming Avenue A,
where in the same period 445 children appeared.

An elaborate system of tubes has of late years improved
the New York transit systems out of all knowledge. It
is not so long since a blizzard was able to throw the city
into hopeless confusion, especially on the Brooklyn Bridge
and the Elevated lines, where frozen switches and ice-
covered spurs defied the most resourceful of engineers.
Hosts of city workers were driven at the rush hours to
the surface cars ; these had their snow-ploughs and sweeps,
with ingenious engines for scattering kerosene and salt
in the outlying districts. It is well to remember that
Greater New York covers 315 square miles, and disputes
with London the primacy of the world: it musters more
than six million people.

The transit companies receive weather-warnings from
Chicago and St. Louis. When a storm is signalled, cars
are run all night, so as to keep the tracks open. A blizzard
is a very costly as well as a disagreeable city visitation.
To remove an inch of snow means an outlay of $35,000

82 AMERICA'S DAY

for labour. In case of a great fall, perhaps eighty miles
of main streets in Manhattan and The Bronx are promptly
cleared, and rather less in Brooklyn ; the rest — a thousand
miles or more — are necessarily left "to God and the rain."

But when the worst is said, it must be owned that
New York gets plenty of sun, even in the severest winter.
And when the weather clears — towards Easter, say — the
city flames with a new blitheness which there is no resist-
ing. She is now all smiles — ''like a cotton-patch after a
.spring shower" — to quote the Texan visitor, as he climbs
into the sight-seeing car outside the Flatiron Building
where Broadway and Fifth Avenue converge. New York
is at all times hopeful, but more so than ever at this
season. You may dwell upon the war with its latter-
math of hate and a future full of guns and smouldering
revenge, New York will agree to some extent, and then
confound you with jets of life and laughter from Walt
Whitman . . . "Yet how clear it is to me that those are
not the born results, influences of Nature at all, but of
our own distorted, sick, or silly souls. Here amid this
wide, free scene — how healthy, how joyous, how clean,
and vigorous and sweet!"

New York looks all this and more to those transient
pilgrims who buy a two-dollar ticket and seat themselves
in the Rubberneck Wagon — a sort of grand-stand on
wheels which "does" New York, from Grant's Tomb ("ten
minutes for prayer and meditation") to the Temple of
Confucius down in Chinatown. Here the timorous are
assured that "no vice or dens shall be shown, no immoral
phases, but only the curious shops and homes." Perhaps
a Chinese opera too, and a chop-suey feast of barbaric
cates.

The Rubberneck Wagon is so called because the rows
of sightseers crane this way and that at the sonorous bid-
ding of the megaphone man— "a bright, entertaining,

THE CITY OF CITIES 83

well informed, and courteous gentleman, who provides a
brilliantly-told tale of history and romance." One learns
this from the program. But surely the personal expe-
rience of that historian — the rich humours of his daily
trundling through the town with America in petto, wide-
eyed and tense under his monster trumpet — would make
a far more acceptable yarn ! The Memoirs of a Rubber-
neck Man should command a great sale; only none but
that genius himself should have a hand in the script.

This is a slow-moving wagon. Its cicerone stands up
with his back to the driver, and from his 'phone fall
measured accents which the hindermost can hear: "On
the right are the twin Vanderbilt houses" . . . "On the
left you have the famous St. Kegis Hotel, which cost
Twelve — million — dollars!" To all which the rubbernecks
attend, with periodic buzz of eager babble ere the next
marvel shall come into view. . . . Was not this the hotel
that suffered from too-exuberant advertising when it
opened? Publicity o'erleaped itself in the case of the
St. Regis — not publicity of the paid-for kind, but a jocular
inspiration of the newspaper wags.

This stately pile was overwritten, overpraised. New
York and all America was soon gorged with the "gorgeur"
of the St. Regis, so that the ordinary visitor fought shy
of it as a New York headquarters. It was a monument,
one gathered, in all manner of precious marbles and bronze,
reproducing the glories of Versailles and the Petit Trianon.
What damasks and tapestries were here; what far-fetched
ivories and cloisonnes, silken carpets, rare silver, and fra-
gile Sevres! Such music and wines, with exotic meats
prepared by artists equal to the great Soyer or Vatel!

A lady reporter slept one night in the famous tulip-
wood bed of the State suite, so as to record her regal
dreams. Without sleeping there at all the cartoonist of
the Sunday supplement recorded a nightmare of anticipa-

84 AMERICA'S DAY

tion over his bill in the overwhelming hostel. Lightning
zigzags were seen in the picture, hitting the victim as
he slept and confirming his worst fear with legends like
these: "Beef and sinkers— $15!" Manager Haan, of the
St. Regis, protested against this nonsense, for which there
was little or no foundation. But New York would have
her jest. It was soon forgotten, of course, and the St.
Regis has long been ranked as one of the foremost hotels
in this eccentric city.

In considering New York, her spendthrift season, her
white lights and "glad hand," it is well to remember that
she is also the metropolis of the New World. Here are
four hundred miles of docks, with roaring marts and fac-
tories so efficient that psychology is brought into play
to get the uttermost out of the human machine. As a
financial centre, New York hopes she eclipses London
already. Since 1914 money has flowed this way as water
flows down hill. "Only by the most careful and constant
extravagance," as the native humorist explains, "can we
keep it from bursting the banks!"

"My only despair," M. Prosper Grevilot told me at
Delmonieo's, "is to plan dishes costly enough for the tastes
and bottomless purses of our patrons." It is chiefly the
visitors who maintain this standard of splash. They bring
with them the old traditions of freak-spending upon which
Mrs. Astor frowned long ago; then she regimented the
"Four Hundred" into a new American aristocracy.
"There are degrees here as elsewhere," a Hindu reminded
me in Olympia, Wash. "It must ever be so, since the
fingers of the hand cannot be all of one size."

1 found caste-marks everywhere in America, and heraldic
searching was a profession that paid handsomely.

"There is a fad for armorial bearings," I was told by

THE CITY OF CITIES 85

a vivacious lady with a tidy business in this line. "You'll
see a big display of shields and quarterings on our cars
as well as on plate, china, and linen. One season there
were crests and mottoes on our stockings ! But you know
New York's weakness for notions." I do indeed. But
no man lived who knew them better than the late George
Boldt, manager of the Waldorf Hotel — "a singular genius"
was President Wilson's tribute to the inventor of Pea-
cock Row, which is the women's parade in that Fifth
Avenue temple of frocks and food, music, fine wines, and
good cheer.

Although social centres shift in the queerest way, the
Waldorf was for many years a sort of court or palace : a
rendezvous for the wealth and fashion of the United States.
By the way, the social ebb and flow is very disconcerting
to propertjr owners in New York. Sold under the ham-
mer recently, the highest bid that could be obtained for
Madison Square Garden — the Olympia of New York —
was only $2,000,000. This was less by $1,375,000 than
was paid for the building in 1911. Twenty-third Street
has steadily declined in value ; Sixth Avenue is a still more
striking instance. In three years a tract across Manhattan
Island, from Fourteenth to Fortieth Street, showed a de-
preciation of $65,000,000.

Twenty years ago the social axis of New York was at
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Seventh Street. It is now in the
Sixties and beyond. Even Newspaper Row is dissolving
and dispersing. "Nothing stays put" is the good-hu-
moured plaint of this restless city. People of wealth give
up their mansions, and pay tens of thousands a year for a
wonderful suite in the latest skyscraper apartment-house.
Then they grow tired of it. They complain they have "no
more privacy than a goldfish," and find repose at last by
taking a country home after the manner of the English,
importing furniture and works of art through agents in

86 AMERICA'S DAY

New York, London, Paris, and Rome. The American coun-
try house, at any rate on this scale, is a recent portent. It
is also a fashion likely to endure, as the agrophobe tra-
ditions of the cities break down and green trees are found
to be more companionable than skyscrapers.

It is well to remember that what New York says "goes,'1
in the terse American meaning of that word. Her visitors
roam up and down in the true pilgrim spirit of veneration
expressed in the modest "I'm from Missouri, and you must
show me." They take home to Podunk and Bird Center
impressive facts that fell from the megaphone man on the
Rubberneck Wagon. How, for instance, New York has
thirty fires every day. How her burglars make off with
$20,000,000 worth of property in a year ; how her railroads
provide marble halls and terminal stations beyond the
palace dreams of Tsar or Sultan. How glad also is New
York to see the man with money — and how glad to see her
is the man who has no money at all ! For it is after all
a very kindly stepmother that America has here. The
municipal charities begin with the babe's milk, and end
beside the nameless alien's graye out there in the Potter's
Field.

"Look prosperous" is the tacit order of the metropolis.
You read this on the box of matches given away at the foot
of the "L" stairs. ""Wear diamonds" was another prompt-
ing on the label. ' ' Come and choose a nobby gipsy setting
and pay us as you please" ! To stint and save in New York
is said to be the maddest extravagance of all, if a man is to
win. Yet free food is offered to the destitute with im-
pulsive cheer. There is free lodging too, and <jood books,
with the hand of uplift extended to the sinking soul. As
for entertainment, where will you find such a movie-show
as New York herself! Why, it rivals all the films of Los
Angeles — pretty Maud in the leopard's den, bold Romeo's
fall from the fortieth storey, and the long, long kiss of

THE CITY OF CITIES 87

reunion — which must not, however, be prolonged beyond
eight feet of film! The States of Ohio and Kansas are
more generous in this respect ; there the censor will permit
a ten-foot kiss.

Is it any wonder, with all these facts before them, that
New York's visitors are reluctant to return to their native
obscurity ? There is a glamour in this place for provincial
America. There is wit everywhere, if only you understand
the language — Hungarian at the sidewalk cafes of Second
Avenue, Yiddish in Canal Street; German, Italian, Greek,
Arabic, and Russ. And the theatres and halls, what a
range of distraction is here, from the Diamond Horseshoe's
blaze at the Metropolitan to the howling mob that assails
the hobo singer or dancer on "amateur night" down the
Bowery, or over on Eighth Avenue. "What talk of plays
and players around breathless tables at night in the res-
taurants, cabarets, and hotels ! How Maude Adams earned
$10,000 a year more than the President of the United
States. How any sum was paid to anybody for anything,
so long as it drew a crowd. How Bronson Howard pock-
eted $100,000 the first year as his share in Shenandoah.
How the Old Homestead just "growed," with no author at
all to its name and therefore no royalties to pay on pro-
duction.

This classic play began as a shapeless sketch somewhere
in the slums. Then it changed its name, and took on more
acts; it developed snow-scenes and chimes, and choruses of
home until at length it got on Denman Thompson's nerves.
The "old rustic" that New York adored would have no
more of it; he retired to a country castle and lived as a
bucolic lord. The younger people hear father recall these
simple far-off times. How remote they seem to the New
Yorker of today! That negro phrase, "befo' de Wall,"
strikes quite a new note now. It is not of Lincoln's time
at all, but of Wilson's, with memories of the Twelve Days

88 AMERICA'S DAY

in August, 1914, and the frantic scramble of stranded
Americans abroad to get home before Germany came to
blows with the Mistress of the Seas.

The Rubberneck Wagons and yachts still toured New
York in war-time; the city was fuller than ever, indeed,
because the pleasure resorts of Europe were closed. Palm
Beach became the Monte Carlo of these times. San Diego
did duty for Cairo ; and instead of the Alps there were the
Colorado Rockies to climb, with a "See America First"
society behind this new domestic travel. But what resort
could eclipse New York, if numbers are to count and the
length and cost of stay ? There is no such arbiter like New
York City for laying down the law — or more strictly, being
the law in all things, from business ethics to dress. Now
the matter of women 's clothes I may for the moment leave ;
whereas the correct wear for men is a shrewd New York
concern calling for comment here and now. "A new suit,"
as the suasive announcements tell you, "is more than a
purchase; it is an investment." And the psychology of it
is fully explained in the many books and magazines which
deal with salesmanship, efficiency, and success.

"It is an axiom," the student is told, "that when a man
looks successful, he finds it easy to feel and to act success-
fully. On the other hand, when he feels shabby his power
to do a deal falls off appreciably. Even a detail may af-
fect a man's mental and moral state; a wrinkled tie or a
dusty hat can upset the salesman, and so business passes
to a smarter rival. Do we not hire a cobbler to build up
the heels of a tramp's shoes? There's more in that than
meets the casual eye." . . . The composer Haydn thought
so, too, you remember, and sat down to do ambitious work
in his best clothes. Now the mass of men's wear in New
York City is of the ready-made variety. British goods cut
by a tailor of Fifth Avenue are only for the gilded youth,

THE CITY OF CITIES 89

to whom the London cachet means as much as that of
Paris to his mother and sisters.

This "semi-ready" trade is in the hands of Jews, and
the advertisements are a great joy. The New Yorker, it
seems, must always look young, so the jacket suit is most
in vogue. Morning coats and silk hats are unusual wear;
the walking stick is rarely seen. The Ready-for-Service
people have an ideal model; it is that favoured by the
exigent college man, "but any youthful mind and figure
can wear it." It is "bred in the lap of science." You
are asked to mark the "vigour and character" of a double-
breasted sack which is subtly attuned "to the wave of
clothes-culture now sweeping the continent." Over it you
wear "a sort of bantam ulster with all the bulk tailored
out of it, and the snap and virility of a form-fitting coat
tailored into it." "Knee-length and double-breasted; half-
belted, plain or inversely pleated and finished with slash
pockets and a convertible collar that operates as easily as
an electric push-button."

"Made in both dark and colourful fabrics; skeletonized,
with a flash of satin in the blades; cut with an eye for
curves, tailored with an eye for trifles, and finished as
finely." . . . Such a garment clearly needs "a swagger
hat to top it off." And here it is — "a new soft felt made
for us by Stetson, and lending itself to the most rakish
twist." There may be a fancy vest with this radiant out-
fit— one "that comes in pearl or tan, or Cuba brown."
There must be a suitable shirt "of four-ply bosom with
split neck-bands, felled seams and placket sleeves." From
this meticulous attire down to the "Trousers Mecca" in
Fourteenth Street is a heavy fall, but I must deal with the
great sources of men's dress in New York.

Those Arabian offerings seem to sell themselves. Here
they are — "the togs of stunts and outsizes." You may

90 AMERICA'S DAY

take them or leave them at $2.50 with no guidance but the
one sign — "Green is the latest caper!" This is no place
for the 'varsity man with "sixty years of knowing how"
behind his "bench-tailored clothes-craft." The Trousers
Mecca is just a plebeian board of pants — "the stout, chubby
sort, the tall slender kind," which need a lot of finding
amid the pants of normal men. A Shoe Medina is next
door to the Trousers Mecca. Here is a giant dude in card-
board at the door; a gay Charlie Chaplin of insinuating
smile, who bids the prowler "Be Good to your Feet this
Fall"!

It is in these poorer parts of the town that one sees New
York's kindliness in operation. Here a college settlement,
out there in the river a floating home for mothers and
babes, with trained nurses and dainty food for the suffo-
cating summer nights. There must be no mention of
charity in America — only what is due from the Haves to
the Have-nots. Even the New York slums are sensitive,
and are quick to resent a tactless exploitation. Some
years ago the Rubberneck Wagon went down Canal Street
and toured the East Side — a very different East Side from
today's — to "do the depravity" of that section between
Allen Street and The Bowery. The natives were highly
indignant, and got an express-man to fit out a retaliatory
expedition at fifteen cents a head.

Soon Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive beheld the
queerest portent creaking by — a crazy van full of happy,
dilapidated folk, men and women, boys and girls, and
infants in arms. All were hilarious and ragged and noisy;
all hugely interested in the palaces they passed, in aston-
ished faces at the windows, and in the racy yarns— social,
financial, and matrimonial — which their cicerone fired off
about the gazing exhibits in a fluent Babel of many tongues.
It was a great success, and thereafter the Rubbernecks

THE CITY OF CITIES 91

confined themselves to Chinatown, leaving white America
severely alone.

The benefactions of the metropolis, whether left in wills
or given in the donor's life-time, are truly staggering.
Millions of money rain upon the city's institutions — edu-
cational, pathological, religious, and philanthropic. There
is money for art, and false teeth for the poor; money to
cure consumption and "the hook-worm of laziness," which
is said to affect the Southern negro. There is money to
fight all things which America dislikes, from despotism to
old age: there is a Life Extension Institute with ex-Presi-
dent Taft at the head of it. And there is money without
stint — millions untold — for scientific research, the kind
that lightens labour and brightens life. For no limit is
set to possibilities of science in the United States.

There are free lawyers to assist the Ellis Island immi-
grant in the most unlooked-for plight. Here, for example,
are three Russian women, from whom the Appraiser of
Customs is claiming $170 duty on the bales of feathers
they have brought with them, and which rank as "mer-
chandise." It seems these peasants had long been pluck-
ing Volga geese and packing their household treasures in
between the feathers, in anticipation of the day when they
should sail for America. Embedded in the bales were
cooking-pots and candlesticks, holy books, gilt ikons, and
smelly clothes. The Legal Aid Society pleaded success-
fully with the Port Collector, and the feathers were at last
admitted as "household goods," though there was enough
in the bales to bed a whole street.

Such is New York, whose war relief work in the neutral
Day covered Europe from Brussels to Belgrade, and thence
to Beirut and starving Palestine. Through the Federal
Council of Churches the city appealed to 35,000,000 Amer-
icans, and through Cardinal Gibbons to America's 16,-

92 AMERICA'S DAY

000,000 Catholics. It was New York, in short, that mobil-
ized the impulsive generosity of the continent. There
were In-aid-ofs of inexhaustible ingenuity; "chain-let-
ters" crossed over to the Pacific, gathering millions of
dollars as they went. You were bidden buy eyes for the
blinded soldier, milk for the Armenian babe, clothing for
Serbian refugees, an ambulance for the Somme; a soup-
kitchen for Berlin, or "Warsaw, or Paris.

At emotional meetings women gave the jewels from their
necks and wrists. The illiterate immigrant threw twenty
cents on the platform. Jacob Schiff handed up $100,000;
the Rockefeller Foundation voted $1,000,000 for relief in
Poland and the Balkans.

The Clearing House Wharf at the foot of Charlton Street
showed how great was New York's anxiety to alleviate
Europe's woe with some of her own prosperity. But the
metropolis, like the rest of America, longed for peace, and
the ceasing of a havoc too strange for transatlantic minds
to grasp. "Yes," said the typical New Yorker at a naval
review, "the Pennsylvania's a wonderful gun-platform;
so is her sister, the Arizona. The new Mississippi will be
greater still, I guess. But we'd rather have the Maurc-
tania racing in once more for our Christmas mails. Can't
you see her, man, sighted from Nantucket in the tail-end
of a December blizzard? What a vision of power and
utility in grey-white tones, shining with frozen spray!
Her towering bows awash, cascades of water streaming
from her scuppers, and four enormous funnels belching
flame and smoke. A regular Pittsburg tumbling through
our wintry bay. . . . Watch her back up the Ambrose
Channel, her course lit with blazing buoys, her upper works
higher than the roofs on the wharfs! Ah, my friend,
that 's the old-time social link — the giant shuttle of broth-
erhood between the Old World and the New! You may
keep your destroyers, your Revenges and VTarspites and

THE CITY OF CITIES 93

Iron Dukes. Only send us the Maurctania again, and
b}- God ! we '11 give her skipper such a welcome as Colum-
bus never knew!"

CHAPTER VII

"dare and do"

"Atmosphere" is an intangible thing, yet it can mould
new men. Call it environment if you will, or the radiant
aura of place and people. The working of it is surprisingly
seen in America. I have entered a Syrian restaurant in
"Washington Street, New York, and been all but mobbed
for language lessons by rayah shepherds and small culti-
vators from the Metawileh villages around Ba'albek. The
keenness of these men amazed me, for I have known them
at home — slow, apathetic, and resigned to the wicked
tyranny of the Turk. Here they were free. Here life
has a blue-eyed, cheery look; all were striving and thriv-
ing, as waifs and strays have done since the first steamer
Sirius crossed the Atlantic in 1838. It is an inspiring
sight, this widespread impulse and aspiration.

"Where were you last night?" I asked the Lithuanian
Jew boy, who sold me the Evening Post outside the Sub-
way. "At the Law School," he replied. He was saving
his money, that earnest lad, not frittering his dimes and
quarters at the movies or at Coney Island shows. You
will meet hundreds like him in the Canal Street cafes.
And Manhattan's Ghetto is the surest place to look for
poets, musicians, and painters. My paper boy will soon
be at the New York University, where nine undergrads
out of ten are Jews. But the zeal for knowledge is uni-
versal here; it is the key to all success, and that elation
which sings in Chopin's letter — "I move in the highest
circles, ana don't know how I got there!"

The spirit and process are well shown by the Texan

94

''DARE AND DO" 95

student who arrived at the State College with two Jersey-
cows of a good grade. ''We've lots of cows at home," he
explained to President Bizzel, "but we are a bit short of
money, so I'm going to sell milk on the college campus to
pay my way. All I ask is the use of a barn and a little
pasture." It was pretty cool, but the freshman had his
way. At nine cents a quart he cleared $54 a month,
and wrote off $14 for the cows' feed. In this way did
the Texan boy secure a college education, at the same
time offering to others a living lesson in ways and means.
"I will study and get ready," Abe Lincoln said, "and
maybe my chance will come."

This motive is plainly seen in a party of immigrants
roaming the New York streets to gain ideas and weigh
their own chances. They have an air of independence
since they landed. They are like Daniel and his fellow-
aliens in the gate of the Babylonian king, with notions
of their own about the worship of the golden image. The
newcomers are not only thinking; they have already be-
gun to read. They are spelling out Success-books which
tell how, from a wooden shack on the water-front at St.
Paul, James Hill saw an empire in the wilderness — a rail-
way system which was to cover half the continent. It was
the same Hill who went to a bush school as a boy, and
lived to promise aid to King Albert in the rebuilding of
his ruined kingdom. "There is no substitute for hard
work," is a saying of this man which the immigrant takes
to heart in his early stages.

' ' Organize your leisure " is a hint from people with books
to sell, the right sort of books. The great thing is to ac-
quire knowledge, and to buy an outfit for the game. Quite
likely the immigrant's education began on board the ship.
Here he had nothing to do but listen, and compare what
the teacher said with the letters that Franz wrote from
the Florida groves and Lucia from the Little Italy of

96 AMERICA'S DAY

Brooklyn, where she had a fruit stall at the side of a
saloon. On the big immigrant ships trained social workers
gave classes in English and talks on American ways; so-
cial, civic, industrial, and political. Such a missionary
was the friend and guide of perhaps fifteen hundred souls,
who were soon to be caged and sorted in the Ellis Island
pens.

Even illiterates show new aptitude to learn on board
the ship bound for America. There are cinema shows,
dealing with the wonders of town and country life, and
warning the immigrant of danger to body and soul in the
siren-city of New York. There are friendly tips and ex-
hortations to the queer crowd on deck, much as the veteran
sergeant gave as "the Kitchener Crowd" drew near the
firing-trench for the first time. ... A little colloquial Eng-
lish would get a man a job ; it would also help him to find
his way about the town, and open new avenues of better-
ment. This ship-board schooling was an excellent plan.
It roused the interest of these aliens; they wrerc encour-
aged to continue in the night schools of New York and
complete the process of Americanization.

In those night schools the teacher needs no language
but his own. He knows his adult pupils personally; their
daily work, ambitions, and tastes suggest new drills in pho-
netics and English conversation. It is surprising wmat
progress these people make, especially the Germans, Sy-
rians, and Greeks. The ideal tutor of a night class shows
sympathy and perseverance; he is a fervid, ingenious or-
ganizer supplementing the routine in a social way, and
turning his school into a club. Debating and singing so-
cieties are formed. There are musical evenings, addresses
from public men; recitations, theatricals, visits to the
library, art-gallery, and museum.

As for the immigrant women, they are a handful for
the domestic educator. Mainly peasants from field and

"DARE AND DO" 97

farm, they know no more than an ox of sanitation and
hygiene; of food values, home nursing, or the sewing-
machine. They need instruction in the very A B C of
city life; their New York teachers have a tragi-comic
tussle with dirt and flies, queer customs, and superstition
deep as life itself. It is different with the children, of
course. Their former ways melt readily enough in the
public schools. Here the clash of races so often seen in
adult classrooms — the impatience of Latin with Teuton,
friction between Asiatic and Slav — is rosed over with
cool reason and tact. This softens strife in the play-
ground, and the races quickly blend.

All through the elementary grades in school the love
of home is fostered, and reverence for the parents incul-
cated with anxious zeal. And for this there is special
need. Illiterate or careless parents and quick, clever chil-
dren are all too prone to fall apart in this land of "Presto,"
where "Adagio" is the inveterate note of a slum home.
Gradually the breach widens through a lack of sympathy
and understanding on both sides. Sons and daughters
grow ashamed of uncouth fathers and mothers, who re-
fuse to mix with America, and cling to the older life. A
little girl from the Ghetto wants to go on to high school
from her graduating class. She is already a great reader,
and father hides her library-card, hoping to avert the
disruption he sees ahead.

I am here reminded that the American money-lust —
the eternal hunt for dollars which tradition abroad has
fastened on these people as their anima mundi — is very
largely misapprehended.

It is not so much money that these people laud as
energy, efficiency, and success in all walks of life, public
and private; civic, industrial, artistic, or humanitarian.
It is in the earning — in the matching of wits, the vying
in a breathless race, that the American finds his crowning

98 AMERICA'S DAY

satisfaction. This is well put by an industrial lord like
Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem Steel-works, a con-
cern with 70,000 hands and a pay-roll of $72,000,000 a
year. "What is it," asked the ironmaster, "that drives
us on to great enterprise? It is not for the money's sake,
but for the thrill of accomplishment. Whenever I see a
man out for nothing but wealth, I ask myself — as the
brakeman did of the little dog that chased a train — What
the devil will he do with it when he gets it?" Let Amer-
ica, therefore, be believed when she defines her Get-rich-
quickness as the greatest game she knows. Mere money
these prodigals cannot keep. "While we are the wealth-
iest people," says the American Bankers' Association in
its Thrift Campaign, "we are still a nation of spenders."

A man who saves his money is voted mean; the thing
is hardly respectable and certainly un-American. Social
standards rise and surge with the flush time. Establish-
ments swell with new accretion of income; the same is
freely spent and capital encroached upon with gay dis-
regard for the future. A successful neighbour must be
"gone one better" in the way of frocks and jewels for
mother and the girls; and sonny must have the car of
the hour — "an Aluminium Six that rides like a liner and
leaps to the gas like a blooded horse under the whip!"
There are seasons at Newport and Palm Beach where
money is shed as a garment. There is also the visit to
New York. Here, as we know, riches are put "on the
toboggan"; and the hotter the pace, the more it is appre-
ciated.

There are signs of slowing up, however. This free "cir-
culation" is questioned now, as so many American traits
are at this time. It is a hundred years since savings
banks were first established in America ; and a nation-
wide effort was recently made to educate the people in
personal preparedness for the bad times which may be

"DARE AND DO" 99

ahead. Five Thrift Days were observed in the public
schools; special pamphlets were read to the children, and
then given them to take home to their parents. There
were Thrift Sundays in the churches, with suitable sermons
and appeals. Thrift called to citizens and farmers from
all the papers and magazines. There was Thrift in the
street-cars and subways and L-trains; advertising on bul-
letin-boards all over the United States. Illustrated pla-
cards, changed every month, appeared in the factories,
offices, and stores. The wage-earner found in his pay-
envelope a thumb-nail folder suggesting novel ways in
which he might save. And, of course, the movies preached
Thrift on the continental scale. America was impressed
by all this, and still more by the feckless record of one
hundred typical young men, set out by the Savings Bank
Section of the American Bankers' Association. These
were real cases from the courts and insurance companies;
from the poor-farms, charity societies, and credit depart-
ments of large concerns. This "Light Brigade" consisted
of normal Yankee blades, sound enough in body and soul ;
quick and keen, but with no more idea of saving money
than they had of loafing their young lives away. Their
downhill "charge" begins at the age of twenty-five, when
these knights of the golden spur prick forth on the high
emprise. Twenty years later fifteen have fallen out and
are dependent upon their children, or the neighbours, or
some benevolent society. At the age of sixty-five, fifty-
four of these have become thus dependent. Out of the
hundred only five become rich. Sixty of them leave enough
to pay for their own funeral; thirty-two fail even in this
miserable respect.

This is not a wholesome example for the immigrant,
whom I have pictured schooling himself in New York and
drilling for the business fray. He is a glutton for knowl-
edge, this citizen-to-be; his children develop with pushful

9

100 AMERICA'S DAY

Americans in the common schools, which are purely demo-
cratic. In Illinois a dual method of education was mooted,
one for the well-to-do, another for the working-classes.
But the Chicago Teachers' Federation defeated this scheme,
and at the same time fought the School-book Trusts.

There are, however, hundreds of private academies for
the sons and daughters of wealthy people. These are lav-
ish establishments — "schools of personality," in which the
elegant arts are taught, from leadership to entertaining;
how to make a speech or ride a horse, or play the violin
with the pearly purity that Sevcik taught in Prague. In
the hot weather such schools as these dissolve into sum-
mer camps, where the young people frolic in idyllic sur-
roundings by lake and wood and mountain. The States vie
with one another in this matter of education; private
gifts and bequests to the college and university run into
millions every year. The rural school is a genial com-
munity centre; and there is now vocational training for
the Indian children in twenty-four Western States, with
headquarters at Santa Fe, N. M.

Only the South has been backward in this regard, but
she is showing improvement, even as regards the black
children and those of the "poor whites" of the mountain
districts. Education must be above all things practical,
and much ingenuity is locally shown to make it so. Thus
a school in Portland, Ore., has twenty-four acres of model
garden. Arithmetic is taught in a "play -store," which is,
in fact, a well-found shop, complete with groceries, canned
goods, and dairy produce. There are business-like coun-
ters for the little salesfolk; an automatic till, too, and a
cashier's desk, where accounts are paid and change given
out in real American money.

The Bible is barred from the schools through fear of
sectarian teaching and consequent discord in the homes.
I have heard many protests against this, as a system which

"DARE AND DO" 101

provides no spiritual or ethical ideals beyond a patriotic
hymn and an occasional salute of the Stars and Stripes.

Thus far I have considered the married immigrant and
his family. But what of the alien bachelor, lingering in
America's gate, which is New York? He slips into a job
the day after he lands — any sort of job. And then he looks
round to take his bearings. He dresses gaily, as young
Montaigne did to humour a world that likes a brave show.
This Aladdin city takes hold of the man. Anything is
possible here, he believes. And this spacious faith, this
pervasive wonder and tip-toe looking for "the next" forms
the groundwork of a patriotism that grows until the day
of citizen papers, with its pageant of music and flags, and
general felicitation.

The five-year interval has been well and shrewdly spent,
for America works like a charm on the receptive man, and
spreads the will-to-win with infectious zest. His earliest
reading was the literature of self-building, and those books
of power which fairly shout from the advertisement pages
of every newspaper and magazine. "Which is YOU" —
is a typical challenge — "the Man in the Street, or the Man
in the Car; the Man with a grand home and a string of
servants to do his bidding?" A picture at the top shows
a poor devil nearly run over by a fur-coated plutocrat with
panicky hands on the steering-wheel and a diamond "head-
light" in his tie. "You can't get on by looking on," is a
caustic reminder. "From Pick and Shovel to Consulting
Engineer" is the tale of a lonely alien who gave up his
evenings to a correspondence course. And again: "The
Boss is Sizing You up!" The boss of the salesmen, whose
star lad (the text informs us) is now on the road to earn-
ing $100 a week with a bacon-slicer which enables the
grocer to sell bone at twenty-five cents a pound.

These appeals carry portraits of great men who were
"all poor boys and missed a college education." Thus the

102 AMERICA'S DAY

Carnegie family are pictured in Barefoot Square, Slabtown,
Pa. Here little Andy got a job as bobbin-boy in the cot-
ton mill at $1.20 a week — the mighty Andy who was one
day to mould millionaires and give away $300,000,000.

Joe Pulitzer, the Hungarian Jew, was another humble"
alien whose career is set out as a model. He was soon a
prince of the press, the owner of the New York World, and
the donor of a couple of millions to Columbia University
in one lump. And so with all the big fellows. Henry
Frick came of folks so poor that as a child of eight he was
sowing corn on the farm, with no boots and only a precari-
ous winter schooling. Now behold Henry Frick today,
buying Rembrandts and Flemish tapestry; bronzes of the
Renaissance, and rare furniture by great ebenistes of the
eighteenth century! AVhat capital had these strong souls
to start with? What culture or social "pull" as they set
foot on the first rung and stared at the stars? . . .

Consider the career of "Plunger" Gates! Or the cattle
baron, whose herds range over a bovine empire; the mail-
order man whose suasive leaflets fall like snow in every
town and prairie hamlet between the two oceans. How
assiduous they all were! How unwearied in pursuit, por-
ing and experimenting with incredible pains ; the Lionardos
of a business era, determined to "get there" and rule
the rest — "Better be the head of a mouse than the tail of
a lion!"

Such is the printed word that kindles the young Ameri-
can— "the man who won't stay down," as the rousing pages
of power describe him. There is no conceivable calling, it
seems, which may not be taught in his leisure hours through
Uncle Sam's mails. Thus the New Yorker can study song-
writing under the Tsar of Rag-time, who lives a thousand
miles off in Chicago. There are postal courses in forestry
and law; in dentistry, chiropody, and aviation. The as-
pirant merely makes a choice and pays his money; books

"DARE AND DO" 103

and postal lessons do the rest. He may incline to plumb-
ing or poultry; to mining, railroading, or the dressing of
a draper's window. Here again the ambitious are fired
with golden facts, such as the fees paid to famous profes-
sionals. "They have no more ability than you, only they're
trained in grip and go."

In this way are high hopes of his own career raised in the
restless youth who feels within himself the "hundred per
cent, efficiency of a goal-getter." For three dollars he
can buy a book of secrets which will change his whole life.
The author of that book is not modest; indeed, "How to
have Nerve" is one of his leading chapters. He claims
to be a builder of back-bone ; the deviser of a system which
dispels all fear and plays upon the small man's diffidence
as "a ghost-scattering searchlight on the rich fields of life."
His book will galvanize the weakling into activity. It will
mass the cell-forces into new power to "put things over,"
and fox the foxiest neighbour until that neighbour laughs
at his own defeat and hails his master in that studious
fellow.

All this for three dollars! But there are deeps beyond
mere knowledge, and the reader is promised "a bodily
buoyancy — a tingling zest which you never felt before."
The mention of physical fitness reminds me that America
puts health even before this hypnosis and drill of the
mind. There are stringent food and hygienic laws, rang-
ing from clean milk to mad dogs. There are weird diets
for the fat and the lean, the neurotic, dyspeptic, and sleep-
less; Mr. Edison has his own "Insomnia Squad" helping
him in the problems of electrochemics and naval war.
"Health first — pleasure follows" is the arrestive slogan of
the Corrective Eating Society. One is amazed at the pub-
licity given to "preparedness" of this kind, together with
tips and warnings from all manner of men — the prize-
fighter and an ex-President of the United States, Mr.

104 AMERICA'S DAY

W. H. Taft. During his term at the White House his
great bulk was a real trial to Mr. Taft. It may be remem-
bered that his fabulous trousers were borne upon a pole
by admirers in the Inaugural Parade. That genial states-
man tipped the beam at 342 lbs. when he re-entered private
life, and then he began a regimen whieh reduced his
weight by 75 lbs. in ten months. Mr. Taft himself tells
the story.

I know no people so keen as Americans upon physical
vigour, and the causes supposed to promote it. Of course
it is the last of the speed-up which accounts for this; the
business world's message to all is "Make good or get out!"
Hence the artillery of tonics and dope for the man who
feels "all in" from overwork or strain. Hence the best
dentists and the worst quacks in the world — the vitopath
and hypnotic healer; the magic potions and electric belts
which "charge the body with the bubbling joy of wingfoot
manhood."

An addiction to drugs and bracers is decidedly on the
increase, especially those containing cocaine, morphine,
heroin, and opium. The Harrison Act of 1914 has failed
to stop the traffic in these narcotics; and Dr. C. B. Towns
of New York has urged upon Congress a Federal Com-
mission to study the growing evil and stamp it out with
drastic laws. It is not so long since America was startled
with vital statistics, and the causes behind them, from the
Association of Life Insurance Presidents, a body entitled
to attentive hearing. At their convention the Public Serv-
ice Commissioner of the Equitable flatly declared that
"the physical force of our people has declined." This was
partly due to the great increase in wealth, partly to the
time- and labour-saving devices which had altered American
habits and made all forms of exercise unnecessary.

At the same time, the consumption of rich foods had
increased ; the sedentary worker took far more than the

"DARE AND DO" 105

2500 calories a day prescribed for him by Professor Lusk,
of the Cornell Medical College. The result was alarming,
as seen from the insurance records. These showed far too
many people over forty who were from fifteen to eighty
pounds above normal weight. And among these the death-
rate was from nine to seventy-five per cent, in excess of
the average.

Revelations of this kind tend to increase anxiety and
fads, and to multiply experts of dubious fame. In the
schoolroom boys and girls — with the aid of cardboard
skeletons — are taught how to drive "the internal com-
bustion engine" of the body through a strenuous Ameri-
can life, with due regard for the nerves which are "the
sparking plugs or energizers" of the whole machine.
Meanwhile mother vows she will buy no food at the grocer's
which is not put up in sealed packages. And father is
warned by the physicians not to cultivate any hair on his
face. What is the moustache but a focus of infection in
the office, workshop, and factory? "You may not feel
the bacteria that flock to your face, but all the same you
take home a choice collection of belligerent bugs"! The
Menace of Whiskers is the theme of an M.D. in a popular
paper, and he thanks God that "the Americans who sport
a trellis-work of this kind are as rare as Irish royalists"!

Chicago was the first metropolis to start a municipal
Diet Squad of twelve men and ladies. They were well fed
on forty cents a day; they were frequently weighed, and
the figures flashed to all the cities of the continent. It was
an heroic regimen for Thanksgiving Day, when all Amer-
ica feasted on turkey and mince pies, while a devoted squad
drilled with Dr. Robertson, the city's principal physician.

"Don't hurry," he ordained, as the hominy and codfish
balls were disappearing. "You must Fletcherizc, and
chew each mouthful at least twenty times." This sort of
thing is taken seriously in America. "Don't hurry; don't

106 AMERICA'S DAY

worry"; this is the latest official counsel. Even Federal
Government concerns itself with these social aspects and
their bearing upon the national soul. "Worry weakens
our mental forces," the U. S. Health Service explains in a
special pamphlet for popular circulation. "It tires and
undermines us by doing nothing. The mind's engine runs
idle under these vague fears, at the same time delivering
no propulsive force. Worry is the protective instinct be-
come abnormal. Consider the lower creatures. No bird
that we know ever tried to build more nests than his
neighbour. No fox ever fretted because he had only one
hole, no squirrel ever died of anxiety lest he hadn't laid
by enough nuts for two winters instead of one. We are
quite sure no dog ever lost any sleep because he hadn't
buried enough bones to provide for his declining years. ' '

The campaign against the liquor traffic is only a fight for
clear thinking and productive power, with the moral aspect
an "also ran," on the great industrial course. Twenty-
three States are now bone-dry; nine more are drying up;
and by 1920 the Bryanites may easily win the thirty-six
State votes which will place 105,000,000 people under
nation-wide prohibition. The long battle between alcohol
and industry is well worthy of notice, for the issue is pre-
eminently American. It recalls the complacency of Ben
Franklin, who, as a "water- American" in the London
printing-shop, proved himself a stronger fellow than the
beer-drinkers. That was nearly two centuries ago.

The tenets of the citizen on this question are not those
of the fanatic, or the Anti-Saloon League, but rather those
of the Tin Plate Trust and the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Throughout the vast works of the Illinois Steel at Joliet
and Gary, electric signs shower discouragement upon drink
— "Did Booze ever get you a better job?" Promotions
are only made from among abstainers by the company's
foremen and inspectors. The social change in this respect

''DARE AND DO" 107

is more than sweeping ; it amounts to a revolution. There
was a time when the town bell rang for the labourers'
grog ; there was rum provided by farmers at harvest-
time "to ward off the sun." In winter the ice-cutters,
the masons and carpenters out in zero weather, drank
hot toddy as a matter of course. Grog-shops followed
the railway gangs and the miners and lumbermen of the
West, as well as the prairie pioneers of Boomtown, where
crude petroleum spouted over the tops of the derricks.
The Labour Union, as Samuel Gompers reminds us, at
first met in a saloon ; the steel mill managers were sure
that workers in the blast-furnace would die unless they
were dosed with whisky between the heats. Even the
engine-driver on the railway took a bottle into his cab,
and after an awful accident one heard that "some one
had been drinking."

It was Science which altered this — the science that saves
time and converts every atom of human energy into out-
put, efficiency, and results. But it was the employers'
liability for compensation which set that science in motion.
The injured workman had to be paid, no matter what
the cause of the mishap. So if the employer tolerated
tippling it was his own look-out. And he began to look
very keenly indeed into the matter. lie was soon inter-
ested in appliances and safety campaigns. Then came
the war upon alcohol. In this the railroads led, for here
if anywhere was need for clear eyes and nimble wits.
A switch misplaced, a signal ignored, a telegram misread,
and a hundred human beings were killed with every cir-
cumstance of horror. Yet the pioneers of teetotal reform
had an uphill climb; "personal liberty" was not to be
interfered with in Liberty's own land. The railroads per-
sisted, however. They exacted pledges, and wont further
still — they dismissed from their service the man who en-
tered a saloon. The logical sequence was to cut out the

108 AMERICA'S DAY

drinks served in the dining-car; and in this reform the
Pennsylvania Railroad led.

Today there are over two million employes who are
strictly dry, and well catered for by railway clubs and
centres of cheer. One hundred and fifty steel and iron
magnates gave their views about the old-time vice of
''rushing the can"; all were agreed that it reduced the
men s labour, and was a source of serious accidents. Some
large employers buy up the saloons near their works in
order to abolish them. "A man with a bottle of whisky,"
says the Du Pont Powder concern, "is as perilous in our
plant as a bomb-thrower."

In some centres cold milk and tea, and cost-price meals
are provided as an offset to the old lure. The Philadelphia
Quartz people put the matter on a dollar-and-cents basis,
and now pay the total abstainer — as the better workman —
ten per cent, more wages than the moderate drinker. It
is in the main a commercial crusade, and the results sur-
pass all expectations. No moral zealousy could have
worked the miracle which these business men have wrought,
and the wonder spread like a religious revival. Temper-
ance advocates talk to the men in the dinner-hour. Anti-
liquor literature is given out for home reading. There
are bulletin boards and flashing signs to make new eon-
verts, and keep the wobblers and backsliders on the dry
line. Medical men lecture to the assembled hands on alco-
hol as a depressant ; and the time spent in listening to this
is paid for by the company at the highest rate.

Make no mistake about this teetotal taming of the Amer-
ican. He is above all things a practical man. He has
harnessed the Niagara Falls to electric turbines, and now
asks of the flood another two million horse-power. He
would unweave the rainbow if it paid him, or empty the
haunted air and the gnomed mine with a shrewd "What's-
in-it-f or-me 1 ' '

"DARE AND DO" 109

The American contends that his meat and grain have
done more for mankind than all the schools of philosophy.
Look at his little daughter — say, Minnie Rohmer of Bea-
man, la. Minnie was given a calf to rear in a feeding
contest which was not to exceed $6.50 per hundred pounds
of meat gain. Within a year the child stood beside a
monster that was hailed as champion by the Iowa Beef
Producers. Even the negro preacher — the prize orator at
Tuskegee College waves a prize cabbage in his black fist as
he roars, "De eart' am full ob dy riches, 0 Lord!" And
therewith he kicks a bushel of giant maize on the pulpit
floor at his ecstatic feet.

All the great stores read dollars and cents in the weather,
just as the electric power people do in the scenery of the
Rocky Mountains. Trade advertisements are displayed or
withdrawn in accordance with predictions from the Bureau.
Thus rain in the early morning is bad for the shops, whereas
afternoon showers give the counters a welcome boost. A
summer that is cool until late June means a heavy loss to
the stores, for the women refrain from buying. And when
it gets warmer they still waver, uncertain now whether
they will "get the good of their clothes" in what remains
of the season. Gloomy weather, the dentists say, keeps
their parlours empty in spite of the appointments made.
On the other hand a lowering day keeps the drug-store
clerks and telephones busy with orders for liveners and
dope. The insurance agents also bless the clouds and the
squalls, for these seem to chasten exuberance and give even
American life a more sober outlook in which a "policy
talk" is feasible. A tobacco company of New York City
with a chain of shops, looks to lose $4000 on a stormy day,
simply because smoking is disagreeable in a high wind and
rain. It is not alone the farmer and grain-gambler who
follows the forecast of the U. S. Weather Bureau.

And yet for all his shrewdness, the American remains the

110 AMERICA'S DAY

most sentimental of men, with social and ethical aims be-
yond any I know in the older nations. Those aims may
be unrealizable — the mirage of expectancy and national
youth; nevertheless they remain a potent factor in a people
to whom the day's strife is a rebellion with banners, a
triumphant march towards betterment of man's estate.
Here is inconsistency which is not easily explained in a
paragraph. In these people qualities of sense conflict oddly
with the spirit. The most literal perspicacity is mixed
with a visionary exaltation which in this New World re-
calls the singular antithesis of the Middle Ages. The Ger-
mans have judged America correctly in this regard as one
sees from the opinion of Dr. Dernburg, who was their
propagandist in the United States.

"It is wrong," Herr Dernburg told his Berlin audience,
"to regard the American as a pure materialist. True, he
is English in language and habit (which was bad enough,
indeed!) but, he does carry a great deal of moral baggage
with him." The point is aptly put, and force is lent to
it by President Wilson's Notes and speeches during the
war. "I would fain believe," Dr. Wilson told the Sen-
ate, "that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind
everywhere, who have had no place or opportunity to speak
their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they
see already upon the persons and homes they hold most
dear." In the same address the Upper House was re-
minded of America's special mission "ever since we set
up as a new nation in the high and honourable hope that
in all that it was and did it might show mankind the way
to Liberty." This is the note of America's schools. It
is also the lesson which the immigrant learns with much
of the patriot faith of old Japan: "There is no need to
pray, for the country itself is divine." America is con-
sidered apart in destiny, with higher ideals and unique
facilities for attaining them.

"DARE AND DO" 111

Therefore all things combine to foster hope in the hum-
blest citizen, if he keeps his body fit and his brain keyed to
the high American tension. With this end in view the
State Governments rain hygienic guidance on their com-
munities. But their leaflets are now eclipsed by the
Moving Picture Health Car, which North Carolina sends
on a rural round where a guarantee of $90 can be got
for a month's service, and go-ahead county boards, rich
farmers, and local housewives often start a fair for the
purpose. This laboratory on wheels carries a trained me-
chanic and a medical lecturer who announces the show
with a megaphone. The car has a camp and kitchen out-
fit for the crew's use in the remoter wilds. It generates
electric light, and strings the village hall with cables full
of coloured bulbs. The program is changed every fort-
night for the edification of country folks; and these look
for the car as their children might for a circus. It is an
event, a distraction, a novelty. It is even good for trade,
because a film on the care of the teeth increases the sale
of tooth-brushes; the fly-fighting pictures induce folks to
order screens for their doors and windows.

Typhoid, malaria, and tuberculosis are some of the sub-
jects flashed upon the screen, with cunning embroidery
of human interest, lest they prove "deadly" in the show-
man's sense as well as in the doctor's. It is now proposed
to extend this service to agriculture and domestic science —
even to religious and uplift themes, such as make for better
rural homes, and a happier and richer country life. All
this ministry sharpens expectations and gives the charlatan
unbounded scope among simple people who look for mira-
cles, and are often robbed on a great scale. There is
no land so afflicted with bogus doctors as America, thanks
to the welter of laws in her self-governing States. I know
no scandal so insidious and huge, no American reform more
urgent — especially on account of the foreign born, who are

112 AMERICA'S DAY

easily impressed by big words, by strung out "degrees,"
and the magic of science which can do all things but raise
the dead.

Consider New England as a quack field, now swarming
with alien labour. Here the foreign born are thirty-one
per cent, of the population, with 81 newspapers of their
own in thirteen different languages. It comes as a shock
to learn that one-third of the great and cultured city of
Boston is made up of foreigners. I know a small Massa-
chusetts town whose seven thousand people you may sort
out into twenty-one races, speaking as many different
tongues. These are the communities reached and fleeced
by bogus doctors, who spend $40,000,000 a year in the
newspapers, playing upon credulity and anxiety with mer-
ciless cunning.

The mischief done by these pests is heartrending. Here
is a Polish boy of nine, discharged from the New York
Orthopasdic Hospital, securely trussed in iron braces.
These, the mother was warned, were on no account to be
removed for fear of straining the cripple's spine. Then
came the quack advertisement and the fond mother's
reply; the visit to a palace of magnetic healing with $100
in her hand — all the savings of a little bakery in the slums.
Next day the child was back in hospital in a dying state,
and the wizard skipped off to his Baltimore branch until
the fuss died down.

"We have no definition in this State," Mr. C. S. An-
drews told me — he was prosecuting counsel to the Medical
Society of New York — "as to what constitutes 'the prac-
tice of medicine.' We have often asked the Legislature in
Albany to define this for us, and they have as often re-
fused. We do what we can, of course, but our best effort
is no more than a drop of remedj^ in an ocean of infamy.
Some of the quacks employ qualified doctors to make false
diagnoses, or even to produce wounds upon healthy tissue

"DARE AND DO" 113

by means of erodent acids. These are kept open as long
as the money flows. It is very difficult to convict these
men. In any case they set up afresh in another name and
another State, perhaps two thousand miles away. Then
Little Italy has its quack healers. So has Little Russia,
Bohemia, Hungary, Greece, and the rest. How are we to
get at these?"

Perhaps by "tapping new springs of democracy," as
President Wilson urged in the domestic program which
is so dear to him in these crusading days. "The votes of
far-sighted men must be recruited by the votes of women,
so that we raay have fresh insight into matters of social
reform, and move more certainly and promptly in all the
problems with which our government must henceforth
deal."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY

"Legislation will be a vain thing until the antagonisms of industry-
give place to generous rivalries in the pursuit of Fair Play. Labour
and Capital, with angry insistence upon their rights, have entirely
overlooked their obligation." — President Wilson.

The outbreak of a world-war threw the United States into
profound distress and gloom; it is curious to recall this
fact in view of the roaring times that followed. The South
was in despair, unable to sell its cotton. New York, for
all its wealth and careless pride, was afraid it could not pay
its debts, and therefore closed her Stock Exchange for
four months. "In' all previous panics," says the official
chronicle of that institution, "the markets abroad were
counted upon to come to the rescue and break the fall.
Imports of gold, foreign loans and foreign buying were
safeguards which prevented complete disaster. But now
our market stood unaided. An unthinkable convulsion
had seized the world. Our boasted bonds of civilization
burst overnight and plunged us all into barbarism."

The savings banks fell back on a panic law, and would
only pay deposits upon sixty days' notice. For the first
time bankers called to their aid the Aldrich-Vreeland
emergency currency. And Clearing House certificates
were issued as in the dark old days. The great steel in-
dustry was turning thousands of hands into the streets;
and Government was appealed to on behalf of the unem-
ployed who were soon an army of millions. Soup-kitchens
and public charities were besieged in a manner wholly
un-American. . . . How the scene changed in 1915 as an
industrial drama of historic interest! For three months

114

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 115

the export of food-stuffs rose; and by April the first big
order was placed for $83,000,000 worth of munitions of
war. Thereafter the clouds lifted with dream-like swift-
ness until America had paid off a mortgage of five thou-
sand million dollars, thanks to Europe's ravening needs.
The export trade of 1916 was nearly $2,000,000,000 be-
yond that of 1915; the excess of exports over imports was
ten times greater than in 1914. There are no records
comparable with these in the whole story of American
commerce.

Great fortunes were made in a night ; a concern like the
Bethlehem Steel could declare a dividend of two hundred
per cent. The humblest alien found work at unheard-of
rates, and buyers for the Allies were outbidding each other
in frenzied contracts. It is not possible to exaggerate the
chaos and confusion of this transition time, when agents
with unlimited credit burst upon traders who had been
whistling to keep up their courage after the first collapse.
One Government gave an order for a chemical which was
five times greater than America's entire production of it.
I cannot deal at any length with the "war-brokers" and
their games. The mechanic with the lathe, the clerk with
a can of coal-tar — these became shell-makers or dealers in
dye. They talked in millions, dogging the buyers from
London and Paris, Petrograd, Rome, Belgrade, and Bu-
charest. Short of cash, though long of nerve and wit,
many a bright young man dealt mysteriously in horses
and mules, in rifles, machine-guns, and explosives. In
cotton, too, and woollens and hides; in machinery and
food-stuffs, cartridges, copper and war-inventions of awe-
some range.

It is a peculiar fact that Labour troubles multiplied in
these flush times. In the fiscal year of 1915 the Depart-
ment of Labour dealt with forty-one disputes involving
138,100 hands. By 1916 there were 227 cases, affecting

116 AMERICA'S DAY

350,800 men. And yet large increases had been granted
to the workers, in most cases voluntarily, to offset the cost
of living, which had soared. There were economic causes
for this, of course; but there were also artful corners in
food, and the trickery of petty trusts like that of the
potato-men up in Maine. There were also cold storage
stunts and a general shyness to part with supplies. The
farmers were hanging on for a rise.

Here, as in Europe, profiteering was a great game, and
the man with food to sell extorted the last penny before
he would market his hoard. The result was that the
dollar bought less than at any time since the Civil War.
Flour went to $12 a barrel, or more than double what it
fetched in 1914. The mine workers of Ohio came to Pres-
ident Wilson, demanding a nation-wide inquiry into a
rocketing of food rates, which left the extra wages far
behind. "He didn't keep us out of war-prices," was now
a rueful caption below the President 's portrait. The truth
is there was no thrift shown, and the carpenter at $50
a week spent every cent of his increase. With Europe's
millions withdrawn from productive labour; with its youth
in the trenches, and millions more (to say nothing of the
women) turned to the arts of destruction, the immense
American workshop found fierce demands upon its energy,
and economic chaos was the result.

Factory bosses of the Middle West vied with each other
in tempting schoolboys with $15 a week for screwing
common nuts in place. A hurry call to the skilled me-
chanic meant two dollars an hour — or say $5000 a year.
All industrial concerns made haste to raise wages. The
U. S. Steel added ten per cent, to the pay-roll of 318,000
men, a matter involving $20,000,000. The Standard Oil
did the same, so did the Westinghouse and the General
Electric. Banks and insurance companies, the New Eng-
land mills, and the motor-shops out West all followed suit,

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 117

until 25,000,000 workers had an increase amounting to
$7,000,000,000, distributed all over the continent. Even
Government salaries were raised — for the first time since
Walt Whitman was a Treasury clerk half-a-century ago.

And still Labour was dissatisfied. Strikes and lock-outs
were declared in the unlikeliest quarters. An eight-hour
day was the issue in Pittsburg. In New York even the
garment-hands walked out. Strangest of all, the typists
and stenographers of the American Federation of Labour
asked for a minimum wage of $3 a day, and were backed
up by the Central Union. But the gravest trouble — the
shadow of a national calamity — was the threat of a general
railroad strike throughout the United States, paralysing
the good time and bringing everything to a standstill.
This menace came in the midst of a Presidential campaign,
and Dr. Wilson handled it with a boldness quite unlike
his usual caution. He sided with the Four Brotherhoods
of railway labour in their demand for an eight-hour day.
Strike funds totalling $15,000,000 had been mobilized for
a conflict which should spread like a storm, involving many
other trades.

President Wilson hurried to Congress as champion of
the Brotherhoods and twelve other Unions, all linked with
the Federation of Trade, and representing 700,000 men.
Mr. W. C. Adamson framed the Eight Hour Bill, which
bears his name, and this was passed as the new unit of a
day's wage for all workers operating trains in Inter-State
commerce.

But the new measure was promptly challenged by the
railroads as "an unconstitutional interference with the
liberty of contract." Meanwhile the strike was called otf,
leaving the employers sore and the men suspicious that
President Wilson had "tied a string" to the prize he had
given them. And so indeed he had. For when the Adam-
son Law was passed, the President urged that in fu-

118 AMERICA'S DAY

ture an? inquiry into industrial disputes should be made
compulsory; and that, furthermore, until the investiga-
tions were complete "no strike or lock-out shall lawfully
be attempted." The President's model was the Canadian
Industrial Disputes Act, which has worked fairly well —
though the Dominion Trade and Labour Congress claims
that "it pinches only one foot," and binds but one side in
these industrial wars.

In no nation have Labour troubles been so frequent or
so bloody as in the United States, where strike-breaking
is a regular craft employing thousands of armed men.
Disorder has often been on so great a scale as to pass
beyond police control and call out the State Militia, or
even the Federal troops, as in the Chicago "battles" of
1894, which began in the Pullman Works and spread to
the Railway Union. It is now hoped that such strife
belongs to the past. There is a gulf not measured in years
alone between Henry Prick of the Homestead "war," and
the Henry Ford of 1917, with his profit-sharing schemes
and his minimum wage of five dollars a day for a staff
counted in tens of thousands. As a Peace apostle Mr. Ford
had no success; as an employer of labour the ascetic little
man is a power in the United States, where he aspires to
employ a hundred thousand hands and turn out a million
cars each year.

Thomas Edison paid a visit to the "Detroit mechanic,"
who was busy with farm tractors, such as the maimed
soldier might use after the war. "Ford is the most hu-
mane man I know," was the great inventor's verdict.
"He's all machines, of course; but what he talks about
most is his men. Are they doing their work easily as well
as efficiently? Henry's critics take him to task for the
high wages he pays. Why, they work out at America's
lowest! I pay less, but Henry gets more for his money."
Mr. Ford is the pioneer of shorter hours on quite new

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 119

(and mechanical) lines. In February, 1913, 16,000 of his
men, working ten hours a day, produced 16,000 cars. Just
one year later, with other aids and systems — with task
analysis and "progressive assembling" — 15,800 men pro-
duced 26,000 cars.

This man is the Messiah of the Central West; an in-
dustrial dreamer, a benevolent despot, with fifty-three
different nationalities in his employ. "No workman," he
contends, "will take pride in his work if he's underpaid, or
has no leisure in which to enjoy his life." And therewith
Mr. Ford cut a Christmas "melon" of $850,000 which he
shared among his foremen and department chiefs. These
are the new ideals of American business. They go much
further than the installation of a well-equipped hospital
in the mill, or the display of signs urging "Safety First,"
and total abstinence from booze. The speed-up remains,
of course; it is eveu intensified in queer scientific ways.
But "welfare" is now a great word between employer and
employed. It is carried to extremes in that marvellous
' ' foreign ' ' city of Detroit, where every third man you meet
is an alien.

The coloured map of the Board of Commerce in this
place, showing the location of the different races, is like a
war-chart of Europe in 1918. The Slav splash of colour
looms largest of all. Other areas show the habitat of
Italians and Jews; of Magyar and Ruman, Belgian, Ar-
menian, and Greek. Detroit is above all cities the best
in which to study the process of Americanization, as well
as that new "spirit of the hive" and specialized labour,
which can turn out a six-cylinder car at $1000, with a
constant tendency to raise the power and reduce the price.

"Keep your workers happy" is the watchword of Amer-
ican capital today. But the happiness must pay its way;
it is a commercial aim on peculiar lines, satisfying both
sides — for a while. I know a factory in Rochester, N. Y.,

120 AMERICA'S DAY

where it takes seventy hands to turn a South American
ivory nut into a trousers button. The work is very mo-
notonous, but the girls who do it are cheered with music —
with lilting melodies from batteries of gramophones in-
stalled in airy rooms. Ventilation, by the way, is a typ-
ical feature as a dividend-payer ; for bad air is more tiring
than hard work. ''What's the matter?" asks the boss at
three in the afternoon. "Not so much snap and drive
as at eleven o'clock. Production seems to sag. What's
the cause?" And fans and blowers are installed; heating
and cooling systems whose cost is carefully weighed against
the extra output which energized workers will show.

The only way to mend a bad world, ' ' says Henry Ford,
"is to create a good one, and give the workman his due
in a generous spirit." Hence the profit-sharing principle
and the higher standard of life insisted upon by the
Ford Educational Department. This is an inquisition of
peculiar powers, like the company itself, which is inde-
pendent of banks and has its own deposits of iron ore on
the Pacific Coast.

It is worth recording that his polyglot army show no
great gratitude to this singular man. ' ' I don 't owe nathun '
t' Henry Ford," snapped the rugged Pole at the Detroit
night school, where the motto is "Learn English and get
better pay." "When he pay me tree dollar, I make tree
hunnud bolts in ten hour. Now I work eight hour an' get
five dollar. But I make nine hunnud bolts!" Even the
alien worker has no illusions on this score. None the less
a profound change of relations is manifest. It was clearly
stated in an address to Cornell University by Mr. John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., who hoped that "the personal element in
industry would soon be regarded as an important part
of the college course, which aims at fitting a man for busi-
ness life."

"Hitherto," Mr. Rockefeller pursued, "the chief execu-

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 121

tives of our great undertakings have been chosen chiefly
for their organizing or financial capacity. The time is
come, I think, when the best men for such positions are
they who can deal successfully and amicably with Labour,
which is, after all, the natural partner of Capital. And
personal contact of the right sort gives us the greatest
promise of bridging the chasm which opens between em-
ployer and employed ! ' ' The speaker had just visited his
coal mines in Colorado, where downright slavery existed
not long ago, and a bloody warfare broke out which scan-
dalized all America. Mr. Rockefeller went from camp to
camp among the aliens, talking with their families, visit-
ing their schools and places of amusement. "These men,"
he reports, "and many in the State besides, had formed
their opinion of any one bearing the name of Rockefeller.
. . . Because of the disturbances, bitterness and hatred ex-
isted in a high degree." And no wonder. The exploita-
tion of cheap foreign labour is a fact which no American
disputes, though he hopes the worst of it is over. The
labourers, especially in foundries and mines, were enslaved
in the most literal meaning of the word. And when they
rebelled they were shot down by armed guards, or by strike-
breakers, as at Lawrence and Patersou; and at Everett,
Wash., where on "Bloody Sunday" the casualties were five
killed, thirty wounded, and a hundred more in gaol.

Many of these aliens realize that, although they escape
one form of militarism in the Old World, they are seized
by another in the New — the militarism of money, and the
vicious concept of the human machine. Here they found
the titans of trade using men as the cottager at home used
bees. They were creatures of profit; the study of them
had a cash value, and was reduced to an exact science.
That the wage-earner's life and limbs were cheaply held
admits of no doubt. The American Institute of Social
Service collected industrial casualties for four years, and

122 AMERICA'S DAY

set thein in telling array against the fours years' slaughter
of the Civil War. It was then seen that money's militarism
was by far the bloodier, exceeding that of the armed strife
by eighty thousand deaths.

In the quarries and mines — coal and iron, lead, copper,
silver, and gold — Mr. John Mitchell, of the United Mine
Workers, reckoned 11,986 cases of killed and injured in
an average year. By no means all the States record their
accidents, and official returns are questioned by unbiassed
observers like the late Dr. Josiah Strong, whose motto
was: "Better a fence at the top than an ambulance down
below!" Indiscipline and ignorance account for much of
this industrial havoc. Thus, out of 448 collisions on the
railway, three-fourths of them were due to negligence on
the part of trainmen and engineers. One hundred and
seven more occurred through heedless signallers and de-
spatches. Then foreign workers in the mines are careless
of safeguards, and are too often left to their own ways.
So their death is accepted as a daily event, and their
friendless bodies sold for dissection to the medical schools.

There remains the question of overwork and fatigue.
Science is not everywhere alert in the United States; and
the speed-up strains flesh and blood to the breaking-point
and beyond. An inquiry into the Terra Cotta disaster
on the Baltimore and Ohio line, near Washington, showed
that the engine-driver had been on duty for forty hours
out of forty-eight, with no chance of any rest. Moreover,
the railroad time-sheets for the two previous months gave
fourteen hours as the working day of six hundred train-
crews. On the Southern Railway the President of the
system lost his own life in an accident caused by a track-
man who was too weary to flag the train.

This phase of prosperity has long been a theme of the
social reformer. "A perpetual war upon humanity,"
Theodore Roosevelt called it. As Chief Executive he had

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 123

many a tilt against employers because of their callous
view of all this murder and maiming. Roosevelt also
brought it to the notice of Congress, pointing out that
"in legislation and the use of safety devices we are far
behind the European peoples." But for business reasons
this was a ticklish target for the American crusader —
unless he were a mechanical genius like Henry Ford of
Detroit.

It is the passion for results — a love of short-cuts and
spectacular methods — which accounts in part for the cheap-
ness of life and limb in America. Her greatest holiday —
the Fourth of July — was, until recently, a lurid and death-
ful orgy. Luckily it engaged at last the drastic attention
of both State and Federal Governments. Before "a saner
Fourth" was forced upon the nation, the day's fun cost
the lives of fifty persons, besides injuring five thousand
more, and inflicting anguish upon the sick in hospitals
through the din of giant crackers, cannons, and revolvers.
Many of the injured died later of blood-poisoning, lock-
jaw, and burns. This strange sacrifice has been gradually
reduced since 1899, when the Chicago T rib line first began
to count the casualties of Independence Day.

I am well aware that these things sound preposterous
to the British reader, but my task is to present the facts
and seal them with American testimony which there can
be no gainsaying. I shall pass lightly over the death-roll
of city streets, only remarking that in New York I rode
in the car of a wealthy speedster, whose record is, I hope,
unique. That car had already killed two men; it figured
in thirteen accident cases, and had injured nine persons,
of whom five would be crippled for life.

Police Commissioner Woods looked for, at least, one
death each day, and a case of injury every twenty-three
minutes. Yet his traffic squads were picked men, each
with special knowledge of his own zone. Block systems,

124 AMERICA'S DAY

new semaphores, and safety-isles are tried, so as to reduce
the street accidents; but the traffic-courts of the city tell
woeful tales of lawless men (and women, too) who never
drove a car before, yet essay a 'prentice hand in the rush-
hour at Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue !

European readers have a habit of dismissing queer or
monstrous happenings in America as mere Yankee yarns.
It is a mistaken frame of mind, an incredulity which is
resented over there as conveying a superior pose de Kant
en bas. What seems to us grotesque and strange is, to
an American, the commonplace of his daily paper. This
democracy claims extraordinary license, and chafes under
the new discipline lately urged upon it by leading men.
It is, indeed, a wayward people, following the feet of
change and revelling in the polyphonic surf of novelty.
Evasion of the law is a general symptom, coupled with
irresponsibility and the pursuit of individual aims. And
this entails calamity on a huge and frequent scale. Take
the burning of the pleasure-steamer, General Slocitm, which
sailed past the foot of the New York streets with a blazing
holocaust of a thousand souls — surely the most dreadful
sight which a great city ever witnessed. The inquest
showed that ever}r known rule and regulation had been
broken by the owners of the boat. And, to crown all, the
life-belts were found loaded with metal in order "to give
them the required -weight"!

Then there was the defective steamer Eastland, which
rolled over at her dock in the heart of Chicago for a
horrified populace to see. "There is not now," was the
official verdict on this disaster, "nor has there ever been,
an inspection service of the Federal Government for judg-
ing the stability of these boats." The result is that in
the last ten years thirty-one vessels have been lost on the
Great Lakes with every soul on board. A lawless spirit
in "the man higher up"; indifference or ignorance among

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 125

employes — these are contributing causes in a waste of life
and limb which has no parallel elsewhere.

The American worker of whatever grade is selected,
trained, and improved in a strictly productive way. There
are in the workshop taskmasters and efficiency engineers,
just as there are soil and crop intensifiers sent round to
the farms by the Department of Agriculture. The man
laying bricks, or feeding a furnace with coal; the woman
pasting labels on jars or cans — here is scope for highbrow
aid and the psychological laboratory of the University.
Or, again, here is a girl folding handkerchiefs. Somehow
she falls slack in the early afternoon; her output is below
that of her neighbours. Why is this? Here enters the
expert — if necessary with a cinema camera whose film will
reveal human frailty and fatigue in microscopic detail.
The reason for fewer folded handkerchiefs is that old chair
upon which the worker sits. It is too low, imposing extra
strain upon the girl to maintain her hands at the proper
level. Now enters the carpenter with four blocks for the
chair-legs — and lo, the automaton's output reaches the nor-
mal again and surpasses it.

Or, again, here is a Detroit motor-shop where twenty-
eight men assemble four thousand pistons a day, each man
putting piston and rod together in three minutes. The
operation is a simple one — incapable, one has said, of any
further speed-up. Yet the analyst has his eye on it. A
sleuth-hound of time is this omniscient plotter; he detects
each flick of a finger which "does not pay," and forthwith
enlists it for service. Those twenty-eight assemblers, it
seems, spend four hours of their nine-hour day walking
back and forth. They are now reshuffled. The task is still
further subdivided; the result is that fourteen men are
reported to the foreman as "free for other work." Such
is the speed up, which has become an extraordinary mania
in the United States — at any rate on the employer's side.

126 AMERICA'S DAY

Its ideal is to conciliate labour as it goes, selecting bosses
who are born for control. ' ' Tact, ' ' says the staff pioneer of
a big concern, "is the sweet oil of business. So keep your
can full!"

Many of the big concerns catch their employes very young
and drill them with vocational insight. This is especially
true of the electrical industry. The New York Edison
Company is supposed to choose its youngsters "in the
nursery." They are weighed in the balance of heredity
and environment; they are appraised and educated, cred-
ited or debited with plus or minus marks.

Health and a good appearance are factors insisted on.
So are perseverance and energy; the "Hold on" and "Try
again," with all concentration, enthusiasm, observation,
memory, understanding, and will. This strenuous gospel
— this sleety faith and all its fruitful works — may be said
to be the real religion of the United States. "There will
soon be no more priests," Walt Whitman exulted. "Their
work is done. A new order shall arise, and they shall be
the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest.
. . . They shall arise in America, and be responded to from
the remainder of the earth."

Here I am reminded that once, and once only, did Wall
Street reach out to save souls, with Mr. James Cannon, the
New York banker, as chief apostle. Five teams of well-
drilled scouts were sent out in advance to attack the strong-
holds of sin in the Eastern States, and that on highly
original lines. Even that difficult man, the late Mr. Pier-
pont Morgan, gave $5000 towards this novel mission, for
he was impressed by maps and figures, and by a card-
indexing of the redeemed which promised rich results.
The manager of this campaign gave up a fine position in
Detroit to act as the spearhead of assault ; and his action —
paradoxical as it may seem — was characteristically Ameri-
can. "We're going after souls," that zealot told me, "ex-
actly as the Standard Oil goes after business. And we're

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 127

backed by the best money and brains in America." But
the Standard Oil success was not forthcoming when the
first flush of novelty was gone. However, that soul-saving
is possible "on business lines" has been demonstrated foi'
years by the famous Billy Sunday, the ball-playing evan-
gelist who must be a rich man now, with a fervid follow-
ing which no orthodox preacher can ever hope to win.

Mr. Sunday's methods are lurid beyond all American
records, which is saying a good deal. "He has the bellow
of Edwin Forrest," an admirer says: "the glare of Ed-
mund Kean, and the flip modernity of George M. Cohan."
Billy's manager will enter a great city and form a joint-
stock company to guarantee expenses; these may reach
$50,000. A board tabernacle seating 18,000 people is
rigged up on a vacant lot, and then the show begins.
Mother may take her baby and have the little one checked,
just as father checks his hat and coat. There is no de-
scribing the vast audience; it is simply America. Here
are shop-girls, and members of the Hod-Carriers' Union.
The rich man is in the front row ; so is the music-hall man-
ager, who follows the uproarious scene with envy. "Billy
Sunday's act is the greatest ever," he sighs, and tries to
profit by it on the boards.

As a pulpiteer the unreverend Billy Sunday is at once
actor, acrobat, and mime. His hearers are in tears over
the sob-story of booze, — when lo, the preacher convulses
them with antic mirth ! He plays upon all the emotions.
He sounds all the human stops with a power that must be
seen to be believed; he uses the rich vocabulary of baseball
and prize-ring. See him picturing the eternal war of the
weak against the strong. "There's young David," he
screams, "soakin' Goliath on the coco, clean between the
lamps! Down goes the big stiff for the count. An' while
the kid's choppin' off his block, the whole bunch behind
the big feller skiddooes!"

128 AMERICA'S DAY

What milder pastors think of ' ' Sunday salvation ' ' makes
very mixed reading. Billy had shattered Springfield, 111.,
when a university graduate reported upon the moral after-
math of the orgy. "Our community seems disillusioned
and burnt out. The sacred power of souls to respond "to
the gentle voice of Christ has been strained and coerced
by these high-pressure methods."

Now for their cash returns. Concerning these the fa-
mous evangelist is very frank. "Do as you want with
your own money," he roars as the collection pans go round,
with a Fitzsimmons reach. . . . "Give if you will. It's
none o' my business what you do with your dough, an'
none o ' yours what I do with mine ! ' ' Philadelphia 's dough
came to $51,156 ; Pittsburg gave Mr. Sunday $44,000, Bos-
ton beat them all — though Cardinal O'Connell warned his
flock against Billy's bizarre performance. Here the col-
lections totalled $90,436.

These large offerings are chiefly from the masses, to
whom closeness in money-matters is the meanest of traits.
Thrift is today set before America's millions, and was none
too welcome at first, even when masked as "efficiency" or
"conservation." The wealthy were asked to set a more
sober example ; the worker was besought to save his money
so as "to prevent his wife going directly from his funeral
to a job at the wash-tub." So keen are the employers of
labour upon the workers' thrift that they go to extremes
of paternalism and stir up wrath by welfare schemes of
drastic range.

Take the Educational Department of Henry Ford's plant
in Detroit. "We estimate," an official said, "that sixty
per cent, of the men can look after themselves. So we or-
ganize to take care of the rest. ' ' The affluent workman is
here required to conform to a higher standard of life. He
must prove himself "clean, sober, industrious, and thrifty."
"It is not wise," says the chief inquisitor, "for working

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 129

men to spend money on things above their station." Em-
ployes must bank their surplus money, and domiciliary
visits are paid to see that this is done. Passbooks and
private papers must be produced when the Ford Investi-
gators call. No profit-sharer may take in lodgers; and
should he settle in an evil neighbourhood, well-meaning
despots transplant him and his into a sweeter quarter of
the town.

It would be absurd to suppose that this system was
meekly accepted by tens of thousands of men: Ford him-
self knows quite well that it is not. He would like to see
all the guidance, the advice and oversight of private affairs
made less minatory, more optional and free. As a "Socio-
logical Department" the inquisition goaded the men to
mutiny. It set up a rigid code of morals, it had spies all
over Detroit reporting lapses; it took testimony from chil-
dren against their fathers, and from wives against their
husbands. Mr. Ford was grieved over this tyranny, and
he checked and modified its scope. He does not believe in
Labour Unions, by the way, "because they mean war."
The equality of men he will grant you — as a theory with
considerable hedging. "But power of all sorts," he says —
"business, financial and political — seems to centre round
the big fellow; it has always been so, and I guess it will
always be." t

Henry Ford plays the democrat out on his Dearborn
farm. It is a mistake to suppose he is greatly loved, or
that his social views have any influence upon the municipal
government of Detroit. This is an extravagant town, and
men of the right civic kind will not "play politics," having
a more alluring game of their own in the gas-blasts and
automatic conveyers of their miraculous shops. INo doubt
Detroit is an exceptional instance of bossing and drilling
the human machine; it is at once the most foreign of all,
yet the most American of cities in spirit. Its population

130 AMERICA'S DAY

in 1900 was 285,000; today it has three-quarters of a
million, and assimilates aliens in a magical way, chiefly
through night schools, where Greek, Italian and Pole are
tempted to learn English, and so "become a better citizen
with a better job."

Printed slips of advice on these lines are found in the
worker's pay-envelope. The saloons are plastered with
similar hints; the girl who borrows a book at the library
finds promptings on the first page. Preachers and editors,
gangsters and ward leaders, all lend their aid to break up
foreign ignorance and blot out hyphenism of all shades.
The big motor shops put premiums upon adult education ;
some offer an extra two cents an hour to Italians, Hun-
garians and Poles who are learning English. Their teach-
ers are themselves taught by experts in immigrant edu-
cation, like Mr. II. H. Wheaton and Dr. Peter Roberts.

Here we see the "progressive action" which President
Wilson sets before American employers. He would like to
have an end made of anarchy-breeding inequalities, which
are still so glaring a feature of the great Republic. The
President also hoped that mutuality of interests will hence-
forth receive support — "and that men of affairs will lend
themselves to the task of making democracy a more effec-
tive instrument of human welfare. It cannot be said that
they have done this in the past." Here is a thrust which
goes to the root of civic and social ills. Hitherto the ablest
and most fearless of men — men of great wealth and moral
strength — have not been willing to serve the community in
public positions. The word politics conveyed a taint of
trickery and graft. Then the newspapers were also feared.
The result was that State and civic government passed to
professional cliques of the Tammany type, intent only upon
power and loot.

"Real remedies," as Dr. Wilson points out, "wait upon
the development of a more honest and more discriminating

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 131

public opinion." That big business is giving a good lead
to the smaller concerns in the treatment of Labour is now
undeniable. A notable instance of welfare-work was the
laying out of the industrial city of Gary by the Steel Trust.
This model town of 100,000 souls was designed and built
as one builds a country house, amid the sand and scrub
of the southern end of Lake Michigan. There were two
square miles of furnaces, foundries, and mills; four square
miles of tree-shaded streets, with parks, playgrounds, and
dwellings of many grades, each one perfect of its kind.

The Grand Calumet River was turned from its course;
all that science could suggest was here carried out to show
what American capital could do for its labouring men.
Industrial strife, it was hoped, would never mar the idyllic
life of Gary. Here the skilled hand could earn high wages
and rear a family, at the same time putting by a compe-
tence and enjoying life in the true American way. Squalor,
poverty, and vice — these were to have no part in the
Utopian city, with its fine boulevards and concert-halls;
its libraries, museums, and gymnasiums. All sewers, con-
duits, and pipes were laid in thirty-foot alleys behind the
town blocks, so as to avoid the noise and dirt attendant
upon the tearing up the streets.

As for the minimum wage, this is now assured in ten
States, and others will presently follow — though the Ameri-
can Federation of Labour opposes the idea, chiefly on be-
half of the working women. President Gompers cham-
pioned the cause of these before the Industrial Relations
Commission. "I am very suspicious," said America's la-
bour lord, "when I see Government agencies busy in this
way." His reasoning is too long and complex to set out
here, but undoubtedly there is confusion and evasion
through the conflict of laws in the various States. Thus
labour boycotts are forbidden in Alabama and Colorado —
where a Federal Statute declares them perfectly legal.

132 AMERICA'S DAY

There are laws against blacklisting in twenty-six States.
Others have special rules against intimidation, or against
conspiracy, or harsh conditions of employment like the
barring of a worker from his trade union. This lack of
uniformity hampers progress in unexpected ways.

The case for an eight-hour working day has established
itself after five and twenty years of agitation. It was
recently set before the Supreme Court in a brief of a
thousand pages intended to uphold the legality of the
Oregon Law. Tired workers and their diminished output
were here represented, whether in a candy store or in the
bituminous mines of Illinois. Shorter hours were elo-
quently urged upon a democracy that sets great store by
the intelligence of its citizens. How shall a man vote wisely
if he has no time for reading, or for study of the topics
of the day? Of what use are night schools to the worker
who comes home dog-tired after a complete round of the
factory clock?

Long hours led to poor health, and symptoms of strain
due to industrial speed and drear monotony. Cumulative
fatigue was set up and to this were traced the serious acci-
dents which figured so luridly in statistical tables. A
shorter day, it was claimed, increased the quality as well as
the quantity of work. It also promoted temperance; it
encouraged education and the general uplift which Amer-
ica is for ever preaching.

The rank and file of workers are now shown the way to
betterment ; the biggest prizes of all are offered to intellects
of devoted training, however lowly in station and poor in
this world's goods. "There's not a man in power at our
Bethlehem Works," Mr. Schwab declared, "who didn't be-
gin at the bottom and work his way up. Eight years ago
Eugene Grace was switching engines. But he out-thought
his job, and that, as well as integrity, lifted him to the

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 133

head of our corporation. Last year Mr. Grace earned over
a million dollars."

The smaller concerns follow this lead, and seek to kindle
in their staff a goodwill and interest which never existed
before. "Let's put up a Suggestion-box," a certan partner
proposed. For some weeks it was a nest of complaints and
vile abuse — of course with no signature. "They've got a
grouch," said the smiling deviser of the plan. "Now
they're working it off. But we'll get some notions pres-
ently." And so they did. An idea of great value was one
day found among the mixed contributions, and a cheque
for $1500 was quietly handed to the man as he worked at
his bench. He was of course astounded. Two years' wages
for a few lines on a scrap of soiled paper! The news
spread like fire. A second man soon waved a $500 cheque ;
a third had $1000 to show, and was proud beyond any money
at this tribute to his wit in the utilizing of waste products.

Yet, in spite of this movement, America remains the land
of giant strikes fought out with firearms and dynamite.
How is this to be explained? Perhaps by the inequality
of distribution which here presents quite monstrous con-
trasts. Mr. Rockefeller is reported to be a "billionaire."
Certainly the man's riches are beyond any dream. Against
him and his may be set the "poor whites" of Kentucky and
Tennessee, a folk who live as illiterate savages in a bleak
and dismal squalor passing all belief — even the belief of
most Americans. It is the record of the Standard Oil
and other Trusts which have set up those "antagonisms of
industry" which President Wilson deplores.

"We find," says the Preamble of the Industrial Workers
of the World — a Labour body of seventy thousand members
— "that the centring of ihe management of industry into
fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to
cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class."

134 AMERICA'S DAY

That labour laws are nullified is beyond doubt ; the
sovereignty of States and the powerlessness of the Federal
authority are great temptations to the unscrupulous in
this direction. "You must watch them!'' cried little
Sarah Shapiro to the Women's Trade Union League of
New York. Sarah was a garment-worker over on the
East Side, and could read the greedy emploj-er like a book.
"I shall take you to our factory after hours, when the doors
are locked and all the windows darkened. Yet inside are
the girls and children — working, working, working!"

The Federal Government prohibited from Interstate
Commerce the products of all mines, factories, and mills
employing child labour. But there are still two million
working children not protected by this Act. The Southern
Senators opposed its passage in Congress as likely to clash
with existing local laws. Mr. Tillman, of South Carolina,
found the Child Labour Bill not only unconstitutional, but
also an infringement of States' Rights. New Mexico,
North Carolina, and Wyoming have no child-labour laws
at all. And nowhere does the Federal Act apply to farm-
work. On the whole, there is ample ground for Labour's
cynical attitude in the face of princely gifts from million-
aire employers. I was astonished at the spirit in which
these benefactions were received. "He'd steal the cow,"
said a superintendent grimly of a very great man indeed,
"and give away the horns for the love o' God!"

At the best time of the year there are 7,000,000 wage-
earners in the factories, at the worst time only 4,500,000.
Therefore, according to the Census of Manufactures, there
is a regular human "slack" of 2,500,000 workers. The
number of men who lose four months or more out of the
year totals 3,300,000. Now, to regularize this drifting
labour baffles all investigation, so immense is the area to be
covered. Subway construction may be finished in New
York, whilst California figs and oranges are waiting to be

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 135

picked. But the distance between these two points equals
a journey from the Old World to the New

There are fine chances for the small cultivator in the
Yazoo Valley of Mississippi ; the flour mills of Minnea-
polis send out hurry calls for hands. But it is nobody's
business to handle the floating forces of labour and distri-
bute them in strategic and seasonal areas of the continent.
American prosperity is, therefore, an elusive condition. No
man lives who will guarantee it for two successive years.
Desolation dawned with 1915 — only to melt into the pro-
digal riot of 1916. Bubble finance and frenzy were ram-
pant in the cities; the farmer was rolling in money with
his cotton at twenty cents instead of ten, his wheat at
two dollars a bushel instead of ninety cents. It is perhaps
this uncertainty which fosters in the United States a
gambling spirit which I have not seen equalled in any land.

"We are a composite and cosmopolitan people," Presi-
dent Wilson owned in his Inaugural Address to Congress.
"We are the brood of all the nations now at war." A note
of regret runs through this grave message, because counsel
and action had been turned from "the great problems of
domestic legislation" to "other matters lying outside our
own life as a nation." America had no control over those
gusts, "which have shaken men everywhere with passion
and apprehension." It was a disappointment to Dr. Wilson
who had set his heart upon the unity of the nation and
internal reforms of crying need. "We have sought very
thoughtfully ... to correct the grosser errors and abuses
of our industrial life, to liberate and quicken the processes
of national genius and energy, and to lift politics to a
broader view of the people's essential interests."

When all has been said about welfare schemes we still
have to consider the armed guards and strike-breakers
whose work it is to crush uprisings and disrupt the in-
dustrial Unions. Now this strike-breaking and gunning

136 AMERICA'S DAY

is an ugly symptom of that cleavage which the President
deplores. A Labour Board may be in full session over a
dispute, but both sides will take no chances. The em-
ployers order out their secret armies, with weapons and
without ; the Unions have trained corps watching the pro-
fessionals who would force the open shop upon them." A
typical strike-breaker was the late James Farley, of Phila-
delphia, who was a rich man with a blood-stock farm at
Plattsburg, N. Y., and a cheque which Wall Street would
at any time honour for $100,000. Mr. August Belmont
used to say that Farley was "a born soldier." Certainly
he gloried in the fight ; he was shot at five and twenty times,
and received over five thousand threatening letters in a
year. Railroads, street car corporations, mines, machine-
shops, and factories all employ men like Farley and Harry
Bowen — who took out a special policy upon his own life
for $100,000. Strike-breaking bosses are on the pay-rolls
in peace time ; and as the first murmurs arise, secret agents
scatter among the men to ascertain their case and their
financial strength. Meanwhile the "breakers" are enlisted.
In a New York subway tie-up Farley was paid $5 a day for
each man, and $1000 a day for himself as field-marshal of
the strike army. It was a task of deadly peril, but Farley
cleared $130,000 in this one campaign.

Today the strike-breaker has a gentler name. Mr. James
A. Waddell is an "expert in emergency employment."
This general has an armory of 1100 rifles in New York
City, as well as barracks where guards are drilled and
maintained. When a railway tie-up was in the air, Mr.
Waddell mobilized in Chicago 13,000 trainmen and engine-
drivers. For this force he drew the great sum of $65,000
a day, plus ten per cent, commission on the commissariat.
How large a matter this may be is seen in a thirteen-day
strike which called for $168,000 worth of provisions. In
many cases, the Labour Union is beaten, the strike called

THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 137

off, and mortified men ordered back to work on their em-
ployers' terms.

It is against militarism of this kind that President
Wilson has set his face. "Our industries," he declared,
"have been under the control of too small a body of men.
Business ought to be democratized, and made to see that
aristocracy is bad for it, just as it is for governments."

CHAPTER IX

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS

". . . Men can assist Fortune, but they cannot resist her; they
may weave her webs, but they cannot break them." — Machiavelli.

I know no stranger institution than the Lincoln Memorial
College down at Cumberland Gap, in the lonely Appala-
chians. Here is a forlorn region of rugged spaces and
wretched farms, which a negro would despise ; of one-room
huts where illiterate women spin, or barter hog-meat and
feathers. Vendettas and feuds are the only break in a life
of complete stagnation. There are no waterways in this
mountain land, the railways have been careful to avoid it.
Yet in these hills dwell Americans of the purest breed
descended from pre-Revolution pioneers; a real peasantry,
vaguely known to the outside world as the "poor whites" of
Kentucky and Tennessee. They are unobtrusive, however.
The poor whites are lost Americans ; clannish and resigned,
given over to tribal wars and a diet of " 'possum and pea-
nuts, with occasional nips from a moonlight still."

From this unlikely stock have come some of America's
greatest men. The greatest of all was Abraham Lincoln,
who as a boy crouched at a "poor white's" hearth, and by
the light of a blazing pine-knot pored upon the Six Books
of his salvation.

"When greatness came to the hero, he never forgot those
days, nor the bleak abandonment of that life. The poor
whites had no chance, so Lincoln asked his friend, Oliver
Howard, to help, and in this way the University for Lost
Americans was born. It has a farm of six hundred acres.
All the practical trades of men are here taught, all the

138

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 139

useful chores which a woman should know both in the home
aud out of doors. Students at this College leave the plough-
tail, the cow-byre, kitchen, and sty to take their final degree,
then they walk home — fifty miles or more — to spread the
new light in a darkness which is generations old.

It is not so long since Dr. Wilson took over the Lincoln
hut at Hodgenville, Ky. ; it is now a national memorial,
enclosed in a granite temple. That occasion was pecul-
iarly solemn. The speaker's fervour; the surroundings
and historic associations all combined with the war-cloud to
produce a deep impression. Gradually the speech veered
to the novel demands and duties of today. "Democracy
will be great," the President said, "and will lift a light for
the nations only if we ourselves are great, and carry the
lamp high for the guidance of our own feet. We shall
not be worthy unless we be in deed and in truth real
democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very
lives for freedom and justice." The speaker has often
shown himself alive to the limitations of the older Ameri-
canism, and he now appealed for a larger patriotism on
the lines laid down by Aristotle: "The salvation of the
State is the business of all its citizens."

Let me consider in passing the Americanism of yester-
year which rested on individualism and the square deal for
all. It is best defined by the foremost of the intellectuals
— Dr. Charles W. Eliot, who for a generation headed
the academic world as President of Harvard University.
"Americans desire for each citizen," Dr. Eliot says — "what-
ever his birth or station — adequate opportunity to develop
the best there is in him, and to win a social position con-
sonant with his capacities and character, both innate and
acquired. They are quite aware that men are not born
equal in these respects; . . . but Americans insist upon
the chance to rise and to do the uttermost. Moreover, they
long for a mobile and. fluent community, in which men and

140 AMERICA'S DAY

women climb or fall quickly — as it were automatically — in
accordance with their dower, whether this be strong or
weak, virtuous or vicious. They have no objection to
genuine leadership in politics or business — or even to dis-
tinctions of birth, provided that leadership is based upon
superior mental and moral powers, and that birth means
inherited force or transmitted culture. And Americans
believe that society should give or maintain no privilege,
save that which is founded upon capacit}' and achievement."
This need now merges in new national consciousness, be-
gotten by the war. "What Emerson called "the sluggard
intellect of this continent" is at last astir, and prepares
to meet "the postponed expectation of the world with
something better than the exertions of mechanical skill."

It is true that America has perplexity to face when we
haul home the guns and open bloodless fire upon her and
one another in the economic field, which is to say the whole
earth. "Make no mistake about Britain," New York is
warned by skilled observers, who went round our "shops"
after a visit to the red litter and black cities of Northern
France. "You wouldn't know her now. Britain is a new
commercial and manufacturing Power — alive, alert, and
plainly bent on conquest. When the crazy fight is over,
Old England will have what she never had before — a race of
business-breeders of the scientific sort. Such labour-saving
machines as they have now! Such fresh ideas too, and
enterprise that's postitively explosive! For the first time
you meet high-brow professors in the factory; physicists,
specialists, inventors concerned with Death today, but
tomorrow with dyes, or drugs, or dolls.

"So prepare for economic war after the War. Are you
ready for the coming tussle in Central and South America?
Have you a clear-cut-policy for Far Eastern trade ? Or was
Prosperity just a pipe-dream of the war — one that vanished
with the smoke of it, leaving Uncle Sam to bleat and trail

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 141

blindly behind the band-wagon, like a brindle ealf behind
a Kansan hay-cart?" Such fears as these have a certain
following, but President Wilson takes a different view.
"Even when peace conies," he said, "what instant rivalry is
to be feared? Already the killed, wounded, and missing
reach a staggering total. The reconstruction of industry
and commerce is bound to be attended with confusion and
delay. It stands to reason that the first task will be along
the lines of repair, to make good, the wastage and havoc of
war. Then prodigious debts will burden the belligerents.
And, aside from interest on money borrowed, each Govern-
ment will have to care for millions of cripples, widows,
and orphans." There was no reason, therefore, to fear a
surcease of America's prosperity. "Not only is there the
part we shall be called upon to play in the rebuilding of
shattered Europe, but the great markets of Latin-America
and the Orient are also calling." And to hasten develop-
ments, the Ship Purchase Act was devised, and plans laid
before Congress to assist American trade.

Here we have the President in practical vein, narrowing
his vision to the material needs of the hour and trying to
lay the ghost of business blues that stalks at every Ameri-
can feast. It is certain that the war-boom was no time for
Quixotic strokes on the part of "those who love liberty,
justice, and right exalted." For no era had seen the Get-
rich-quick craze so reckless and wide. It threw into the
shade the mania for speculation which began in 1899 and
died down in 1907. Hundreds of new millionaires were
made in 1916. The cities were bulging with riches that
ached to be spent. Small farmers up in Maine (to their own
amazement) found themselves "potato princes," with their
land rich as Nevada patches where high-grade ore may
begin at the grass-roots.

Now was the heyday of wild-cat stocks and fly-by-night
"syndicates for undisclosed purposes." The promoters of

142 AMERICA'S DAY

these withheld the very nature of their venture, and on that
account reaped the larger harvest. Even shrewd financiers
were badly ' ' whip-sawed ' ' — to use a Wall Street word — and
wrote off serious losses in the spirit of the man who sent off
a quarter for a "fine steel engraving of George Washing-
ton," and received in exchange a penny stamp bearing the
hero's head! Why is it that Americans are so gullible?
Why is the craze for short cuts so common a maul to men
who aspire to be rich without any effort ? Because the short
cut is possible in this land of unique resources and spec-
tacular coups. Nowhere in the world are the ups and
downs of fortune so dramatic and swift as here. Consider
Dan Sully, the bull operator in cotton, who bossed the
markets of New York and New Orleans. He made millions
a day — for exactly one week. Then the price broke, and
Dan was forced to the wall with debts of $10,000,000.

Was he downcast at all? Emphatically no. Trade was
fairly singing, and the defeated Cotton King sang with
it from disappointed depths. He would "come back," as
they say of the beaten pugilist. "Life springs anew,"
mused Dan sententiously, "from the grave of lost wealth.
I'm down, but not out. I'll spring up again at the gong
with a new gait, and then you'll see things leap where now
they crawl ! " It is the American spirit that bubbles here.
Whatever is sent these men "receive in buxomnesse," in the
old Chaucerian spirit. They let hazard reign, retaining
their composure and the mens acqua amid stormy bliss that
changeth as the moon.

James R. Keene won and lost his all in plunging style —
not once, but half a dozen times. The Pacific Coast grew
too small for Keene 's operations; he must needs sell out
and go East to lock horns with Jay Gould in the Wall Street
arena where giants are for ever vying like the Broadway
skyscrapers.

Wary and grim, the Railway King made ready for the

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 143

onset. "I hear Keene 's coming East in a parlour-car full of
money. Well, I'll send him West in a freight-car when the
light is over." The invader did have a bad time at first.
He tried to corner the wheat market, and Gould squeezed
him badly. Then Keene tackled Russell Sage, but his foes
joined forces, inflicting a loss of $8,000,000 in a war of sixty
days. But plume-plucked Richard came back in the grand
manner. James Keene paid all his debts ; then he began
to juggle with sugar, tobacco, and railway stocks till his
cheque was once more good for $30,000,000.

There was also "Bet-You-a-Million" Gates, a tragi-comic
figure of the old school, now passed from the hectic scene.
John W. Gates was a rugged fellow, a man of muzzle-
loading maledictions whom Pierpont Morgan loathed.
John had a grudge against the great financier, who denied
him a seat on the board of the Steel Trust as a crude, in-
decorous person. Gates brooded upon this, and took his
revenge by buying the Louisville and Nashville Railroad
overnight from the Belmont family, afterwards forcing
Morgan to take it off his hands at a profit of $7,500,000. In
1902, a whole cohort of these ''Kings" came out of the West,
scenting battle and power in Wall Street. There were Tin-
Plate Kings, and Kings of Wire and Sheet-Steel; others
again had kingship thrust upon them either by the Mc-
Kinley Tariff, or the accident of cheap fuel on the Ap-
palachian plateau.

But men travel by night, as the Moslems say, and
Destiny travels towards them. Playing with our daily
bread in the frenzied wheat-pit of Chicago, James Patten
cleared $750,000 in a few hours. Joe Leiter's corner is an
historic event, so is the railroad duel between Edward
Harriman and James Hill. This was the strategy which
allured America, though her leaders urged upon her the
"competition of virtues" which Burke declared to be the
only profit of war. In this land a penniless man may, by a

144 AMERICA'S DAY

clever stroke, make himself master of the game. A striking
instance of this was the famous ' ' postage-stamp bid ' ' which
Abe White of Texas made for Grover Cleveland's bonds in
the panicky days of '96. The President appealed for gold
to replenish the Treasury reserve, and a great idea flushed
the red-haired lad from far-off Corsicana.

"White was without a dollar in the world; yet behold
him nosing in and out of Wall Street offices to estimate
likely tenders for the emergency bonds. I ought to say
that Secretary Carlisle exacted no deposit from patriots
on this occasion. Young Abe, with characteristic daring,
filled up a string of bids totalling $7,000,000, and sunt them
off to Washington by registered mail at the cost of 1.11.
When the allotments were out, a sum of $1,500,000 stood in
the unknown name of Abraham White of New York. The
issue was a great success. Government credit rose, and
the bonds were listed at a premium. But how was Abe to
find this huge sum, with no more assets than a sure financial
flair, and that felicitas for which the Romans looked in the
genius of their generals? Mr. White took his allotment
down to Russell Sage, and begged for a boost with a suasive
tongue and argument there was no gainsaying.

The railroad giant was delighted to help. It was, of
course, a gilt-edged deal ; and as he listened, Sage recalled
his own dim days as errand-boy in a grocer's shop up-state.
He financed Abe's bid, and the resulting clean-up gave the
Texan a handsome start. He had luck, and the multitude
followed him for a time.

It is no use pretending that careers like White's have no
influence upon the masses. "Abe can fly without feathers,"
his publicity agent said. "He'll run a shoe-string into a
fortune. Look at his Bonanza Gold!" America looked
very hard indeed at this ugly venture. To give Abe his
due, he returned all moneys when nothing but "frost" was

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 145

found in those shining sands and veined rocks, which were
presently to dazzle the speculators.

It is of course a pity that wild-cat stocks are advertised
at all — especially with such decoys as the Mohawk Mine in
Goldfield, Nev. There was a time when Mohawk Mine was
quoted at ten cents a share on the New York Curb Market.
It soared to $20 when the ore in sight was paying $1,000,000
a month. Here, then, was a spring-board for the wild-cats
in 1916. They appeared in all the cities with Denver, Col.,
as the fiercest of them all. For the Mohawk was a great
name. There was the Red Top, too, that hopped from
eight cents to five dollars. There was Great Bend and Sil-
ver Pick; Four Aces, Jumping Jack, and the Stray Dog.
America rose at them all as a pike will rise at a spinning-
bait. In boom-towns of the Sierras publicity-men were
writing "human interest stories" of sudden wealth. Here,
for example, is a mysterious waster who sold his little claim
for six figures and lost all in Larry Sullivan's saloon. This
prospector owed his laundress $40; he paid the poor soul
with a bunch of worthless paper which she jammed into a
cigar-box among candle-ends and scraps of string. A few
weeks later they were dug out as ten thousand dollars'
worth of property.

These were everyday events, and not concocted stories.
One advertising agency spent $1,000,000 in newspaper ad-
vertising. Companies were floated in thousands, but not
one of them made good. And some idea of the speculative
spirit can be formed from that fact that this one boom
inflicted a loss of $200,000,000 on the credulous American
public. That Nevada rush had all the features of old-time
Western life, and boomers made the most of it in a liter-
ary way. There were desert tents with snowy ranges in
the background. Here was the tin bank with gay ruffians
cashing in on the strength of sensational daily strikes.

146 AMERICA'S DAY

Great sums were lost and won in the gaming-joints, where
faro and roulette went on all through the drunken night.
Bad men held up the mule-teams, and stole ore that showed
"four noughts to the ton."

Pneumonia and poor food filled a God-forsaken ceme-
tery ; some of the camps were thirty miles from any water,
and over a hundred from the railway. No timber was
available for the mines. To crown all, there was no per-
manency in the patchy ores, and the boom collapsed at
last in dismay and general wrath.

At every turn Americans are tempted by the science of
investment, which Russell Sage used to say was "the most
profound and complicated of them all." To make money
quickly is an American obsession ; one turned to rich
account by swarms of sharks whose array of argument and
appeal must rouse the student's admiration. Here again
State barriers and conflicting laws intervene to snatch a
rascal from the ball and chain of felony. The cheats had
an unexampled harvest in the flush time of 1916-17. But
there were fashions in the crooked game. Thus the old
bucket-shop disappeared ; it was killed by crusaders of
the Stock Exchange and the Board of Trade. Another
factor was the refusal of service by the telegraph and
telephone companies. Bonanzas in cotton, and land-
irrigation schemes; fake insurance and the bold "syndicate
of secret process" — these also were missing. But the oil-
well and the mine are perennial lures, tricked out with
allusion to Rockefeller and Senator Clark, the Montana
copper-king and patron of art, whose Fifth Avenue man-
sion so bristled with bronze that he set up a foundry of
his own in West Sixteenth Street.

The motor-boom bred hundreds of fly-by-night con-
cerns, run by veterans from the backyards of finance —
often from the State gaols. One of these sharks, with
handsome offices in eight cities, was recently raided by the

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 147

Federal Government for using the mails with intent to
defraud. In ten months he had wrung over five million
dollars from every known class. His literature bore the
stamp of genius; his free book — The Open Gate — would
have opened the purse of Hetty Green herself.

In another brochure, a handsome lad was seen haunted
and dunned by outstretched hands — crude hands of trades-
men, dainty palms of women, expressive enough, but im-
perious or full of greed. "Where's the Money Coming
From?" was the arrestive legend. "There's more due to
you out of Life," the harassed one was told. "Get it —
Get the Money, the repose and success which you ought to
have."

This is a diverting subject. You may follow it through
the bronze doors of the Stock Exchange in Broad Street,
a place of clanging confusion and maniac cries. Member-
ship here is so sought after, that $75,000 has been paid for
a seat. I shall not follow the financial brain-storms of this
money-mart, nor the records of panic and boom, with at-
tendant scenes of ridiculous frenzy. However, the most
recent deserves passing mention, for it preceded the famous
Peace Note of President Wilson and quite demoralized
the Exchange.

People who were rich on paper only — plungers in "war-
brides" and munition stocks — saw their profit vanish as
they stared; all manner of people, from the scrub-lady
of the Ritz-Carlton to ranchers of the Western plains.
"Funny thing," remarked the moralist of the coloured
supplement, "but the moment the millennium bobs up —
bang goes the bottom out of our stocks!"

I shall not dwell upon the scenes of the Curb Market at
Wall and Broad Streets; they would read like a visit to
Bedlam — though the annual business done in this roped
enclosure exceeds a hundred million dollars. "The Curb"
is a fantastic pandemonium of hardy stalwarts, whose garb

148 AMERICA'S DAY

varies with the season. For this arena is no place for
invalids. Heavy rains find the brokers in sou 'westers, oil-
skins, and rubber boots. An August heat-wave brings them
out in shirt-waist garb; and in the zero blizzard a chorus
in Arctic furs serenades the luxurious towers all round
with, "In the Good Old Summer Time !"

Communication between the offices and these men is
very queer to watch. Excited figures lean from the sky-
scrapers and shower pellets of paper, or even weighted
notes, which sportsmen below catch before any one is hurt
or killed by them. There are secret codes of gesticulation
with the swift commerce of deaf-mutes. In all this mad-
ness, however, is money method on sound lines; and the
Dean of the Curb presides with eloquent fingers and a
megaphone of heaven 's own reach.

The dollar-hunt has lost some of its zest now that "big"
Americans have left it and given themselves to that public
service for which President "Wilson has so often appealed.
Already there are signs of change, though they are not demo-
cratic signs. Afar off in California a thinker like Professor
Ide Wheeler, of the State University, regrets the grouping
of new "castes" and classes. At the other side of the
continent a typical magnate like Charles M. Schwab would
like to see an American "aristocracy": "The men who
have succeeded — who have helped to build up the country,
and now contribute to the efficiency and well-being of
their fellows." There is less blatant vying of late years
among the "cottagers" of Newport and Lenox. Mere dis-
play in the House of Have is voted vulgar now, whether in
yachts or racehorses, or lavish entertainments with details
priced for the reporters — the frocks and jewels, the flowers
and food and wines, even the massed money represented
round the festal board in the persons of famous men.

One is surprised to pick up in salons of the great a sort
of American peerage, with pedigree tables set out with

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 149

regal circumstance, beginning with the Astors and the Van-
derbilts. There follow the Goulds and Rockefellers, the
Morgans, Mackays, Havemeyers, Fields, Lorillards, Ar-
mours, Harrimans, Du Ponts, Belmonts, Whitneys, Leiters,
and Goelets. Mrs. Astor queened it in her day, calling the
famous Four Hundred from the social mass as the cream
of America's money-power. Mr. George W. Perkins set
an example of civic spirit; the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan
spent nearly forty million dollars in looting Europe of its
art treasures for the enrichment of the United States. And
in a later day we find Mr. Benjamin Altman, the Fifth
Avenue draper, bidding seventy thousand dollars at
Christie's for a Hoppner portrait of the Lady Louisa Man-
ners.

The Rembrandts of Havemeyer, the Sugar King, are the
envy of connoisseurs. So are the Pompeian bronzes which
Mr. John Wanamaker gave to the University of Pennsyl-
vania. For the portrait of Pietro Aretino by Titian, Mr.
H. C. Frick paid $100,000. Well may the Old World fear
the American millionaire, when he seeks such treasures with
the best advice in Paris and London to guide saleroom bids
which are not to be denied. Italy had to pass special laws
to prevent her noble but faded families from parting with
heirlooms and works of art. Mr. Pierpont Morgan restored
to the cathedral of Ascoli its famous Cope, because he found
it had been stolen for sale to the "mad American" who was
in Rome with millions of lire to fling away for such things.
When the harassed banker returned to the Grand Hotel,
he found six thousand letters from people offering treasures
of all sorts, from a Cellini dish to a Delia Robbia plaque
built into ancestral walls.

This is an acquired taste in America, yet the rough
diamond seeks it — the social climber and men of mushroom
wealth who follow a leader with blind faith, and pay great
prices for unblushing fakes.

150 AMERICA'S DAY

No collector can escape these things : witness the Moabite
pottery which the faker, Shapira, foisted upon the German
Emperor. But no nation in the world buys bogus works
of art on the American scale. The subject has long de-
lighted the comic artists of New York, who pictured the
"well-upholstered plute" in his marble gallery on Madison
Avenue, staring at a Cinquecento pax or a monstrous god-
dess "by Rubens" . . . "Why had the Old Masters no
pretty girls among their acquaintance?" Yet there is hope
for the plute who feels the bleakness of money, and regrets
a life in which "Red-lined accounts were richer than the
songs of Grecian years." There are many such converts
in the United States today, where divine things are not
held lightly, despite all appearance to the contrary.

Many of these money -kings have had none but the "fe-
rocious education" which Louis Philippe bewailed, with
physical torment too, a hard bed and never-ending battle
with toilsome tasks. The city child thinks in terms of
money, turning his spare time into dollars with precocious
Hair. It is the money standard which faces the home*
seeker in the wilds when he presents his entry-claim at the
Federal Land Office — say, in the rolling foothills of the
Flathead Indian Reservation, which was opened to white
settlers in 1910. Here is cut-over land disfigured with
tree-stumps which' must be blasted out with a low-freezing
explosive in cold or wet weather. "The ground covered
by a single stump," the State mentor tells the pioneer,
"will grow from twenty-five to fifty cents' worth of food in
a year. You may take it that an acre of a hundred stumps
will produce $50 worth of a crop after clearing. So why
leave these dollars under the stumps? Why pay taxes
upon stump-land when the whole world cries out for Amer-
ican farm-stuff?"

So the speed-up is introduced to this jungle of yesterday.
Mother Earth must now produce; she is encouraged and

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 151

bribed and trained, her output watched and methods im-
proved precisely as with the human element in Detroit
shops. Most of the States send country advisers round
on regular tours of counsel and inspection. These men
are local Ministers of Agriculture, with social and uplift
missions as a sympathetic side-line. The farm expert
may make three hundred calls in a summer. He draws
maps of the fields, showing drainage, fertility, and fitness
for this crop or that. In passing he notes the barns and
houses; the village school, the social and economic con-
ditions of the community. Then he meets the folks at a
peach and oyster supper, and in a hearty talk impresses all
with cheery science and assurance of bumper yields — if
his guidance be followed intelligently.

In this way pioneers are taught to know soil-types at
sight, as well as insect pests and remedies for their ex-
termination. Men learn how to test seeds and rotate the
crops; also the value of rock phosphate and limestone.
Social intercourse, promoted by that visiting genius from
the world beyond, develops a spirit of co-operation in buy-
ing and selling to the advantage of all. Yet these rural
sections need more than money, as Mr. Carl Vrooman testi-
fies; he is Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in Washing-
ton. "I know farmers," Mr. Vrooman says, "who have
broad fields, great herds, huge barns, and long bank ac-
counts, yet their success ends abruptly there. They live
dull, narrow, purposeless lives, devoid of all aspiration,
happiness, or public spirit. The wealth of such men is
like much of the fertility in our soil ; it is not available.
These farmers need instruction in the art of living just as
their less skilful neighbours do in the art of growing and
marketing their crops. For, after all, it is only the wealth
we dominate and dedicate to some fine purpose that we can
be said actually to possess."

What I may call the new America has no quarrel with

152 AMERICA'S DAY

money-making, but does seek to endue it with high vision
and aims. Yet Success remains an absorbing game in the
United States ; its votary is too often a hermit plotter, ' ' as
unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop," as Byron said of
himself. This quest of profit is a peculiar peonage. It
begins in childhood ; it matures in the hard man of tabloid
speech, whose real confidant is the cylinder of an office
dictaphone.

Now come with me into the prairie spaces, and watch the
American boy coining his wits into gold. Here is Charles,
aged thirteen, with a nice little pony of his own and $40
in the bank besides. His first capital was a dying piglet
with a broken back, presented by his father as a hopeless
case. But Crip pulled through and lived, fed by his young
master with pitiful care. Crip was soon sold for $4, and
the money invested in other piglets with equally slender
prospects of life; for Charles was now become-an expert.
He was constantly marketing porkers, and reinvested at last
in sheep, with which he had great luck.

"I saved my pennies and nickels till I was six," the suc-
cessful man will tell you in a reminiscent mood. "Then I
had ten dollars. With that I bought a Jersey calf, earning
money for its keep till it became a cow, and I was able to
sell milk, prouder than any farmer."

The girls make and sell college flags to help their own
education. A widow with sick children and a mortgage
of $500 on her frame house will turn her last few cents into
the nucleus of a little fortune. She becomes a "cake archi-
tect." Thousands of women have found "the cook-stove
route to Success": Mrs. Ellen Kidd of Richmond, Va., with
her pin-money pickles; Miss Mary Laverty, with canned
and jellied fruits, now worth $7000 a year; Mrs. L. A.
Schaaff, who sells marmalade by the car-load in every city
of America. Man, woman, or child, these people will not
be kept down, whatever disability may hamper them. Con-

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 153

sider the case of F. R. Bigler, who as a railway servant lost
his right arm below the elbow and his left foot above the
ankle. ' ' I was up against it, ' ' this gallant fellow owned to
me in Kansas City, Mo. "But I had to forget the word
'can't.' What's more, I slid past 'I will' and froze on to
'I must/ whilst learning to write with my left hand.

"On leaving the hospital I walked miles after a sales-
man's job, with a 'hot box' in the new joint of my artificial
leg. And a dandy salesman I became ! When I called, I
gingered up the 'Can't-See-You's' and 'Nothun' Doin's,'
till they gave me the glad hand as 'Expectiug-You's' and
'Dee-lighted You've Come!' Mind, I've broken no sky-
lights on my way to the top, but all the same I 'm comfort-
ably fixed."

The American spirit shines bravely here. It is a spirit
of many facets, with an ethical code which, it must be
owned, is lenient to "the 'cute trick that comes off."
Many a time have I heard the late Edward Ilarriman un-
ravel the tangled skein of American business with a sar-
castic smile. He would tell of a State Legislature that
blocked his plans. "These people are crooks," he would
say, calmly; "and I can buy them." This frail little man
was lord of fifty thousand miles of railroad and controlled
a more powerful oligarchy than ever sat in Washington. A
deep trader in the wash of Wall Street wars, Harriman
was absorbed and cool at the desk, though fidgety and
nervous in his private life. The ambit of his schemes over-
leaped the United States ; he pegged out Mexico and China
in enormous claims. It was strange, indeed, to hear this
man dissect human nature and American graft, with all
the frigid science and detachment which we associate with
Guicciardini and Machiavelli. To the hot-headed Roose-
velt (as President) this meteoric genius was "an undesir-
able citizen." But he was also a great American, carrying
craft and force with him as Ulysses did the winds.

154 AMERICA'S DAY

Huntington, Harriman, and Hill — here are three master-
builders who "found desert and left a garden" in that
mighty West where they carved out a group of the wealthi-
est States in the world, and shaped with steel rails the
destiny of five-and-twenty million people. As companions
these titans are far more interesting than their European
compeers. They may care no more for poetry and art than
Darwin did ; they are probably eaters and hunters of facts,
who

"Contemplate the wisdom of the past,
And see the splendid thing we've made of it at last."

But their whole life is in their work. Big deals are to
them a delectation, just as painting was to Veronese; his
water-colours to Turner, and to Gautier and Flaubert the
magic of carven words and jewelled lines.

Sir Rivers Wilson once travelled West with James Hill,
and for two hours sat with the statesman-strategist in his
private car, soaking in statistics and economics of the
prairie and its population. "I was mentally prostrate,"
the Englishman owns. "I left him at last with the excuse
that I had letters to write, but really in order to sleep off
the debauch ! An hour later I was awakened by a knock on
my door. It was Hill's secretary, with four foolscap sheets
packed with figures, and commencing: 'Dear Sir Rivers, —
Pursuant to our discourse. . . .' ' So thought and action
were inextinguishable fires! James Hill saw with sleeping
eyes, and played the game in dreams by night as well as
day.

To sit with a group of these men on the deck of a yacht in
the Sound, or in the lounge of the Poinciana at Palm Beach
is to realize that truth is stranger than any fiction in the
matter of human experience and strife. The big fellows
relax and expand on these occasions; they grow episodic
and discursive, searching the detritus of years and recalling
trifles with a tinge of regret in their mirth. Thus "A" left

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 155

a poor man's camp in Arizona, and was soon digging out
"gold bricks as big as an Iowa barn that assayed twenty
dollars to the ounce." As a lad, "B" was in a copper
boom on the El Paso and South- Western, a savage country
close to the Mexican border. "C" was of the ancicn
noblesse of New York, with no rough corners in his career.
He came of a family that waxed great as realty values
grew in the most chaotic of cities. The C's had a pedigree
that went back to 1801, when hay was mown in Astor Place.

"D" was once the slave of a cross-roads store in south-
west Kansas, where railways were unknown, and broom-
corn and milo-maize stretched in leagues to a brassy
horizon. Here "D" doled crackers and tea to old-timers.
He chewed calico, too, and spat balls of it on the counter
before critical ladies to prove that the colours would not
run. As a child of eleven " E " ran errands for the men in
the Cambria steel-plant at Johnstown, Pa. At thirty-eight
he was a millionaire. One night "E" met ten of his col-
leagues in the Stotesbury mansion in Philadelphia, where
he sold Cambria to the Midvale people for $72,900,000.

"F" is the head of a mail-order concern whose sales
amount to $140,000,000 a year. Of this immense traffic,
not one dollar's worth is sold over the counter; it is purely a
postal business, with catalogues and lists of which 40,000,000
copies were issued last year. This idea was due to a boy
station-agent in the Minnesota wilds. He sold cheap
watches through the mails, and his advertising had an
irresistible pull. Today "F" retails every known article
from a button to a bungalow ; for wooden houses in sections
are commonly ordered through the post in the United
States.

"Your staunch Aladdin home" (the advertisement tells
you) "comes to you in a sealed box car, complete even to
the key of the front door. All is ready for the carpenter to
put up, with wide porch, a big parlour and dining-room;

156 AMERICA'S DAY

three bedrooms, a work-saving kitchen, a bath and the
latest hygienic closets. The price is $687." These are the
homes which the Western cyclone so easily whisks away,
often with serious loss of life. They can also be jacked up
and removed on wheels by a team of horses — or by a motor-
car which is photographed in the act of trailing a mansion
in its wake. For this will be a double-edged advertisement.

I must not forget "G" in my group of magnates; he is
the Timber King, perhaps the most distinctive of them
all. His hosts of lumbermen in the Pacific North-West are
turning American forests into cash with incredible speed.
The}' sleep under pines that were towers of green when
Columbus fell on his knees and kissed the earth of a New
World. ' ' G " is something of a recluse, with a silent empire
of his own in the remote States of Oregon and Washington.

Here begins at dawn the song of the ax and hammer and
saw ; the crop of centuries is harvested with an ardour and
method which has lately alarmed the Federal Government.
"We are the champion wasters of the earth," Secretary of
Commerce Oldfield told the Philadelphia Board of Trade.
And he gave amazing instances, including the reckless
havoc wrought by squatocrats of the timber lands, before
whom noble forests melted away into a dismal tangle of
sumach and blackberries.

I have spoken of ethical codes peculiar to men who have
come to the solstice of honour and power. How these codes
have changed one realizes as "H," the tram-and-train lord
of New York, recalls the manoeuvres of Belmont and
Ryan, of Gould and Sage and Whitney. Historians of the
City try to probe the tangled mergers and pools of those
troublous times; the perfidious deals which considered
everything but the common people. "The story of our
street railways," says a New York authority, "is one of
franchises stolen from the public. Of bribery and the

ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 157

corruption of officials; of debauchery in the Courts of
Justice, of stock manipulation and the deliberate wrecking
of rival roads, whereby hearts were broken and the innocent
involved in direst ruin. A classic instance was the Thirty-
Fourth Street tramway, which showed costs of $6,472,287
per mile, whereas the real cost was only $150,000. The
sum charged for steel rails alone would have laid the whole
system with solid silver bars weighing forty-seven pounds
to the yard."

That era passed with the power of Tammany Hall. And
today the Federal Government, whilst averse from undue
interference — "Government by suspicion," as the President
calls it — is determined to attack business of the "loaded-
dice" variety : the description is again Dr. Wilson's own.
Business of that kind is often allied with shady politics;
and here an experience of the great Edison lends point.
Apropos his first patent was a machine to record votes, and
this he took to Washington, and showed to veterans in the
Capitol lobby.

"It's mighty ingenious," one of these conceded — "an
invention you couldn't monkey with if you tried. And
that's just the trouble, me lad. If all things here were
on the square, and no man tried to crook us, — why this
invention would be a dandy find. As it is, it's useless."
The crestfallen inventor asked, "Why?"

"Because we must leave a loophole," he was told, "a
chance to block the fellow who seeks to railroad through
Congress a little pork-barrel of his own. So you see, this
machine is the last thing we want. Mind, it's a bright
notion, all right for the Utopian State, but there's no ideal-
ism here — only just politics. So take the damned thing
away ! ' '

Mr. Edison owns that the lesson "broke him all up."
He profited by it, however, and on the way home vowed that

158 AMERICA'S DAY

never again would he waste time and brains over an article
which would not sell. There is much "Americanism" in
both sides of this story.

With these dubious ethics we find a puritanical spirit in
the people at large. This paradox is seen in the career of
Elihu Root, who is one of the ablest of American states-
men. Mr. Root might have been Republican candidate for
President, only the White House is for ever barred to him
in public estimation. The counts against him are twofold :
His defence of Boss Tweed before Judge Noah Davis, and
his activity as leading counsel for the Metropolitan Street
Railway — the most reckless of all the old-time traction
gambles. William Tweed was the hugest embezzler whom
even Tammany has known. He looted New York on a
colossal scale ; and the lawyer who defended him was re-
buked by the Judge after the notorious boss was convicted.
"Good faith to a client," came from the Bench to Mr. Root,
"can never justify or require bad faith to one's conscience.
It is well to earn fame as an advocate ; it is still better to be
known as an honest man. ' '

CHAPTER X

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS

President Wilson locates the real wealth of America in
"our great, flowering acres," and quite rightly points to
the farm as the greatest asset of all. In 1916, although
the crops were poor, agricultural products realized the
vast sum of $13,41'J,U0O,00U. High prices made up for a
diminished yield, and the following season, in response to
Presidential appeals, the area under cultivation was
enormously increased. The city American knows little
about rural conditions. lie is in the main an agrophobe,
and life in the country is to him inconceivable. Thus Rube,
the farmer, looms as a comic creature, whose ways are
drolly shown in coloured supplements of the Sunday papers.
He is scarcely real — a shadowy wraith, with scientific
guardians in Washington who teach him to tickle the soil
and so drown America with plenty.

Against this may be set the fact that Rube is leaving the
land for the streets of "white light," and the big industrial
centres ; here he does less work and earns much more money.
This movement is remarked in all nations, but I cannot
stay to comment upon it. Even Germany is alarmed by a
flight from the land which has reduced her rural population
from 63.4 per cent, in 1871 to barely 39 per cent, today.
But that Rube, the American rustic, should forsake his
garden came as a real shock to the city folk. He was
thought to be a pampered person, turning over wads of
wealth with a pitchfork, and keeping old age at bay in
the great outdoors. Thirty dollars hung from his fig-tree.
A Texan acre gave him a whole bale of cotton, or cauliflow-

159

160 AMERICA'S DAY

ers to the value of $900 where there was a well to wet the
top. So at any rate the city understood.

What was the hog but a prowling dividend? The hen
was worth $9,000,000 to Kansas alone. As for the goat,
he cropped the worthless hillside and made grass-land out
of it in the process. He raised his own kids, boarding
them on brush and weeds, with much consideration for the
farmer. Experts of the comic supplement showed the goat
browsing on bits of paper and tin. cans. He was said to
weed the garden, and repair the fences for the feeble
farmer who looked to Congress instead of to manure and
the sweat of his own face. . . .

So the homeseeker of the plains was now bound for
Broadway, and the intensive farming of human beings !
Not alone from the Dakota Bad-Lands was he trekking,
or the Oregon sage, but from that tropic paradise of the
poor man— palmy, piney Florida, surely the fairest State
in all the sisterhood of commonwealths ? Florida was below
the frost-line, the city man argued. It was an open-air
hothouse of sugar-cane and citrus groves, where no man
worked save for exercise and to feed the less fortunate
Northern people.

With little in his pocket but rectangular holes, the
merest hobo could buy orange land down here, and rich
muck soil such as old Nile never made in its overflowing.
For the terms of the agent were : " A dollar an acre down —
that's all! a dollar an acre a month — that's easy."
Florida's name evoked a Pindaric Elysian for the pure in
heart. "A Garden of Eden without snakes," as the land-
boomer called it feelingly — "A Riviera without swells."
Here the lotus-eater shot big game in his back-yard, and
hauled out of the sparkling Gulf red snapper, pompano,
and the mighty Jew-fish of four hundred pounds.

Wiry, then, was Rube leaving the lush regions, and head-
ing for Manhattan and the skyscrapers ? The official reply

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 161

surprised America. It was because of the drear serfdom of
the farmer's lot; because of a host of foes beyond the
scope and science of the Federal Entomologist in Washing-
ton. True, the Bureaux showed Rube how to fight the
chinch-bug and the army worm ; the weevil that spoiled his
cotton-bolls, the tick that tormented cattle and pierced their
hides to the farmer's loss. But human pests preyed also
upon Rube: usurer, the big railroads, and a gang of com-
mercial brigands who posed as middlemen and absorbed
nearly all his profits. "Our normal life is on the land,"
says Henry Ford, speaking for America in the mass.
Ford's earliest dream was the cheap farm tractor, with
fuel distilled from the growing crops and not bought from
the greedy Standard Oil. "The mechanical tractor will
replace the horse and all draft cattle; it will do all the
heavy work and make our farmer independent of short-haul
freight rates. As things are, more than fifty per cent, is
added to the consumer's cost after the crops are grown !"

"Efficiency in production comes first," this typical Amer-
ican pursues. "But not less important to Rube is the mat-
ter of handling, distributing, and marketing his stuff. Up
to now the trusts have cheated our farmer. The cost of
transport hampered him, the banks have soaked him an
awful price for loans. I want to do away with all this. I 'd
like Rube to stay on the farm, for he's better fixed now than
ever he was. The cheap car keeps him in touch with the
outer world. He can hitch his telephone to the barbed
wire fence ; he has the phonograph, the moving pictures, and
electric aids. Still, when all's said, our farmers do need a
missionary government and influential friends in Con-
gress." They have a staunch friend in President Wilson,
whose Good Roads Bill and Cotton Futures Act, the Office
of Markets and Rural Credits Bill, are all sound measures
in the agricultural revolution which began with the greatest
of wars.

162 AMERICA'S DAY

America learned from her Government that Rube had
been neglected. He was a kind of mujik, it seemed, whose
very existence the intelligentsia of the East ignored, until
high food prices brought him, together with his crops and
"critters," on to the front page of the New York papers.

But who is Rube? Whence comes the most unmartial
of all Americans, whose attitude to war is summed in the
Chinese maxim: "We do not make swords of our best
iron, nor soldiers of our favourite sons"? Rube is often
enough an alien — a German, a Finn or a Swede, at his
ease on the early homestead claim, which may be twenty
miles off the rail in a primeval wilderness of dark pines
and tamarack and fir. Rube is the landless man on the
manless land; he squats with his women upon wild sod
soil, where steam outfits are breaking a thousand acres a
day. I saw Rube in the primitive stage at a dry-farm
meeting of Poles on the prairie of Eastern Colorado. Here
thirty families sat down to a basket dinner, with stack-
covers upheld with boards to keep off a sun-blaze which
imposed silence upon us all. There was not a tree to be
seen as tired eyes swept a breathless horizon. This is how
townships begin.

The next scene is a group of wooden shacks and sod-
houses, with buffalo grass for lawns. Water must be hauled
two miles; but the women are brave, and take their turn as
path-tinders, ploughmen and builders. Even so, Rube is a
good American ; he may even be a real American migrating
from another State. In any case, there is keen competition
to get him. Virginia makes an official bid. So do the rail-
roads and land-agents of the South and South -West, going
out by way of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas ; the semi-arid
regions and the Pacific Coast — then back East through the
Rocky Mountain States: Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.
The rural homeseeker is really an immigrant of a secondary
type. He is one of the floating mass that studies, with a

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 163

view to betterment, the literature issued by State agencies,
as well as by realty-men of all grades.

Thus the intense cold of [Michigan may prove too much
for the Italian beny-grower. He is therefore attracted to
the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, where the Reclamation
Service have, by irrigation, made apricot orchards out of a
desert of cactus and sand. On the other hand, a Dane or a
native American may be driven from Arizona by the fierce
heat; and he now surveys all America's range for a more
temperate clime. There is constant migration of this kind ;
and to lure the settler on to the land is the special work of
railway Industrial Departments charged with the develop-
ment of new territory. With the rhapsodic boomer-sales-
man who buys part of "Section 32 — Township 12 — Range
14," I shall deal in more detail, as he deserves. For the
land-boomer is a genius, as well as the most amusing rascal
in America; he buys by the mile and dreams of selling by
the square foot.

Booklets and maps, folders, pamphlets, and "letters of
experience" — these are turned out by the ton. Written
with skill and fervour, they are illustrated with photographs
of a conventional type. Here, for example, is an early
pioneer beside a crude hut on the roughest of land. On
the opposite page is the same man assisting a large wife
(and the girls) into a swell car outside a colonial mansion.
He has made good in a few years. In the background a
couple of whirling threshers are at work; and farm hands
are driving buggies through oceanic crops, from which
emerge only the men's heads and those of the horses. A
glance at this farm literature is worth while, for it reveals
an important phase of America's materialism. Nature and
man's labour are here translated into dollars and cents; the
versions varying from sober tables and reports to soaring
raptures over "the golden pay-dirt which you handle with
a hoe."

164 AMERICA'S DAY

Virginia makes a dignified appeal, as befits the Mother
of States. Settlers are shown the tobacco-fields, and
tasselled maize which is fourteen feet high. Orchard
ledgers of Waynesboro are produced to show how each tree
filled ten boxes, at $10 a box, with "that sun-kist pippin
which we call the Young Man's Hope." Then come the. tes-
timonials. Here is a doctor from California, disappointed
by coastal fogs and the heat of inland valleys. He had
lived in many States, and was now vowed to Virginia,
where niggers knew their place and malaria and mosquitoes
were alike unknown.

There was also the man from Iowa, to whom northern
blizzards and cyclones were now but an evil dream. He
was today the Water-melon King, filling standard cars
on the railway with Eden Gems of forty pounds apiece,
grown on deep phases of the Norfolk loam. These migrant
settlers are met by local agents whose strident offers call
from the official booklets. "The chance has come to You
— it will not come to your children." . . . "Be Careful!"
cries the Homeseeker's Friend. "You may encounter a
crook at the depot, and of course he has a big bargain
just to toll you off. If he says he's the agent, and won't
let you see the seller, then it's time you sat up and looked
for horns and a tail ! ' ' The honest one tries to put this
warning into German, Magyar, and Italian. "You are my
guests, gentlemen," says he with the beau geste. "Your
board and livery will cost you nothing on the show-me
trip."

As we go South and West the exuberance of the boomer
rises. "It's mighty fine to be king of your own farm,"
says North Carolina, where deed restrictions "will for ever
prevent the land from passing to a negro": this clause is
never waived. "It's grand to know the future without
any fears, and that the man of fifty-five — the age of city
failure — is here at his best; his experience ripe, his judg-

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 165

ment good, with no lime in his bones — thanks to God's
sweet Southern air." . . . "How can any reader," a sud-
den challenge rings, "with red blood in his veins, scan the
leaping stories set down here, and not feel fired in the same
way? So fill up the contract-form on the last page — it is
your Declaration of Independence." Here is a Chadbourn
farmer who came in a prairie schooner from Indiana after a
voyage of six weeks and five days. He was a cripple, with
an invalid wife and eight children — "as forlorn a family as
ever sought the sun in this blessed garden spot, where
merely to breathe is to drink Ambition in camel-draughts."

That heroic cripple cleared the first three acres on his
knees, and was soon raising wheat at forty-five bushels to
the acre. "But he said 'Yes,' " the earnest agent hammers
at waverers. "He grasped the offer, as the city man may,
leaving all the turmoil — the battering, bruising strife of
office and streets. Come where the tomato ripens in mid-
May. Come where the hog only dies when he goes to the
smoke-house, after a riot in peanut fields where the 40-bushel
crop merges mystically into pork at four hundred pounds
to the acre. ' '

Kansas, the core of the continent, raises an unblushing
pa?an in her own praise. The Sunflower State is not the
treeless, sand-swept, cyclonic barren of city imagining, but
a granary "where the farmer has so much corn that he
can't find his way home!" There were no white men here
in 1850. The Indian hunted the buffalo ; American soldiers
hunted the Indian ; all the plagues of Egypt settled on the
soldier until the name of Kansas became a lurid reproach.
All that has passed, and today the State has nearly two mil-
lion people who have done wonders to plough the Great
American Desert off the map.

In the semi-arid regions of the "West, vast areas are now
"brought under the ditch" by the U. S. Reclamation

Service. And by the Carey Act, agreements are made with

i

i66 AMERICA'S DAY

the Federal Government for the development and sale of
desert lands — "not exceeding a million acres in any one
State." Irrigated farms are sold with water-rights from a
system of canals, like that of the Arkansas Valley of Col-
orado, which cost $2,000,000. The result is very striking.
Cherry-orchards here make $500 an acre. Senator Crow-
ley's little fruit-farm of ninety acres at Rocky Ford cleared
$20,000 in a single season.

But the boom State — the State of mushroom cities and
fortunes — is surely Oklahoma, which was long ago given to
the red man as a home ' ' so long as the grass grows and the
water runs." It was President Jackson who signed this
domestic scrap of paper. But the Cherokees refused to
budge beyond the Mississippi. The Seminoles went on the
warpath for years; but at last the Five Civilized Tribes
were settled in Oklahoma. Not for long, however. One
April day in '89 an army of whites, 60,000 strong, invaded
this No-Man's Land, and the city of Guthrie was born in
a night with a population of 10,000 souls. Next the Iowa
and Fox lands were thrown open. After these came
3,000,000 acres of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reservations.
The Cherokee Strip was twice as big ; and to it were added
lands of the Kickapoo, Kiowa, Apache, and Wichita Na-
tions. There was no rest for the red man. He is an Amer-
ican misfit ; he vanishes slowly, out of sight and out of mind,
with his tomahawk tamed to a pruning-hook, his buffalo-
robe exchanged for an agency blanket. Yet some of these
redskins are very rich. Braves of the Osage Nation draw
millions of dollars from lands and royalties on oil and
natural gas. A headright in the Osage tribe is worth
$27,500 ; but I fear wealth only hastens the process of decay.

Restrictions upon Indian lands have been gradually re-
moved in favour of the white pioneer. Soon there will be
little left for the aboriginal tribes but "reasonable areas for
homesteads." Meanwhile, the invaders develop Oklahoma

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 167

with impetuous zeal. New cities are shaped in an hour.
Newcomers dwell in tents and shacks and dug-outs until the
township of Pawnee or Shawnee is fairly on the map —
heated and lighted with natural gas, oiled in crude oil or
grain, and of course with a live newspaper to record and
boost the raw metropolis.

All the semi-arid States have irrigation schemes. Even
Nevada tried to forget her lurid past, and now poses as
"Uncle Sam's Nine Million Dollar Farm." Here land is
almost given away, and water-rent charged for a ten-year
lease of the dams and ditches of the Truckee and Carson
Rivers. The idea is to supply the mining centres with fresh
home-grown food. For here is a large non-producing com-
munity with plenty of money to spend. Nevadan towns
and camps are largely fed with tinned stuif, imported in
carload lots from more fertile States. This elusive treasure-
house could never sustain herself, and at last the Reclama-
tion Service came to her aid with canals and pumps and
reservoirs.

Thereupon much of the desert bloomed. Diversified
farms appeared among the sagebrush of Las Vegas; oases
glowed in the Carson Valley, not far from the famous
Comstock Lode. And a new Nevada called to the farmer,
dressing the Sierras in orchard guise and denouncing as
slander her old repute as an ash-heap freaked with gold
and silver.

I fear she remains a volcanic desolation. After all,
Nevada has her own bonanzas — her sudden pay-streaks of
gold, and wild stampedes, as to the Kendall claim where
ore was sacked assaying $10,000 to the ton. Farming in
this Tom Tiddler's ground is a ticklish task. "You must
have money to begin with" — even the land-boomer admits
this awkward fact. "The capitalist can live here in com-
fort" is his victim's way of putting it. And therewith
that victim works up to a crescendo of disillusion. He

168 AMERICA'S DAY

writes a letter that sears the recipient who sold the land
and representing it as Nature's shrine, where a few twigs
stuck in the rock became a bending grapefruit orchard.
"The only trouble with pears is the breaking down of the
trees." . . .

"Yes," sighed an agent to me in St. Louis. "Nevada is
an imperfect Eden, with a soil-making process that tends
to get on top of the water. It's a pity. The farmer out
there needs real science as well as the push you can't keep
in with a hog-tight fence. Strange, how the man of guinea-
pig power will hear Opportunity knock along that rainless
sand ! He takes up three hundred and twenty acres under
the Expanded Homestead Law, and then sits down to watch
things grow ! Of course nothing grows but disgruntlement.
And the last chapter is a letter to the agent so hot that
Uncle Sam needs an asbestos mail-bag to carry it."

Dry-farming and the ditch are also features of New
Mexico and Arizona. Torrid arroyos and virgin mesas
have here been made to yield; but again the process is
not for the poor man. Both of these desert States are
larger than Great Britain ; their range includes the date-
palm and the turquoise mine. Here also, I must say, the
West remains very mild, and no boom literature can alter
the fact. It is all very well for Arizona to advertise her
fabulous copper mines, her new orange and olive gardens;
her ostrich farms, and that Ilomeseeker's Ideal — the Salt
River Valley, where irrigation has done flowery things. It
is good to hear that the Houses of Parliament in Phoenix
were "built without scandal, or even a breath of sus-
picion"; that college men are ranching here; that the desert
is "dry" indeed in a whisky sense, and wholly free from the
toughs and yahoos too long associated with the Border State
in uninstructed minds "back East."

Granting all this, the fact remains that Arizona is the un-
likeliest place for farming. Moreover, judge and jury have

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 169

not yet superseded the "hip pocket" court as an arbiter of
equity and law. The Arizona Rangers, under Captain T.
H. Rynning, could tell tales of frontier life madder than
any yarn set out in the penny blood beloved of British boys.
Grim encounters with smugglers and stage-robbers, moon-
shiners and cattle-thieves — Indian, Mexican, and American.
For the Arizona bad man still haunts the Border; and at
Douglas he has only to cross the dusty street to find himself
in Mexico. Down here desperadoes still spur into town
with pistols, rifles, and dynamite, intent upon the bank
safe. And later they gallop over the Border with their
haul. The lifting of horses and stock became so serious at
last that small ranchers gave up in despair; and then the
Arizona Legislature brought the Rangers into action.
These are half-police, half-soldiers; crack shots, and cowboy
sleuths well versed in the desert wiles and amenities. So
the farmer in these parts has enemies in lurk, even though
"God an' Natur' " be not ranged against him, or the -wolf
and the worm — the flood and drought and tornado of the
Northern States.

It is this eternal warfare which in part accounts for
Rube's defection, and that growing distaste for life on the
land which has alarmed the Federal Government. The
symptoms are not merely local ; they are fairly general from
sea to sea. Over much of New England farming is un-
profitable now; the hilly sections are worked out. New
Hampshire and Vermont, northern New York and Western
Massachusetts have "abandoned farms"; the process is
spreading in Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and Virginia. Thou-
sands of men from the Middle West have gone over into
British Columbia or the Canadian North-West, in search
of cheap and fertile lands. What is the cause of this?
Partly the increase of population. The disappearance of
public domains has had much to do with it. So have spec-
ulative abuses of the land-laws; the "tiring" of the soil

170 AMERICA'S DAY

by imprudent methods, and the havoc of floods due to reck-
less destruction of the forests.

Few Americans realize the damage done by soil erosion,
caused by the cutting of timber on the hills. "Will the
lumberman straighten up," asks the booklet of the Woman's
Club, "and see what his fortune is costing us?" No, he
will not, so the destruction goes gaily forward. The present
stand of timber covers 550,000,000 acres, or about one-
fourth of the United States. Of this stand four-fifths is
privately owned, and the present rate of cutting is three
times greater than the annual growth. Forest fires alone
cost $50,000,000 a year ; and all efforts to rouse public senti-
ment have had little effect in reducing the prodigal waste
of timber which attends the development of America: the
extension of railroads, the settlement of public lands, the
building of cities, and the opening of mines. In one year
the State of Michigan alone cut 3,600,000,000 feet of white
pine, with the result that her wheat crop steadily dwindled
from 35,000,000 bushels to 8,000,000 bushels. Indiana's
forests are but a memory now ; a century of clearing forces
that State to import eighty-two per cent, of her lumber.
Disastrous floods are frequent in deforested areas, like the
lowlands of the Southern Appalachians. In one year floods
fed from this treeless tract caused $18,000,000 worth of
damage, sweeping away bridges and dams and homes, as
well as spreading barren sands over thousands of fertile
acres.

The flood was a serious discouragement to the farmer, and
he began to give up ownership of the soil. In a couple of
decades one-tenth of all the holdings changed to a tenant
basis ; and nomadic renters hastened the agricultural decay.
In 1902 the Reclamation Act was passed; and a Board of
soil experts and Army engineers went out to survey the
desert States, with a fund of $20,000,000 behind them for
irrigation schemes.

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 171

Thirty million acres of likely land were mapped out by
the Reclamation engineers; then rivers were dammed and
waters impounded on a great scale. But from the first
Director Newell sounded a warning note. No simpleton
would succeed as a farmer in these arid zones. Labour
alone would not do, for "if working took the place of
thinking along the desert ditch, then every male would
have a bank account."

Here the opening is for the few ; and the fact should be
made clearer to the trustful homeseeker, who is too often
swindled by visions of an irrigated West, where the orange
grows in dust and sleek kine turn the alkali-flats into a
model dairy. There is too much of this hilarious stuff in
circulation, and the rustic, native or alien, is all too apt to
believe it. Is he not for ever absorbing miracles? He
hears of a cow on the shore of Lake Huron milked by elec-
tric power from Niagara Falls ; of moving pictures thrown
on the screen in Seattle by means of melting glaciers in far-
flung peaks of the Rockies. The wit of man — machinery —
electricity; all things are possible through these, the wide-
eyed rustic is told, until wonder has banished all mistrust.

"If your crops increase at this rate," said the agent to
the Texan planter, "what '11 they be worth ten years
hence ? ' ' Rube was overcome, but managed to blurt out at
last: "There ain't that much money in the world!" It
is this bouncing spirit which makes the boom literature so
easily accepted. A favourite State with the land-sharks
and colonizers is Florida, "where wire nails will blossom in
a sandy loam, which has a marl below it that shows eighty
per cent, of lime." Florida is a magical name, linked with
tropic fruits — the lemon and the lime; guavas, mangoes,
and pineapples. Nevertheless it is no place for the average
farmer, as a glance from the car window shows on the way
down to Palm Beach, which is the Monte Carlo of America.

Here are miles of palmetto-scrub with sworded leaves;

172 AMERICA'S DAY

miles of dismal cypress swamp, and of live-oak festooned
with ragged moss; miles of grey wilderness too; and over
all a sifting of tine dust which covers everything in the train
as with a coating of flour. An unpromising garden is this
Florida, tricky and treacherous; rich enough in spots,
though often ruinous to the experienced citrus-grower.
Yet homeseekers buy land here which they have never seen,
relying entirely upon the boomer and the Development
Company who seem so fair and forthright, with their money
back offers and pressing invitations to a Show-Me trip "in
our private car, Millicent."

As many as fifty of these concerns^ have operated at one
time in the "orange garden of the world." They buy
thousands of acres of sand-soaked stuff and sell it at $50
an acre to weaklings who drift from State to State in search
of an easier life. There is no resisting the boom literature,
nor the follow-up letters mailed at intervals from an office
in Chicago or St. Louis. These are positively ecstatic.
They anticipate each question and demur till it seems folly
not to sign and remit a money order for a stake in "this
predestined centre of wealth and population." . . .

' ' Here things grow for the sake of growing, and to make
glad the heart of man. Here noxious things call a hushed
truce, and good growing weather lasts from March to De-
cember. . . . You're homesick for the South, so come out
of bitter places where the thermometer gets white in the
face with cold. Come down to Punta Gorda and perfume-
laden zephyrs of the Gulf. The frail and feeble here get
well, the well get rich; the poor live for nothing on game
and fish and a little garden. What you pay for coal up
North will clothe your family in Florida. "... And so the
wild place is invaded. The new homestead may look like a
forsaken goat-walk in West Texas. It may be in the tall
timbers, or in raw cut-over lands — even in a noisome marsh,
where a wagon sinks to the hubs in mire. Still it is always

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 173

Florida, and the Show-Me tripper is easily overborne by
the rogue's word. Just as dubiously (the shy visitor is
reminded) did the "Iowa pioneers survey those treeless
plains which now feed the world."

And then the boomer gets down to practical things. "If
your hogs get wormy with over-eating, mix lye with their
feed and so protect your profits. Don't wait till the hogs
are dead. Try a quarter of a can to each barrel of slop. . . .
Your own health is assured. Doctors are the only droopy
people in these parts. If you hear a cough, be sure it's
imported. And you'll know the hearse horse when you see
him, for he's downright ashamed of his job!" The comic
side of this traffic has long been pictured in the papers:
Mr. Ilomeseeker's first night in a languid heaven which
turns out to be a floral swamp aflame with fireflies; the
boom of bitterns heard afar, and frogs in all octaves. A
bush township is on the map indeed, and there it will re-
main for a season. It will never materialize beyond the
boomer's first improvements. Remote from railway mar-
kets, it is impossible to sell delicate and perishable fruits.
So the lots merge once more into the jungle. And Mr.
Homeseeker — "his face wrorking, his mind yearning for
likely curse- words" — is driven from an Eden where snakes
curl on his doorstep and alligators bark in his backyard ! . . .

There is no need to harp on the mischief of these frauds.
The failures drift back to the city, and for all time they
kick and croak whenever "the land" is mentioned. For
it calls up a hell of a life, with savings sunk and farming
hopes gone down for ever. Such pessimism as this injures
America badly. Meanwhile, the boomer swings another
deal, being nobody's keeper but his own. Yet even this
callous calling shows signs of grace in a time of flux and
change. The new type of boomer is Ben F. Faast, of Eau
Claire, Wis. He formed a company and bought 50,000
acres of brushy, cut-over land to retail in the usual way.

174 AMERICA'S DAY

Most of the buyers were factory aliens and steel-mill hands ;
nameless creatures known to the furnace boss as a number —
as a bull might be, or a convict. In the course of years these
men had saved a few hundred dollars; they could peel off
a few ragged bills to make the first payment on fifty acres
of the uncouthest land.

But such "farms" are not quickly cleared; perhaps an
acre a year is won. Knowing buyers will strip the brush
from ten acres or so, and then grow clover and timothy
among the stumps. Or they turn in cows and hogs and
sheep to grub over the ground, and help the frost to dislodge
the rugged roots. At any rate, Mr. Faast grieved over his
clients' bargain. They could not support a family on the
land; and, turning once more to wage-work, they fell
between the two stools of livelihood. In this case the
boomer decided to clear and develop the holdings; his
company could do it better and cheaper than any individual
settler. First of all the land was gone over with a steam
stump puller. Then Mr. Faast built cottages and barns;
he also stocked each forty-acre lot with a cow and two pigs ;
a dozen fowls, six rolls of wire fencing, and other needs. A
ready-made farm was then offered on a long-time basis of
purchase ; and so low was the interest that the buyer could
make a living from the start.

I cannot stay to trace the rise of Boomtown from its
"unincorporated" stage to the order of Judge So-and-So,
who proclaims it a city of the second class. But miracles
of this kind never cease. Not long ago the Imperial Valley
in Southern California was a tangle of tropic thorns and
arid scrub, infested with tarantulas and snakes. Last year
it sent out 100,000 bales of fine cotton, and 10,000 freight-
cars full of melons and other fruit. The chapparal thick-
ets of South Texas are conquered this way ; so are malarial
swamps of the Mississippi, which cover the richest of
alluvial lands.

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 175

Yet no skill can ensure success, and the fact is strikingly
shown by the cotton crop. Of this commodity the world's
annual need is 20,000,000 bales, and America produces
about three-fourths ; the looms of Lancashire alone call for
4,000,000 bales. Now in the first month of the war, when
the New York Cotton Exchange closed its doors, the staple
stood at 7 cents, or $35 per bale of 500 lbs. Planters and
markets were aghast. A pool of $135,000,000 was formed
to steady the price, and ten cents were aimed at as desirable.
As consumers the Central Empires were cut off, but the
military needs of the Allies created a boom without prec-
edent in the trade. For in scientific hands the stuff can
kill as well as clothe; cotton is a prime factor in the high
explosive of today which destroys merchant ships and turns
Northern France into a crater-field. By the end of 1915
the price had risen to 12 cents, and Southern planters were
mourning their reduced acreage and the careless handling
of a growing crop which had been thought worthless.

The yield for 1915 had been over 13,000,000 bales, and
farmers now set to work with furious zeal on the largest
acreage ever sown to cotton in the United States. Mean-
while speculation and rumours of peace, with exhausted
nations replenishing their stocks at any price, sent the
staple up to 16 cents. The extra demand, it was thought,
would exceed three million bales, apart from Indian and
Egyptian supplies. But while man was proposing, Nature
disposed. In mid-July, when all looked well, the whole
cotton area of the Atlantic States was swept with storms of
wind and rain. The rich bottoms were flooded for days,
the uplands scoured and washed severely. To crown all,
the dreaded weevil attacked the bolls in countless swarms;
this insect flourishes in damp weather, and now it appeared
in districts never visited before. There was great distress
in Alabama, where the negroes were soon beating the woods
for food; even white landlords had to mortgage their

176 AMERICA'S DAY

plantations. The crop excess of three million bales, so
confidently predicted, now melted away. It was not even
a normal crop, but about three million bales below; and
the result was that cotton soared to 20 cents and over — a
figure unapproached since the Civil War.

Even more serious was the falling off in wheat. With
high prices ruling in the first six months of war, the Ameri-
can farmers added ten million acres to their wheat area.
But much of the extra crop was so poor that millers
refused to buy it; and there were many complaints from
purchasers abroad. In 1916 it was hoped that wheat pro-
duction would approach the normal, but here again Nature
intervened, and Government forecasts came whittling
down owing to losses from rust and blight, and other
causes. In any case our daily bread is at the gambler's
mercy. I know no stranger figure than that of the Chicago
Wheat King, who never sees a grain of wheat and may be
unable to tell a harvester from a plough. Yet he sways
vast tides of the North-Western plains. Behold him in his
skyscraper office, poring upon charts and wavering ratio-
lines of population and production.

The Wheat King has weather reports from Chile and
the Argentine. He knows the threshing conditions of
India and Siberia; the "invisible" supplies in farmers'
hands and the "visible" in grain-elevators and ships; on
the railways, the canals, and Great Lakes. At the man's
elbow is a crop-map of the United States. And all day
long electric advices ring and buzz from his commission-
men throughout the continent, but especially in primary
markets like St. Louis, Buffalo and Duluth. The King is
warned of coming changes, and he acts accordingly. A
rising storm in Montana may reduce by two per cent, the
crops of Northern Minnesota.

Of scenes in the Chicago wheat-pit it would be tiresome
to speak. They are degrading; and in war-time they

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 177

showed trade neutrality at its worst, with frenzied men
screaming bids in each other's faces amid a tumult of
indescribable violence. In a recent ten-day tussle "for
future delivery" forty-four cents was added to each bushel
of wheat. Millions of money were made and lost by
dealers whom present-day America looks upon as enemies
of the people and the farmers; the statesmanship of
President Wilson is dead against these produce-gamblers;
it may safely be said that their tricks and corners are a
thing of the past.

In Secretary Houston the American farmer found a
friend indeed outside the high-brow circles of Agricultural
Science. Mr. Houston is a practical economist ; his
grading of crops and protective measures bid fair to restore
to the land its old prestige. Since the passing of the
Cotton Futures Act, the farmer is no longer at the mercy
of local buyers, nor can the big operator raise or depress
market prices at his own reckless will. In 1913 Mr.
Houston had two hundred Kansan farms surveyed. It
was then shown that with an average capital of $8800
the owner received — after paying five per cent, on his
money — exactly $529 for the year's work. On a farm
averaging $18,359 his share was only $659 ; and where
the investment reached $32,231, Rube had $1028 for him-
self when the season 's battle was over.

This revelation surprised the city folks. They imagined
Rube planting dimes and reaping yellowbacks with the
expert aid of Mr. W. J. Spillman, Chief of the Office of
Farm Management in the Bureau of Plant Industry at
Washington. The Department of Agriculture has been
justly held in high esteem. It has spent hundreds of
millions in research work, and heaped up records in
agronomy and biology. Moreover, it sent trained pioneers
into foreign lands for new things to grow. Here I touch
upon America's "plant immigrants"; the story is quite

178 AMERICA'S DAY

a romance, and, so far as I know, unrecorded in Europe.
It is assumed by the Department that there is not in this
world any variety of grain, or a fruit or food-plant, which
cannot be suited with a "stepmother" soil and climate
somewhere between the bleak Dakotas and the Mexican
Gulf ; the cane-brakes of Louisiana, and the wine and citrus
lands of California.

Therefore a corps of explorers is maintained; devoted
men who will run any risks and use all means to send
home scions and cuttings, seeds, and even useful insects
like the kelep or Guatemalan ant, which it was hoped would
prey upon the cotton-boll weevil: these live consignments
go direct to the Parasite Laboratory at North Saugus,
Mass. The work of plant introduction dates back to
Franklin's day. So far back as 1770 we find that states-
man-scientist (as Pennsylvania's agent) sending home
mulberry clips and seeds. For many years American
consuls did the same; and at last Congress voted $20,000
a year for the support of botanists at large — keen-witted
legions of peace who should go forth to conquer the nations
on their own ground

Here, for example, is David Fairchild, with a caravan in
Babylon, and palm-suckers swaying from his camel-
packs. "We pay $600,000 a year for dates to this very
region," he told our consul in Bagdad. "Now we shall
introduce the palm to our desert gardens at Yuma and
Tempe, Ariz., and also at Mecca, Cal." Professor Hansen
went to Turkestan for new foreign plants; Dr. Knapp
brought the Kiashu rice from Japan; Carleton's prize
was the dhurum wheat which suited the two Dakotas
and Nebraska, and now is worth $10,000,000 a yearf
To transplant the Smyrna fig to Californian orchards took
nineteen years ; but the task was done by Explorer Swingle,
who made a special journey to Asia Minor for the wasp-
like insects which fertilize the flowers.

PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 179

I cannot linger over the adventures of these free-lance
farmers. Fairchild was arrested in Corsica; and in a
cross-country flight he cut enough scions or bud-sticks
from the citron groves to graft a small American orchard.
At Saaz, in Bohemia, the same envoy was a suspected
person among the hop-growers. Cuttings were secured
in the dead of night. Fairchild packed these in a ruined
barn, and sent them off as "glass-ware" to his agent in
Hamburg. This work is but a minor branch of the
Department of Agriculture, which may be styled the
mainspring of rural America. It has an army of 16,000
men and women, including technicians and specialists in
every branch. The past three years has entirely changed
its methods — or rather added economic efficiency to the
purely scientific side.

"It is all very well," says Secretary Houston, "to teach
the farmer to make two blades grow where one grew before ;
but if he can't sell the extra blades at a profit, he's a
poor business man." And in this way "we aim to help
him." The farmer has wondered wiry he got less money
for a larger crop. In 1912 America produced 677,758,000
bushels of maize in excess of 1913, yet the farmers received
$171,638,000 less for it To solve this and other problems
the present Government created the Office of Markets
and Rural Organization. In 1915 this Bureau showed
the cotton-planters of the South what their product was
worth, and induced them to hold it for a better price.
Land banks and good roads are amongst other features
of the renascence; and the Agricultural Extension Act
will spend $10,000,000 a year in direct education of the
farmer and his family. This Bill places in each of the
2850 rural communities a couple of county agents — a man
and a woman — specially picked for the task, and trained.
These will work with the aid and direction of the land-
grant colleges and the Department of Agriculture.

180 AMERICA'S DAY

It was Secretary Houston who realized that too much
science and too little sense had been shown by the Wash-
ington Bureau in their relation to the farmers, who were
as far removed from their national guardians as they were
from the State Department or the Coast and Geodetic
Survey. Of what use was it to spend millions in research
and pay no heed to practical application of the results?
The farmers' bulletins were found to be too diffuse and
technical. There was a treatise on the silver fox, but no
popular paper on the raising of colts. Guinea-pigs and
pheasants were learnedly presented, but there was no
compendious pamphlet on the feeding of the dairy cow.
Therefore concise and simple pamphlets were prepared,
and of these over seventeen millions were issued to the
farmers last year.

Moreover, an Office of Information was created to
summarize for the local papers all the literature of the
Department, and make popular the lessons of scientific
agriculture. So the farmer absorbed knowledge with the
day's news. He was taught the lesson of field tests
undertaken by the county agents: how a crop of hay
showed a profit of 257 per cent, on an extra outlay in lime ;
how to sort his potatoes and sell the best to the city hotels,
getting as much for one grade as the entire crop used to
fetch in haphazard daj'S. A new system of killing and
chilling poultry replaced the traffic in live birds; new
methods of picking and packing citrus-fruits saved decay
in transit which entailed a loss of $1,500,000 a year to the
Calif ornian growers. The functions of the middlemen ;
co-operative purchase and sale of all things from berries to
seed, and from implements to coal — these and other phases
of life on the land now engage the Washington Department.

CHAPTER XI

"an helpmeet for him"

The "solemn emphasis" and "sacred duty" of the United
States, expressed by President Wilson in the Lusitania
Notes, set the Germans discussing a new enmity of inevi-
table drift.

"The fact is," concluded the Hamburg Fremdenblatt,
after a caustic survey, "that so deep a chasm yawns
between our Kultur and America's that only a bridge
of swords can span it." "This New World," the German
stay-at-home was told, "is bossed by the women; they
are worshipped over there like the sacred cats of Thebes."
Aud to show the American man's nonentity, Herr Doktor
would quote a Texan paper: "If there's $10 to be spent
on clothes, Daughter takes $5, Sonny gets $3, Ma grabs
$2 — and poor pa has his hat brushed!"

No land was more foreign to the Teuton habit than this
huge gynocracy; the rulers of it waddled out today in
Persian tubes, and tomorrow rolled forth like the hooped
Infants of Velasquez. American women were spoiled
by cockering and indulgence. They counted life by the
heart-throbs of passion and caprice, yet in twelve States
the polling booths were open to them ; they swayed ninety-
one votes in the Electoral College, and might well decide
what manner of President should go to the White House
and reign in their name.

Germany reviewed these facts with rising ire. For if,
as Bismarck said, the Fatherland was the male element
among nations, surely America was the female, owing to

181

182 AMERICA'S DAY

the social chromosome in her make-up which gave her a
horror of the destroyer's role. How different was the
status of woman in Germany, where she was a source
of strength as the prime recruiter of an ''Army with
a country"! Did not the German mother advertise her
new-born child as "another little soldier for the Father-
land"? Here the Kaiser set decent bounds to female
activity, naming church, children, and kitchen as the
proper spheres. On the land, even in peace-time, four-and-
a-half million women handled the hoe, clad in the Petrine
apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, and withal bred to
worship of the male. These pious souls, as well as matrons
and maids of high degree, were compared with the gay
scansorial birds of New York and Newport who were intent
only upon candy and clothes; the car, the salon, and the
good time, with its biting thirst for change and the switch-
it-off and fade-through of a life that was like a perpetual
movie-film. . . .

Now in all this German girding there is a modicum of
fact leading to false conclusions in the Teutonic way, and
ignoring incalculable factors. No sooner was war declared
than America's women rallied to the President with a
fervour which Berlin found disconcerting. The bourgeoise
of France was not more devoted, nor the modish maid,
who turned from the tango and tight skirts to become a
jusqu'au boutiste — a bitter-ender with the passion of
Jeanne d'Arc lighting her girlish eyes.

A joint memorial, pledging loyal service and support,
was offered to the President by eight of the greatest col-
leges for women in the United States, including Barnard
and Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, and Mount Holyoke.
At the White House this vow was read to the President
by his two daughters, Mrs. F. B. Sayre and Miss Margaret
Wilson: "Although we believe that the settlement of in-
ternational difficulties by war is fundamentally wrong, we

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 183

recognize that in a world-crisis such as this, it may become
our highest duty to defend by force the principles upon
which Christian civilization is founded."

In the long list of German mistakes, the American
woman must be given a prominent place. Her adhesion
ensured the full measure of military and industrial aid,
to say nothing of the part played by the farmer's wife
and daughters in the food-supply of us all. I shall not
deny the supremacy of women in the United States, for
it is a fact. She is a law unto herself, imposing her will
in all directions, from the motor-shops of Detroit to the
ateliers of Fashion in the Place Vendome. Immersed in
business, her men are apt to leave civic betterment to the
women's clubs, as well as all the finer things of life, from
music and aesthetics to the planting of shade trees. Women
have much to do with the suppression of the liquor traffic
as well as the promotion of better babies, with prenatal
care and oversight for the poorest of mothers. In the
"West especially the woman in public office is a power for
good. She is there concerned with prison reform and pub-
lic recreation ; with libraries and museums, city planning,
local efficiency, and fire and police protection.

In America marriage is considered from the business
angle, with a wealth of published anecdote and testimony
from successful men who love to tell the story of their
climb, and the part which their wives have played in it.
The effect of marriage upon employes is debated : how
it steadies the worker and helps the speed-up of factory
production; why bachelors are less efficient and devoted;
why the married man lives longer, with evidence upon
the subject from Herbert Spencer and the Germans,
the insurance companies, the Federal Census Bureau, and
big employers of labour like Mr. Armour and Mr. Vail.
Whether young love pays any heed to this prosy aspect I
take leave to doubt. Certain it is that couples are wedded,

184 AMERICA'S DAY

divorced, or merely "separated" with surprising ease in
the United States.

There is no attempt at uniformity in this matter. Some
States forbid marriage between whites and negroes, whites
and Chinese, and whites and Red Indians. Others allow
all three. Marriage between first cousins is prohibited in
sixteen States, and in some of these declared incestuous
and void ; other States are quite complaisant in this regard.
In most of the States you may not marry a step-relation;
but in seven of them (and in the Hawaiian Islands) no
such veto is imposed.

Perhaps the greatest scandal of all is "easy alimony," as
the result of a collusive bargain between the parties;
the man willing to pay for freedom, the woman seeking
a life of selfish sloth. In one New York court, alimony
sets $4,000,000 a year in motion, and the evil has grown
with the flush time. "Divorce is our subtlest social
menace," says Judge Morschauser, of the New York
Supreme Court. "The alimony system is the sanction
of it by society and law, and it places a premium upon
idleness and vice." "Do away with collusive divorce,"
said an eminent jurist to me in Washington, "and two-
thirds of our childless couples will readjust their lives.
Then we'll hear less of the 'I'm tired of him and he's
tired of me, so why not fix a divorce ? ' " Last year in New
York City the courts of Manhattan alone granted 1300
divorces, and twice as manj^ separations. Yet the metrop-
olis is by no means "easy" in this respect, whereas the
"nisi-mills" of Reno, Nev., and Sioux Falls, S. D., are
notorious all over the continent. Chicago's divorce rate
is higher than New York's; America's fairest city — Denver,
Col. — outpaced them all last year, having more than half
as many divorces as there were marriages.

This unrest is found among all classes, from the New
York motorman to the queenly "cottager" of Newport;

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 185

one of these dames threw her little son into the alimony
bargain for an extra payment of a million dollars.

Meanwhile the war offers new and vivid interests for
the women as for the men. Within a month of President
Wilson's declaration, the women of thirty -two States
had volunteered for substitute work in a way familiar to
us all, but wholly novel in the United States. The Wire-
less League impressed many college girls; they sat with
receivers on their heads, jotting upon pads the cryptic
buzzings sent by Mr. Otto Redfern, the radio-inspector
of the U. S. Navy. Then the suffrage parties formed
National Service bodies on the usual lines — nursing and
motor-driving, cooking, farming, and clerical work. New
York had its War Substitute Department, calling for a
unit of 100,000 women to replace in part the men who
enlisted for the first Expeditionary Force.

America's upheaval was the most bewildering of all.
The continent was soon adrift, groping for guidance and
trying to follow precedent of appalling trend. A lead
had already been given by Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt. This
great lady — a decoree of the Legion of Honour — worked
as a scullion in the Lycee Pasteur at Neuilly. She was
under fire at Pont-a-Mousson with Harvard ambidanciers
and young free-lances of the American Field Service who
were attached to the French Armies. Mrs. II. P. Whitney
was another early worker in the French field; she hurried
over with surgeons and nurses, motors, medical supplies,
and clothing for thousands of refugees. At home the
cloud of change spread slowly, till the state of war was
a fact, and Liberty's torch glowed with new demands
above New York Bay. Then it was that the pink tea
vanished, and the Red Cross function became a social
sign. Soon economy was a White House watchword;
Mrs. Wilson and the Cabinet ladies were urging thrift
and deprecating the extravagance in dress. Vanity's

186 AMERICA'S DAY

mirror was seen shot to pieces by the European guns ; the
rites of Beauty were now concerned with that test of the
nation which the President put so plainly ''for the future
peace and security of the world."

Now the American woman is an able recruit, as the
German writers know, even when they present her in
the rainbowed spray of Folly's fountain. She is, in fact,
peculiarly adapted for management. Self-reliance is
developed in her from childhood. Her business head is
unaffected by a sentimental heart; the handling of affairs
comes more naturally to an American woman than any
other, not excepting the French. This applies to more
than the common trades and callings; it covers also the
learned professions, and the oversight of industry on the
largest scale.

A glance at the Census of any date shows hosts of
women doing work which was thought to be man's alone.
But this is a commonplace of American life. It has never
called for remark or borne any relation to war. Nowhere
else is the value and dignity of labour so respected, and
this esteem applies equally to the woman's share. I
take 303 occupations from the 1900 Census, and I find
women engaged in 300 of them. They are slaters and
plumbers, carpenters and house-painters; teamsters, elec-
tricians, masons, bricklayers, and mechanics of every grade.
Dentists, architects, and civil engineers are here in hun-
dreds; commercial travellers and clergy by the thousand.
And these last are licensed to preach, and to marry couples
according to the State law.

But I cannot hope to convey in brief space a fair idea
of woman's activity; it is too huge a subject, too diverse
and full of surprise. Consider the case of Widow Warren,
of Silver City, N. M. — "General Contractor and Specialist
in Concrete-work. " This typical Western woman has her
own quarries and saw-mills, her steam derricks, steam shov-

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 187

els and steam pumps, ready for the biggest job. She
designed and built a dam of 50,000 cubic feet with the aid
of Mexican gangs, whom she bossed with more than Ameri-
can tact.

My survey could be continued indefinitely. Turning
to the South, we have Mrs. G. H. Mathis, of Alabama,
the ablest soil-expert in the State, and a spreader of "pep
and ginger" among all classes, from Governor Henderson
himself down to the poor whites of the range, to whom
this energetic lady introduced tomato-growing with excel-
lent economic results. Mrs. Mathis has trebled the earn-
ing-power of farmers in this cotton State. She has mul-
tiplied values, introduced new crops, and wiped out
the cattle-tick which was costing the stockman over a mil-
lion dollars a year.

It is difficult to speak in general terms of the American
women, as it is of any other phase in a land of such
extremes and joyous novelty. Here caste and degree take
the widest flights, from the school-marm of the oil-lands
to the grande dame of the Newport cliffs, who breathes an
oxygen denied to the baser sort and spreads a feast like
the Eleusinian mystery for the elect and few. Such con-
trasts as America presents I have never seen elsewhere.
The distance from Palm Beach luxury to the Polish hovel
of the Panhandle is not to be measured in miles alone.
And here let me say it is the wife of Rube the farmer who
fills the asylums of the Middle West. Her lot is one of
appalling toil, quite beyond the ken of folk outside the
barbed-wire push of progress which is found beyond the
Rockies.

Very different is the city woman's life. Of course, it
varies with the cities, of which some are as far apart as
Cork is from Constantinople, with all manner of climates
in between. Speaking generally, the American house-
keeper is the most efficient of all, whether as contriver,

188 AMERICA'S DAY

seamstress, or cook. Yet in New York — and here is a
typical paradox — housekeeping is a lost art, save among
the rich, who pay their parlourmaids more than we do
our high-school teachers. The metropolis is a hive of
communal living; of vast hotels and apartments which
leave the housewife nothing to do, and are very proud of
the fact. Less wealthy families frequent boarding-houses;
but even the best of these depress the permanent home-
eeeker, whether she come from Europe, or from the Southern
and "Western States, where home life has peculiar variety
and charm. A New York clerk with a wife and $2000
a year cannot look for a cosy suburban villa with a garden
and a maid; he might as well expect a palace in Madison
Avenue.

Life in the cities is not conducive to child-bearing, as
may be seen from the falling birth-rate among American
stocks, as distinguished from the foreign-born, whose
fertility brings the general level up to that of France, and
no more. The real American family has decreased sur-
prisingly in the past hundred years. Franklin found an
average of eight children to each married couple of his
day, but when the present century opened the number
had fallen to between one and four. It is the alien stocks
that increase, and the older aristocracies of intellect and
rank express dismay over the fact. In Massachusetts,
taking all social classes, it was shown that the foreign-born
had twice as many children as the native Americans.
Then Dr. William Guilfoy, of the New York Health
Department, showed that these alien infants were a more
resistant stock, with a death-rate well below that of Ameri-
can children. "Why was this? Because the foreign mother
suckled her babe. "She is more likely," Dr. Guilfoy adds,
"to stay at home and look after her family."

All manner of leagues have sprung up to study and
solve the "race suicide," to which Roosevelt drew attention

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 189

years ago. Maternity is encouraged in various ways; and
much prominence is given to the so-called "twilight
sleep" — the painless DUmmerschlaf of Drs. Kronig and
Gauss, of the Frauenklinik in Freiburg, where the scopo-
lamin-morphine treatment has been long in vogue. Then
Baby Week, with its literature of hygiene and infant aid,
became a national institution; it was proposed by the
General Federation of Women's Clubs and welcomed by
the Public Health officials in thirty-nine States. Next
came Mother's Day, with its white carnation badge and
homage in the home to "the best woman who ever lived."
President Wilson proclaimed the first celebration, after a
special resolution in both Houses of Congress.

But all this deference does not alter the fact that mother
has a hard time of it as a housekeeper in the cities; she
is very far indeed from being the toy and tyrant of man as
set forth in the German papers. Even living in common
brings her up against petty tj'ranny and graft on the part
of janitors. Lack of steam heat and hot water leads to
unseemly squabbles and "rent strikes"; there are dis-
putes about the lifts which you would never suspect. For
example — is Baby in her car to go up by the main shaft,
or be relegated to the garbage-hoist, with the groceries
and the coal? I was in the New York Supreme Court
when such a case was fiercely fought out between landlord
and tenant. On the other hand, to run a home on British
lines means that the housewife must do her own work, for
the American servant is a contradiction in terms, the alien
charlady a trial too bitter to be borne. It is surprising
what shifts even families of a good class are put to by this
problem. Chinese and Japanese boys have been tried with
poor success; and as for the negro maid, her "goings-
on" would knock the breath out of a reformatory super-
intendent.

I have referred to electric devices in the home, from

190 AMERICA'S DAY

shaving-mugs to raisin-seeders. "Nobody," declared Dr.
Eliot of Harvard, "should be employed upon a task which
a machine can perform": this is a very American maxim.
Certainly the city housewife looks for universal service
from the button at her bedside, which starts the day by get-
ting breakfast without any drudgery at all. "Free your-
self from the tyranny of servants" is a clarion note of the
electric companies to the women. "Get more time for
recreation — for worth-while family life and the things you
really want to do."

Now, as the finer vessel, the American woman does lean
to the higher things. She wants to read the best books,
to stud3^ music, and wander through Europe on the edu-
cational tour. Quite likely there is a husband to polish —
an earnest climber whose youth had known nothing of
art. "My carving was done at the wood-pile," he owns
with a new regret. Such a man will stand before the
costly Corot with the scoffer's "Only trees and water!"
Or he will agree with Walpole that the Divine Comedy
is like "the ravings of a Methodist parson in Bedlam."

Therefore much is expected of the women in matters of
culture and taste. It is for them that the Mentor Club is
formed, with a conversational course, "which enables you
to ignite a dinner party at fifty 3Tards with Familiar Wild
Flowers, Three Weeks in Rome, and The Pictures We Love
to Live with." I find this an admirable tendency, though
it make the superior person smile. There is a story told
of a farmer's wife in Missouri, who wrought classic sculp-
ture in butter, as her familiar medium. Mrs. B sent a

Sleeping Iolanthe to the Paris Exhibition. It was politely
rejected by the Art Committee, and sent down to the Dairy
Products section, where it wilted when the warm weather
came, and comically disappeared.

Yet ridicule falls with broken sting before the childlike
purpose of these people, and their naive pursuit of nobler

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 191

things, when the get-ahead game is over. Before the war
one met American girls of quite humble origin in Milan,
studying opera under a maestro of unconscionable fees.
But then America and millions are convertible terms in the
Continental mind. In far-off Prague I found American
girls in Sevcik's violin school in the Lindengasse. The
Bohemian hermit took thirty kronen for an hour's lesson
from the Chicago school-marm, who had saved her money

for ten years in view of this tuition. Miss R went

back at last in a low-necked gown that showed the "Sevcik
mark," a little bruise that bore witness to eight hours'
practice every day. It was the women who in pre-war
days organized the grand tour abroad from Killarney to
Darjeeling; from the Rue de la Paix to Plato's Academe
in Athens — that mangy mound of picnic litter and tawdry
memorials. Who was so frank as the American over the
disenchantment of foreign travel?

The month of May saw the Exodus begin from New
York City. There were more than a hundred magnificent
ships in the service, and in ten weeks $7,000,000 was col-
lected in fares. For many years the "See America First"
movement was little more than a voice in the wilderness
of joy. But with Europe closed, the tourists overran their
own continent, climbing the Rockies instead of the Alps,
taking cures at Hot Springs and Paso Robles ; camping out
in the Maine woods, and spearing giant tuna in the Pacific
off Santa Cruz.

"Discover America" was now a shrewd appeal. "Swit-
zerland is ringed with armies," the holiday folk were
warned. "The peaks of Tyrol bristle with guns, so turn
this year to Colorado and the Garden of the Gods." This
America did, increasing the railway revenues by $326,-
401,568. Hotels and farmers, ranchers and innkeepers, all
had handsome hauls.

The "Discover America" literature of this year is cun-

192 AMERICA'S DAY

ningly addressed to Mother and the Girls; and patriot
ladies support the movement with diverting tales of travel
disillusion. What a fraud the Orient was after all, with
dirt and squalor in the Christ-shrines, and in hotel beds
"old warriors with plated hacks" of a less heroic breed than
Milton had in mind. . . . Here was the great Sikh, Patiala,
striding down the platform at Charing Cross to his car — an
incongruous figure for London town in flowered silks and a
chaplet of roses. The Mikado had sent his palanquin to the
Uyeno Museum ; today that divinity shot forth in a racing
Twin-Six which could climb the castle wall "on high with-
out a knock." Then reviewing her tour in India, Mother
was sarcastic over a call upon the Rajah of Faridkot, a
model State studded with schools, grain elevators, and other
agencies of hustle. The gorgeous nautch was non-existent
in Shahadpur; its place was taken b}r a movie-show which
exposed the evils of booze in the most rabid Kansan man-
ner.

So it was better to stay at home and do the Grand
Canyon, the Big Trees, and Spouting Geysers, which no
age withered nor custom staled. Americans abroad — one
of the Girls declared — went in vicious ruts beset with vul-
garity and dollar-chasing fights all the way from the Giants'
Causeway to the Pyramid of Cheops. In Rome itself there
were Coney Island shows on the hoary Borghese acres. In
all the capitals were noise and heat, hurry and smells, with
sights which left the soul blind and the body limp in lands
where ice-water and the shower-bath were extravagant
wants. Nor was it true that ' ' English will carry you any-
where"; or that the eontadini of Tuscany will fetch and
carry at a bidding in Pennsylvania Deutsch.

It is safe to say, however, that American armies of culture
will always go abroad, even with the slim purse that boards
in Bloomsbury and "does" artistic Paris from a five-franc
pension in the wilds. As for the social climber, the cachet

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 193

of foreign travel is as necessary to her as the name of Car-
lier in a hat, or Worth or Paquin on the waistband of a
gown. There are climbers of many grades, from the pro-
vincial elegante of the Middle "West to the great lady of
New York who aspires to the dazzling record of Mrs. J. J.
Astor; that gifted hostess who received the King of Eng-
land as a guest in her own home.

It would take too long to trace even a modest climb,
diverting as the stages are, and the many stumblings in
unfamiliar ether. There are social sponsors, of course;
openers of doors in which even the rattle of golden keys can
spell disaster. But the whole career — this shooting and
shining through the London season like a star, belongs to
another world, marked with the milestones of Ascot and
Cowes, the moors and the Carlsbad cure ; the Nice Carnival
and a winter in Cairo, with orgies of dress and days of
tumult too silly for belief in the deathful glare of 1918.
This European triumph was very dear to the American
woman, and doubtless will be again ; it was the subject of
cable matter to the New York papers, often with portraits
of the victors and spicy details of intrigues and vying:
"Our stars must glister with new fires, or be — today
extinct." But the men cared little for these costly cam-
paigns; the uplift at home was more to them than social
gains abroad, and the idea spread that wealth were best
regarded as an instrument for the common good.

Before the war the industrial king moved in a glare of
publicity. His business deals were discussed in the papers,
his cliques and projects, and the buzz of Wall Street rumour
against him. The splendours of his wife were set down
with Pharasaic micrology. Her ocean-going yacht was
expressed in dollars and cents, its silver fittings and grand
saloons ; its crew of sixty men ; a French chef in the galley,
and on the shade deck a dozen Japanese valets in white silk
tending men of awesome name on Astor Cup Day in the

194 AMERICA'S DAY

Sound. Parade and pageantry at Newport was the papers'
untiring theme ; it was said to surpass all that went before,
even in Byzantium or Bagdad. It was always the women
who willed these modish stunts, whether as breaker-in upon
the established powers, or as an arrivee of austere magnifi-
cence, more or less securely throned. The man was
acquiescent and no more, having interests of his own in the
home town or in the office.

Yet when success came he strayed joyward with the rest
on conventional lines; in no country has the say-so of
Fashion such unquestioned sway. The new millionaires sat
to visiting painters, men who came over from Europe to
give a pompous rendering of business humanity; then they
boomed the portrait like professional barkers outside a
show. For this was a further boost and counted in the
social climb. Mother and the Girls favoured Art in like
manner, so that suave painter-immigrants reaped a golden
harvest with unsubtle and sentimental brushes. There was
La Gandara and Chartran, Mucha the Czech, Zorn the
Swede, Thaddeus the Irishman, and Boldini the Paris-
Italian, who paints chiffons divinely and sets the insipid
maid on a full-length canvas as the heroine for bold
dragoons. There should be rich stuff in the American
memoirs of these visitors.

Here I cannot escape Newport: it is amazing how this
town has held American attention. For many years
preachers and social reformers inveighed against its freak-
ish riot. Newport life was the scandal and target of the
masses all over the continent. "The expression we get of
society in this place," Bishop Potter of New York used to
say, "is quite beyond my comprehension." But it was
well within the compass of reporters for the yellow press,
who piled Pelion upon Ossa in preposterous yarns, as
though the bare facts were not sufficiently absurd.

On these Newport cliffs, tracts of rock and scrub have

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 195

been sold by the square foot, as land might be around the
Paris Opera or the Bank of England. Here "cottages"
were built (like The Breakers) more stately than Dorches-
ter House in Park Lane ; here castles of marble or granite
sprang up in the desert — like Grey Crag, the massy pile
which overlooks Sachuset Beach. As there was no shade,
huge trees were tunnelled and uprooted far inland, then
hauled to Newport by tractors and Italian gangs, to be
planted on the sea-lawn of America's Crcesus. The for-
mula for a cottage on Bellevue Avenue is "A million for
the house, a million to furnish it, and $100,000 for a stone
wall or a steel fence that would defy the safe-breaker."

This exuberance needs a good deal of trimming, yet what
remains is lavish enough ; it is a fact that the wall around
Mr. Berwind's chateau cost a fortune. Nor can it be denied
that Newport is the playground of America's plutocracy;
a none too wholesome influence in the nation's life, con-
sidering its antics and the devouring interest taken in them
by the people, especially the women. When fortune smiled
upon her man, Mrs. Break-in aspired to conquer Newport ;
and press and pulpit never tired of her pushful manoeuvres.
First of all the lady rents a cottage at $10,000 for the sea-
son : this begins in late June, reaches the zenith in August,
and trails away after the Horse Show in September. Then
the elect move up to the Berkshire Hills — perhaps the love-
liest spot in America, when the autumn blaze of woodlands
beggars all description.

But Newport remains unique among the resorts : it is the
social citadel, its freedom and favour a precious guerdon
bestowed upon very few. Dragons innumerable are here
on watch ; and let it be said at once that money is powerless
to move them. Man}- a prodigal spender knocks in vain at
Ochre Court and The Crossways; the season fades without
any hint of an Astor or Vanderbilt invitation. There is
indeed small hope for neophytes of the rough diamond

196 AMERICA'S DAY

order; the Western woman who is just bon enfant and a
good sort, brimming over with hospitality and faith. Many-
such have played a waiting game at Newport and Palm
Beach, aided by their Girls, who have no doubt attended the
most exclusive (and expensive) of private schools. I refer
here to the wives of mining magnates, or to those of men
who made a fortune in munitions or the motor trade — or
even in ways still more abrupt, like the produce gamble or
an oil-strike in Texas or Oklahoma. Newport has no love
for these sudden ladies; their career is not so much a climb
as a rocketing, with inevitable fall in it from the first.

Behold Mrs. Break-in receiving in a Bourbon salon of
green and gold ; a merry and flaring soul in orchid brocade,
with a social guide behind her, and in the kitchen a hierarch
of pots and pans imported from Paris on his own terms.
The lady's meat-bill is already $1700 a month, the retinue
she brought with her a joy to the brigand tradesmen of
the town. It was to resist the exactions of these that the
richest members of the colony declared a boycott, and
started markets of their own. Mrs. Break-in was at last
shown checking her bills by the cartoonists of the Sunday
papers, who knew the game by heart. She was discharging
servants in desperation, or even cleaning her own tiara and
cursing in Gehenna-torrents the butcher who sent twenty
pounds of sirloin up to Reckless Castle and charged for a
hundred on a crested and scented bill.

Behind old Newport rises the twelve-mile avenue of
mansions in which American women rule. Here are
formal gardens such as Lenoir laid out for Josephine at
Malmaison. There are alleys and hedges, exotic trees
and colonnades; aviaries, pagodas and fountains, with
classic nymphs outlined against park-like thickets. A
striking feature of the colony is its hostility to casual
trippers and sight-seers. The most tempting paths are
blocked with "Private — Keep off!" Alert attendants

"AN HELPMEET FOR IIIM" 197

chase away the curious prowler who would invade the
sanctity of Bailey's Beach, or survey the famous cottages
from the street side. It was only the old law of Fisher-
men's Rights that saved Cliff Walk for the public; and
the city fathers were asked to move a road which exposed
to vulgar gaze the luxurious bathing-huts of the rich.

Some of the embassies have summer quarters here, and
foreign diplomats play a leading part as arbiters of ele-
gance and devisers of novel fetes. The mania for novelty
spread like a sickness: the starter of a new craze was
acclaimed with brazen smiting, for Newport abhorred
monotony as Nature does a vacuum. There was competi-
tion for the occult person with a turban and a mystic
line of talk; he sat in a Chaldean boudoir, turning blood-
red crystal and tracing life-lines that were badly tangled
on the matrimonial side.

Brahminism and Bahaism had their day; so did coach-
ing and polo and golf. Auction bridge enjoyed unfading
vogue, with losses and gains on a staggering scale. At ban-
quets the lordliest dish was voted dull at last. Becasse a
la riche and Truite saumone a la Monseigneur, these gave
place to heathen plats — perhaps a Canton puppy with
bamboo-shoots and birds' nests; shark-fins to follow, and
sea-slugs with as many legs as a centipede. These Apician
tricks, we are told, will never again be played after the
purging of a world-war on unparalleled lines. However
this may be, the recorder of social America notes a great
advance in taste and interests. Gone for ever are the days
when jaded guests waded in the public fountains of Balti-
more, or played leap-frog in the Washington streets after
a smart dance.

Ten years ago the money-splash was rampant. The New-
port hostess scoured history for spendthrift notions which
should eclipse the Roman feasts of Horace and Petronius.
Freakish pageants were weighed, from the "costlie brav-

198 AMERICA'S BAY

erie" of Elizabeth's wooing to the mindless whim of a
former Gaekwar who spent a million rupees on the mar-
riage of his favourite pigeon with one belonging to his
Prime Minister. The great thing was to outshine one's
neighbour and maintain a loud lead in lavish entertain-
ing. No wonder the yellow press showed "How the Rich
Live," with facts and figures procured from the Fifth
Avenue shops. Here everything was set out, from Moth-
er's rope of pearls to Baby's hundred-dollar doll, with its
Paris hat and "fluffy undies" of fine silk and filmy lace.

But apart from strident folly of this kind it is a mistake
to suppose there is no American aristocracy. Families
of rank and breeding maintain ancestral pride with rigid
hauteur, as any one knows who has even a nodding
acquaintance with the elite from Charleston up to Boston —
where, as the satirist says, "a Cabot will only speak to a
Lowell, and a Lowell only to his God!" "Your minds
turn more to the past than ours do," Lord Northcliffe told
America in a message of racy insight. And there is no
abler or more intimate witness than he in matters relat-
ing to the United States. "You have an astonishing cult of
local antiquities, all the way from andirons to inscriptions
on tombs. You have an incredible number of books
devoted to family history, with lists of ancestors and
enormous lists of descendants. You have also a unique
array of patriotic clubs and societies — especially for
women — to which nobody may belong unless descended
from some special group of historic persons somewhere
in the remote Colonial or Revolutionary past." Lord
Northcliffe refers, of course, to such bodies as the Daugh-
ters of the Revolution, whose chapters have been recruit-
ing for the Army and Navy. There are also the Society of
the Descendants of the Mayflower; the Society of the
Colouial Wars and the Daughters of the Holland Dames,

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 199

Descendants of the Ancient and Honourable Families of
New York.

The American woman's view of the war is worth noting.
As onlookers they surveyed it for more than two years,
paying little heed to the martial or mechanical sides —
the hero who muffled a bomb with his body, or the sea-
plane which torpedoed a ship from the air. It was the
bleak agony of Europe's women which most impressed
their sisters in the Great Republic. The wailing of Ger-
man Klageiveiber, or Grumble-wives, such as shocked the
Bavarian poet, Ganghofer, in letters found on the slain
of his own side. "Barely a word of cheer," this recorder
noted — "nothing but cries of misery and lamentation, with
news of mutinous parade in the cities, and a shrill 'Give us
back our men'; which defies the drawn sabres of the Berlin
police." . . . "Our little Klauss has died of emaciation,"
was a typical passage from a letter found on a dead sol-
dier. "And I should like those Herren of the Reichstag
who tell us all is well, to have a look at my baby now."

American women wept over these scraps of paper.
They knelt with the girl-wife in the slime of France, as
the Last Post died down, and men with arms reversed
turned away their faces from a figure of shaking desola-
tion. . . . "Where is he? . . . Am I too late? — Oh, my
darling, come back to me, I can't live alone"! Such
scenes moved American women profoundly. So did the
opinions of great ladies like the Countess of Warwick,
who dwells on the eternal battle between feminism and
militarism; the bleak dismay and new knowledge forced
upon suffragists "belonging to families with a great mili-
tary record."

"We must learn to hate war," American women were
told by Ellen Kay, the Swede. "We must hand on the
spark of hate till this evil thing is quenched for ever."

200 AMERICA'S DAY

The revolts of hospital nurses were weighed in the United
States; the glee and gladness of the shabby mother whose
son was yet alive, although half his face had been shot
away. And likewise the awful nescience of her who turned
from. God with unbearable ache: "If prayer was any
use, would the child I bore with so much anguish have been
torn limb from limb, and left to scream for death in a pool
of filth and rats?"

This woman-view was seen with stark clearness on the
other side of the water. Here Jane Addams and Julia
"Wales echoed Aletta Jacobs, the Dutch organizer, who
called an International Congress at The Hague. "We
women, ' ' Dr. Jacobs said, ' ' judge war from our own angle.
The men consider economic results — the glory, power,
and so on. But what are such things to us beside our
husbands and sons, the fathers and brothers, who march
out and never come back again?" Here no comfort is
felt "because they died in honour's lofty bed." The
great test has come to all the women. And today even
the German mother is no Spartan, but a blasphemer, stand-
ing with Death the reaper in the hortus siccus of a ghastly
field.

I have dealt elsewhere with the American farmer's wife
and her slavish lot, which is in glaring contrast with that
of the idle rich in Newport. Theodore Roosevelt received
a letter from Mrs. Rube, in which her outlook upon war
is expressed in artless terms: —

"Dear Sir, — When you were talking of 'race suicide'
I was rearing a large family on almost no income. I often
thought of writing to you about my hardships, and now
when 'preparedness' may take of my boys, I feel I must.
I have eleven of my own, and brought up three step-
children besides. Yet in all the thirty years of my married
life, I have never had a new cloak or a winter hat. I have

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 201

sent seven children to school at one time. I had a family
of ten for eighteen years, with no money to hire a washer-
woman— though bearing a child every two years. Nine
of my children (several are through or nearly so), got into
high-school; two reached the State Normal, and one the
University of Michigan.

"I haven't eaten a paid-for meal in twenty years, nor
paid for a night's lodging in thirty years. Not one of my
five boys — the youngest is fifteen — uses liquor or tobacco.
I've worn men's discarded shoes; I've had little time
for reading, so I think I have served my country. My
husband has been an invalid for six years, leaving me the
care and much of the work on our sandy little farm. Now
I've bothered you enough. Only to me, race suicide has
perhaps a different meaning when I think my boys may
have to face the cannon. — Respectfully,

"Mrs. "

Mr. Roosevelt thought his correspondent more worthy
of salute than "any colonel of a crack regiment." He
could only instance Belgium, whose sons were helpless
when their mothers and sisters were abused. He could
but reassert that law rested on force alone, and that
"Preparedness no more invited war than fire insurance
invites a fire." Here feminism and militarism are seen in
hopeless clash. What the claims of women may be when
this scourge has passed is a theme beyond my present
scope. Certainly American women add to a social sway
already unique, new political power in a dozen States.
As a live issue "Woman's Suffrage is endorsed by all parties,
and may well be an important plank in the election of 1920.
Girl workers of the sweat-shop talk about votes; it is in
this direction that President Wilson seeks "new springs
of democracy" . . . "that we may have fresh insight into
all matters of social reform."

I must deal briefly with the old "indictments" of candy,

202 AMERICA'S DAY

cars, and clothes. The consumption of sweetstuffs is, of
course, enormous; in three decades the per capita stint of
sugar rose from forty pounds to- over ninety. Dr. Eugene
Fisk, of the Life Extension Institute, advised American
girls to "Cut out candies and ice-cream sodas" if they
would carry good looks and elegant figures into middle
life.

As to motors, these are counted by the million in the
United States; quite humble folk will buy one, though it
entail a mortgage upon their home. And as John N.
Willys reminds us, "many refinements and conveniences
of the best cars are due to woman's demands." "The final
decision," this famous designer says, "often lies with a
man's wife, or sweetheart or sister; so the woman's favour
is a sovereign asset in the selling." For this reason the
mechanism must be simple, for my lady loathes any
"mussing or monkeying with the engine." All the adver-
tisements dwell upon this, and the delights which should
follow the touch of a button. "No exertion, no uncertainty,
no bending over — an act which the well-groomed woman
will ever resent." She will, indeed, for her corset's sake,
rightly holding this garment as the basic truth of dress.

I have no doubt that American women are the best-
dressed of all, though they follow the caprice of Paris
with superstitious zeal. In the first flight I place the
cosmopolitan aristocracy of the Eastern States; these
are catered for by such artists as Jean Worth and Madame
Paquin; Paul Poiret, Doucet, and the great Felix, whose
salons in the Faubourg were - thronged by the beauties
immortalized by Balzac and de Musset. American women
of today have much to do with settling the current vogue
for the whole world.

At stated seasons, buyers of unlimited credit and keen
flair visit the grandes couturieres ; and great are the pow-
wows held in sumptuary cabinets round about the Opera.

"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 203

Here graceful mannequins parade upon a stage in splendid
raiment, with footlights to show night effects to professional
eyes of the New York and Chicago Dressmakers' Clubs.
These visitors are by no means easily awed. They have
minds of their own, and the caprice of millions to humour
when they get home. So they suggest alteration or modi-
fication. The Paris artist demurs, pleading inspiration
from a sunset, an exotic flower, or some lovely portrait
in the lTffizi or the Louvre. In this manner is the model
"fixed," and with it a season's fashion for the United
States, with repercussion down as far as Rio and Buenos
Aires.

The say-so of Paris "goes" with American women of
every grade. I was amused to hear the forewoman of a
Baltimore factory testify in court that as skirts had
become so short she had to wall her girls round with
barrels so as not to distract the male operatives who
worked near by! I am here reminded that Beauty and
the Boss is a regular discussion in the New York papers,
varying with the season and the modes. Hot weather
brings out the famous "peekaboo blouse," a more or less
diaphanous affair, and the anxious theme of employer
and employed. "Does Docility go with Dimples?" is a
typical headline, and both sides state their grievances
and views. In other words, is the pretty girl a worth-
while servant? And just what relation does the vanity-
box bear to the pay-envelope at the week-end? Such
matters are quite gravely weighed in the United States.

Here also Dress is taken in the serious mood of the
French, only there is far more spent on it. A designer like
Lady Duff Gordon is struck with the aplomb and chic of
the office girls in down-town New York. ' ' Nothing in
Paris can touch them," is the testimony of this modiste.
"They have plenty of money, as well as the spirit for
fygariiig delightful clothes." Home dressmaking is forced

204 AMERICA'S DAY

upon American women because skilled service is scarce
and dear. Besides, the individual is a clever contriver,
with all manner of aids at her disposal, as one speedily
learns in the Butterick skyscraper — an eighteen-storey
workshop of fashion papers and patterns which cover the
two Americas from Montreal to Montevideo. I will" not
deny that these women lean to the bizarre in modes; they
follow "the latest" with neuromimetic faith, whether in
dress, new dances, or pastimes.

The fact remains that they have a talent for adornment.
Long ago discerning visitors like Rejane and Bernhardt
found this out, and took home with them trunksful of New
York creations. For many years American designers were
aggrieved at their patrons' devotion to the Paris label.
"If an earthquake levelled the Opera Quarter we'd have a
chance," the Madison Avenue artist told me, with Cellini's
own acceptance of a mad, bad world that forced ugly
tricks upon the rarest craftsmen. "Our best people lay
down the immutable law that tourists and trousseaux
must cross each other on the seas. Right here in New
York the creative impulse has a poor show. Rich women
prefer to look a fright in a frock of Monsieur — without
any regard to line or style or colour — than appear as a lur-
ing and gracious figure in an American frock. It's really
sad." So the dressmakers said.

The great ladies maintained that New York was only
a copyist and adapter, lacking the artistic atmosphere of
Paris, and therefore obliged to import the models which
it multiplied with such cunning and success. Some years
ago Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish declared for Home Rule in
Fashions, and war upon the French mark; the movement
made a great to-do, because of the lad3r's rank. "We're
like a lot of sheep," she declared abruptly. "We go over
in droves and buy everything we wear, from silk hose to
hats and frocks and jewels. Yet our own people have

' 'AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 205

more skill and taste. I've often shown a French fitter
how to pin a gown so as to get the best effects." . . .
American modistes and couturieres assuredly came into
their own during the war, reaping and sowing in the flush
time, and profiting — it may be permanently — by the stop-
page of ocean traffic.

CHAPTER XII

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS

"Especially in your country does it exert immense influence on the
public mind." — Pope Benedict XV to his American interviewer.

The front-page Person who sets out for America pre-
pares for a stiffish ordeal, as one does who embarks for
the Equator or the North Pole. But no vicarious hint,
no experience at second hand, can make real the endless
siege which a grand tour of the United States entails upon
the distinguished visitor. Three royal names occur to
me in this connection: Prince Henry of Prussia, Prince
Louis of Battenburg, and the Duke of Abruzzi. It is
safe to say these sailors will never forget New York, with
night and day assaults upon their peace and patience,
which baffled every known strategy. The stay of each
of these was an orgiastic whirl not to be conceived by
the European ; an epos of stormy joy beyond the power
of sober words. Those bulky mail-sacks, with epistles
from soulful girls — and queer abuse from anarchist dives
in the Black Belt of Chicago ! Specimens of cigars and
ties that sought a swell christening were sent along for
the Lord High Admiral's blessing. So was the Semi-
Ready suit, which was none the less "personal as a billet-
doux; tailored entirely by hand, with intimate touches
and endearments of individual effort in each hidden stitch
and high-caste line."

There was a time when cynical and scandalous comment
in the press drove prominent Americans abroad and kept
them there. The ablest men were barred from a political

206

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 207

career through fear of the newspapers. The Trust magnate
saw his career dissected with frigid scorn ; his 'cute law-
honesty and stock- watering ; his Borgian virtu, and the
glorious villainies which had marked his rise to greatness.
At no time could the reporter be evaded. Nor was he to
be suppressed or censored, as the Government itself has
lately found, and therewith bowed to a puffing humour
which "put it over" on George Washington himself in
the long ago. One day the Liberator attended a Council
with a copy of the National Gazette, a lewd and daring
sheet edited by Philip Freneau, who held a clerkship in
the State Department under Jefferson. "That rascal,"
said Washington to his colleagues, "has been sending me
three copies of his paper every day, as if he thought I
would become the distributor of them." He probably
did — especially as the Father of his Country was vilely
abused in that day's issue! Freneau 's paper died an
appropriate death in the yellow fever outbreak of Phila-
delphia in 1793.

You cannot awe the American scribe. He pursues the
biggest game with a child-like trust in the due and license
which have never failed him; we saw these conceded in
the first two years of war, when "big things" rained upon
the American press until the veterans were sated. The
New Yorker chatted informally with kings, as none other
could do. Foreign Offices received him gladly, from
the Quai d'Orsay to the mysterious Bab-i-Ali above the
Golden Horn. Chancellors and Ministers gave exclusive
stories to the Yankee, leaving the native scribe to pout
with a sense of slight and chagrin. But New York was
in no way elated, accepting each prize as a matter of
course. In Berlin old Zeppelin was interviewed upon the
aerial raids. Von Tirpitz was America's authority for
the submarine exploits; at home Edison was asked about
electric cures for all the curses of a chemical war.

208 AMERICA'S DAY

It was to a Hearst man that the Crown Prince wept
over the havoc and slaughter he had seen. At the Sublime
Porte the Grand Vizier shook his hoary head over Veni-
zelos; and complained about the Sherif of Mecca who hid
the treasure of the Holy Places — a tidy sum, aud one
sorely needed by the Porte in a hungry time. America
was bombarded with the sayings and sentiments of august
Persons who had never previously spoken for publication.
Newspaper envoys flitted back and forth in Europe with
a naive thirst for knowledge. As it happened, all the
belligerents were anxious to humour him ; so from end to
end the firmament of war fairly blazed with American stars,
tackling jobs which in 1914 were not even office dreams,
but mere pia desideria too silly for editorial thought.

But of all the stunts, all the resounding scoops (how the
English language limps behind them ! ) none quite equals
that twenty minutes which the World man had with the
Pope "in his magnificent private library on the second
floor of the Vatican": there a Maestro di Camera trans-
lated, as the Keeper of the Kej's delivered his prayer and
plea — "that this terrible carnage with its attendant
horrors and misery may soon cease." That famous inter-
view gave rise to caustic comment abroad. The Papal
Secretary of State tried to explain "misunderstandings";
the Austrian prelate who arranged the audience was
censured and dismissed. Certain it is that the Vatican
was embarrassed by this Park Row feat. Dom Gasquet,
the Benedictine historian, found the Pope depressed over
the affair — and no doubt prejudiced against American
reporters. But how came this New York Worldling to
glide by the noble guards and arch-priests, the purple
monsignori and princes of the Curia, who fence the Sover-
eign Pontiff from the passing show? There was a prec-
edent, it seems, and the World man played it well. Leo
XIII (the American urged) had received Jim Creelman at

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 209

no fateful time; so Pope Benedict might well speak to a
liunded million neutrals through thirty thousand news-
papers, all the way from Tallahassee to Spokane. Now
what were the war-aims and views of the Holy Father?

To say that America believes in publicity is to state a
fact too feebly. Publicity is America's blood and breath.
The President is bound by it; a President's coffin cannot
escape it. I have before me a page advertisement of the
Springfield Metallic Casket, which at Canton, 0., keeps
the remains of Mr. and Mrs. McKinley "from the viola-
tion of the earth." Never before have I seen coffins
flaunted in seventy-five styles, with hardware to match,
and "burglar-proof vaults," which are surely peculiar to
America. You will find all about them in a lavish cata-
logue called "The Final Tribute," which shows the funeral
pomp of all mankind, from that of a Kansas Senator to
the hairy Ainu of Yezo. This macabre business may be
in doubtful taste, but it is gleefully characteristic. Down
in Birmingham, Ala., I was handed an undertaker's card
with the gay-grim legend: "I'll get you yet!" On the
other side was this consolation: "But you'll have all the
attention you'd expect from a friend."

This matter of publicity, I must own, appals me at
the outset. The gleam of Liberty's torch, high over
Bedloe's Island, is somewhat dimmed, when I reflect
that a newspaper lit it, with the aid of Henry Doherty
and the Society for Electrical Development. A great
city like Baltimore takes space in the magazines beside
the breakfast cereal and the safety razor. And the text
tells you why. "Ask Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem
"Works, who is spending $50,000,000 here to establish the
largest steel plant on the Atlantic seaboard." A smaller
town like Kenosha, Wis., makes a most modest bid for
your plant and personal energy. "She offers low freights,
lake transport, intelligent labour, and cheap electric

210 AMERICA'S DAY

power." All over the continent statesmen and society
leaders have their own halo-polishers in the press. A
Presidential election is the most colossal task of all for
the publicity expert. He has a cabinet of movie-men,
an army of orators in a dozen tongues, including Magyar,
Yiddish, and Greek.

He partly edits ten thousand papers by means of extra
matter supplied in plate, and matrix, and proof. He
inspires a corps of cartoonists day by day, till the whirl-
wind finish rings out a blast of challenge from the rival
camps. Then it is that the best writers open fire with
pile-driving boosts for either candidate. No wonder the
Campaign Headquarters is like a great post office gone
mad. The Boss of all is now firing salvoes with a range
of three thousand miles; his target is nine million votes,
scattered from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. America revels in the
strife which Success entails; the Edison formula for it is
"two per cent, inspiration, and ninety -eight per cent,
perspiration." Repose seems to mean stagnation in this
vivid land. One must do and drive, if one is to rank
among the live wires of business; how many American
figures of speech are drawn from electricity, railroads, and
mechanics?

The same qualities are looked for in the man as in the
car — "power and pep, pick-up and snap"; I quote from
an advertisement before me. "Life is too good to waste,"
the American gloats — and wastes himself in the using
of it. "If I can't make sixty-one minutes to the hour,
it won't be for want of trying!" It must be that extra
minute which the foreign visitor finds so wearing — even
the militant suffrage lady who never knew defeat before.
Poor Mrs. Pankhurst, hunted by reporters, hid from them
on the dock near the outward bound Saxojiia, and went
on board at the last moment only to find the pressmen

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 211

waiting at her stateroom door! "I am very tired, and
wish to lie down," was an appeal which even the sob-
sisterhood respected.

That great soldier, Marshal Joffre, must have felt like
that when he left New York for home :

"Un gros rus£ compare
Qui cachait bien son jeu."

He was a jusqu'au boutist in that American Press cam-
paign; temperamental calm sustained him, and the "II
faut tenir bon," which one notes in his early letters;
that motto goes back to Colonel Joffre 's trials among the
Touareg of Timbuktu. The Allied Missions were made
up of men who dislike publicity, yet they took naturally
to democratic ways. Witness Mr. Balfour sitting on a
box in the foc's'le of the Mayflower, chatting with the
sailors, and handing out cigars on the way up the Potomac
to Mount Vernon and Washington's Tomb.

The front-page Person is never allowed out of the public
eye; he must always be on show for anecdote, opinions,
and appraisal. "Not quite my type," was Walt Whit-
man's verdict on John Morley. "Not the letting-it-go
kind. Rather too judicial; still, quite a man." Visitors
nowadays show more tact and understanding than Dickens
did in 1841. His American Notes gave umbrage to his
inquisitive hosts — though Dickens did his best to placate
them during a second tour after the Civil War. The
famous Person is apt to become fogged with incense and
deafened with the feast of trumpets. ' Cocktails are named
after him; he eats and drinks too much, and gets very
little sleep.

The flashlight fiend will take even genius unawares.
There are shorthand scribes who report the statesman
falsely, leading off with an Epictetus maxim, and winding
up with prize-ring praise of the orator, — "he carried a

212 AMERICA'S DAY

wallop like the kick of a mule!" One of these days
perhaps Mr. Balfour will tell us of his pilgrimage with
penetrating play, and that charity of the mind which is a
sympathetic vision. It cannot be said of him, as it was
of Canning, that he was a "ballroom failure"; a stingy
talker, and no ladies' man. I am always expecting some
Lucretian epicure to return from the United States and
write a classic book which shall be a joy to us all, alike
in the Old World and the New. Even Lord Bryce remarks
the noise and tremor which accompany American life.
He compares this people to a tree "whose pendulous
shoots quiver and rustle with the lightest breeze, while its
roots enfold the rock with a grasp which storms cannot
loosen." The rustling, at any rate, is demonstrable by
a mania for publicity, which is all persuasive and unique.
"Is church advertising as necessary and fruitful as it is
in business?" was a question put to seventy-eight factors
of all denominations. And seventy-five answered, "Yes,
it is." But Barnum methods are over, it seems; the
Religious Press Advertising Bureau warns its wire-pullers
against "aping the circus billboards." . . . "The Church
does not run a bargain counter; and in our judgment
she soon reaches the limit of legitimate publicity. Is it
not still true that regenerated men and women are our
best showing? After all, the real Gospel is our main
attraction; and we doubt whether any side lines will
bring us a nobler profit." The boomer of 1918 is a skilled
psychologist as well as an artist of Rossini's own exuber-
ance: "He could set to music a page of advertisements!"
Everything in heaven and earth, from the night sk}' to
Niagara Falls, has been pressed into selling service.
Landscape and mountain are made hideous with mammoth
"calls" from chewing gum and spotless cleansers. There
is a good deal of feeling, I must say, against this viola-
tion; it is passing in the new Day. Less odious, even

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 213

masterly, is the phrasing and display of advertisements in
the newspapers and magazines. Besides these, the trade
appeals of other lands look anaemic.

Great musicians who visit America are all the better
for eccentricity of person, however pure and perfect their
art may be. A great soprano will permit the boys to
invade her hotel suite; on Sunday morning the lady is
stupefied to read — not indeed an interview, but a signed
article b}' herself on "Singing Shorn of Its Mysteries"!
As for the President, his "public" life is not so wearing
as it was. I have known Roosevelt retire to bed with a
bruised hand and aching neck after two thousand hand-
shakes at a garden fete. The White House of 1918 has
no more welcome for casual callers than Buckingham
Palace has, or the Elysee. But in Jackson's day a
reception drew ungovernable mobs to the Executive Man-
sion which "belonged to all the people." Old Hickory
could never have foreseen the result of his first free
lunch. When he opened the doors his admirers surged
in and trod his cheeses into a greasy pulp on the East
Room carpet. The chipping of furniture for souvenirs;
the removal of statuettes, cutlery, cups, and glasses —
here was an enthusiastic vice wrhich lasted up to Roose-
velt's term. The Colonel and his lady worked wonders
in White House reform. They put a stop to a traffic in
invitations which brought seven hundred guests to a sup-
per for three hundred, and drove a hungry President
to raid his wife's larder for cold pie and pickles in the small
hours.

America was rather restive over the war-time sovereignty
which the Federal Government assumed. Thus a Press
Censorship clause was inserted in the Espionage Bill with a
view to ensuring reticence in regard to the plans and armed
forces of the nation. Most of the newspapers, the Presi-
dent was glad to say, put national safety before mere news.

214 AMERICA'S DAY

At the same time there were "some persons who cannot be
relied upon, and whose interest or desires may prove highly
dangerous to the country at this time." The penalty for
indiscretion was a fine of $10,000 and ten years in gaol.
Here was a revolutionary move in a land where the Press
had unbridled power; it is not surprising that the Senate
added a proviso that: "Nothing in this section shall be
construed to limit or restrict any discussion, comment or
criticism of the acts or policies of the Government or its
representatives, or the publication of the same."

There were statesmen in that debate who had no illusions
about the sacred mission of the Press. Senator Pomerene
of Ohio quoted articles "so treasonable that had they been
published in other countries the editors would have been
shot." "Some people," mused Mr. Stone, the Chairman of
the Committee on Foreign Relations, "seem to think there
is something about a journalist which puts him above the
law. I cannot understand why these men should be allowed
to prowl at large after information." This is the view of
a new aristocracy ; it is by no means that of the masses, to
whom the Press is a mighty abstraction, a more than
Roman imperium, dancing through American history with
the large exuberance of Liberty herself. American re-
porters and men of letters enjoy greater favour and for-
tune. Every avenue of public life is open to them. Presi-
dent Wilson won early renown as historian and biographer ;
he also wrote for the papers in his Princeton days.

Roosevelt passed from the White House to the office of
The Outlook; and among Foreign Ministers who were
writers too, I need only name John Hay and Mr. Bryan,
who has been a journalist all his life. Colonel W. E. Edge,
the Governor of New Jersey, was manager of the Atlantic
City Press. Governor Cox of Ohio was first a farmer's
boy, then a printer, and finally the owner of the Dayton
Daily News. Reporters, publishers, and poets are rated as

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 215

men of affairs, and appointed to important embassies and
legations abroad. Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who lived in regal
state among us, was for many years editor of the New York
Tribune. And I first met his successor, Mr. Walter Page,
in the office of The World's Work, which he directed, being
at the same time a partner in a publishing house of high
repute for the quality of its books and periodicals. The
Ambassador to Russia, Mr. David R. Francis, owns the
St. Louis Republic; Dr. Henry van Dyke, lately at The
Hague, is a poet and essayist of international renown.
The list could be extended surprisingly.

Enormous fortunes are made by men who own news-
papers and periodicals ; this is mainly due to the advertise-
ments, which account for nearly ninety-five per cent, of the
revenue. So cunning are these announcements, so artistic
and lavish in scale, that there can be no reasonable com-
parison with the advertising of any other nation. The
total sum spent in this way must exceed $500,000,000, yet
this is by no means the money-measure of American pub-
licity and salesmanship, which bring into play all the
wiles and guiles, all the faith and hope and vigour of the
national genius.

A million dollars is nothing for a breakfast-food cam-
paign or the launching of a new car. The New York
department stores contract for daily columns by the thou-
sand; and $5000 is no startling price to pay for the "posi-
tion" page of a magazine. The ability shown in advertis-
ing, the close watch upon results, the psychologic study
and high pay given for text and pictures — these are mat-
ters to amaze the foreign expert who scans the page with
knowledge of price and "pulling power" — say in the Sat-
urday Evening Post or the Ladies' Home Journal of Phila-
delphia. As literary properties, apart from the daily
papers, I consider these the most valuable in any country;
and the last-named deserves special mention as a factor in

216 AMERICA'S DAY

the uplift of women's lot. I know no agency — political,
civic, or social — which is such a power for good as the
Ladies' Home Journal; though to understand this calls
for intimate grasp of rural and provincial life in the
United States.

The daily papers, with their overwhelming Sunday
supplements, have to a large extent dropped those "yellow"
features which made them so offensive to Americans of the
better sort. "It is the task of a live newspaper," one was
told, "to raise the devil in some way every day." Hence
the craving for stunts, for daring personals and prurience,
which the European could only survey with awe, seeing men
defamed and women mocked for the fleeting amusement of
the mob. This ugly phase belongs to the past. The
monthlies, too, have given up the so-called "muck-raking"
articles, of which the most notable was Miss Ida Tarbell's
history of the Standard Oil concern. To attack the Trusts
was once a paying vogue; to expose municipal graft and
big business grabs, as well as the careers of industrial kings,
their coups and counter-plots, which were cynical and
crooked reading in the literature of power.

This missionary zeal is an American tradition ; it was
defined by Joseph Pulitzer, when he bought the bankrupt
New York World in May 1883, after its failure as a relig-
ious journal.

Government by the newspapers was of real use in Boss
Tweed's outrageous day; it is out of place in President
"Wilson's, and that of State Governors of a new type.
Thus I find a fervid Churchman as Chief Executive in
Maine, a Socialist farmer in North Dakota, a Doctor of
Philosophy in Arkansas, and University men in Illinois and
Indiana. It was already a changed America which took
up the Prussian challenge; and since that day the all-
absorbing theme has been Democracy's War, and the new
world-order that must come after it.

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 217

From the very first — three centuries ago, indeed — the
hunting of news was known for a prime sport. In 1680
Ben Harris of Boston resolved "to furnish the Country once
a month (or if any glut of Publick Occurrences happen,
oftener) with an account of such considerable Things as
have arrived unto our Notice." In Colonial days, the
papers had a lively time. There was British censure and
stern visitation upon offenders; there were inter-office wars
and editorial duels with bludgeon and pistol and pen. The
famous Stamp Act killed many aspiring sheets. Among
these the Pennsylvania Journal died with mournful glee —
"In the pious hope of Resurrection, having departed this
life on the 31st of October, 1765, through a Stamp in the
vital parts." There were forty -nine of these casualties
before American independence was won.

I must pass over the journalism of Revolutionary days,
when the Boston bell-cart went through the streets collect-
ing rags (at 10/ a lb.!) which a primitive mill made into
paper for the Massachusetts Spy. Ink and type — any sort
of a press — these were hard to come by in the new Republic.
Moreover, readers were so few and shy that the seven dailies
of New York could only muster a circulation of 9420
between them. Yet it was always natural for the Press to
lead the nation. The big editor was already a political boss
who took himself very seriously. "You must try to elect
the President without me," cried old Sol. Smith of The
Independent, with tears rolling down his massy cheeks.
Sol. was just then amalgamating a couple of papers, so for a
season America had to lose the guidance of her inky Tsar.

The birth of the Sun in 1833, the forming of the Asso-
ciated Press in '48, and the invention of Colonel Hoe's
machine are landmarks in the newspaper history of New
York. Sunday papers were long resisted in the Puritan
spirit; on the other hand, all attempts to establish a relig-
ious daily were foredoomed to failure. As a preaching

218 AMERICA'S DAY

sheet the Sun was a poor concern ; the original founders of
the World withdrew from an uplift venture with a loss of
$200,000. With sensational coups and headlong vying
for public favour — like that between the Herald and the
Sun — I have little space to deal. There was no such tiling
as a dull season for news. When facts were few, reporters
eyed the moon itself with wistful impulse that begot a
monstrous yarn, which was fathered upon Sir John
Herschel, who at the time was out of the way in South
Africa. The astronomer was supposed to have viewed
the moon through a new and mighty telescope which
revealed weird valleys and forests, stupendous temples and
strange birds winging stranger way over rivers paved with
gold. It was Locke of the Sun who wrote the famous
Moon Hoax, and the watchful Herald demolished it.

I suppose the Herald is the richest of newspaper prop-
erties. Its founder, the elder Gordon Bennett, was a
humble proof-reader down in Charleston, S. C. How he
borrowed $500, and produced the first number in a Wall
Street cellar, at a desk made of bits of board upon two
barrels, is a classic instance of American hustle. Bennett
did everything himself. He secured advertisements and
financial news. He haunted theatres and clubs for social
stuff; at four in the morning he was writing leaders, or
else sweeping and dusting out his editorial cave. All
things were made to serve the Herald; an infernal
machine addressed to the editor, or an assault upon his
person by a visiting crank ; the first gold of the Californian
rush ; and episodes of the Civil War, with its corps of Her-
ald correspondents, who had $100,000 to spend. These men
wrote of Union victories on the backs of rebel State bonds
and Confederate scrip of enormous face value. So scarce
was paper at that time, that more than half the Southern
journals suspended publication. Others used crude wall-

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 219

papers, with the news on one side and gaudy floral patterns
on the other.

Under Gordon Bennett's son the Herald attained a
wider renown, notably by the sending of Stanley to meet
Livingstone at Ujiji. But it is Horace Greeley who stands
out as the most powerful and truculent figure of the
American Press. It was the dream of his life to own a
newspaper; so far back as 1833 we find the man touring
New York and boring young editors with his views on a
one-cent paper of vast politico-social sway. Greeley was
laughed at, of course. He started the Morning Post on a
cash capital of $150, a promise of $200 worth of paper,
and an agreement with a cautious printer to settle for the
composing every week. After three stormy settlements
the Post died out amid general execration. Greeley was
now a precarious free-lance; he was also a Voice hired on
easy terms by shady politicians at the State Capitol up in
Albany. Yet this hack could bring out the Tribune on a
mysterious thousand dollars, and the moral backing of
petty statesmen who had faith in his stormy talent. The
first number was published in 1841 with a lofty flourish
which was not upheld. "No immoral or degrading police
reports" were to pollute Horace Greeley's page; the Tri-
bune was to reflect only "the virtuous and refined."

The famous pressman gloried in a fight and had recourse
to the queerest circulation methods. He "donated"
strawberry plants and steel engravings of himself, which
gave his rivals scope for the drollest scurrility. In the
summer of '63 the Tribune office was besieged by a mur-
derous mob, and Greeley took refuge in a refrigerator.
These riots were due to Lincoln's drafts for soldiers; and
they broke out afresh in the following year. But already
schooled in violence, the Times and Tribune now mounted
real artillery on their office roofs. There were editor-gun-

220 AMERICA'S DAY

ners turning off real thunder, with ingenious hoists for the
ammunition.

Greeley 's fort was now stuffed with giant reels of paper ;
he poked Minie rifles out of loopholes, and had handy
openings for grenades to be thrown at storming parties.
Such was New York journalism during the Civil War.
Henry Raymond of the Times is a familiar type, akin to
Gordon Bennett and the rest. Here is Raymond writing
his first leader in a windowless loft by the light of a gutter-
ing candle stuck on three nails in a wooden block. "It'll
take five years," he said, "to put my bantling on its legs."
He was soon greeting Kossuth on Staten Island, and devis-
ing stunts that put the Herald in the shade, and eclipsed the
Sun itself.

It was the Times that shocked New York with revelations
of the Tweed Ring, giving figures from the City Comp-
troller's books to show the huge extent of the looting.
One item was $5,663,646 for "repairs and furniture for a
new Court-House." In vain was a bribe of a million dol-
lars offered to the Times; and so ingrained was graft
that Bill Tweed surveyed the whole exposure with a bored
indifference — "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
was a classic question of the Boss. After Ra3rmond of the
Times, comes Pulitzer of the World, who once slept out on
the park benches as a homeless hobo. It was this man's
"Yellow Kid" whose antics in the Sunday paper moved
Dana of the Sun to condemn "Yellow journalism" for the
first time. Pulitzer was in turn defeated by the rich
Calif ornian, W. R. Hearst, who coaxed away the World
staff, including the Yellow Kid artist, who was offered a
Presidential salary.

Whatever may be thought of Hearst and his chain of
papers — there can be no denying the skill and mob-
knowledge with which they are conducted. None others
approach them in circulation. None pay so lavishly for

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 221

pictures and stories, whether news of the day or science
and society features for the Sunday sections. The Hearst
papers, as all Americans know, have their own code of
ethics, and upon this I need not dwell. Setting aside
questions of decency and taste, the Hearst journals are
marvels of popular appeal; it is absurd to ignore them
when considering the influences that sway the mixed peo-
ples of the United States. Moreover, it is incontestable
that Hearst motives and methods — political and social,
technical and professional — have moved certain of our own
papers to a discreet and pallid emulation of stunts and
hunts, adapted to our less impressionable people.

Press publicity is quite a modern weapon, one forced
upon the British Government like the flame-thrower and
the chlorine-cylinder. It went against our grain, yet
could not be ignored without serious disadvantages. So
at last we find our Foreign Office receiving the American
"boys," as President Wilson does after the Friday Cabinet
in Washington. An interview with the British Prime
Minister, our Foreign Secretary, or First Lord was no
longer an impossible stunt, but a frequent fact, with big
headlines and editorial comment when the feature reached
New York. Even in Paris the rigid Protocol of the Quai
d'Orsay so far unbent as to form a "Comite de 1 'Effort de
la France et de ses Allies," which was to counteract the
world-wide ferment which centred in Berlin.

This covert arm of the Kriegsamt was for many years
run by Dr. Otto Hammann, the supple tool of Hohenlohe,
von Biilow and Bethmann-Hollweg. It was Hammann \s
work to create the "atmosphere of Victory" which should
go before the German legions like a cloud of tire, tinging
a timorous world with awe and admiration. Whether
Britain and her friends will ever equal or surpass that
Berlin Bureau is unlikely.

The stealing away of its "atmosphere" is not to be

222 AMERICA'S DAY

denied. "Sooner or later one succumbs to it," is the
reluctant testimony of Professor P. Sefton Delmer, who
may be cited as an excellent witness. He is an Australian,
and was appointed English Lecturer at Berlin University
in 1901. "In Berlin I had constantly to remind myself
that these were German reports, and full of German guile.
The marvellous thing is that this subtle influence is felt
even by intellects ivhich perceive its trend." Judge from
this what its power must be where no bias exists, and
where German rumour calls from every cave to the untu-
tored masses.

Publicity is proven as a weapon of war. Here in
England we have seen it used to call armies into being
for the factory and field, to raise enormous loans and rally
the nation to economy and thrift for a long and wearing
fight. It is pre-eminently an American weapon, and
plays a compelling part in the polity of a land where
silence, dignity, and repose do not accord with the spirit
of youth welling in a restless people. A recent skirmish
between the Cabinet and the Press ended in official rout
and a letter of capitulation from the Secretaries of War,
the Navy, and Foreign Affairs. "While there is much
that is properly secret," these Ministers said, "in con-
nection with Departments, the total is small when com-
pared with the information which it is right the people
should have. America's present needs are confidence,
enthusiasm, and service; and these are not completely
met unless every citizen is given that feeling of partner-
ship which comes with full, frank statements relating to
the conduct of public affairs." This was the outcome of
the "news-gag" clause in the Espionage Bill, which had
been severely handled in both Houses.

At last President Wilson formed an Information Board,
with Mr. George Creelman in charge. The Press was
appeased and put upon its honour, with regulations on

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 223

the news-desk and hints from the Bureaux in each
reporter's heart. In a word, the Government was beaten;
the papers were self-censored indeed, but as free as ever
from "the dictation of superannuated majors who knew
no more about news than they did of giant ordnance in
the field." With this parting shot the Press withdrew
to engage in war-work and devise a Headline Policy
which should be common to them all. Here Columbia
University joined forces with them through the School
of Journalism founded by Joseph Pulitzer of the World.
A super-editor was soon instructing his colleagues from
academic halls oh the Hudson heights. "It is to a con-
sidered and continuous policy of news presentation that
we must primarily look for the keeping before the American
people of the importance of team-play, and of the fact
that we are today a member of a great team of nations
whose success is ours, and whose failure would alike be
ours. . . .

"Keep news of the fighting upon the front page. For
it is Our fighting. It is the reason why all our local
energies — the raising of troops, the training of men here
or there, the manufacture of munitions and the issuance
of billions of credit — are conducted. These activities can
be understood only in relation to the end for which they
are undertaken. . . . That end is the defeat of Germany,
which is being accomplished on the battlefields of Europe
and on the high seas." Such was the new policy which
the official "blacking-brush" might have brought to
angry damnation. At the same time, the Government took
care to issue a daily Bulletin of its own. This was dis-
played in all post-offices, and marked the stages by which
a pacific continent took on war-harness by a social revolu-
tion.

Here publicity has a pride of place denied it in the
quieter lands. The University of Pennsylvania welcomes

224 AMERICA'S DAY

a congress of Advertising Clubs. "Sparks will be struck,"
the advance agent said, "from the contact of keen minds,
new fires of optimism will be kindled, new courage and
understanding promoted among men." These live wires
were able to draw a letter from the most conservative
of Presidents. Dr. "Wilson was glad to know that the
clubs sought "to establish and enforce a code of ethics
based upon candid truth." This was an aim which showed
"good business judgment as well as a fine conception of
public obligation. ' ' That such a crusade was needed, I
will not attempt to deny.

But of late Truth has invaded even the Bargain Base-
ment, where sober values have superseded the merely
snatching legend: "These 25 c. Handkerchiefs are a
trifle mussed, so we allow you 10 c. for washing them." I
know a mammoth store in New York, whose publicity
man began a Truth campaign which all but drove the
managers to mutiny. Yet the fellow persisted in his
heresy. "Sincerity," quoth he, "is the biggest word in
the dictionary. Give me six months' run, and if I don't
double the sales, put me in the discard as a street sweeper."
He had his way, that revolutionary, and dollars followed
"like trained pigs" — the phrase is his own. It was per-
plexing at first to the startled staff. The devotee of
Truth knew that the average woman will refuse to buj'-
"five-dollar" hats at fifty cents, whereas she will readily
bite at $3.89. This tricky system was swept away, —
though for a while Truth stood unheeded in frippery's
halls, like the pedlar who sold golden sovereigns on London
Bridge at a penny apiece.

Nowhere is publicity so profoundly studied as in the
United States. I am willing to believe it is a "fascinat-
ing" art, since human frailty is its chief concern, and it
carries a shifty code. Howbeit one must admire the
play which these mages make with words. What insinua-

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 225

tion equals the hand-camera hint : ' ' Your friends can
buy anything you can give them. — except your photo-
graph!" Or what is quainter than the shaving-soap that
figures as a "Big Stick" — one of suaver utility than Roose-
velt ever planned. "So husky to look at, so magical and
soft in application ! The metal grip grows daily in your
affections as the Big Stick wears itself out in your defence."

In the underworld of advertising I came upon the letter-
broker, an agent unknown over here. He deals in names
and addresses; he rounds up and classifies inquirers of
all kinds, whether for patent medicines, or wild-cat
stocks and shares. The letters are rarely sold outright,
but let out on hire with a sliding scale of charges governed
by recency of date, by the subject-matter, and the number
of originals among each lot. A mail-order house will
pay from $5 to $10 for the loan of a hundred thousand
letters; but I have known $1500 given for the names of
fifty thousand possible victims in a crazy speculation.

It is curious to recall the stunts of other days, and
the itch for novelty which was never still. Even civic
science had its freaks and finds, and editors were glad to
get them for the Sunday supplement. Take the alliga-
tors of the Jacksonville (Fla.) Zoo. These idle saurians
were yanked out of the sun and set to clear the city drains
by crawling through them with ropes and chains. Who
could invent such things as these ?

The social firmament was combed for stunts — (there
is no escaping the word), and all classes responded eagerly.
At the zenith was my lady of Newport, who went to the
fancy ball as Aphrodite, with nothing on her but a wisp
of gauze — "you could lose it in your purse, my dear"!
And at the nadir was the felon in gaol; he was tyranny's
victim, I fear, in this democratic land. His terrors and
tortures in Trenton were exposed. So were drink and
drugs smuggled in to him at Auburn; and — worst of

226 AMERICA'S DAY

all — the ghastly preparations for the death-chair in Sing-
Sing, a sizzling horror which I shall not describe.

These ugly themes cast wholesome light upon abuses;
for the vice and graft of American prisons, no less than
their crude philanthropy, were scandals that cried aloud
for reform. Of late years an official ban has been put
upon penitentiary yarns. Superintendent James M. Car-
ter, of the New York State Prison Service, warned his
staff against notoriety of this unbecoming kind. Legiti-
mate news might properly be given out, but "the practice
of featuring convicts and advertising persons indiscrimin-
ately is not and cannot be helpful."

Aerial and cinema feats took a reckless toll of human
life, besides debauching the people who viewed them.
On the political side there was the "Manless Special," a
famous train which brought Suffrage armies to besiege
the White House and the Capitol, and the liquor-loathing
Sheriff, who watered the streets of his home town with
hundreds of gallons of "blind tiger" whisky.

America loved spectacular news of this kind, but the
buzz of it ceased when ten million citizens marched to
register for Humanity's "War. New Headlines now
appeared in the papers, and mere inanity was no more
seen. "Old Glory in the Firing Line" was a front-page
feature. Or "The Hoe behind the Flag" — an exhortation
to the farmers: "Taking Stock of Our Resources," "The
Men who Get Things Done," and "Our Bridge of Ships
Across The Atlantic." "These United States," whose
lack of cohesion Washington himself bewailed, were now
one indeed in that "privilege of self-sacrifice" which
President Wilson praised. "We may regard this as a
very happy Day," the Chief Executive told the veterans
of the Civil War. "A Day of Dedication, a renewal of the
spirit which has made us great."

America's millions were now in Democracy's War —

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 227

"With both feet," as General Pershing vowed: "To the
last dollar," as ML Viviani testified after his memorable
tour with Marshal Joffre, "To the last man, and the last
beat of their hearts."

CHAPTER XIII

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW"

"Les anciens, Monsieur, sont les anciens; et nous sommes les gena
de maintenant." — (Moliere, Le Malade Imaginaire).

The collapse in Russia and the military burden it threw
upon the Allies did much to deepen America's responsibil-
ity and reveal her own role in a critical liberation of forces
too evenly balanced for a speedy decision. Germany, as
we know, held her lightly as a possible enemy. The early
satires of journals like Kladderadatsch and Simplissimus
show Uncle Sam as a clumsy titan with a wooden sword:

"Any centenarian can see
To ring a bull's-eye when he shoots at me!"

Another cartoon showed a Mexican peon on a bucking
bronco, throwing a lasso at the impotent President, who
was scolding Berlin from the far Atlantic shore. Ameri-
ca's aim to boss the world was desolate Hamburg's theme:
"Not of course by military means, for these people lack the
very rudiments of martial tradition. Their mentality is
essentially bourgeois, yet they assume lofty airs as keepers
of the world's conscience. This pose flickers through all
Ilerr Wilson's chameleon Notes."

Herr Wilson would do well to change his ways while yet
he was safe. For, lifted again and again from the dip-
lomatic saddle, he was now in danger of being blown out of
the military path. . . . And so things drifted to a rupture
which was quite calmly viewed in Berlin. Was it of much
more account after all than the break with Hayti or

228

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 229

Liberia? These op hiions underwent a change. I find Pro-
fessor Jannasch debating the cost of war with "the Land
of Limitless Kesources." He regrets the Pan-American
influence which can seize millions of tons of shipping, and
close markets from Vera Cruz down to Valparaiso — "the
result of our colonizing genius these ninety years." But
there could be no turning back. Dr. Jannasch kept the
Pan-German eagle flying because: "Our people have
poured out streams of blood ! They have hungered and
shivered, and sacrificed their savings to the one Desire, of
which the halting fulfilment has proved bitter enough. Let
us push on to the decisive battle in which the Americans
can take no part."

Other writers, too, thought the New World too thickly
overlaid with Germanism to move an armed fist against the
Fatherland. And therewith the}' traced the sway of
Deutschtum in the United States, from the rabble of Valley
Forge which Von Steuben reorganized for Washington with
German marksmen of deadly fame, armed with bored rifles
made by German gunsmiths of Pennsylvania.

From first to last what was America without its Teuton
leaven ! It was Andreas Klomann, a Rhenish Prussian,
who founded the steel industry of Pittsburg, which Penn-
sylvania Germans like Henry Frick and Charles Schwab
carry on to this day. Busch, the famous brewer of St.
Louis; Havemeyer, the Sugar-man, Otto Kahn and Jacob
Schiff, those Wall Street princes — here was German genius
flowering in a bleak and graceless land. In the Civil War
187,000 hyphenates fought for the Union; their folks at
home put $600,000,000 into Lincoln's empty war-chest.
But what reminding should America need of all this aid?
German soldiers in bronze and marble stood in mute
reproach in every well-kept park from Boston to San Fran-
cisco.

By this time America shook from sea to sea with armed

230 AMERICA'S DAY

upheaval, and Berlin pedants were dwelling upon new facts.
This world-war was more scientific than any which had
gone before. But it was also a machine-made war, and
men were drilled for it with an ease and swiftness which
confounded precedent and opened up disturbing possi-
bilities. America's Day of Registration showed an enor-
mous muster. Secretary Baker was talking of six-figure
armies raised by selective drafts which favoured no class.
And Joffre's appeal was being answered. "Led by her
President," said the Marshal through the State Depart-
ment, "this mighty people has entered the war. And by
the side of France, in defence of mankind, the place of
America is marked. France, to whom American valour is
known, cherishes the thrilling hope that the flag of the
United States will soon be unfurled in our fighting line.
This is what Germany dreads!"

That dread was spreading as the President got to work
and training camps appeared, each one with a city's popu-
lation, and all intent upon the business of slaughter. Soon
there was an Expeditionary Force in France, an American
Staff established in the Rue Constantine near the Paris Min-
istry of War, and whole divisions of pupils were at lethal
games behind the lines under the veterans of Haig and
Petain. Fabulous loans were offered to the Allies. There
were steel rails and rolling stock for Russia, fleets of ships
on the stocks for Britain, that she might defeat the sub-
marine. For home defence America had a program
involving billions of dollars, and a rally of power — per-
sonal, industrial, and agricultural — which must change the
continent for all time.

The navy was transformed; a loose system of coast
defence was pulled to pieces and reconstructed in the light
of ballistic lessons. Science and invention were enlisted on
a vast scale. All things lacking — torpedoes and shells, big
guns and mines and explosives — were forthcoming in truly

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 231

American profusion. So were skilled hands for the bases
in France ; engineers, electricians, and road men ; dock-
masters of Hoboken, Fifth Avenue chauffeurs and lumber-
jacks from the far North-West. The submarine service
began a headlong race for proficiency. It had a long way
to go, I am bound to say; yet the pace of it exceeded the
utmost hope of men who knew America's resources. Here
Henry Ford deserves a tribute. He enlisted his own indus-
trial armies, which number scores of thousands ; he offered
machinery quite unique in scope and scale and ingenuity.

But it was above all in aircraft that supremacy was
planned. The eyes of the German armies were to be
blinded by American squadrons, so machines were talked
of in ten thousands. For this purpose a first appropriation
for $64,000,000 was no sooner passed than Congress tabled
another for $600,000,000. The German war-aims were
often expounded by the President. The Kaliphale of
Berlin was dissected by him with its implied dominion of
Europe and Asia from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf.
"The great fact that stands out," Dr. Wilson explained, "is
that this is a peoples' war for freedom, justice, and self-
government among all the nations. . . . And that it rests
with us to break through these hypocrisies — the patent
cheats and marks of brute force — and help set the world
free; or else stand aside and let it be dominated by sheer
weight of arms, and the arbitrary will of self-constituted
masters."

"To do this great thing worthily and successfully," the
President pointed out, "we must devote ourselves to service
without regard to profit or material advantage, and that
with an energy and intelligence that rise to the level of the
undertaking." But would this efficiency be forthcoming?
The Germans doubted it, and fell back on a survey of past
American wars. All was different now, however ; con-
fusion was stilled like the twitter of birds in a rising storm.

232 AMERICA'S DAY

Colonel Roosevelt's offer of an independent levy was
politely declined. He was a gallant man, a line public
servant, but . . . "the business now in hand," declared
the President plainly, "is practical and undrainatic,
scientifically definite and precise." There was no scope
here for the beau sabreur; rough-rider methods, well
enough in Cuba, were sadly out of place in the fields of
France. "I shall act at every step," Dr. Wilson declared,
"under expert advice from both sides of the water."

Even Germany began to see that this leader was carrying
his people with him. "It is not an army we have to train
and shape for war," the President told Congress when he
moved the Conscription Act; "it is* the entire American
nation." And that miracle was growing; the States
"United" in a sense that Washington never saw, nor that
Lincoln left when his task of Reconstruction was completed.
"What our country needs," said Dr. Murray Butler, Presi-
dent of Columbia University, "is an intellectual hero, an
outstanding poet or a seer, to move hearts and heads as
Emerson did our fathers." America was sure she had such
a man at the White House in this her Day, and German
thinkers were inclined to agree.

It is curious to follow the Berlin process of giving the
devil his due. What astonished friend and foe was the
personal ascendancy of the President, his fixity of purpose
and supple grasp to which men in Congress who opposed
him paid unstinted homage. "Wilson may have a one-
track mind," they conceded, "but it seems to have ample
switching facilities!"

His role was the pontiff's, his word infallible in American
faith and morals. "Why have our people changed over-
night?" asked Congressman Byrnes of South Carolina.
In this case an opponent of the Conscription Bill went
home to face constituents who favoured it as by an abrupt
caprice; it was bewildering. "Simply because the papers

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 233

urge them to back up the President. Whatever he asks
for he gets by an overwhelming vote." And indeed his
sagacity had won. Now for the first time one heard
business men agreeing with Martineau that: "Reverence
for human life is carried to an immoral idolatry when it is
held more sacred than justice or right, and when the
spectacle of blood becomes more horrible than the sight of
desolating tyrannies and triumphant hypocrisies."

The forty-eight States ranged themselves behind their
chosen leader "with plain heroic magnitude of mind." In
New York the German Liederkranz serenaded Mayor
Mitchel with "The Star-Spangled Banner." Southern
negroes marched to the booths with martial song ; in
Western deserts the Indian braves went on the war-path — ■
not indeed in plumes and paint, but in the latest caper of
Kirschbaum togs, with dandy hats and loud shirts of ultra
design.

It is no skin tepee that houses the Indian chieftain of
today; that saddle-coloured savage draws thousands a year
from gas and oil lands leased to the big Standard or
some other interest of the East. The Osage lord rolled
up to the Agency in a Ford car and registered as an
American soldier. Then he drove back to a fine house,
with fauteuils and parquet floors, and a costly gramophone
in which Gounod and Verdi were followed by ragtime airs
from the Broadway musical shows.

I must say there are less "civilized" specimens than
these. In Colorado the Utes were unwilling to serve,
the remote Navajos of Arizona would not "fight in
Germany," and were therefore tactfully excused. Other-
wise all the races of the Melting-Pot rose at their Presi-
dent's appeal. The Hungarian of Chicago wrote patriotic
letters to his native paper, the Amerikai Figydd, whose
leading article was a paean to the Day. It was the same in
Lowell (Mass.) — "our vest-pocket Athens"— where the

234 AMERICA'S DAY

Greek Erevna gave stirring news to the native coffee-houses.
Registration was also explained in Italian, Spanish, Yid-
dish, and Norse. Even hyphenate journals turned upon
the Fatherland with regret, recalling its furtive strokes
at Uncle Sam. These began with the Samoan affair, and
passed to the Hayti intrigue of 1914, not forgetting Herr
Zimmerniann's bait to Mexico and Japan.

Every sort of citizen hailed the privilege of service,
which the President hoped would receive the widest pub-
licity. And the press responded with a "Wake Up!" cam-
paign which spoiled the farmer's picnic on the Kansan
plain. It was for sluggish rural centres that the Com-
mittee of Public Information prepared a national booklet,
IIoiv We Came Into The War. Propaganda swept the
continent with tireless ingenuity and zeal. It pierced
the prairie apathy; it struck sparks from the dullest, and
set Great Britain in a new light. An official order was now
issued deleting the offensive third verse of "The Star-
Spangled Banner." And a typical Western newspaper
summed the situation in these words: "Mr. Balfour's
reception by Congress ought to convince the English
that we are willing to forget George III — if they can!"
So at long last President Wilson was rewarded for that
patience which Pitt defined as the first virtue of states-
manship.

I have called America a continent of contradictions.
That "all men are created equal" was set down as a self-
evident truth in the classic Declaration. Yet a Rockefeller
may amass a thousand millions, whilst the "poor white" of
Tennessee drags out a life of savage squalor on his lonely
rocks. Then Jefferson, in his first Inaugural Address,
laid down the principles of democracy, which as a "bright
constellation has gone before us and guided our steps."
A particular star of that galaxy was "Justice for all men

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 235

of whatever persuasion, religious or political." Yet the
State laws jar strangeh/ on this Jeffersonian latitude. Last
year a citizen of Olympia, Wash., was sent to gaol for
calling George Washington a drinker. And three thousand
miles off — in prosaic Waterbury, Conn. — a Lithuanian
freethinker was tried and convicted for "blaspheming the
Bible," making light of its miracles and the divinity of
Christ. The Free Speech League of New York took up
this case, pointing out that the law went back to 1642
and was coupled with witchcraft, entailing the death pen-
alty.

How are such vagaries possible among the People of Now
— the "common people" whom Lincoln said God loved
because "He made so many of them"? The sovereignty
of the people is the first principle of Americanism, and no
leader has stated it more forcibly than Woodrow Wilson.
"I take it," he says, "to be a necessity of the hour to open
up all the processes of politics and public business — open,
them wide — to public view: to make them accessible to
every force that moves, every opinion that prevails in the
thought of the people: to give society command of its
own economic life again — not by revolutionary measures,
but by a steady application of the principle that the
people have a right to look into such matters and to control
them. . . . Wherever political programs are formulated
or candidates agreed, over that place a Voice must speak,
with the divine prerogative of a people's will, the words,
'Let there be light !' " Here is the antithesis of Kaiserism!
And in similar vein was the message which Mr. Gompers
sent to revolutionary Russia on behalf of the Federation
of Labour.

Meanwhile, from Madrid to Prague, from Calcutta to
Quebec, "the silent mass of mankind" for whom Dr. Wil-
son spoke, were raising voices louder than the guns. And
America showed the way with growing determination.

236 AMERICA'S DAY

' ' At one bound, ' ' our Prime Minister told her Pressmen in
Downing Street, "the United States became a world-power
in a sense that she never was before. ' ' Her President was
hailed by France as the eloquent interpreter of outraged
right and civilization. All Europe rang with homage. The
halls of the Sorbonne were full of American praise, so were
illiterate barracks of the Ukraine, where the mujik blinked
in the new light of freedom and extravagant hope.
Marshal Joffre was a pilgrim to that sacred grove on the
Potomac, where he laid a palm-spray of bronze upon Wash-
ington 's tomb, with the wistful hope that America would
soon sound a trumpet-call like his own classic Order of
the Day: "L 'offensive va se poursuivre sans trcve et sans
relache ! ' '

Courage, self-mastery, and continuous effort — here is
the formula that sustains the American soul in the great,
game of life. "0' course," as the darkie explained to
the learned German, "ef you sho'ly hunt Trouble, an' stay
ter shake han's an' ask how's all de HI' Troubles at home
— w'y den ye can't blame Joy ef he take ter de woods wid
his banjo !" To think pink and look prosperous are factors
extolled and favoured as conducing to Success. On the
other hand, the grouch — he who croaks and kicks — is known
and damned at sight, like the movie villain who flickers to
a lurid end in the last picture of a popular reel.

Therefore preparedness for the battle of life is a forceful
affair. To begin with, it involves many experiments in
education; the President of Columbia bluntly declares that
"Our present system is worn out." For this reason
the General Education Board, backed writh thirty-five
millions of Rockefeller money, began to remodel elemen-
tary and secondary education on lines laid down by Dr.
Eliot of Harvard, and by Dr. Abraham Flexner, who
would cut out all the trimmings of the Platonic ideal and
get down to the brass tacks of today: "Nous sommes le&

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 237

gens de Maintenant!" The Flexncr plan lays stress
upon science and industry. It would abolish that formal
discipline which moved the humorist to remark with
reminiscent sadness, "It makes no dif'rence phivat ye
shtudy, 's long's ye hate it!" Mathematics of the utili-
tarian type are to be taught; the training is to be largely
vocational and on strict business lines with little regard
for the larger humanities.

Of course the intellectuals opposed this scheme, citing
the wisest sage of antiquity, who turned from the physical
sciences and gave himself to the life of man. The contest
between the two schools still rages sharply, as it does
among ourselves. But the Greeks may have to give way,
with all their allies from Ignatius Loyola to Heinrich von
Treitschke, who defended the classics as a guide to intellect
and taste. "Imagination will be cramped and stunted,"
American scholars mourned as they surveyed the Flexner
scheme. "Knowledge and enlightenment will be abridged
and shorn of those delights which have made them so rich
a possession." The experiment is therefore assailed as a
disastrous stroke — "the opening wedge of a frankly sordid,
materialistic education which will make of us a race of
efficient Hottentots. ' '

On the other hand, American parents raise a counter-
plea for their twenty million boys and girls. "Give our
children a practical education," they urge. "We waut
them fitted for the fight. ' ' So the system of 1898 must go ;
it is already out of date, although hailed in its day as the
heritage of all the ages. Secretary McAdoo of the Treas-
ury would have the teaching of Spanish made compulsory
in the common schools; two-thirds of America's youth leave
these at the age of fourteen, and never return. In this day
of plain speaking hard things are said of the mental and
moral equipment they take with them into the busy
American world. After all, the high-brow was a poor

238 AMERICA'S DAY

enough citizen for war-time — unless indeed he knew
something of the Science of Slaughter. Even conservative
England had found this out. Had she not now a Chair
of Aviation at Oxford? There was at Leeds a Depart
ment of Tinctorial Chemistry, at Liverpool a School of
Tropic Medicine, and at Sheffield — that home of high-
speed steel — a Professorship of Metallurgy, as well as a
Chair of Russian, endowed by the armament firm of Vick-
ers. Surely these were significant signs of the times?

Colonel Shirley, Director of Military Studies at Cam-
bridge, was aghast at the ignorance of high-brow English
boys. "Is it not absurd," he asked — for all the world as
Dr. Flexner might ! — ' ' to make a boy do Latin verse before
he can express himself clearly in his mother tongue!"
So there was vigorous blowing in Britain upon the Latin
cinders and Greek dust ; a floundering out of blind alleys
and buffalo-tracks of learning into the broad American
way, and the workshop of a brighter and better world.

The college man in business is often debated in New
York, where tradition and the facts go steadily against
him. An industrial prince, like Charles M. Schwab, will
take the high-brow for his theme in get-ahead talks with
slum lads over on the East Side. Mr. Schwab — no college
man himself — favours Science in a general way, because
it tends to eliminate chance from the material affairs of
men. The cultured youth, Mr. Schwab is afraid, has
inflated notions of his own worth; he seeks to capitalize
at once his costly years of study. Hard slogging on the
up-grade, the steel-master believes, goes against the college
grain. The high-brow gets a disagreeable jolt in his new
job ; his own superiority is a standing bar, with all its
top-hamper and unnecessary sail. It is quite otherwise
with the poor lad, hammered night and day in ambition's
forge. He pores over books when others are in bed; he

THE "PEOPLE OP NOW" 239

foregoes the usual pleasures, he does menial tasks in the
summer months to pay for his technical tuition.

Mr. Schwab made out a plausible case, and American
life fairly bristles with the proof of it. That brusque
giant and patron of the arts, John G. Johnson, of Phila-
delphia, was a blacksmith's son who scampered through
a suburban board school. He became the leading corpora-
tion lawyer of America, and two Presidents pressed high
office upon him.

Another poor boy was James A. Farrell, President of
the U. S. Steel Corporation, the master of 270,000 men and
a business worth a thousand millions a year. Jim Farrell
is the incarnation of American drive; no man's advice is
more eagerly sought on the all-absorbing topic of Success.
He has a memory of abnormal grasp, as the greatest of
advocates found when heckling him in a Government suit
against the Trust he controls.

The lives of these men, paragons of energy and shrewd-
ness, have long allured the American masses and inspired
the arid literature of efficiency schools. Forging Ahead
is a typical title. IIow to Figure Fast is a ready reckoner
which is described as The Book That Counts! Another
is Wealth in Waste; it deals with potential gold from the
factory smoke, with potash from seaweed, paper from
sugar-cane stalk, silk from sawdust, and valuable nitrates
from the atmosphere. Was not War Secretary Baker
building a four million dollar plant for this (i crazy ?? pur-
pose?

These books have an immense sale. There are get-
ahead periodicals, too, like Success and System and the
American Magazine; this last is conducted on novel lines.
Here we have inspiring yarns, with real heroes and real
names. Here is Jim Hill driving his dog-sled over the
Canadian rivers in mid-winter — the Cecil Rhodes of the

240 AMERICA'S DAY

United States, of whom a spell-bound reader wrote,
"Hill's adventures make fiction seem vapid stuff. I have
never hung by the eyelids to any climax as I did to this
man's battle with the Hudson Bay Company for the Red
River Trade." Equally moving (to the American reader)
was Hill's exploit with the St. Paul and Pacific. The
American titan took that road in hand when it was but
"two streaks of rust and a right of way," and with the
derelict he built an empire in the North-West.

But the Great War is shaping other heroes. America's
Hall of Fame has now shifted from University Heights to
the battle-fields of France, with expectancy of new leading
worthy of more spacious times. This feeling was voiced by
President Butler in the halls of Columbia, when he con-
ferred degrees upon Marshal JofTrc and Arthur Balfour, the
envoys of a new Holy Alliance for security and peace. Big
gaps in the graduates and Faculty spoke of Columbia's
contribution to the new Day. Five hundred students were
at Plattsburg, Newport or Fort Myer, training for Army
and Navy commissions.

"The American youth who pass out today," Dr. Butler
said, "enter a strange world at a crucial hour of history.
Time will soon tell whether man has crossed the Great
Divide and begun his decline, or whether he is still ascend-
ing to universal freedom. It is more than a world at war —
it is a world in social revolution. From the Russian steppes
clear across Europe, and the United States round to Japan
and China, men and nations are not only locked in fearsome
grappling, — they are also examining, readjusting, and reor-
ganizing their olden habits of thought and action, private
as well as public. ' '

Hence the need for new leading; for larger vision and
devotion such as the people perceive in Woodrow Wilson,
who "reigns" as no President ever reigned before. "It is
an heroic age," says another American thinker, Dr. Eliot

THE " PEOPLE OF NOW" 241

of Harvard — "an age that prompts the question: 'What
do I love? What do I live and work for? And for what
am I ready to die?' Quite naturally the answer comes:
'For justice, for freedom, for the increase of natural human
joy, and the fairer distribution of the legitimate fruits of
labour.' " Here is Americanism defined; the laic religion
of tomorrow's reconstruction to which all the democracies
subscribe.

Meanwhile, an epic stage is set in the United States with
mute beckoning to unknown players. What manner of
man will the stress and strain bring forth, as the Revolution
brought forth George Washington as patriot, soldier, and
statesman? It is strange, America muses, how war dis-
covers genius in unlikely quarters. Andrew Jackson
stepped from the Bench to the battle-field in the chaos of
1812. It was an obscure failure, Ufysses Grant, who was
destined to lead the Union Army to victory at last. The
splendour of Lincoln has a background of blood and flame,
and imminent ruin. It was the rough-rider charge up San
Juan hill that gave Roosevelt a glimpse of the White
House and future renown. Therefore the flush-time idols
are neglected. The standards of Success have shifted, and
citizens rally for service as they did when the farmers of
Concord Bridge tired "the shot heard round the world."
"The whole nation," the President ordained, "must be a
team in which each man shall play the part for which he is
best fitted."

Achievements once thought great were forgotten now.
The Panama Canal is America's greatest "short cut," yet
the man who made it — General G. W. Goethals — had a
prouder task in the Emergency Fleet which was to foil the
German submarine. The crowning work of Edison's career
is being done in war-workshops of the Westinghouse
concern. Herbert Hoover forsook his mines for the ration-
ing of nations. Julius Rosenwald, the Selfridge of Chicago

242 AMERICA'S DAY

■ — a man rich enough to give away $G87,000 on his birthday
* — left his mammoth store to join the Council of National
Defence. And Daniel Willard turned his back on railways
to organize American industries for war.

As for the women, I could fill pages with their practical
work. "Stop passing resolutions," a shrewd lady advised
a very exclusive Society. "And go home and plant some-
thing!" It was pointed out by the Department of Agri-
culture that housekeepers control eighty per cent, of
America's food expenditure; they could therefore do great
service by eliminating waste. Secretary Houston was
informed by his experts that poor cooking and over-lavish
provision at table dumped in $700,000,000 a year into the
garbage-cans. This vast sum was now to be saved, and as
much more added to it by the children, whose "door-yard
gardens" were soon a national feature, full of vegetables
and small fruits with hygienic space on the side for chickens
and rabbits, pigeons and ducks. The U. S. Commissioner
of Education, showed that by intelligent direction a twelve-
year-old boy or girl could easily grow $50 worth of food in a
garden of five hundred square feet. There need be no
interference with regular school work, nor too much time
taken from the hours of play. Moreover, the new hobby
had an educational value; it added to health and strength,
and filled the child with wholesome pride as a helper of
the State.

Then a million women were asked to do men's summer
work on the farms. To all volunteers the Department of
Agriculture sent a concise and simple primer of instruc-
tions. For the first time economy and thrift were Govern-
ment themes, urged upon homes where these virtues had
never been known. The women were told it was possible
for them "to aid our economic preparedness when the
Great War summons an immense Army to the colours."
With a good team, and a riding-cultivator equipped with a

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 243

sun umbrella, ploughing corn was a more pleasing job than
washing clothes. The spring seat of a binder was con-
trasted with the useless piano-stool, and "few household
chores are more fun than riding a hay-rake."

It need hardly be said that the Red Cross had feminine
armies of its own, as well as funds to the extent of
$100,000,000, and as much more as might be desired.
Never, surely, was money so profuse in flood. Only the
Quakers were exempted from combatant service, and these
took up works of utility and mercy. "No Friend will fail
in his duty at a time when the world is torn and bleeding.
"We must show by our example that we love America in
very deed and truth."

It is a long way from the Quakers of New York and Ver-
mont to the Filipinos of the Asiatic Archipelago, yet here
also the same signs were seen. Fifty thousand islanders
answered America's call, and marched to the Malacang
residence of Governor Harris, who rules in the President's
name. "We take our stand," said island chieftain Manuel
Quezon, "on the democratic principle that he who will not
aid his country as a soldier in the hour of need is unworthy
of citizen privilege."

Such was America's will to war; it came with a bracing
sense of shock and the awed perception of a sterner Day.
No man voiced this more earnestly than General John J.
Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the First Expeditionary
Force. "This is the beginning of a wonderful era," the
veteran declared when both Houses of Congress passed the
Conscription Bill with great majorities. "I would rather
live now and have my share in today's events than have
lived in any past period of the world or witness any devel-
opment which the future may have in store."

The upheaval in America was more foreign to habit than
in older nations of homogeneous race and traditions of war.
It is hard to convey the sensations of a New York matron,

244 AMERICA'S DAY

when shopping in Sixth Avenue and suddenly faced by a
big effigy of Liberty, with minatory finger and the startling
legend below: "You Buy a Bond, or I perish!" One of
these days a native humorist will write a droll book on the
''Wake Up" campaign which President Wilson waged to
ensure an effective war and to imbue the Central West and
South with martial incentives. For it was in these sections
that the farmer scratched his head, irresolute over the
many scientific recipes for the "bread bullets" which he
was to provide for the Allied peoples. Rube cheered with
the rest, of course; yet in his heart he was afraid the
Executive ran too fast and was over-autocratic in Free-
dom's war. Witness the new regulations for the produce
markets, the bossing of railroads and factories and mines.
Mr. President, the farmer feared, was filching more and
more power from Congress until that body bade fair to
become a war-time rubber-stamp. Nor were signs lacking
that Congress itself felt that way too.

"We're shooting democracy into the Germans," said the
caustic Socialist of Milwaukee. "We've a Tsar of our
own over here, so let Nicholas send us his cast-off crown."
In this way were the rueful and truculent, the remote herds
of brotherhood and peace, as well as artful traitors and
duty-dodgers worked upon with auras of conflict and con-
fusion. It would be absurd to say that the Great War was
"popular" in the jingo sense, as war was when petty vic-
tories over Spain shrieked from the New York Journal in
monstrous type made up of Stars and Stripes. America's
War called for patient education. The Council of National
Defence called a conference of all the States, and Secretary
Lane spoke plainly to the delegates. Germany, he declared,
was not to be starved out ; she would put up the greatest
fight the world has seen. "But whatever the size of the job,
we must be equal to it. ' ' The envoys present should there-
fore impress upon their home folks the need for immediate

THE "PEOPLE OF NOW" 245

action, and lay plans for a long and obstinate struggle.

Secretary of Labour Wilson made a personal appeal to
the workers. Mr. McAdoo, of the Treasury, toured the
country with his wife on a "Why We Fight" mission. He
dealt also with the national penalty: "If Germany wins
. . . she would come here and set the conqueror's heel
upon us all ! We might have to pay an indemnity amount-
ing to half our total wealth, which is $250,000,000,000.
You would have taxation upon your shoulders for a
hundred years to come." There were also lectures on the
Chautauqua system which brought home to the masses how
vital was victory in this far-off fight.

But if "Business as Usual" was an early obsession of
our own, is it any wonder that the Melting Pot — a con-
tinent thousands of miles off — should be slow movers in
a universal war? Americans find life hard enough in
normal times. "Our toll of industrial deaths," said the
Director of the Museum of Safety, "equals fifteen full
Army regiments every year. Over three hundred regi-
ments of toilers are so seriously hurt as to be laid off for
four weeks. " " America at peace, ' ' said another authority,
"lost in two years and a half of death, mutilation, and
lowered production, the $3,500,000,000 first asked of Con-
gress on the eve of our entry into the war. ' '

At home and abroad today there are nobler interests
for America's gilded youth who at one time aspired to a
De Maupassant leisure of parties and veiled ladies, prac-
tical jokes and games in the vicious ephebia of Broadway
glare and tumult. A Thaw of Pittsburg became the senior
American flying officer in France. Alan Seeger, the Har-
vard poet, gave his life for1 the cause like our own Rupert
Brooke. Vernon Castle, the famous salon dancer, had
America "at his feet," yet he hurried over to take part
in sky quadrilles against the Bodies. Young Marshall
Field, a lad of enormous wealth, became a trooper in the

246 AMERICA'S DAY

Illinois Cavalry; young Vanderbilt joined the ammunition
train as a private soldier.

There was a time when the rich youth sought to outshine
all the dandies, since Alcibiades went out to supper with
golden grasshoppers in his hair. This folly can never
quite regain its tinsel glory. The mermaid feast, the hectic
play at Palm Beach tables — all the staggers and lapse of
moneyed license — these belong to America's isolated past,
when young Hotspur made a torch of his purse to light
his narrow round — Las de toucher tou jours mon horizon du
doigt. The American youth of 1918 has the world for a
field.

CHAPTER XIV

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK

"I call a new testimony — yea, one better than all scripture, more
discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications. . . .
Stand forth, 0 Soul!'' — (Ieriulxiaa) .

When Henry James returned to New York after years of
absence he had much to learn about his native land, its
joyous growth and clamorous aims. "Perhaps you'll write
us the Great American Novel," was the hope of a friend,
who guided the weaver of words through the noisy maze.
But the artist demurred. "I'm afraid I can't," he said,
"for I don't know the American world of business."

Now my survey of a pink and practical outlook must go
back to a time when the anima mundi of these people was
not duty or sacrifice, but mainly Success, and that of rather
a barren kind which left the winner unfulfilled.

To compare the present American aspect with that of
pre-war days is like setting the Britain of 1918 beside the
England of Ascot Week in 1913, when our "week-end
habit of mind" was a German taunt. America as well as
Russia has known the throes of revolution. The uprooting
of tradition, the adventure overseas and its reaction upon
life at home — these are already reflected in American life
and letters. The Great American Novel, it is felt, may
after all be written in blood, like Draco's law. And haply
by some exiled Ovid, like young Norman Prince who died
for France, or Alan Seeger, the poet-soldier, whose reverie
called up Love and pillowed ease:

"But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some naming town!"
247

248 AMERICA'S DAY

It is the voice of America's new-found soul, a nobler
note than that of the petty trader who "couldn't pass a
bank without raising his hat and walking on his toes."
This waggish worship of the money-shrine has been
appreciably chilled. Dollars are become as dirt to be swept
in billions into the maw of war. Therefore a sober
journal like the San can now say, "We are reading
seriously. ' ' The reviewer glanced at ' ' this Season 's books, ' '
and sighed as one who knew them by heart. How could
the public swallow the old stuff in this new day? But it
was not the old stuff; there was here less of the milk for
babes and more strong meat, such as belongeth to them
that are of full age. Books of broader vision lay on the
critic's table. Something of Mazzini's flame in '63 —
"Nationality is an end, a collective mission from Above."
"Writers were harking back to the fervour that lifted the
North in '65 when the security of the Union had been
assured by the sword. And men pointed to France,
quoting the Parnassians of Fort Vaux and Douaumont:
"Notre race tou jours a su reverdir!" Over American
literature a change had come, as it had over industry itself.
There were now merchant fleets to build, and U-boat
destroyers; aeroplanes in thousands, sea and land harness
for millions of men. The steel plants of Pittsburg were
turned from the ways of peace. So were the motor-shops of
Michigan, the rubber-shops of Ohio, lumber-camps of the
North-West; the farms and ranches, the stock-yards, oil-
fields and mines.

The wholesale jeweller was busy with periscopes, the
sash-chain man making cartridge-clips ; and from under-
wear factories came bandages in ribbons that would reach
to the moon. Machine-gun aid was expected of the cor-
set people. Cash-register plants and makers of infants'
food were also in the killing or curing line. Thirty thou-
sand firms had asked for a share in the Big Job, and Uncle

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 249

Sam was doling out "practice orders" of an educational
kind. Thus a threshing-machine man got a contract for a
hundred six-inch shells, and with it Government guidance
in the necessary jigs and tools and gauges. There was room
for every citizen in Democracy's war — for the "Wyoming
cowboy as well as for commercial lords who were on the
Washington pay-roll at one dollar a year.

It was this upheaval which accounted for the new books
on our reviewer's table. Of course there were pamphlets
on physical condition. "In this world-crisis," said the
dope-and-diet ad. of a health-culture course, "you must
be a national asset, and i\oi a liability." Even the fiction
promised, by title or puff, to illumine matters — that
swayed the new American thought. There was still pink
reading, of course, but its pride of place was gone. The
novels were less exuberant ; minor poets had more flints
than flowers in their little triolet offerings.

Strangest of all, here was naval and military science —
a work on Trench Warfare, for instance, by Major James
A. Moss, U. S. A. This author was concerned with
obstacles and ditches, mining and countermining ; bayonet-
fighting, the use of grenades, and bombs and liquid fire.

At the same time there were a few works that reflected
peace-time interests wholly given to war. The cottage
spinster still gabbled from her cabbage-patch with a back-
ground of hollyhocks and hens. The small-town parson
told of business methods in the local church. He took
space in the paper to advertise his spiritual wares. There
were bulletin boards at the cross-roads, and Barnum par-
ades to boost the Sunday School — that problem of a stormy
day when Christ ethics were decried with Nietzschean
ferocity.

There are Western yarns in the Season's list — "fine, big
novels of simple sweetness and virile .strength," with
corresponding heroes on the coloured wrappers, and pri-

250 AMERICA'S DAY

vate guidance from the publisher to the reviewer. Here
is "a ten-strike in fiction, a miracle of mental cleanness,
and that rarest of all achievements — a really pure love-
story, mined from the grand old moral bed-rock." Of
one novel we are told that "not a man in it wears a collar."
It is a tale of gold-seeking, with the Arizona desert for a
scene. Life on the ranch and range has always been a big
seller; simplicity makes a strong appeal to the sophisticated
of this land. Fanatics of the speed-up are allured by
languor under the giant tree-ferns of Hawaii, where the
heart's thirst is satisfied by the hand's thrift, and
unwedded lovers eat frugally of taro and dried fish. It is
a standing marvel to the New Yorker what a dollar can do
in these cradled nests. He pays a dime for each egg
in the restaurant caviare ; three children at private schools
run him into nine thousand dollars a year.

But the best seller of all is the Wholesome in fiction. I
know a man who sold seven million copies by virtue of a
God-given secret which was defined by his Chicago publisher
in a special brochure of boosting. In this pamphlet,
ministers of religion pay generous homage to this maze of
letters. Had they not preached from the Big Seller's
text? So great a man was in more than one sense a
handful for his publisher. That lucky tradesman jour-
neyed 2500 miles into the waste with his contract. For
genius held that the heart of the great reading public
could only be touched from a hermit hut in the sage and
sand far away from all distraction. The source and fount
of big sales was duly pictured in the booklet ; it was a dinky
abode, eighteen by thirty-five, thatched with arrow-weed
and furnished with Socratic severity. Here prose epics
for the million were turned out. Here the Big Seller
played upon America's soul — "soft and low," as Chicago
tells us, "like a magnificent organ is played."

Pre-war America had no great love for heavy reading;

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 251

it held with Byron that the end of all scribblement is to
amuse, or at any rate to point a rosy moral. "I haven't
read a serious book for fourteen years," President Wilson
owned in one of his rare moods of intimacy. "I read
detective stories for fun, but very little modern fiction.
It concerns itself with problems, and I have enough of
these." So the war-time President falls back upon his old
favourites. "There are things of Tennyson which have
comforted me," he owns. ''Where will you find the theory
of popular government so finely expounded as in The
Princess?"

"A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled —
Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will,
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd."

There is much Americanism here, with aspiration
towards the ideal State; a benign democracy in which
sorrow and evil are but calls to valour and dignity, that
these things may cease. "I intimate in a hundred waj's,"
is a Walt Whitman impulse, "that man or woman is as
good as God!" Yet Secretary Harlan could oust that
whimsical poet from a humble clerkship as "the author of
an indecent book!" It is a fact that realists have never
been popular over there. ' ' The stream of events which we
call actual" was to Thoreau an abominable mess — "a sort
of vomit in which the unclean love to wallow." There
was another and sweeter stream which hurried the spirit
into the flowery way. Edgar Allan Poe was long classed
as a wallower; it was not until 1910 that he was admitted
to America's Hall of Fame. Poe was among the dis-
reputables— an outcast from clean-living America when
he returned from Philadelphia with a sick wife and four
dollars fifty in his wastrel pocket. Yet respectable authors
were doing well at this time — witness Hawthorne and his

252 AMERICA'S DAY

Puritan themes of sin and the soul. He had a fine home in
the Emerson parsonage at Concord, where Mosses from
an Old Manse breathed the New England note that "God's
in His heaven ; all's right with the world."

Or there was Lowell, Professor of Belles-Lettres at
Harvard ; abolitionist, diplomat, poet of The Cathedral,
surveyor of a well-made world from "My Study Windows."
Lowell could haggle over terms with that magazine harpy,
Sarah Josepha Hale, who was paying the unfortunate Poe
fifty cents a page, and receiving grateful letters from
him. "The price you mention will be amply sufficient,"
the pariah wrote to her. Would Mrs. Hale keep five
dollars' worth of space for a special feature, "which I will
endeavour to adapt to the character of The Opal"? So
the way of the transgressor was hard, the way of a Longfel-
low serene and smooth, with fear of God and the love of
man to commend "A Psalm of Life" such as that which
America loved.

It is curious to consider Columbia as the Britomart of
purity, hailed as such by all her poets from Bryant to Bliss
Carman. The moral tap must be kept running, the arts
can only defy its cleansing at their peril. In some of the
States Shakespeare has been banished from the schools: a
production of Antony and Cleopatra was raided in Chi-
cago, where culture and civic pride are peculiar obses-
sions. The Heine fountain in New York was fiercely
assailed ; paintings in Denver and Kansas City have been
slashed with the axe of an outraged proletariat. Tess and
Jude were withdrawn as improper books.

The successful American writer will resent comparison
with European realists, however great their fame. Thus
the late 0. Ilenrj' was aggrieved when an admirer called
him "the De Maupassant of the United States." "I never
wrote a filthy line in my life," this author protested to
Professor Alphonso Smith. "And I won't be classed with

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 253

bawdy writers." America's foremost periodical is proud
to claim that its stories "strike twelve, but not sex o'clock!"
The welter of State laws have at least this in common — that
they reveal authority "smelling for smut" with the pro-
fessional zest of a wheat-inspector in Minneapolis. There
are as man}'- censors of the movies as there are religious
sects. The lavish Birtli of a Nation was banned in Ohio on
the ground that it stirred up hatred and racial strife. Nor
will Ohio allow snakes to be shown on the screen ; the bandit
may flourish through a five-reel crime only on condition
that he comes to a bad end.

In Iowa the clubwomen censored a story that showed a
bride at breakfast in a sumptuous home. Her husband, it
was pointed out, was "only on a salary." Therefore
modish gowns, fine silver, and parquet floors set a danger-
ous example to the young women of the community. Down
in Missouri the State is severe upon the amorous motorist.
His car, it seems, is all too apt to pull up at night with
all lights out, to the peril of joy-riders behind him, who
come hurtling through the dark to certain wreckage. The
man at the wheel, Missouri maintains, may forget himself,
but he should at least remember the lives and limbs of
others. Why should the love-god fare forth in a high-pow-
ered car, and use it as a man-trap in the gloaming? So
Sheriff Bode and Attorney Ralph declared war upon the
"one-armed" driver — that public terror whose soul was
centred on the girl beside him, and not on the road or the
joyous traffic of it.

Now and then a literary rebel will scathe all this Puritan
peering. Thus Theodore Dreiser breaks a lance with the
vice crusaders; it is only fair to say that he speaks as one
of the vetoed and forbidden, involved in public odium and
pecuniary loss. "The average American," this novelist
complains, "is intellectually bounded by the canons of
church and Sunday School, as well as by the conventions of

254 -• AMERICA'S DAY

his native town. The darkest side of democracy is that it
permits the magnetic, the cunning, and unscrupulous to
sway our masses — not so much to their own undoing as to
the curtailment of natural privilege, and the ideas which
they should be allowed to entertain if they could think at
all. ' ' Mr. Dreiser is very severe on the intellectual poverty
of "a land so devoted to the material, though dedicated by
its Constitution to the Ideal."

Another realist whose name carries weight is Abraham
Cahan; and he also spoke his mind about "our divorced
life and literature." It was only in the newspaper, Mr.
Cahan said, that the cultured reader could get a faithful
reflex of the American scene. Life was faced squarely
enough in business, in politics, and in the home; yet the
ablest writers continue to produce little but fluff and
prettification for that terrible tyrant, the average reader.
In this discussion professors and critics took a hand; so
did publishers, novelists, and moralists of the Comstock
Society — these last concerned to protect "female readers
of immature mind."

Mr. R. W. Chambers drenched the debate with common
sense, scathing American literature as he passed. "What
is read and criticized as such reflects nothing but the self-
consciousness, ignorance, and impotency of those who dili-
gently produce it." Another forceful critic answers the
self -set question: "What are the judicious to do?"
"They will do what they have always done — read the lit-
erature of less pious countries. "Why should I bawl and
beat my breast because Dr. Howells has written nothing
comparable to The Revolt of the Angels, or The Nigger
of the Narcissus? It is much more polite and comfort-
able to heave Howells at the cat — and read Anatole France
and Joseph Conrad" !

However, Americans are not easily shaken from their

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 255

sense of well being. They do love the literature of rosy
thought; they savour goodness —

"As one who stays the sweet wine in his mouth,
Murmuring with eased lips, and is most loath
To have done wholly with the sweet of it."

There is wide agreement to ignore ugliness and evil, and
let laughter drown the surge of cosmic mystery and the
cruelty of things. The "ostrich-literature" is more than
a tradition: it is the national symbol of huge endeavour,
and the brave Bossuet-faith which sees our tangles as so
many golden chains that meet beyond mortal sight at the
conventional Throne. There are too many people, as O.
Henry reminds us, who wear life as "a reversible coat,
seamy on both sides." America has no use for these dole-
ful fellows. They are nearly always high-brows, like John
Caspar Branner, Professor of Geology at Leland Stanford
University in California. Let this scientist tell us of the
ostrich pose, in so far as it relates to earthquakes on the
Pacific Coast.

Here was a group of problems which nature had left at
the door of a lovely and favoured land. Surely the rail-
roads would encourage research, and the collection of data
that might help ? Or what of the telegraph and telephone
concerns — the electric power and water companies whose
dams and mains were in constant danger? Insurance
offices, too, were puzzled over rates and risks. Yet the
policy of hush "put it over" on them all. Only two con-
cerns in a land three times the size of England showed any
interest in Professor Branner 's quest, which was the
rational study of earthquakes.

"It seems incredible," this bold man avers, "that the
business interests of our State should willingly and weakly,
year after year, allow a permanent threat to hang over their

256 AMERICA'S DAY

industries, their transportation-lines and public utilities,
without making an intelligent effort to investigate the sub-
ject, or to help those who are willing and anxious to do
it. Yet such are the sad facts. The result was that the
great 'quake of 1906 caught us unprepared. Water-mams
were broken when the city of San Francisco became a rag-
ing furnace; we were fairlj' trapped in snares of our own
weaving."

In a word, California prefers to take her chances and go
on thinking pink. This was America's chosen outlook till
the world flamed with war. For two years and more she
surveyed the wide anguish with expectancy worthy of a
bench of bishops. The battle-field of France loomed as a
new Sinai, to be watched afar as from a sanctified camp.
On that Mount of thunder new laws were being graved for
the wiser ruling of the race in years to come. America
lent a sympathetic ear to the Primate of All England,
preaching in Westminster Abbey on a task of reconstruc-
tion that glowed through the smoke of ordeal like a pillar
of fire. . . . "Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's
good pleasure"! So the blood of sprinkling spake better
things than that of Abel. A portent of this time was the
insistence upon universal slaughter as a panacea for spir-
itual and social ills and the ultimate betterment of human-
ity. Rainbows of Christ were seen gleaming from green
clouds of the poison -gas. Nests of new-born sweets were
found in the shell craters; the perfect man would yet be
gathered from horrid fragments that swung from the
barbed wire.

Certainly America, in her neutral day, was kindled with
shining prophecy of quenched tears. To her the dreadful
blast was

"A trumpet in the distance, pealing news
Of better; and Hope, a poising eagle, burns
Above the unrisen morrow."

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 257

I know nothing stranger than the buoyant alchemy
which turned our shame and torment to new grace in this
rosy way. It was not confined to Americans — though I
know no people more nimble in transmuting woe into joy,
or sublimating boons from the ashes of dread.

That spirit smiles at us in the work of Mr. W. D. Ilowells,
the dean of American letters, whom the whole nation
honoured on the celebration of his eightieth birthday at
the National Arts Club in New York. All his life Howells
shrank from moral disease with the pudor of Jane Austen.
He disliked violence, and rarely dwelt upon unpleasant
themes. In his early days he renounced a tidy job as a
reporter, though he knew the value of this "school of
reality," and "the many lessons in human nature it could
have taught me." "My longing," this typical American
tells us, "was for the cleanly respectabilities." After all,
the goodly outside of life was best. Why stray into gloomy
recesses where silly gnomes hammer out of their own hearts
the seeds and sparkles of new misery? This was America's
view. Je me presse de rire de tout, she confesses, with
Beaumarchais' hero . . . de peur d'etre obliger d'en
pleurer!

Nowadays the old pink thinking is less ebullient.
America is a conscript nation ; her cities are armed camps,
with slackers in gaol or fled over the Border into Mexico.
The continent of peace is converted to force of arms and
war's philosophy — surely a German triumph of peculiar
poignance?

"We must begin with a fresh sheet of paper," President
Wilson said, as he removed General Goethals from the
Shipping Board. "And we must do the things that are
most serviceable." Here we have the bustling motive
which America imports into all activities, from the church
to the slaughterhouse. Even her religion is business-like,
and one must examine it if her spirit and literature are to

258 AMERICA'S DAY

be understood. There is no mutiny against a heedless
God, no tears in eyes that fail with looking upward; no
murmur of baffled breath, but only the practical prayer
of Heine — "Give me health, 0 Lord, and a sufficiency
of money — 'tis all I ask ! "

America has no quarrel with any cult, from the Quietism
of Laotze to the devil-dance of Billy Sunday and his pulpit
slang. An industrious reporter counted a hundred and
fifty faiths between Mormonism and Christian Science.
Some of them were winners in a worldly sense. Look
at John Dowie, who made millions of money in Zion City,
and came to grief wrestling with sin in New York where
no sin is (they say), but only will and gratification. Or
consider Elijah Sandford, the penniless madman who
began to build a temple on the sandhills of Maine with no
other possessions than a wheelbarrow and a spade. Soon
men were selling their farms to support a rascal of whom
his dupes at last declared that he "hadn't enough religion
to grease a gimlet." Sandford claimed to raise the dead:
he talked with the Deity in aisles and minarets where at
length the rats swarmed in eerie desolation. In his
decline this man and his Holy Ghosters set seaward in a
crazy fleet bound for Beirut and the Way of the Cross in
Palestine.

The Holy Boilers were ruled by hell-fire and fear; their
antics surpassed the contortions of an Indian village mela.
The Brotherhood of Light left the grosser communities,
and took to the desert four hundred miles south-west of
Denver, where they lived on apple sauce, dates and water.
There is no end to these eccentrics.

"Religion," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is the flag
under which the world sails, but not the rudder that steers
its course." And America has very many rudders. Here
religion adapts itself with all the elasticity of Hinduism
and the rugged wisdom of Islam.

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 259

Hence all the drastic editing of the Bible; the restating,
rearranging, and transvaluing of outworn theologies. The
Protestant Episcopal Church, in General Convention at
St. Louis, laid easy hands upon the Ten Commandments.
Clauses that were meaningless or turgid were cut out,
since the spirit of the age called for brevity and sense.
Both the marriage and burial services were altered. The
word "obey" was undesirable, the commendation of St.
Paul redundant as the wedded loyalty of Isaac and
Rebecca.

And at funerals, why should not more cheerful Psalms be
chosen? The Twenty-Seventh, say — the Forty-Sixth,
and Hundred and Twenty-First? That gruesome thought,
"Though after my skin, worms destroy this body," must
come out altogether. Why depress dutiful citizens at the
graveside? So the elements of fear and fuss are elimi-
nated; they are out of place in the New World Prayer
Book, as they would be in a balance-sheet or a prospectus.
In short, the American is a radical in religion. Like
Holmes, he aspires to a wider, more humane and modern
interpretation of Christianity.

American intellectuals do not mince their words in this
matter; let me cite Professor G. Stanley Hall, President
of Clark University. "Two millennia under the Prince
of Peace," says this psychologist, "have not prevented
this colossal and atrocious war. And the Church of Christ
cannot fail to incur reproach and neglect unless it be relaid
from the foundations. It stands by; it looks on — aimless,
helpless, paralysed ; convicted of failure to a degree that
all the heresies in its history could not have caused.
True, it mitigates suffering by beneficent ministration; but
it did nothing to prevent the nations from flying at
one another's throats, and has been impotent in all its
efforts to restore peace. Time was when the Church made
and unmade wars. Today it is a proven bankrupt, an all

260 AMERICA'S DAY

but negligible factor. And we have in Christianity, as at
present understood, verj- little guarantee that the world
may not at any time lapse into the barbarism and paganism
of a war of extermination."

It is common knowledge that this "failure" has been
canvassed throughout Europe, from Lambeth Palace to
the Holy Synod of Moscow. The American Churches have
felt it keenly, and are striving for unity with a view to the
brotherhood of nations and the prevention of future strife.
Thirty communions, with eighteen million adherents, now
form a Federal Council, with committees of wide range
from the liquor-laws to relations with Japan. The immi-
grant is taken in hand ; so are divorce and labour condi-
tions, farm life, home and foreign missions, corrupt poli-
tics, the Lord's day, slum tenements, and the physical
and moral well-being of America at large. Yet somehow
these efforts lack "punch" — to use an expressive American-
ism. Or if they have it, the country is too huge, too busy
with doing, to straighten up and reflect upon ghostly
things. After all, to get ahead is the principal goal; and
the greatest of sins is the Greek one of missing the mark.

No complex philosophy sways this people ; no hierarchal
dogma of life and death, destiny and evolution. American
clerics are in no way dismayed by the spectacle that met
Newman as he considered the world, its various history
and the races of men. "Their mutual alienation, their
conflicts . . . the disappointments of life, the defeat of
Good, the success of Evil; physical pain, mental anguish,
the prevailing intensity of Sin — all this is a vision to dizzy
and appal, and inflicts upon the mind a sense of profound
mystery which is absolutely without solution."

The American saint has no such worry, for his primary
concern is with social salvation here and now. Quite
likely, his church has a library and a gymnasium ; a swim-
ming-pool too, with billiard and card saloons — even a

THINKING PTNK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 2G1

"spooning parlour'' where a lad may woo his sweetheart
under the smiling eyes of the parson's lad}-. There is
music and laughter over all; the oxygen of good fellowship
is here infused, and the church community rejoices in it.
The perfect pastor of such a flock is Dr. Henry M. Edmonds
of Birmingham, Ala. — a fearless hustler with a world of
sympathy in his glance. Differing with the Presbyterian
Board on Old Testament tales, on Sunday games, and the
question of drink, Dr. Edmonds founded a church of his
own, which even the negroes may attend. Here local min-
istry reaches out to the mines and gaols, as well as to the
roaring industrial plants of this great steel city of the
South.

A trained nurse instructs poor mothers in infant care,
and milk is supplied by the church funds. The men of the
congregation have in their minister a business friend and
adviser. On certain days Dr. Edmonds sits in a down-
town office as the father confessor of traders in trouble.
And the city pays tribute to his skill in freeing people
from financial toils. It will therefore be seen that Ameri-
can religion has little interest in wingy mysteries or omens
of terror come down to us from far-off times. Supersti-
tion is largely confined to the alien and coloured races; it is
also a pastime in the more lavish "native" circles. For
the Newport cottagers have "recourse to them that have
familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter."
No modish gathering is quite complete without its Eastern
mage installed in a tent on the lawn.

The masses display a mild interest in theoretical science.
Sunday supplements of the newspaper will have an astro-
nomical feature in which this earth of ours is belittled as a
speck of cosmic dust, with joys and woes too insignificant
for words when considered sub specie ceternitatis. How
the sun is a million times bigger than our globe. How
Arcturus is fifty thousand times greater again, and so

262 AMERICA'S DAY

remote that light takes two hundred years to reach us,
though travelling at a speed equal to the New York-Lon-
don journey and back in the twentieth part of a second.
This is excellent high-brow stuff, and fetches an appropriate
price from the Sunday editor.

In one corner of the page are vague creepy-crawlies ;
in the other a portrait of the cheerless Haeckel, or even
Sir Oliver Lodge, whose views upon Death and Survival
provide the American ghost story of today. The higher
physiology sets out soundy theses on "Vitalism," "Mate-
rialism," and the like. It accounts for everything; pre-
senting a surgical case in the Crucifixion of Christ, Who
is said to have" died "from pericarditis with effusion,
accelerated by the javelin-wound." Or again, here are
ingenious bridges built by science between the microscopic
aniceba and the higher man, represented by Dr. Wilson
and Mr. Edison. The gap is abysmal, of course, but the
Sunday caterer is equal to it. From the ape to Plato is
conceded to be a long, long way ; but is it any longer than
that from Clausewitz to William Jennings Bryan?

A palaeolithic fashion-page will show the flounced robes,
the jackets and jewels and sashes, of faded ladies painted
a'ons ago in the Cretan caves. There is also a column of
sanitary science, with diagrams from the palaces of Minoan
priest-kings. All this makes first-rate reading in the Sun-
day American, whose editor draws the salary of a Cabinet
Minister. The secular religion of these people reacts upon
their literature, and the two must be considered together.
It is the religion of that scientific inquirer who recently
stated his aim as follows: — "To make discoveries which
shall, bit by bit, add to the interpretable, subtract from
the incomprehensible, enlarge the practicable, and thus
improve our estate upon earth — that is, if we have the good
sense not to employ our invention to worsen it."

The scientist may tell quaint tales of men's arboreal

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 263

ancestry. It is quite possible, he will declare in the Sunday
paper, that the primate stock came of Therapsid reptilians
which had become bipedal, and perhaps arboreal. Now
here is a dandy opening for the write-up man of Mr.
Hearst's papers. That artist makes ready an impressive
page which appears in a whole chain of journals from
Boston to Chicago and thence to Los Angeles on the Pacific.

"Arboreal uprightness came first," — the ingenious
writer makes this his foundation. And he builds as he goes,
boosting the half-human monster who is already three
parts Man in column four of the yarn and is still growing
— like the giant at the fair.

The arboreal climber is hunted through aeons of time,
and the reader's imagination aided in the process by photos
of baboons from the Bronx Zoo. The creature's fore-limb is
soon a mobile arm, his hand a plastic instrument for
grasping, hanging on, reaching ahead and catching hold.
Thus early in human history does acquisitiveness appear;
and from this stage to the portraits of Carnegie and Rocke-
feller is only a matter of a column and a half. There is a
big public for pseudo-scientific stuff of this kind. But
the moral is America's unfaltering faith in man. It
inspires all the pink thought and the philosophy of smiles ;
it is the secret of impatience with nescience and pessimism
of every shade. No doubt the world-war has jarred this
fond belief. America herself is plunged into the orgy with
armed establishments on the grand scale such as will not
pass when Peace reigns again in a sore and smoking world.

For all that, the United States is slow to put off her
rosy glasses. She finds comfort in the optimism of Spen-
cer that, in some way or other, a future race of men will
become automatically moral. Among the foremost think-
ers one finds a soul-state of agnostic stoicism. They pick
to pieces the older Christianity ; they examine dogma by the
glare of guns, and recite in No Man's Land the sublime

264 AMERICA'S DAY

paradoxes of Christ. Their demand is for a lowlier cultus,
one more in accord with human suffering and sin ; a religion
of mutual aid and earthly understanding, to be clasped and
woven into the day's work, and not writ in the starry
unattainable. "I have the sense of these things," the
American says with Saint-Beuve, "but not the things
themselves. ' '

They are not other-worldly, these high-brows of the
United States; they hold, with the late William James of
Harvard, that "true ideas are those we can assimilate,
validate, corroborate, and verify" There is the same
pragmatist appeal to experience and the individual, the
same self-abandonment to life and the experiment it entails
in contact with reality. Not long ago Professor J. H.
Leuba, of Bryn Mawr College, sent out test questions upon
religion to a thousand men, all more or less distinguished
in physical science as well as in sociology, history, and psy-
chology. The results were published hi Dr. Deuba's work:
The Belief in God and Immortality; and the effect on
the reader's mind is to persuade him that American leaders
are in the main freethinkers, or at all events unorthodox
and various to a degree.

The sombre Haeckel of Jena preaches the beauty of
resignation to the hap of chance — a brave acceptance of
the unavoidable in a scheme of things where heedless
Nature for ever makes and breaks with a futility which
eludes our scrutiny. To the American mind this is mon-
strous. The scientist that counts over there is the "sen-
sible" man. "Why should the electrician waste his time
chasing the positive ions when he could send high voltage
to the Californian vine and kill the costly blight of
phylloxera?

It is now asked of Science that she leave ineffable pro-
blems, and fall in for service at home or abroad. Let the
chemist drop his molecules and try to abolish famine by

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 265

laboratory research. Let the inventor abandon liquid air
and solar heat, to get busy with farm tractors, and a
mechanical cotton-picker which shall catch the lint and
leave unripe bolls on the uninjured plant. Such gear as
this might be the making of the South, and free her from
economic slavery to the negro whom she abhors.

I may say that bodily soundness has a literature of its
own ; the present year will see six hundred books on
medicine and hygiene published in the United States. How
is a sick man to go on thinking pink in the traditional
American way? S3'Stems and theories are set out for him
by experts like Professor Irving Fisher of Yale, Chairman
of the Hygiene Board; Dr. Eugene Fisk, of the Life
Extension Institute; Dr. G. W. Crile, of the Cushman
Laboratory; and Dr. Robert Morris, whose Microbes and
Men tells how bilious folks are despondent because the
"sad" germs — the colon bacilli — are too well fed and
swarming in the intestine. "I never think of Nietzsche or
Schopenhauer as philosophers," Dr. Morris says, "but only
as afflicted men expressing the toxins of anaerobic bac-
teria."

There are books and pamphlets against dope and drugs;
stoke-up counsel for the high-speed job, with a few words
from Edison at the start, and much about Mithridates — a
hero who, it seems, had Jim Farrell's memory, the stamina
of a Texan jack, and the devil's own flair for dodging
poisons in his food. The foreigner wilts at last under this
literature of health, with its fusillade of Do's and Dont's
from every department of life; baby's bottle and the gar-
bage-can, the papering of rooms, the licking of postage
stamps, the swatting of flies, and the cuspidor or spittoon,
which is by no means banished from America in 1918.

There are national laws about food ; State laws, the laws
of towns and cities and private concerns. The New York
Department of Health scatters far and wide free booklets

266 AMERICA'S DAY

in English and Yiddish ; there are lectures and movie-shows
on eugenics, genetics, and dietetics. Sickness, one gathers,
will soon be a crime ; a clear century of active life is claimed
as the birthright of every citizen.

With all this incitement it is no wonder that quackery
flourishes, from the Park Avenue palace to a shack in the
Kentucky hills; from the New York surgeon of costly
stunts down to "ole Aunt Lize," the herbal witch, with her
dog-fennel and weird roots, her toads and snake-skins,
cobweb-pills, and charms beyond the Chirurgia Magna of
Paracelsus. No civilized nation that I know is so intent
upon mending and moulding, training, dosing, and fortify-
ing the horse-power of man. Here in America the drug-
store is become a saloon in disguise — one already known
as an agency of mischief. It is to the chemist's shop that
the citizen turns for free treatment when grit blows into
his eye on the gusty street. Here also he can buy stamps,
or use the telephone while his wife and the girls sip iced
drinks at the soda-fountain. But Congress has no illusions
about the drug-store, its tonics and bitters, its remedies,
cordials, elixirs and compounds. Many of these contain
a high percentage of alcohol, and sell the more freely as
prohibition laws are pushed to fanatical extremes.

Representative Meeker of Missouri shocked the Lower
House with a list of 746 patent medicines that warmed the
cockles of the heart, if they did nothing else. More than
half of them were twenty per cent, alcohol ; a few were as
high as ninety per cent. It is not to the ailing, but to
tipplers that these nostrums appeal, and the rogues who
sell them manoeuvre skilfully between the vast complex
of State laws. Then the question of drug addiction grows
more and more serious, apart from the bracer and pick-me-
up of the business man. I refer particularly to the craving
for morphine, heroin, and cocaine which is found among
all classes, from the rich fldneuse of Newport and New

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 267

York (o the "bad nigger" of New Orleans: his whisky-
trade vanished when a raid on the fruit-storer disclosed
quart bottles of rye inside noble pumpkins priced at $1.60
each.

I began to fear, after residence and research in the
United States, that pink thinking is not so much a native
trait as a defensive armour for life's battle — that it was,
in fact, no spontaneous aura, but a rather hard exaction;
an implicit law punished in the breach and favoured in the
observance.

It is true, as Bacon noted, that "the pencil of the Holy
Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of
Job than the felicities of Solomon." But such pencils are
gaily edited in this New World. Even its early Puritan-
ism, as Professor Channing reminds us, was not so much
a SA'stem of theology as an attitude of mind. It was
"idealism applied to the solution of contemporary prob-
lems." No doubt the war, with all its attendant change,
will modify this passion, though to what extent it is yet
too early to determine. Up to now, religion, philosophy,
and literature have all been tinged with betterment and
the uplift of man ; the elimination of pain, of unnecessary
labour and those tiresome chores which swallow up the good
time and cloud our little span of life. In America tlie
greatest doctors, psychologists, and men of science seek the
limelight as popular writers, and contribute their quota
to the Greek "full" of joy which is the national goal.

Here a familiar theme is the triumph of great men over
physical infirmities. These range from the stomach
troubles of John Rockefeller to the fatness of Eoscoe
Arbuckle, that merry monster of 320 pounds, who makes
$100,000 a year as a movie-star. Fatty Arbuckle 's grin
lights up the billboards for three thousand miles; and the
secrets of success were wrung from him for the benefit
of le>sser men. "If work and worry could have made me

268 AMERICA'S DAY

thin," he told the sympathetic reporters, "I guess you'd be
hunting for Fatty this minute with a microscope!"

Or here again is An Autobiograp) ' y by Edward L.
Trudeau, M.D. Certainly the American spirit shines
throughout. At two and twenty this man broke down
writh tuberculosis. He fought hard for every day he lived,
"contemplating the ceiling" from his bed for twenty years.
At sixty-three Dr. Trudeau died, after saving thousands
of lives and building the greatest open-air sanatorium in,
the West. His Autobiography is pink unto shrillness, with
insistence upon every page that your true conqueror is he
who fights with a broken sword. "The fellow who's fully
equipped," the author maintains, "has no battle on his
hands, but only a walk-over."

Here is the rcligio poetoe of the United States. This is
the laughing mask with which America covers the sinister
face of things. Every singer warbles the "Excelsior" note.
No vicious panders of the Martial type are these poets; no
bitter Juvenals, no doleful bards in the sombre black of
Tasso, but blithe zealots like Willard Wattles of Kansas,
who hails a new constructive Christ amid the rippling
leagues of wheat and green-bannered corn of the Sunflower
State :

"Who art thou, Carpenter,

Of the bowed head? —

And what buildest thou?

'Heaven,' He said."

One must know these regional poets if the real America
is to be gauged. I consider Vachell Lindsay of Illinois
a more "American" voice than any Anacreon of New York
who only sings of love. Lindsay is a truer index to the
seething of the giant Pot than all the mannered vers
libristes of the East. Sectional poets now confine their
fancy to homely themes, as Edgar Lee Masters did in his
Spoon River lyrics. The prairie town now glows with

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 269

unwonted splendour. In his "Springfield Magical," Mr.
Lindsay finds mystery and glamour in prosaic streets;
the American city is to the poet what Florence was to
Dante, or Shiraz to the rosy hedonism of Hafiz : —

"In this, the City of my Discontent,
Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass,.
'Romance — Romance is heie!' No Hindu town,
Is quite so strange. No citadel of Brass
By Sindhad found held half such love and hate,
No picture-palace in a picture-hook
Such webs of Friendsiiip, Beauty, Greed, and Hate."

Turn where you may in the United States, the desire for
sweetness and light is seen.

The uplift is very loud on the Chautauqua platform — that
orgy of instruction which may begin with Iroquois tales for
the children at ten in the morning, and go on till eight at
night, when a lecture on the torpedo's gyroscope winds up
an overflowing day. A mushroom city of three hundred
souls will have its culture-club. In due time the Browning
cult appears, to flower at last into a Shakespeare celebration
under the Drama League of Chicago. This is a nation-
wide concern, affiliated with hundreds of libraries, universi-
ties, and civic societies for both sexes and all America's
races.

Today the levelling-up of taste extends from the child's
book to the crusade against ugly hoardings which threaten
to spoil the new national roads which are being laid from
sea to sea. There is the Lincoln Highway, in which twelve
States are interested ; it will be 3284 miles long, linking
New York and San Francisco for the motorist in a direct
line. The South plans a Dixie Highway, which will be
longer still ; the West has more than one such road, notably
the scenic stretch known as the Columbia, which runs for
two hundred miles through the Cascade Mountains of Ore-
gon.

270 AMERICA'S DAY

It was here that the billboard man was warned off. A
new race of aesthetes will have no giant cows shrieking
somebody's milk on the sky-line. No Heinz cans should
disfigure the glorious landscape, no monstrous babe calling
for a favourite food, or forty-foot Fatimas lolling on the
bluffs to boom a famous cigarette. To their credit be it
said that most of the advertisers agreed. A few rebelled,
of course, and set up claimant horror by lake and hill and
torrent. But the Oregonians were not to be trifled with.
They turned out in force with flame and violence ; more-
over, there was to be a boycott of these offending wares.
Tar and feathers haunted the billboard man till he agreed
that Beauty was best — at any rate in the Grape and Apple
State.

I cannot deal at any length with the American stage,
which was so well guarded for forty years by the late
William Winter, the famous critic of the New York Tribune.
When this man frowned a play was damned ; his favour
had the "Broadway appeal" in it, and fat bank rolls alike
for author and producer. Mr. Winter could be very pru-
dish ; he was nearly always pugnacious, loathing "immoral"
themes and scathing them in terms that shocked his milder
brethren. This despot had a horror of Ibsen ; he set his
face against most of the translations — French, German,
and Russian. Not even the acting of W. II. Crane could
save a comedy of Octave Mirbeau, though it bore the
promising title Business Is Business. Here the play itself
passed the Puritan muster, but it was a sombre theme
of bitter unjoyous aspect, therefore success was impossible.

Everybody knows that men of genius are appreciated in
the United States. The famous painter is made much of
there; so is the tenor of lyric passion, the pianist of rhap-
sodic fireworks, the Wunderkind who takes the town by
storm with a Guarnerius violin and a Tourte bow that
would tame the devil himself.

THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 271

It is curious how these high priests of art take to the
dollars, however dreamy and unworldly they may be at
home : America has no illusions upon this score. A pictur-
esque alien of renown was offered $40,000 for eight concerts
at which none but the So and So piano was to be used. Did
the musician accept it ? He did, although none too gladly.
The great man's face, we learn from the cynics, fell "like a
cook-book cake," for he thought the fee was to have been
bigger. "He'd play on a tin kettle if you made it worth his
while," the agent confessed with shocking frankness. No
wonder the American humorist considers music "the most
expensive of noises. ' ' But even he agrees that America will
hire the world's foremost artists at any price — the sculptor,
the designer of dress ; the Slav boy -fiddler with a left hand
of flawless magic, such as draws tears down the iron cheek
of Success and raises to life the spiritual death which is
Vulgarity.

A generation ago Matthew Arnold gave high-brow counsel
to the United States where he perceived an inveterate
drift towards commonness. "What the Americans most
urgently require," their superior visitor said, "is a steady
exhibition of cool and sane criticism." In this matter
Arnold himself led the way, quoting Goethe's warning
against mob-movement and excessive homage to King
Demos and his noisy train : the Americans, our apostle of
culture found, had too much esteem for the average man
and deferred unduly to his wishes. Their Press was "an
awful symptom," their education of the "brisk and flour-
ishing" variety, which the critic feared was "more than
doubtful" in results.

Matthew Arnold praised Emerson for his roseate views,
but he was afraid they went too far. Nor did the English
visitor agree with the Ohio lady who found Syrian roses on
each common bush, and excellence in lavish riot. On the
contrary, Arnold held that "excellence dwells among rocks

272 AMERICA'S DAY

hardly accessible, and a man must always wear out his
heart before he can reach her." That is the lesson which
is being driven home today. And as the old illusions
wither, a new hope grows that the reconstructed world will
find in American ideals that "moral equivalent for war"
which William James desired.

"Each one of us literally chooses," the American philo-
sopher said, "by his ways of attending on things, what sort
of a universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit." From
the first America's choice was a goodly Eden which no
serpentry could wholly spoil. It is unlikely that pink
thinking will easily pass or that this people will be quickly
convicted of error in its radiant creed. You may demon-
strate the futility of it; you may point to ravening war as
a proof of incurable evil. But America will always cut
you short with her eager Browning outburst: "Ah, but
a man's reach should exceed his grasp — or what's heaven
for?"

CHAPTER XV

THE WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

"By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
Be sure, be sure we're going to do some splendid things!"

It is in no flippant vein that I set down these lines of Kipling.
Every American knows how well they express the hub-bub
and friction of official Washington in the time of Prepara-
tion for war. The fervid clamour for Congress and its
advisers, the prodding and protest of newspapers, the
shrilling of cranks and patriots in conflict with wiser
counsels; the efforts of willing or wilful men, no doubt
in earnest, but still a real hindrance, no less harmful
than the plot and rumour of German agents and tools.
There was uproar everywhere ; a cheery tumult in which
everybody fed the flames with such fuel as he had, until
responsible men called a halt in the anxious riot. "Less
shindies and more ships," was the shrewd appeal in this
distracting season.

America groped and staggered after splendid things with-
out regret for the unfamiliar mists enfolding them. An
unmartial people was now rough-hewing Armies and
equipping Navies of the sea and air for service abroad
against the most warlike people of all. These things
democracy must do in its own way, imbibing discipline in
doubtful gulps as it floundered into battle. This is natu-
rally the way of blunders; our own Prime Minister hinted
as much when he drew America's attention to Britain's
unready record and the lessons it afforded the latest cham-
pion of our cause.

In all ages leaders have complained about Liberty's

273

274 AMERICA'S DAY

legions; they are hard to handle, and apt to become
tyrannous in a crisis. History teems with instances of
this, from the city-State of ancient Greece to the Ireland of
Sinn Fein and the tragi-comic violence of revolution ary
Russia. The trials of Cromwell and Washington come
back to us now with new force. Danton's struggle with
the Girondins and Lincoln's with his "Copperheads" have
a parallel in Kerensky's stand against the Bolsheviki that
overthrew him.

As for America, it is plain that the early Fathers put no
great faith in the common people. Richard Henry Lee
was all for a "regulated liberty, so that the ends and prin-
ciples of society may not be disturbed by the fury of
the mob." Jefferson was anxious to curb the supremacy of
the new Legislature. "One hundred and seventy-three
despots," the famous democrat was afraid, "would surely
be as oppressive as One." It was to guard against these
perils that the State Constitutions were provided with
elaborate checks based upon the division of power favoured
by Montesquieu. Hence a curious distinction between Con-
stitutional and Statute law, such as is unknown in our own
polity; it has given peculiar authority to the Judges, who
replaced the Legislatures as the ultimate guardians of
popular liberty.

In 1911 President Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey,
spoke very plainly on this subject. "If we felt," he said,
"that we had genuine representation in our State Legis-
latures, no one would propose the 'Initiative' and 'Refer-
endum' in America. They are now being proposed as
a means of bringing our representatives back to the con-
sciousness that what they are bound in duty and policy
to do is to represent the sovereign people whom they pro-
fess to serve, and not the private interests which creep into
their councils by way of machine orders and committee
conferences."

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 275

The past few years have seen astonishing reforms. Thus
the Non-Partisan League swept North Dakota with a
Socialist demand for public utilities under State control —
grain-elevators and milk supplies; markets and slaughter-
houses, with hail-insurance for the farmer and rural credits
on a new ingenious basis. So drastic a program called
for alteration in the State Constitution, but this has already
become a mania with the Commonwealths.

This appetite for change, together with the lingering
sectionalism of the continent, accounts in part for the
war-time confusion that raged in Washington. Certainly
the men in authority were aware of the peril of this
tumult ; witness the humorous inversion of President Wil-
son's dictum by Covernor McCall of Massachusetts —
"Democracy must be made safe for the world!" Individ-
ualism was well enough in the abstract ; it was mere suicide
when face to face with the German Wille zu Macht, intent
upon conquest and exploration. Here the collapse of Rus-
sia, was cited, and America's millions rallied to militancy
for Freedom's sake. At one time the Eastern States
rebuked the West for an alleged war apathy — which was
said to put the Mississippi Valley "behind the field-kitch-
ens" of the battle-line. The}' were a flabby folk, out there,
provincial and pacifist, sodden with selfishness and mate-
rialism ; pro-Germans, flush-timers, and the like. I quote
the ironic comments of the West when the recruiting records
had turned the tables upon those censors of the Atlantic
coast.

It was Alfred Zimmermann, the German Foreign Min-
ister, who stirred the trans-Alleghany farmers to vivid
wrath with the egregious letter he wrote to Von Eckhardt,
his envoy in Mexico City. In this' it was suggested that
President Carranza should seek the aid of Japan, and
then with German backing make an onslaught upon the
United States with a view to the reconquest of "lost

276 AMERICA'S DAY

territory in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas." America
was staggered at this. Her irrepressible humorists fell
mute in the face of a perfidy that jarred the nation into
vengeful unity overnight.

That letter was in President "Wilson's hands when
Bethmann Hollweg was cooing about those ''friendly rela-
tions with the United States which have come down as a
heritage from Frederick the Great." Zimmermann dates
his letter January 19, 1917. And twelve days later
Johann von Bernstorff handed Mr. Lansing a Note in which
the following appears: "The German people repudiate all
alliances which serve to force the nations into a com-
petition for power, or to involve them in a net of selfish
intrigue."

The Zimmermann letter was the most dramatic discovery
of the war, so far as America was concerned.

It was a God-send to President Wilson, for it grappled
the "West to him as nothing else could have done. For
the first time. "America's war" lowered up on ranch and
prairie with searching blast. It was Prussian intrigue
that stiffened Wilson's Reply to the Pope's Note. "We
cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany
as a guarantee of anything that is to endure. . . . Treaties
of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to
set up arbitration in the place of force ; territorial adjust-
ments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the
German Government, no man, no nation, could now
depend on." When was a great Empire so branded and
shamed? And how startling was the confirmation found
in those "Willy-Nicky" telegrams of 1904, published by
the New York Herald. In them was a plot aimed by the
Kaiser at "the Anglo-Saxon group."

Next came the frigid orders for wholesale murder sent
by Count Luxburg from Buenos Aires with secret Swedish
aid. There was also Baron von Rautenfels. This man

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 277

arrived at Christiania with two hundred bombs in his
baggage, and Foreign Office seals to ensure their use in
sinking ships and drowning non-combatants at sea.
America was bewildered. So the German Emperor, his
envoys abroad, his officers on land and afloat — what were
they all but a gang of callous Thugs for whom the rope
and shot-gun of the lynching party were altogether too
mild a fate? The Republic was awake at last; aware of
her own danger too, and very angry indeed.

Her first Army in France represented every element in
the United States, from the alien volunteer to the million-
aire conscript. The students of Yale were there with The
Bowery toughs, Virginian planters, Rocky Mountain min-
ers, and lumber-men of the North-West. There were stock-
riders, and stockbrokers; there were Red Indians — like F.
W. Riches, a full-blood Cherokee of Oklahoma, who was
already a decoree of France and a noted flier since 1914.
Lieut. 0. Loft, in charge of the redskin Forest Service in
France, was himself a chief of the Mohawk tribe ; the Sixth
Wisconsin Regiment had whole platoons of Chippewas from
the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation.

So the revolution was complete, confounding the prophets
and politicians. There was no frothy rage or red fire.
"We go into it gravely," said the New York Times. "Our
mood of 1917 is not that of 1898 (the Spanish-American
War). Yet America's mood in 1917 is that of France in
1914: our enemy can take no comfort from the fact."
There is no desire to impress unwilling soldiers, the ideal of
a consecrated army was emblazoned on the first recruiting
banners — "Be a Went, Not a Sent!" In his hints to the
Exemption Boards President Wilson defined the delicate du-
ties entrusted to them, between "the most sacred rights of
the individual and the untarnished honour of the nation."
"Our armies at the front," he felt, "will be strengthened
and sustained if they be composed of men free from any

278 AMERICA'S DAY

sense of injustice in their mode of selection." And to this
end the draft system was altered again and again.

The .margin of man-power was immense. There are in
the United States 22,000,000 males of militia age — that is,
between eighteen and forty-five. No more than five per
cent, of these were to be called until the establishments were
ready for more. Objectors who quoted the "involuntary
servitude" clause of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Con-
stitution were reminded that this did not apply to soldiering
in time of national stress. There were Exemption Boards
for every 30,000 of the population, with the right of appeal
to a Board of Review in each Federal District. Civil serv-
ants and divinity students were excused. So was the con-
scientious objector; the sailor, the artificer, and all indus-
trial and agricultural hands. No man with a wife and
child, or other dependents, was enlisted ; neither was the
resident alien who had not yet taken out his first papers of
citizenship.

Of these drifters the last Census showed two and a quar-
ter millions, many of them subjects of Germany, Austria,
Turkey, and Bulgaria. A special Act of Congress raked in
the Allied nationals for service under their own flags; but
on the whole America was disgusted with her sans-patries,
and pressed for drastic measures against them. "This is a
poor time," the shirkers were reminded, "for a man with-
out a country." Freedom was tossing and straining upon
stormy seas, so the alien was asked to "bail, row, or go
ashore."

I must also mention political influence in the working of
the Exemption Boards. Congress was stirred with rancour
over the assignment of local quotas according to population.
The most startling allegation came from the Northern
States. Their spokesmen declared that the Draft Census
had been so juggled as to throw a disproportionate burden
of service upon them, with a corresponding immunity south

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 279

of the Mason and Dixon line. So hotly was this grievance
pressed that Mr. Samuel Rogers, Director of the Census
Bureau, was suninioned to the Senate to explain how he
arrived at his estimates for 1917, basing them on the re-
turns of 1900 and 1910.

But all this sectional stress — this "oppression" of the
North by a Democratic administration — melted away .when
the President appealed for unity with incomparable dig-
nity and tact. Human freedom was at stake "to be wholly
won or meanly lost," as Lincoln said when he stood alone
among betrayers, resisting them all. This was no season for
fruitless talk. "We have a chance to show," Dr. Wilson
urged, "that the principles we profess are living principles;
we are glad to pour out our blood and treasure to vindicate
these things."

No one in this country, and not many in the United
States, have a clear idea of the forces arrayed against the
Federal Government in its task of waking the nation's war-
will and developing and maintaining its power. For a
hundred years America has been a land of refuge, an asylum
where Liberty was given extravagant interpretation. And
this was treated with lenience till the Day of trial came.

The anti-American forces may be divided into pacifism,
Socialism, Irishry, Germanism, indifference, and downright
anarchy. All of these — apathy alone excepted — were very
noisy; each had its own press and hordes of adherents
intent upon clogging the war machine by every known
means, from sabotage to wholesale matrimony. The cause
of Peace so multiplied its labours as to become unwieldy.
Therefore a Clearing-House was formed to co-ordinate the
activities of the Emergency Peace Federation, the Church
Peace Union, the American Union against Militarism, the
Neutral Conference Committee, and the Woman's Peace
Party. To the last named that veteran social worker,
Jane Acldams of Chicago, lent her strenuous aid.

280 AMERICA'S DAY

Peace at any price had a backing in the Senate among
that "little group of wilful men representing no opinion but
their own, ' ' whom the President declared had left America
"helpless and contemptible in the midst of a crisis of ex-
traordinary peril." I recall this episode as one of the
many milestones on the via dolorosa of Preparedness. For
at last that stormy way grew thick with unlooked-for con-
verts and devotees. There came a time when the mildest of
pilgrims preached a Pacifist War against Prussianism.
Had not Hoover and Gerard trailed the vileness of it from
the slave-pens of "Wavre in Brabant to the drear typhus-
hell of Wittenberg, where British prisoners died obscenely,
crawling with lice and torn by savage dogs ? It was a holy
and wholesome thing to war with an organized terror which
seventy million people backed so long as it promised them
power.

Gerard's account of the lawless Kaiser eclipsed that of
Ambassador Dana in 1781, when Frederick the Great was
flaunting his brazen guns as the last reasoning of force and
fraud. Dana considered Frederick "as complete a despot
as hath ever been sent into this world for a curse to man-
kind." It was Frederick's successor who told Gerard that
no laws of war existed between the nations — "and to this
statement the Chancellor agreed."

To America, therefore, it grew clear that Kaiserism must
be stamped out if Freedom was to survive the calculated
pounce of 1914. It was a reluctant lesson; but Woodrow
Wilson — the "Princeton Professor" of the Berlin satirists —
had ten million men in his class when the application of it
became an imperious need.

Then was the new America born. Then it was that
Bryan himself preached war from the Chautauqua platform
— that peculiar vehicle of bourgeois culture in the United
States. "The more any one favours peace," the Nebraskan
orator said, "the more loyally should he support the Gov-

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 281

eminent." In Chicago — that stronghold of hyphenism —
Mr. Bryan went much further. "I've been a pacifist all
my life," the ex-Foreign Minister owned in a famous apol-
ogia; "but the sort of peace I'm after is one that lasts.
There's only one way to attain it now, so we should all get
together and fight the devil ! ' ' Here also was Henry Ford,
of peace-ark fame, "prepared to go to the limit in this
struggle."

But the unlikeliest of all belligerents was surely the Peace
Society, which rallied to "the cause of humanity at large";
its placid organ, The Advocate, was now hailed as a good
loser by the laic press. "If our members," The Advocate
said, "can conscientiously engage in active service they will
do so ; if not, they will lend their efforts behind the firing
line. . . . We must all help in the bayoneting of a normally
decent German in order to free him from the tyranny which
he at present accepts as his chosen form of government."

This change of heart was mainly a domestic process. It
owed little or nothing to Allied suasion, and a great deal to
American pacifists employed on relief work in all the zones
of havoc from the Danube to the Meuse. This is not the
place to speak of benevolence which covered Europe and
crossed over into Asia at Beirut to keep the Syrians from
starving. American Jews heard the Kadish or prayer of
mourning from the Polish provinces. They replied with
millions of dollars, as well as with foodstuffs and warm
clothing, doctors, nurses, and business administrators.
The same work went on in stricken Serbia, in Albania and
Montenegro, in Flanders and Northern France, where "the
kiddies" were crying; their cries reached the Iowa prairie,
where the Farmer's Acre was soon sacred to their wants.

Americans engaged in relief work took dreadful testi-
mony home with them, when they went to report or appeal
for funds on the lecture platform. Take Vernon Kellogg,
Director of the Belgian Commission in the two neutral

282 AMERICA'S DAY

years of war. He is Professor of Biology at Leland Stan-
ford University, and as fervid a peace-man as his colleague,
Dr. David Starr Jordan. No man living has seen Prussian-
ism in the raw as Victor Kellogg has, from Warsaw in the
East to Great Headquarters at Charleville, where he was
the guest of German officers of all grades — the veteran gen-
eral and the subaltern of eighteen straight from Heidelberg
with sabre-slashed face. Here, then, was unique oppor-
tunity to seize the German point of view, the perverted
Weltanschauung which had strewn the earth with corpses
and now skimmed the baby's milk for explosive glycerine.

''The discussions," Dr. Kellogg says, "would begin at
dinner and last far into the night. As we talked we tried
to understand each other." But Deutschheit, the Ameri-
can concludes, "will never allow any land controlled by it
to exist peacefully beside a people governed according to
our ideals." The guest perceived in his hard-drinking
hosts "a whole-hearted acceptance of the worst of neo-
Darwinism — the Allmacht of natural selection rigorously
applied to all human life, society and Kultur." . . . "I was
convinced that this war must be fought to a finish which will
determine whether or not the German system is to rule the
world." It was for this reason that the Director of Belgian
Relief went home a converted man — "an ardent supporter,"
he was careful to say, "not of war, but of this War." It
was a distinction that spread like a name. Not without pro-
test, however, from "those dangerous elements," as Presi-
dent Wilson called them, "who hide their disloyalty behind
a screen of specious and evasive words."

So numerous were these, so reckless and determined in
anarchy, that I can only outline their malignity. The
draft-resisters of Central Oklahoma called themselves the
Working Class Union. They were a serious trial to Gov-
ernor R. L. WTilliams of the Wonder-State, for they en-
listed ' ' bad niggers, ' ' Indians, and alien tenant farmers, in

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 283

a league of terror that flashed through three of the wilder
counties. It may be well to remind the reader that in the
United States a regular police force is unknown outside the
larger cities; so that sparsely -settled regions have to rely
upon the Sheriff and his civilian posse, who are too often a
law unto themselves. This is one of the root causes of
lynching.

Cranks of a tamer breed invaded Minnesota under Louis
Lochner, of Peace-Ark notoriety; this man claimed to
speak for two million workers. Lochner 's convention was
vetoed by Governor Burnquist, who declared "it would
have no other effect than to aid and abet our enemies."
So all facilities were denied. Ilerr Lochner \s train — the
"White Rabbit Special" — rolled back and forth in vain
quest of asylum for the so-called People's Council. The
hotelkeepers of Milwaukee and St. Paul closed their doors
against the party. At last Lochner 's followers were asked
to bring their own tents, as well as pots and pans, for a
desert meeting far from the tyrannous crowd.

The Socialists were truculent and shrill till the Federal
Government handled them roughly. Their bosses were
Morris Hillquit (born in Russia), Victor Berger (born in
Austria), Julius Gerber, and Boris Reinstein — the delegate
to Stockholm whose passport was at last rescinded. The
passing of Conscription caused disruption in the Socialist
ranks. Real Americans like Upton Sinclair, Allan Benson,
and J. S. Phelps Stokes broke away from the party. A very
able member, Charles E. Russell, was expelled for going
to Russia with Elihu Root's Mission. Therefore little was
left but a cultus of pro-Germanism upon which the Depart-
ment of Justice descended with a heavy hand, because of
its treasonous propaganda. Irish-American editors were
now ordered to refrain from attacks upon England, whom
the United States had joined in Democracy's war. The
Irish also were divided. Patrick Egan, a former Minister

284 AMERICA'S DAY

to Chile, charged John Devoy, the editor of the Gaelic-
American, with plotting the Dublin Rebellion with thv,
aid of German money, as well as exporting arms and
ammunition in defiance of American neutrality.

It is certain that Anglophobia of this kind passed decent
bounds. The "flag of the Irish Republic" was presented
to Lieut. Wacker, of the U-53, who sank ships in American
waters. "We shall hoist this flag in honour of Ireland,"
the assassin said as his boat left, "when we sink the next
English ship." Folly of this kind added to President
Wilson's burden. The Clan-na-Gael orators cried "Death
to England!" from a soap-box at the street corner. The
Irish-American press preached open sedition ; at a hyphen-
ate meeting in New York, an officer of the Irish Volunteers
struck a reporter with his sword because the man refused
to rise when "Die Wacht am Rhein" was played by the
orchestra.

All this faction was Unanimously condemned; American
common sense would have none of it. "It is incompre-
hensible to me," the President said, "how any frank or
honest person can doubt or question my position with
regard to this war and its objects. ... I can conceive
no purpose in seeking to becloud the matter, except the
purpose of weakening our hands and making the part we
are to play in this great struggle for human liberty an
inefficient and hesitating part."

Mayor Mitchel of New York, himself the grandson of an
outlawed Irish patriot — forbade anti-Ally speeches, and
refused police protection to Jeremiah O'Leary and other
firebrands of the Clan-na-Gael. Of course, mob fights
ensued. An Irish captain of police gave an order to his
Irish squad — and the New York streets beheld civil war
of a new kind, with citizen "Vigilantes" aiding the forces
of order against the Clan-na-Gael mob. Mr. T. P. O'Con-
nor poured oil upon these troubled waters. Ex- Ambassador

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 285

Gerard (whose life was threatened in Chicago) told the
Irish that their pro-German leaning would change to fury
if they could but see the camp at Limburg where "Irish
prisoners are dying of starvation and tuberculosis." . . .
He got secret news that the Prussian Guards were shooting
and killing their Irish captives. One prisoner was killed
whilst Mr. Gerard was inquiring into the murder of an-
other. "There is no telling how many were shot down by
their custodians." This was after the fiasco of Roger Case-
ment's recruiting visit.

Meanwhile "America first" was a national watchword of
rising sternness. Again and again the President insisted
upon unity of aim; the gigantic conflict he was directing
would (he declared) not only remove the last vestige of
difference between North and South, but also "any lines,
of race or association, cutting athwart the great body of
the nation." He met hindrance still, however, from the
Senate Chamber to far Viatka in Russia, where returned
emigrants were abusing America and a democratic regime
which, these renegades vowed, was more cruel and tyran-
nical than any Tsardom. These Russo-Americans did much
to nullify Mr. Root's Mission; the Bolsheviki were told it
was nothing but "a Wall Street venture conducted by the
Chief Tory of the country."

Impatient people in Paris and London knew little of the
dark forces with which President Wilson was battling.
He had the Press on his side, however. The intellectuals
hailed him as America's Man of Destiny; the ideal Execu-
tive whom Lowell pictured years ago — "so gently guiding
public sentiment that he seems to follow it ; so instinctively
grasping the temper and prejudices of the people as to
make them gradually conscious of his own superior wis-
dom." Wilson's opportunity was now declared greater
than that of Washington or Lincoln. The saviour of the
Union, it was pointed out, was at first thought a White

286 AMERICA'S DAY

House misfit by reason of his rough exterior and backwoods
breeding. On the other hand, it was as a high-brow that
Wilson was mistrusted. How should a book-worm steer
forty-eight rugged and striving Commonwealths through
the storms ahead? What sort of President should an his-
torian make when the world was aflame ? — a man of letters,
a fine gentleman, and no mob-orator at all? Yet hearken
to his voice in the thunder's mouth: "Woe be to the man
or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this Day
of high resolution, when every principle we hold dearest
is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of
all!"

The foes at home were more difficult to deal with than
any foreign enemy. Their tactics changed from day to day.
Their tools and catspaws were Protean shadows sheltered
by kState laws; it was impossible to disentangle motives in
treason's twilight zone. The German Embassy, we know,
was the headquarters of a dynamite diplomacy. It was
efficient in its way and spent tens of millions in wicked
work ranging from alarmist rumours to infernal machines.
Three thousand miles off, in San Francisco, Consul-General
Bopp and the Saxon Attache, Von Brincken, were hiring
bombers at $'300 a month and a bonus on each successful
job — say a ship bound for Vladivostok or a train load of
horses for the Allies, bridges and tunnels on the railways;
munition works, warehouses, and docks. The forces of
Deutschtum were at one time blatant, at any rate in the
German- American journals, of which there were not less
than four hundred and fifty in the United States. I fancy
these misread the average hyphenate; he was wary and
prudent throughout, and sat on the fence, mindful of his
stake in the richest of countries. Ninety per cent, of him
came down on the American side, leaving a band of plot-
ters, incendiaries, and strike-fomenters upon whom Chief

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 287

Justice Covington moved with all the might of the Federal
Government.

The fact should not be forgotten that America is partly-
German, and that, however loud hyphenate loyalty may be,
there remains an alien menace of great boldness and sway,
shifting with the fortune of war and current feeling in the
Fatherland. There were.spies in the White House itself, as
the leakage of the Wilson Peace Note showed. The Naval
Affairs Committee of the Senate were told by Secretary
Daniels that important letters had been stolen from confi-
dential files of the Ordnance Bureau. Senators Tillman
and Chamberlain, men high in the War Council, admitted
the daring and success of traitors ; no military or industrial
secret could be hidden from them. The German hope — as
Secretary Lane expressed it — "of mastering the world by
high explosive and low intrigue," was luridly pursued in
America, which offered unique scope and immunity.

The hyphenate danger was complicated by the dual
allegiance sanctioned by Paragraph 25 of the German
Citizen Law, passed by the Bundesrath and Reichstag and
made effective on January 1, 1914. This measure — semel
Germanus semper Germanus — superseded the old law of
1870, whereby nationality was lost after ten years' residence
abroad, or by declaring fealty to a foreign State. The new
Bill was framed by Baron von Richthofen, who explained
that "it permitted Germans who, for motives of an eco-
nomic kind are compelled to acquire a foreign nationality, to
retain at the same time their Reichsangehoerigkeit." Of
course this duality nullifies the Bancroft Treaty, and es-
tablishes a conflict which, as Senator Lodge pointed out to
State Secretary Lansing, ' ' is contrary to American law and
incompatible with our oath of allegiance."

The President was also troubled by labour violence of an
anarchic type, and by the high-handed methods of State

288 AMERICA'S DAY

Governors in suppressing it. I refer especially to that out-
lawed body, the Industrial Workers of the World, whose
organ declares that: "Property, whether material or in
the form of specialized labour, has ceased to exist for the
proletariat. ' '

The I. W. W., as this singular body is called, works with
bomb and torch and terrorism. "They can't stop us," was
the boast of Boss Hey wood. "We- — the rough-necks of the
world — will go on till we take control of all production,
working how and when we please. The man who makes
the wagon shall ride in it himself. ' ' Another leader hoped
the I. W. W. "would keep the soldiers so busy in the indus-
trial centres of the West, that they'll have no time to fight
the Germans." There was warfare in the Desert States,
and it is worth while to consider it if one is to grasp the
bewildering complexity of American conditions. Twelve
strikes were engineered in the anthracite coal regions.
Anti-conscription literature was freely circulated, together
with pamphlets urging riot and gaol delivery for the men
who had refused to register for military service. In South
Dakota vast grain-fields were mapped out with a view to
burning the crops ; and Food Controller Hoover had the
grain-elevators of the State protected with barbed wire
and armed guards.

"There's the devil to pay out here," came across the
Rockies to New York. "Strikes reasonable and unreason-
able occur, and they spread and multiply. Fires have been
started, and wells poisoned. Helpless workers are stoned
and beaten. Treason is openly preached. Our Army is
reviled; and soap-box orators, foaming with anarchy, are
bedevilling the cow-town communities." Federal officers
conferred with Samuel Gompers, of the Labour Federation,
and it was proved that German money backed the wickedest
designs. At seditious meetings a portrait of Karl Marx
would be displayed, with his favourite motto in many Ian-

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 289

guages: ''Workers, unite ! You have only your chains to
lose and a world to win."

There was never at any time a genuine Labour movement
against the President's plans. On the contrary, Labour
stood behind the Government "like a stone wall," as James
Duncan said, ' ' in its fight against autocracy. ' '

Meanwhile the President, radiant in summer garb, and
carrying a big flag, led his early conscripts from the Peace
Monument to the White House. Here he addressed them
from the reviewing-stand with his usual sense of fitness and
felicity. "The eyes of all the world," Dr. Wilson said,
"will be upon you, because you are in a special sense the
soldiers of freedom." The first half million were soon
housed in sixteen model townships, each with 40,000 recruits
in training. These and other specialized camps rose as it
were miraculously in their chosen sites. At Quantico the
Potomac flats and Virginia hills had a new Aldershot set
in their midst. Dense woods disappeared, roaring war
opened in the tranquil spaces with French and British ex-
perts directing it.

At Dayton, 0., great farms were obliterated by thousands
of teams, and by workmen both black and white. Six
weeks saw an aviation camp laid out here, with miles of
hangars, acres of machine-shops, barracks, lecture-halls and
offices. For the aerial arm alone Congress appropriated
$640,000,000. It was in tens of thousands that machines
were ordered so as to ensure that "crushing superiority"
which the French High Commissioner declared would break
the trench deadlock and end the war. Under General
G. O. Squier (a formed Attache in London) aerodromes
were built at Mineola, L. I., at Newport News, Pensacola,
Detroit, Champaign, and San Diego. Admiral Peary took
charge of the Aerial Coast patrol, with its sentinel cordons
and squadron stations. The Mexican Border was soon to
be made safe in this way. Had not Pershing praised the

290 AMERICA'S DAY

wings of war that carried his mails over the Sierra Madre
from Sonora, and awed the bandit troops of Pancho Villa
with a sight of "yellow hawks that dropped flame from the
skies!" One machine, the General testified, "was worth
more to me than a whole division of infantry. ' ' There were
Allied advisers at Headquarters in Washington — Colonel
Rees, R. P. C, a noted English pilot ; Lieut, de la Grange,
an aerial champion of France, and other aces of renown.
The docility of America in all her efforts was a sign to be
remarked ; her willingness to learn war methods impressed
all her foreign teachers, as well as her aptitude in grasping
the novel conditions of war.

As for the Navy, President Wilson pointed to vast defen-
sive areas in both oceans, and urged a suitable program
with all speed in contracts and construction. A single Bill,
passed unanimously by the Lower House, voted $1,500,000,-
000 for this purpose alone. It called for capital ships of
over 40,000 tons; these include new types like the electric
California, and giant cruisers of 35 knots mounting 16-in.
guns. There are also scout cruisers and coast patrols,
submarines of 1000 tons, swift U-boat chasers, as well as
seaplanes and dirigibles. New dockyards and naval sta-
tions are designed ; powder, shells and armour plants, as well
as underground oil-tanks at Guantanamo, Pearl Harbour,
Puget Sound, San Diego, Mare Island, and Narragansett
Bay. An energetic drive is being made to bring the naval
personnel — ever a weak point — up to 150,000 men. One
may soberly say that money is being poured out like water ;
the first year of war cost America over twenty billion dol-
lars. Merely for destroyers Secretary Daniels has asked
Congress for $1,000,000,000.

But money alone will not produce modern warships and
trained crews at short notice. Naval construction has up
to now been slow and costly in the United States — at all
events when compared with British, or even German sources'.

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 291

From the time Congress authorized the Dreadnought
Oklahoma until she joined the Atlantic Fleet, nearly five
years and a half elapsed. Four years were allowed for the
battle-cruisers, and $16,000,000 for the hull and engines
alone. In many cases private bids from concerns like the
Fore River, the Newport News of Quincy, and Cramps' of
Philadelphia fell through altogether, and Secretary Daniels
had to lay down the ships in the national yards. Then
Hadfield's of Sheffield secured a $3,000,000 order for 14-in.
and 16-in. armour-piercing shells. Their bid was no less
than $200 each below that of the Bethlehem Steel Company
of Pennsylvania. And these Sheffield shells passed the
severest test of the Ordnance Bureau, when fired at plates
turned at an angle of ten degrees, so as to deflect the
striking force.

Of course in these matters it is war-experience that wins.
But America is fast learning on the naval as well as the
military side, adapting and developing her industries and
resources in a style that amazed the foreign missions. The
Japanese Plenipotentiary was greatly impressed by the
titan efforts which America was making "against the insane
despoiler of our civilization. " . . . America 's will would no
longer be expressed in words alone. To frustrate the sub-
marines, emergency fleets of merchant vessels were put in
hand by the Federal Shipping Board. For this purpose
Congress voted $750,000,000, but the purchase of new
vessels and the commandeering of others took the total
estimates to $1,134,500,000. All the great steel plants-
all the lumber of the South and the North-West, as well as
new armies of skilled labour, were pressed into service under
Admiral W. L. Capps and Mr. E. N. Hurley of Chicago, new
nominees of the President, after inevitable disputes and
delay.

This colossal program was to do more than defeat the
trump card of the Von Tirpitz policy. It would also

292 AMERICA'S DAY

revive America's merchant marine, which may be said to
have passed with the Civil War. The Confederate raiders
wrought havoc among the clipper-ships of that time, and
left the nation with no zest for changed conditions of the
sea, brought about by the introduction of steam and iron,
for which America's "wooden" yards were not adapted.
Therefore capital was withdrawn from maritime invest-
ment and turned to the exploitation of natural resources,
as well as the building of railroads and the development of
industries which promised a rich and speedy return.

In this way America fell off as a seafaring nation.
Sailors and their sons now took to the land out in the
Middle West. They went into the factories, they engaged
in coastwise or fishing trades. In world-commerce the
United States became more and more dependent upon
the bounty-fed and cheap-wage vessels of other nations.
She was at last paying $300,000,000 a year to alien owners
for the transport of her own products.

After the Civil War a few subsidies were granted to
shipowners, but these new lines failed, partly through
unskilful management, and partly owing to economic con-
ditions beyond any owner's control. The Pacific Mail was
rescued by strong financial interests, but this concern also
went out of business owing to the Seamen's Act which the
President signed in 1914. Primarily a labour law, forced
through Congress by an autocratic Union, this measure
added seriously to shipping costs, which were already the
bane of American owners. The trans-Pacific lines could
only live by employing Chinese, Japanese, and Lascars, at
$10 or $15 a month. "Safety at sea" was the watchword
of a new Bill which, radically altered the sailor's status.
The foreign provisos were so complex that American Con-
suls required the modification of thirty-seven Treaties and
Conventions in order to carry them into effect.

Thus it was that the Pacific became "a Japanese lake";

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 293

and in two years 405 American vessels, totalling 351,000
tons, were transferred to foreign flags. A steamer manned
by Asiatics would cost only $777 a month to operate; the
same ship with an American personnel cost $3270; the offi-
cers' pay alone was more than double. The new Act had
orders about the seaman's food and quarters, his freedom at
home and abroad, and his ability to understand orders in
English — a rule which applied to seventy -five per cent, of
the crew. Therefore the outbreak of war in 1914 saw
maritime enterprise at its lowest ebb; the last grudging aid
to builders and owners quenched in apathy or downright
opposition. No wonder the American flag had become a
rare sight in foreign waters, and the native sailor a still
rarer sight. A recent Government estimate showed but five
men seeking sea emplo3rment from every hundred square
miles of continental America, as against forty-three in Ger-
many and two hundred and forty in England.

This dwindling was especially regretted in regard to the
South American trade, and statesmen quoted remarkable
figures to drive the lesson home. Elihu Root instanced the
port of Rio de Janeiro. Thither in a recent year came
120 steamers and sailing-ships under the Austro-Hungarian
flag. Norway sent 142, Italy 165, Argentina 264, and
France 349. Germany was represented by 657 vessels, and
Great Britain topped the list with 1785. But not a single
steamer had flown the Stars and Stripes ! Seven sailing-
ships was America's contribution to Rio's teeming trade,
and of these, as Mr. Root remarked, two were in distress.

Four years ago there was little enterprise in the Ameri-
can yards. In August, 1914, ship-plates were selling at
Pittsburgh at $26.66 a ton, and in Middlesbrough at $34.
Yet a 5000-ton steamer, costing $40 a ton in the English
yard, cost at least $60 in the American — a difference of
$100,000 on this small vessel alone. The price of labour
too was far higher; there was also the comparative in.

294 AMERICA'S DAY

experience of American builders, due to the long decay and
national discouragement.

Shipping was a neglected, even a discredited industry,
beset with disability and penalty. Yet such are the re-
sources of America that all obstacles went down before
the wand of war and the beckoning freights, which were a
thousand per cent, higher. The present year will see
America with a merchant fleet of over 1600 ships, trebling
the tonnage of 1917, and including enemy vessels in opera-
tion by the II. S. Government ; these aggregate 700,000
tons. A grand total of 10,000,000 tons is said to be in
sight.

America felt the full force of the war-time shipping
boom. There were stories of steamers paid for by a pros-
perous maiden voyage. An old tub that went begging
a decade ago at $72,000 now fetched half a million. The
German tramp, Walk ii re, sunk by Con Spee in the shallow
harbour of Papete (Tahiti), was fished up and patched.
Soon the rusty wreck rolled into San Francisco under her
own steam, and there, after further repairs, she was sold
for $700,000. Anything that floated was the surest gold
mine, for the shadow of scarcity lay upon the world through
the Prussian policy and the economic pinch it brought.
Here, then, .was America's chance to foil the German aims.
She could strike a blow for Freedom with the shipwright's
tool, at the same time setting up a new marine of her own
with Government aid — belated indeed, but now with no
stint of capital or national energy. Six million tons is
America's promise for the current year.

Hence the clattering orgies of construction. Hence the
steel ships of 8000 tons launched in a little over two
months, and freighters of 3000 tons built on the Great
Lakes, and brought down through the locks of the Welland
Canal to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. The whole
continent soon crashed witli this work from the old-world

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 295

yards of Maine, westward to the inland seas, and down to
the Delaware flats and new Florida slipways at Jacksonville
and Pensacola.

Shipyards sprang up overnight round the white rim of
the Mexican Gulf. Likewise in Louisiana baj'ous, in re-
mote Texan ports, and up and down the Pacific Coast
from San Diego to Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma; here
virgin forests are at hand and the steam saw is never silent.
America's crop of ships is an astonishing portent, the
most timely of the many harvests intended for a world
besieged and menaced with hunger. New legions of labour
were called for and drilled, standard parts assembled
and uniform types designed, as in the motor-shops of
Detroit, where motor-cars are turned out by progressive
magic. In this way it was possible to produce ocean-going
vessels in a few weeks — ships with a fair turn of speed and
a variety of uses; cargo-boats and tankers, transports,
wooden auxiliaries, coastwise tugs, lighters and harbour
craft. The one aim was to create the carrying fleets with
ever-increasing speed, to confuse and whelm the German
submarines with the sheer number of possible victims until
naval invention and counter-measures should check the
underwater weapon, and once more adjust the balance be-
tween attack and defence.

The automobile torpedo is a delicate weapon, and each
target missed increases the cost and risks of a destructive
cruise. It was America's aim still further to reduce the
U-boat's chances. Better five little vessels of 3000 tons,
it was argued, than one big ship of 15,000, which a single
shot might sink. Such was the motive of the Shipping
Board's energy. On seven hundred launching-ways, it
roused workers of all degrees, from the Pennsylvania steel-
king to the riveters of a lonely sand-pit on Puget Sound,
where ships were launched for the new Vladivostok service
which served Russia in her hopeful days.

296 AMERICA'S DAY

But what of navigating officers and men, say for a thou-
sand ships? New schools appeared, afloat and ashore, under
public and private auspices. Henry Howard of Boston
started classes at Harvard ; these spread through New Eng-
land and thence down to Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston,,
and New Orleans. Recruiting stations were opened on the
Great Lakes, as soon as the ice formed and the big freight-
ers tied up for the winter. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit,
and Buffalo soon had their academies. Commodore Frank
Hastings, the New York banker, began tuition at Green-
wich (Conn.), and gave likely men a fair knowledge of
theory in six or eight weeks. There were also calls for
marine engineers, and many a chauffeur responded, leav-
ing luxurious service for the fearsome lure of a war-time
sea.

Let me say in passing that the chief engineer of a Stand-
ard Oil tanker was paid up to $5000 a year, with a bonus
of fifty per cent. The Navy Department gave the cruiser
Newport to the State of New York as a school for officers
of the merchant marine. Massachusetts equipped the
Banger under Captain Emery Rice, who in the Mongolia
fired the first shot of America's war at a German submarine.
The coastwise States — Pennsylvania on the East, Oregon
and California in the West — passed laws establishing sea-
schools with the support of the Federal Board. As for
deck hands, cooks, stewards, and firemen — "We shall pro-
vide them, ' ' was the pledge of Andrew Furuseth, the ruling
spirit of the Seamen's Union; he fell into line at the Presi-
dent's appeal for unity and aid, and he sent through the
Central West the stirring slogan — ' ' From farm to f o 'c 'sle ! ' '
which brought thousands of recruits for the new ships.

The war-spirit of the United States drew remarkable
tribute from British statesmen of ripe experience and
measured speech. "It is a theme which absorbs my
thoughts day and night," Mr. Balfour told a crowded House

WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 297

of Commons with unwonted force and fervour. "It is a
theme which moves me more, I think, than anything- con-
nected with public affairs in all my long experience."

CHAPTER XVI

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD

"... 0 son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the House
of Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear the word at My mouth, and warn
them from Me." — Ezek. xxxiii. 7.

For two memorable years Woodrow Wilson was torn be-
tween the bandits of Mexico and Teutonic Thugs in Wash-
ington and Berlin. These last had unlimited funds and
Imperial license. No law restrained them, no scruples
of decency or humanity. They found willing tools among
the German- American millions whose attitude in the mass
no man could predicate, since they were confronted with a
dilemma as novel as it was unexpected. The President,
in his Declaration of War, thought it well to draw dis-
tinction between the German people and their autocratic
Government, whose warfare was against mankind. To-
wards the German race America had "no feeling but one
of sympathy and friendship." In the face of all the facts,
and fierce avowal of the contrary by the Berlin press,
President Wilson was sure the German masses had not
backed the militarists in this calamitous war. "It was not
with their previous knowledge or approval," the President
declared.

Of course high reasons of State prompted this distinc-
tion; it was more than once set out with ostent and evi-
dent anxiety. For if Germans do not form the backbone
of America— as hyphenate leaders claimed in their trucu-
lent time— they do play a leading part in the economic
and industrial life of the United States.

Now the hyphenate position was obscure and delicate

298

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 299

to a degree. Moreover, the forty-eight States were far
from being "United" in a foreign policy. The East was
chafing under humiliation at sea and at home; the West
sang pseans to the President who "kept us out of war."
State Secretary Bryan handed minatory Notes to Bern-
storff and Dumba, at the same time assuring them that
Americas eagle screech was not to be taken seriously,
since its purport was mainly to impress sentiment at home.
It is quite clear that as Foreign Minister at such a crisis
the Nebraskan orator was a misfit, if not a national mis-
fortune. His nods and becks and smiles, his incurable pink
thinking and Jeffersonian views, did America the gravest
disservice. The State Secretary was played with as a child
might be in a brigand's den; his geniality encouraged tiie
Central Powers to a course of outrage which could only
have one result.

On his way home in 1915, Constantin Dumba reviewed
America's attitude with a sort of naive wonder. Was it
really possible, the ex- Ambassador asked one of "these
idiotic Yankees" who was a fellow-passenger, that the
President and his State Secretary thought the Central
Empires bound by any international law in a fight for
their very existence? If so, it was too grotesque. As for
American mediation, it had a fair chance at first, Dr.
Dumba thought — "if Wilson had been big enough for the
job."

Mediation was certainly in President Wilson's mind at
first, and — the disgraced Ambassador notwithstanding —
he was as "big" a man in 1915 as he afterwards proved.
But he had first of all to educate and rouse his people.

Wilson's heart was set upon peace, despite his own
growing fears and doubts; this is evident from his public
utterances. His intimate friend, Secretary Lane of the
Interior, says with perfect truth that "the President sees
the world, not as so much money, land, and machines,

300 AMERICA'S DAY

but as so many men, women, and children." However,
apart from Wilson's inclination, we must also consider
America's military weakness, and the tradition of moral
suasion which State Secretary Bryan urged, even when
the Lusitania crime thrilled America with wrath and horror.

Officially, at any rate, Dr. Wilson set his face against
war, and began the long watch and wait which the angry
East styled "Government by periscope." Three months
after his "Strict accountability" Note, and three days after
the hugest atrocity in the sea's annals, the President made
his unfortunate "Too-proud-to-fight" speech at Phila-
delphia. At that moment the bodies of American women
and children were being washed ashore on the Irish coast.
The whole continent was stirred, and "big" leadership at
home lost a rare chance. But the President was confused
with the surge of threats and motives; he was for a time
distracted and overwrought — "rattled" is the American
word. Indeed, his long ordeal, had we but known the
facts, would have earned our loyal support instead of the
note of satire which our editors took from colleagues in
New York who ought to have known better. For if
France and Britain were unprepared for the German
onslaught and the web of craft that went with it — what
of America, to whom war of any kind was a shameful
nightmare which the oceans and her own ideals had alike
combined to render impossible?

In February, 1915, the Berlin Reichs-Marine-Amt or-
dained the "Sink-at-sight," and all neutral vessels were
warned from a certain zone around the British Islands.
This drew a Note from the State Department, claiming for
citizens and ships "the full enjoyment of their acknowl-
edged rights on the high seas." Any violence "would be
very hard to reconcile with friendly relations," and the
Imperial German Government was thereby held to "strict
accountability" for any lawless acts of its naval officers.

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 301

On 29th March the Falaba was destroyed, and on May 1
the Gulflight. Six days later came the immense tragedy
of the Lusitania. This was followed by the Nebraskan
on May 24, the Arabic on August 19, the Hesperian on
September 4, the Persia on December 30, and so on to the
Silius and Sussex in March of 1916. In all these cases
American citizens were drowned or injured. The list is not
complete, but it shows the German disregard for successive
protests from Washington. "What can America do?"
asked the Berlin press, as the President's Notes grew stiff'er.
To the German mind it was a purely academic discussion,
tinged with mild amazement. For here was a nation of a
hundred millions whose Chief Executive confessed he could
not even police the Mexican Border, so small and ill-
equipped was the Federal Army !

Theodore Roosevelt inveighed against "the Pontius Pi-
late neutrality" of Washington, and the milk and water
of America's reply to the blood and iron of the German
Wille zu Macht. Elihu Root shot many a rankling shaft
which inspired the most caustic cartoons. "A Govern-
ment," the ex-Senator said (he has a large and influential
following), "that shakes first its fist — and then its finger —
is bound to fall into contempt. " Indictments of the Wilson
policy were published by diplomats like David Jayne Hill,
and by historians like Franklin H. Giddings, Professor of
Sociology and Civilization at Columbia. The White House
was a target for angry theorists, yet all of them ignored
two cardinal facts: (1) That the continent was not
unanimous, and (2) That if it were, the military means
to enforce its will were wholly lacking.

Moreover, the flush time and the Golden Year had done
much to blunt the nation's sensibility. The fall of 1916
saw money raining in billions and New York herself em-
barrassed by the deluge. At this period President Wilson
gave a cryptic hint of his own position in a letter to the

302 AMERICA'S DAY

late Seth Low, a civic magnate and philanthropist of note.
Mr. Low was referred to the first few verses of Ezekiel
xxxiii., wherein is laid down the duty of a Watchman to a
rather heedless flock: "But he that taketh warning shall
deliver his soul. ' ' Of course, so long as unity was lacking,
and adequate force remained a pious wish, the President
could only ensue peace, whatever his private judgment
might have been. He professed to ignore the root causes
which had set the world ablaze ; he was still concerned with
moral issues only, at the same time giving a subtle lead
to Western apathy, which continued to block the way.
"You are looking for some cause," he told the Nebraskans
at Omaha, "that will make you raise your spirit and not
depress it ; a cause in which it seems a glory to shed human
blood if need be, so that all the common compacts of Lib-
erty can be sealed with the blood of free men."

The Speech with which the President opened his Second
Term prepared his people for the upheaval that was at
hand. They now stood firm in armed neutrality, but might
be drawn still further into uncontrollable currents which
shook the earth with passion and apprehension of organized
wrong. It was a wistful, reluctant address. There was
much to do at home, Dr. Wilson reminded his hearers, but
these things were shelved; there were still mightier ends
to achieve "with the whole world for a stage." The Chief
Executive was above all things anxious to be America's
authentic Voice, the instrument of her considered will.

This is the role he praised in Grover Cleveland in 1897,
and again in 1913, when writing to Mitchell Palmer about
"the most delicate dealings of the Government with for-
eign nations." There should be no knight-errantry on a
President 's part, no ebullition of feeling, but swift and loyal
interpretation of the country's desire. "America first,"
was Wilson's concept, as it was Lincoln's in 1862.

It was Wilson's hope to settle the Mexican welter and

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 303

keep out of the European war. This was the period of his
abstract posing which puzzled the Allies and confirmed
the Germans in their estimate of America's impotence in
war.

The President's views sprang from the complex of a
statesman and a man of letters engaged in political tasks
at once delicate and huge. He was profoundly influenced
by the teaching of Immanuel Kant, for, as lecturer on in-
ternational law, Wilson often expounded the well-known
Kantian theories of Permanent Peace. The German phi-
losopher considered war a degrading barbarity. "Seek
above all," he urges, "the domain of pure practical rea-
son." Kant agrees that a violation of Right may be felt
throughout the world, but he does not argue from this that
recourse to war is necessary. He appears to go further
indeed, and to deny that international wrong has any
objective character. States are entirely independent of
one another. They have no superior, therefore who shall
decide between the just and the unjust?

Still less can States judge of their own cause. The two
concepts of Justice and War do not touch at any point.
That does not mean that the rights of one State cannot be
violated by another. But when war breaks out, who shall
say which of the parties has Justice on its side ? Two moral
forces are in conflict. Each may subjectively believe in
the virtue of his cause. There is no judge, therefore no
law.

Yet even in Wilson's academic day, belaboured by all
belligerents and by many of his own as well, it is plain
that he had America's war in mind and was shaping the
people's will to it. "God forbid that we should be drawn
in," he told a training-camp of nurses. "But if we are,
we shall shake off our dreams and stand up for humanity."
His domestic schemes were now fading in the battle-smoke,
military weakness dogged his larger aims with shadowy

304 AMERICA'S DAY

indecision. This was glaringly seen in the Mexican chaos,
to which I must here allude. It is none too clearly real-
ized that Mexico marches with the U. S. border for two
thousand miles, much as Scotland marches with England.
In the towns of Nogales and Naco the main street is the in-
ternational boundary. Now border conditions have for
many years disgraced America's name, and roused a real
hatred for the "Gringos" in the Republic of the south.

It is also well to point out that States ' Rights have time
and again hampered the Federal Government in this Border
affair ; much of the blame must lie with Texas, Arizona, and
New Mexico. Here the Sheriff and his posse ; the raid, the
feud, the "bad man" and his pocket artillery are still
familiar features. And the lex talionis still has a wide
sway.

I may not linger over this Border life. At its worst it
surpassed the wildest flights of a "Western movie-play, with
cattle-thieving and wholesale homicide; the smuggling of
arms, the train-wreckers and masked bravos, the plots and
frauds, all the terror and reprisals which strew the chap-
arral with dead peons and desperadoes, as well as with in-
nocent victims of American greed. How Mexican ranchers
and farmers have been squeezed out of land and stock
by the white men of the Border is a squalid tale. From
1910 onwards refugees fled from the fire and sword of the
pelados in the Mexican States of Sonora, Chihuahua, and
Tamaulipas. Many of these settled in the strange No-
man's Land of the Rio Grande, between Laredo and the
Gulf, where the river plays erratic pranks and offers shifty
problems to the Boundary Commission in "Washington.

Now in neither Republic had the hapless peon any po-
litical existence. His treatment on the Border stung him
to revenge, and kept alive the hatred, contempt, and mis-
trust of both races. The bandit Villa spoke for the Bor-

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 305

der serfs when he swore he would raise a wall of terror
which the Americanos would never cross.

Wilson's attack upon Vera Cruz, Pershing's punitive
mission and the persistent talk of intervention, all served
to fan the flame and unite rival factions against America's
wavering dictation. Aba jo los Gringos! became the watch-
word of all. "Mexico for the Mexicans!" was another
patriotic cry, potent as the iron sway of old Diaz in healing
feuds and closing the ragged ranks of outlaws, from Manuel
Pelaez in the oil-belt to Lower California, where Cantu
reigned as king with a comic opera army in full song.

As Venustiano Carranza gained in power, defying Wil-
son and forcing recognition on the United States, a new
Mexican Constitution was coming into force, with anti-
foreign clauses so sweeping as to exclude missionary work,
as well as ownership in lands and mines. There is, of
course, historic warrant for Mexico's mistrust. This goes
back to the Texan War of Independence and the confusion
it entailed. In 1847 the frontier troubles caused armed
conflict with the United States. The troops of General
Winfield Scott reached the Mexican capital; they scaled
the heights of Chapultepec, imposing America's terms in
the Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo, as a tablet on the Cas-
tle wall reminds the citizens of today.

The long Border remains a problem, especially with a
weak, unstable Mexico ruined by bandit chiefs and played
upon by Germany — as the Zimmermann letter showed, and
the record of Franz von Rintelen, who was paymaster-in-
chief of the plotters south of the Rio Grande. So much for
the Border, which President Wilson tried to police with the
State Militia in 1916.

To the south of it lies a State which Humboldt called the
treasure-house of the earth. Mexico is larger than the
German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, with France

306 AMERICA'S DAY

added to them. Nearly one-third of the world's silver
comes out of this land. Her mineral riches are incalcu-
lable ; her petroleum a precious asset of the Grand Alliance
in a universal war to which oil is a vital need for new
engines of ever-increasing power and number. American
oil supplies are running short, owing to the increased de-
mand of a pleasure-loving generation which has millions
of cars. California's output rose from four million barrels
in 1900 to a hundred millions in 1916. Oklahoma's in-
creased from six thousand barrels to sixty-five millions,
yet the shortage grows more and more acute.

Therefore it was more than ever necessary that dis-
order should cease in Mexico, where the Tampico belt
alone bids fair to equal or surpass the oil production of
the world. These great fields follow the Gulf for three
hundred miles, and extend sixty miles inland. Experts
say there are signs of oil all down the coast as far as the
Guatemalan border, and that borings on a wider scale
will have astonishing results. The whole yield of the
United States for last year was 307,000,000 barrels. Fif-
teen Tampico wells had a capacity of 250,000,000 barrels.
A single gusher at Poturo del Llano gave a hundred thou-
sand barrels a day, another could fill an ocean tanker over-
night.

It was thought well to maintain armed guards against
the ever-present German incendiary; for her ten million
barrels may go up in smoke, as happened at the Dos
Bocas gusher in the Tampico region. I need hardly say
that Mexican brigands levied tribute on this wealth. The
armed gang of Candido Aguilar demanded $10,000 from
each producing concern. Only Lord Cowdray's syndicate
refused; the result was that pumps were stopped, and
great leaks caused. Then surface fires broke out and
lasted four months, involving a far greater loss than
Aguilar 's proposed blackmail.

THE WA.TCHMAN AND THE SWORD 307

Before the Terror — which dates from the decline of the
Diaz regime in 1910 — there were 40,000 Americans in
Mexico, handling- property worth over a thousand million
dollars. Of Mexico 's imports fifty-five per cent, came from
the United States; of all that Mexico had to sell, her big
sister took seventy-seven per cent.

In Victoriano Huerta's day, President Wilson was anx-
ious over American prestige, which was then at a low
ebb. It is clear that the Washington Bureaux had a
fair inkling of German designs in the fall of 1915. Ger-
man reservists were crossing into Mexico and directing
petty "wars" too bewildering -to follow. German ships
were stealing into lonely ports with lethal cargoes hidden
in cases of hardware, typewriters, pianos, and ice-cream
freezers.

Mexico under Huerta offered a German vantage-ground
of unique scope. For this reason the Mailed Fist was
soon stirring the hell-broth, and Von Eintelen poured
millions into it through the Deutsche Bank. Meanwhile
Huerta's manoeuvres — the Vera Cruz affair and the abor-
tive pursuit of Villa — gave the ignorant peon a low opin-
ion of American might. Thus the too-tame bull that re-
fused to fight in the crowded ring — the tawny Longhorn
or red Hereford of massive and kindly mien — was now
hustled out by angry chulos to the contemptuous shrieks
of the mob: Toro Americano! — Why, it was a Yankee
beast that turned to nibble straw when the picadors spurred
on top of him, dropping their lances and stooping to slap
his stupid snout !

It cannot be denied that the Mexican mess was badly
handled by the U. S. Government. In 1914 Huerta, a
Mixtec Indian of pure blood, was ruling well enough when
President Wilson resolved to break him. Huerta's sway
was, of course, despotic — like that of his master, Porforio
Diaz. The American Fleet, under Admiral Mayo, was

308 AMERICA'S DAY

sent down to Vera Cruz to compel this tyrant to salute
the flag. Huerta haggled for a return salute; the result
was that none was given on either side. Mayo's squadron
sailed away after a pitched battle ashore, in which there
were many casualties.

Meanwhile Wilson was pointing out to Congress that
"if we are to accept the tests of its own Constitution,
Mexico has no Government." It was argued that Huerta
was a usurper who had overthrown with treachery and
crime the previous regime; but then, that has been Mex-
ico's way since the Constitution of 1857 went into force.

Carranza was favoured by the Washington Cabinet —
though it also leaned to Pancho Villa, a free-lance who
had hopes of the precarious "throne" in the National
Palace. But Villa's aims were blighted by Wilson's final
choice after Huerta 's resignation. Thereupon the bandit
chief took a bloody revenge by invading American terri-
tory and "shooting" up the border town of Columbus,
N. M. This was the outrage which called for the Pershing
expedition, and an outlay of $200,000,000, which was worse
than fruitless. "Get Villa, dead or alive," was the order
given to the American General. But he came back empty-
handed, his retreat hastened by the minatory tone of First
Chief Carranza, who now threatened a national war. Such
was the problem confronting Wilson in his neutral time;
and Prussian devilry in both Republics heaped fuel on the
flames.

Mexico was now exhausted; one of her railways with
a gross revenue of $34,000,000 earned but $22,441 in paper
money of more than doubtful value. Claims on Carranza 's
Government soon climbed to a billion dollars. At long
last President Wilson drew out of this political morass.
He reinstated Ambassador Fletcher in Mexico City; he re-
ceived Carranza 's envoy, Seilor Ignacio Bonillas, who had
been a member of the Joint Commission that settled terms

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD .309

between the two Republics. Mexico now settled down to
business as the Border itself does when the tide of woe
has turned and the* good time smiles again. Railroads
and mines were dug out and repaired. There was re-
construction everywhere on the old familiar lines. The
native press began to change its tune, and was quite polite
to America. Anti-Gringoism was bad form in this brighter
day. The State mints were working overtime ; so were
the theatres and cafes of the capital, where Americans
left the club and strolled up to Sanborn's drug-store for
ice-cream, and pastries and tea. Oil sont les neiges d'an-
ianf Where were the bandits and butchers of yester-
year?

President Wilson was well aware of the geographical
and political importance of Mexico, but he mistook the
mass of peons for a people, which they certainly are not.
No accurate census of the country has been taken, nor
should we accept the official estimates and classification
of 1900. There are, perhaps, 15,000,000 souls in the Re-
public, and of these fewer than 2,000,000 are of Caucasian
race. The number of half-breeds is rather larger; the
rest are Indians, belonging to fifty tribes speaking as
many dialects. Mentally, morally, and physically the peon
of today is what he was centuries- ago. ''There can be
little doubt," says Senator Beveridge, "that, speaking by
and large, he is far below the culture of the ancient
Aztecs." An American protectorate appears to be the
sanest solution of the Mexican question upon all counts.
And the next upheaval will find the United States equipped
to make an end of endemic anarchy at her door — the
desolation of a State which is unique among the prizes
of Latin America, and therefore a standing lure to arro-
gant Powers trained in war and forced to territorial ex-
pansion.

Mexico commands the Gulf, which is at once the outlet

310 AMERICA'S DAY

and approach to the southern harbours of the United
States. It has been the dream of American statesmen
that this sea should one day be wholly American — the
more so in that it now controls the Panama Canal. More-
over, as Mexico dominates the near Pacific, this turbulent
State has a bearing upon America's Western Coast. A
modern army landed there could invade the Border at
many points where fortification is impossible or prohibitive
in cost. Therefore its integrity, stability, and internal
order are prime factors in the policy of the greater Re-
public.

Wilson's dilemma, when the Great War came, was a
repetition of history — that of April, 1793, when the First
President declared America's neutrality in the French
wars and sought "to gain time to our country" which
was quite unfitted to play its part. The "suitable estab-
lishments" which Washington urged upon the infant Re-
public were still ignored ; even the ' ' respectable defensive
posture" which was his minimum was not yet in sight.
For this reason he steered clear of entanglements and
pursued the "different course" which "our detached and
distant situation" appeared to render possible.

Washington had not been dead twenty years before
America was faced with entirely new conditions which en-
tailed a radical change. Monroe, Madison, and Jefferson
were already counting upon British sea-power as a barrier
against European intrigue. Aloofness was even then
known for a myth, and the Two Americas closed their
ranks, resolved to exclude any and every Old-World domi-
nation. So the problems of the Fathers were in part re-
peated by the issues which Wilson faced in his neutral
day. The Farewell Address of Washington is not more
unruffled than Wilson's Message to Congress a few weeks

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 311

after the German onset broke. "We are at peace with all
the world. . . . We mean to live our own lives as we
will." So said the Pilgrim Fathers when they set sail
from Plymouth in 1620, weary of the homeland and its
religious persecution.

America has always been a place of dreams, and no
dollar-hunt has ever quite dispelled them. No less a wit-
ness than Henri Bergson has lately testified to this. "He
who has lived in America," the philosopher told the intel-
lectual peers of Paris, "comes to realize that in no nation
does money mean less ; it is only a certificate of efficiency.
The American soul is saturated with idealism — even with
mysticism. Their history shows that abstract thoughts of
morality and justice have always held first place." This
is the plain truth. Pacifism split the House of Deputies
of the Protestant Episcopal Church when new prayers for
the National Army were to the fore. Thus the God of
Hosts was asked "to strengthen and protect the soldiers of
our country; to support them in the day of battle, and in
time of peace to keep them from all harm." "If we adopt
this prayer," said Dr. J. H. Melish of Brooklyn, "we shall
be doing irreparable injury to the youth of our land. It
is impossible for soldiers — as the Prayer asks — to 'serve
without reproach.' Moreover, it is not a Christian prayer,
but one addressed to the iron Deity whom Joshua invoked
when he set forth to invade."

Pacifism was carried to queer extremes; its apostles in
all ages were cited, from Buddha to Mr. Bryan. Non-
resistance was expedient, the fanatics said; it was also
economically wiser than war. It was quite workable too,
according with the Christ ethics, teaching humanity and
justice as well as conserving men's energy for sane con-
structive labours. America should, therefore, adopt the
peace-ideal and act upon it until the older nations, led
by this example, should pass into Emerson's "region of

312 AMERICA'S DAY

holiness," where no ignoble passion marred the social
serenity. This was the counsel which Theodore Roosevelt
decried for three years or more as "the diluted mush of a
make-believe morality."

This Utopian land has had many wars, and muddled
through them all with no great zest for the business. The
Revolutionary War lasted seven years, the War of 1812
three years, the Florida War seven years, the Mexican
War two years, and the Rebellion four years — to say
nothing of frontier affrays with the Indians during the
whole of this period. In 1898 came the clash with Spain,
thirty-three years after the surrender of Lee to General
Grant at Appomattox. America was wholly unprepared
for the war with Spain, but it would be a graceless task
to recall the scandal and confusion which marked it at
home and abroad — the sea affair as well as the land cam-
paign. The navy was in a bad way; its gunnery record
at Santiago was exposed by the late Professor Alger, a
leading American authority. "At 2800 yards," this sci-
entist states, "nearly half the shots fired went wide of the
mark." Service powders, the discipline of crews, battle-
practice, co-ordination, and construction all were unsound
at that time. Yet Congress was unmoved at each revela-
tion.

Nevertheless reforms were stirring. Young Sowden Sims
was bombarding the Bureaux and the Senate Naval Com-
mittee, thereby imperilling his own career. "When we
launched the Kentucky," Sims declared, "we ought to
have shed tears over her instead of breaking a bottle of
champagne." This was the battleship of open turrets and
unprotected guns, a design that was soon officially con-
demned. But if Sims spoke plainly in those days (he
became an admiral, and worked with our own fleet in
European waters), what shall be said of candid friends

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 313

who are today rewriting America's school books till the
military record glares with crudity?

It is a wholesome sign, this banishing of mythical exploit ;
the spread-eagling of minute-men and rustic heroes who
could "lick creation" with a pike and gun snatched from
the farm-house wall when the drums began to beat. The
Unpopular History of the United States is a piquant nov-
elty of our time, and a token that the great democracy is
building from the depths in order to cure the Prussian
madness.

"Why," asks the new historian, "has the sovereign voter
of America remained so heedless? I was a grown man of
thirty, hoeing my beard with a safety razor, ere it dawned
upon me that the fighting record of our country had not
been one long, unbroken record of star-spangled victories.
Like other boys, I'd been fed upon Fourth of July ora-
tions. ... I believed that one lone, grey-haired farmer
with a drum, a bloody rag round his head, and a son and
a grandson behind him, had chased the British Army
from our sacred continent. I believed that — did you?
I thought that a single American patriot, with a muzzle-
loader and both hands tied behind him, could beat any
horde of foreign hirelings that ever marched down the
pike. I had no doubt of it — had you? I was sure the
Redcoats outnumbered the Colonials. Yet in that glorious
year of '76 we mustered 89,600 men against the British
20,121! I didn't know that— did you?" Much of this
"Unpopular History" has lain perdu in General Emory
Upton's Military Policy of the United States. The late
Homer Lea's Valour of Ignorance carried the truth a step
further, and General Leonard Wood, a former Chief of
Staff, rounded off the peril of reliance upon moral force
in a sullen world of torn-up treaties and rattling swords.

But a prosperous and easy-going America had long for-

314 AMERICA'S DAY

gotten the famous Draft by which the Colonies filled their
fighting quotas in Revolutionary days. In the 'Sixties
both the Union and the Confederacy used the Draft, and
the courts of North and South upheld its validity. Con-
scription does indeed raise the sharpest issues in a modern
democracy: we saw this in Australia, where Mr. Hughes
put a Referendum to his people. Yet he lost by a narrow
margin because Labour and the women electors were against
him.

In Canada the cleavage was more serious, led by the
Catholic hierarchy under Cardinal Begin of Quebec and
Mgr. Bruchesi, Archbishop of Montreal.

In the United States conscription came as a real shock.
The example of Quebec was quoted by one set of partisans ;
another pointed to "a military Canada, with veteran le-
gions trained in the sternest school and contemptuous of
their unmartial neighbours." When President Wilson de-
livered his War Message every point was cheered till he
came to the first levy of half a million men — ' ' who should,
in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal
liability to service." Congress was taken aback. Staunch
supporters of Wilson demurred, and there was resolute
opposition for a time.

Southern Congressmen were against the arming and
training of negroes, who were all too prone to run amuck,
as they did at Houston, Tex. Here coloured troopers shot
up the town, killing seventeen and wounding twenty more
before they could be disarmed. Senator Vardaman of
Mississippi was quite justified in his earnest warning of
this danger. Then American Labour looked askance at
conscription ; influential newspapers attacked it as " un-
necessary, undemocratic, conducive to militarism, and a
violation of that 'involuntary servitude' which the Consti-
tution forbids."

President Wilson stood firm throughout this agitation;

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 315

he was supported by the Federal Army Staff, by most of
the Eastern Press, and all the intellectuals. ''No one can
hate militarism more than I do," said Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler of Columbia in his Allocution to the University.
"None would resist more actively and emphatically any
movement to change the peace-loving industrial temper and
spirit of our people for any of the older forms, which are
now slowly going to their death — let us hope never to be
resurrected — on the battlefields of Europe. But there is a
call to national service and a preparation for it which, so
far from sharing the Prussian motive, is only the voice of
Democracy conscious of obligation and duty, as well as of
rights and opportunities." This is the voice that pre-
vailed.

German folly and frightfulness helped it in surprising
ways, till at length America was roused, from the school-
girl to the negro surgeon ; from the Polish mechanic to the
Wall Street millionaire. James Wood the Quaker was now
on constructive work. Thomas Edison was at sea, study-
ing anti-submarine devices ; Frank Vanderlip, America 's
foremost financier left the greatest of banks to enlist in
War Loan service. Conscription was an accepted fact; it
brought in State quotas of men that filled the camps to
overflowing. And with it came the bushido code of loyalty
which Americans have so long admired in the Japanese.
The sons of Cabinet Ministers — Daniels, McAdoo, Houston,
Lane — were now serving with the humblest lads. "Con-
scription," as young Rockefeller said, "is the one thing
needed to abolish class distinctions among us." Judge
Gary of the Steel Trust, welcoming the Japanese Mission,
put America's military resources at fifteen million men and
a hundred billion dollars, without seriously crippling the
country.

These are stupendous figures, but the record of the Sixty-
Fifth Congress confirms them. In six months' session an

316 AMERICA'S DAY

Army of a million and a half was mustered, besides over-
seas forces which were transported with little loss. Fif-
teen million hands were mobilized for industry. The Navy
was trebled, the Regular Army modernized, vast aerial
forces planned, together with mercantile shipping on- a
great scale.

Admiral W. L. Capps, of the Emergency Fleet Corpora-
tion, promised 2100 ships by the end of 1919, or 14,500,000
tons in all. This includes enemy and commandeered ves-
sels, as well as new construction and ships from the Great
Lakes, which are cut in two and brought down through
the Welland Canal. Twenty thousand million dollars
were voted by Congress in direct appropriations, includ-
ing seven thousand millions in loans to the Grand Alli-
ance. In the same half-yearly session the President ac-
quired unique prestige. Men marvelled at his "despotic "
powers, asserted in such measures as the Selective Draft,
the Espionage and Embargo Bills; Priority, Transport,
War Revenue, the Food Control, and Soldiers' and Sailors'
Insurance.

"Give us victory," wrote Lincoln in a famous letter to
General Hooker, ' ' and I will risk the Dictatorship ! ' ' Dr.
Wilson made up his mind that if war came he would avoid
Lincoln's anguish and insist upon conscription at the out-
set.

The long-drawn chaos of the Civil War should have
settled this matter, but democracy has a short memory
for things that ruffle its ease.

"The real difficulty," says Sherman in his Memoirs, "was
to get an adequate number of good soldiers. We tried
every system known to modern nations — voluntary en-
listment, the draft, and bought substitutes." Very re-
luctantly did President Lincoln sign the Draft Act on
July 11, 1863; it pressed unfairly upon poor men, and gave
exemption to any recruit who could produce $300. Two

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 317

days later fierce riots broke out in New York, and the
casualties exceeded those of many an American battle.
So abhorrent was military service that out of 77,862 names
drawn from the wheel in the metropolis, only 2557 joined
the Northern Army.

We may be sure that Lincoln's ordeal was in Wilson's
mind as early as the panic winter of 1914-15. It was of
course the submarine campaign which hurried him into
war— the reckless German gamble which was to humble
Britain, and give naked Macht a vindication that would
silence every protest and establish the Prussian code.
Now this U-boat bid was simple enough, and by far the
bravest menace ever aimed at civilization. The last shred
of law was to be dropped, every ship afloat destroyed,
whether belonging to neutral or belligerent. Red Cross
vessels too, argosies of food for the starving Belgians,
steamers full of refugees, the Dutch fishing-boat, Spanish
liners and coasting vessels — all the tonnage that sailed the
seas — was to be sunk for a complex of reasons, military,
political, and economic. The invisible craft could not
conduct a cruiser warfare according to established rules.
Of its very nature it could only strike and disappear. It
used torpedoes as the mad Malay uses a kriss in the
crowded bazaar, with no regard for victims or his own
fate.

Such was the German plan for breaking British might
and planting the Trident in the Mailed Fist with appro-
priate flourish. U-boat "warfare" was to give the Father-
land a flying start when a German peace was signed and
other nations, crippled for ships, faced a shortage of food
and raw materials. This was the plot which unfolded be-
fore America. She was slow to grasp it, even with U-53
doing fell work in her own waters. It was an over-
prosperous America of many views and voices. Moreover,
the German element had great sway; German efficiency

318 AMERICA'S DAY

(Tiichtigkeii) was the pattern of all, as the President him-
self reminded a Labour audience. "As a university man,
I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, be-
cause nowhere else could they get such thorough and
searching training, especially in the principles of science,
and those which underlie modern material achievements."
The German farmer was known for a wizard who produced
ten pounds of pig-meat from a bushel of corn. Where the
American got thirty bushels of oats from an acre, the
German got fifty-eight; the potato-yields were respectively
ninety-five bushels against two hundred and five.

However, this business friendship was cooling fast as
the two ideals of government fell asunder with glaring
cleavage. Germany watched the process with unconcern,
confident of her own "strong position" (Machstellung)
and America's sprawling hugeness which no war-danger
could ever arouse in time. Germany was sure of this —
Hindenburg himself explained it; parrots of the press
played scornful variants on this theme for a season. The
Americans were "a naive colonial-like people," led by a
dreamer who talked daggers with a bodkin in his hand.

So matters drifted until January 31, 1917. On that
day Alfred Zimmermann handed Mr. Gerard the "ruth-
less" Note which caused President Wilson to sever rela-
tions. He could do no less in view of his own threat
after the sinking of the Sussex, and the pledge which his
warning extorted from Berlin. That pledge was now
voided for the sake of "tortured mankind." The trou-
bled conscience of the German Government could leave
no means untried "to hasten the end of the war." . . .
"It must therefore abandon the limitations which it has
hitherto imposed upon itself in the employment of its fight-
ing weapons at sea."

I have said that America was slow to realize a purpose
so monstrous. Even in his address to Congress, announc-

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 319

ing the rupture, President Wilson renews his "inveterate
confidence" in "the sobriety and prudent foresight" of
Kaiserdom. ... "I refuse to believe that it is the inten-
tion of the German authorities to do, in fact, what they
have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. . . . Only
actual overt acts on their part can make me believe this
even now. ' '

The night crime of the Laconia was such an act, and
thenceforth the United States was committed to war,
though little or no preparation had been made for it.
That the Watchman in Washington was perplexed is evi-
dent from the Notes he sent between the Lusitania and the
Sussex. He took each German quibble seriously: the lia-
bility (with blood-money offered) in the Lusitania case;
the "regrettable mistake" of the Arabic, the proposed "in-
quiry" into the Persia, and the conditional "concessions"
which followed the Sussex affair in the Channel.

Merchant vessels (the German promise ran) were not
thenceforward to be destroyed without warning, and the
saving of human lives — provided that America insisted
upon the freedom of the seas as laid down by her in
Notes sent to Great Britain on December 28, 1914, and
upon the freedom of the seas as laid down by her on
November 5, 1915. Should American pressure fail in this
respect (as German catspaw for sea "freedom") ; should
Great Britain continue to violate "the rules of Inter-
national Law universally recognized before the war," then
"the German Government would be facing a new situa-
tion in which it must reserve for itself complete liberty of
decision."

More than once the Imperial Chancellor asked Mr.
Gerard how America could protest against the submarine
without equally resisting Britain's tyranny at sea? The
diplomat was not posed at all, but ready with a shrewd
reply. "If two men entered my grounds," said he, "and

320 AMERICA'S DAY

one stepped on my flower-beds, whilst the other killed my
sister, I should first pursue «the murderer. ' '

In his Message to Congress declaring war (April 2, 1917),
Dr. Wilson defined the cause for which he led this "great
and peaceful people into the most terrible and disastrous
of all wars."

"We shall fight," he said, "for the things we have al-
ways carried nearest our hearts. For democracy, for the
right of those who submit to authority to have a voice
in their own government; for the rights and liberties of
small nations, for the universal dominion of Right by such
a concert of free peoples as will bring peace and safety
to all nations, and make the world itself at last free."

Years ago, as Governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wil-
son laid down his creed, declaring himself "enlisted for
life" against all reactionary systems thrown athwart "the
triumphant hosts of the great Democracy. . . . We must
move forward," the Governor told an audience at Ho-
boken, after a three-thousand-mile tour of the West as
Presidential candidate for the first time, "and any man
who blocks this concerted movement of humanity will be
swept aside." America, he said, was no longer choosing
leaders because they were fine fellows, but because they
understood the best interests of the nation at a critical
juncture in her history.

It is absurd to suppose that this born leader was at any
time an advocate of peace-at-any-price, or that he carried
the doctrine of non-resistance to visionary extremes. But
he knew, as none other did, the full complexity of the
many problems before him. As historian of George Wash-
ington's epoch, Dr. Wilson pictures the anguish of the
First President, with an unruly rabble as the only avail-
able force and a victorious enemy in the land. "He found
neither the preparations nor the spirit of the army to his
liking. His soldierly sense of order was shocked by the

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 321

loose discipline, and his instinct of command by the free-
and-easy insolence of that irregular levy. And his au-
thority grew stern as he laboured to bring the motley host
to order and effective organization." AYilson little
dreamed, when he wrote this Life of his fellow-Virginian,
that he was himself destined to create a colossal militarism
among the masses he loves so well. "Let the result be
so impressive and emphatic," he urged upon them on Lib-
erty Day, "that it will echo through the Empire of our
enemy as indeed what America intends to do — to bring
this war to a victorious conclusion."

That enemy styled Wilson the greatest "despot" of all,
and truly history repeats itself in the strangest way. Less
than ten years ago Woodrow Wilson was immersed in
books ; his greatest battle was fought in University affairs
in the Gothic halls and tree-shaded campus of Princeton.
Today he sways, with unprecedented power, an armed
democracy which may well prove the decisive factor in
the most stupendous of wars. In his college days Wil-
son wrote A History of the American People, and in the
chapter dealing with Lincoln's second term he gives a
picture of dictatorship which is closely applicable to his
own.

"The war had not run its extraordinary course without
touching the Government itself with revolution. The Con-
stitution had been framed with no thought to provide
for such days as these, when States were breaking away
from the Union, and the Government was struggling for
life itself. And with unlooked-for exigency had come
unlooked-for and arbitrary acts of power. The whole
authority of the nation seemed to be concentrated in the
Executive without restraint of law. . . . Many an un-
doubted principle of the Constitution seemed as if for the
time suspended in order that the executive and military
powers might move supreme to meet a supreme necessity.

322 AMERICA'S DAY

Individual rights seemed for a time in abeyance. Even
politicians of his own party thought the President unsafe.
. . . Fortunately the rank and file had caught the spirit
of the war. . . . They looked confidently to see all things
restored, as of course, to their old poise and balance when
the storm of war had passed."

But the turmoil of the 'Sixties was a small affair com-
pared with the present effort; its conscript service and
control of the railroads, its authority over food production,
distribution, and prices; its embargoes and taxes and
censorships. There was at first much carping at these
"surrenders to Kaisertum and Tsarism." All this inter-
ference, the dubious were afraid, would set America on
the road to Marxian Socialism — or even, to the Fourier
ideal of communal happiness, with "home" in a vast bar-
rack under the watchful eye of impersonal sovereignty.

The power of the President has grown enormously since
the time of Washington and the elder Adams. Chief
Executives of the early school concerned themselves with
laws, the appointment of officials, and the direction of
foreign affairs which were mainly formal. Formal also
were the White House relations with Congress; and the
Constitution was rigidly observed. It is Jackson, Lincoln,
and Cleveland who are chiefly associated with the broaden-
ing of Presidential sway. Officials were now abruptly re-
moved, the veto power was used, the national policy
moulded, and legislation led along bolder lines.

It was felt that Congress needed skilful handling if it
were not to split into regional elements and cross-purposes
fatal to any real national progress. Roosevelt took a vig-
orous hand in this control; Taft was of the laissez-faire
school, and consequently left the White House with his
political fortunes ruined. In 1913 Wilson inaugurated
a "reign" so sagacious and strong that the whole con-
tinent rallied to him. Even the Eastern press, in its most

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 323

impatient moments, could review the Prussian affronts
with unshaken faith in the Chief Executive. "We're be-
hind you, Mr. President," was a timid assurance of this
time. "Only, for God's sake, don't step on its!"

The high Wilson note was sounded on Inauguration Day.
"This is not a day of triumph," he told America, "but
a Day of Dedication. Here muster, not the forces of
Party, but of Humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us;
men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon
us to say what we will do." Yet it is as a militarist that
this Apostle of Peace will live, and not as the social and
political reformer.

The President has power to lead the country into war,
though the formal declaration is left to Congress. A case
in point was President Polk's despatch of General Taylor's
force to the Mexican Border in 1846; it was a step which
made straight for war. Another instance is Cleveland's
bellicose message to Great Britain in 1895 over the Vene-
zuela-Guiana boundary. And three years later, when Mc-
Kinley sent the Maine to Havana, he knew it meant a
war with Spain. Wilson's Note to Germany after the
sinking of the Sussex committed America in the same
irrevocable way.

When war breaks out the President becomes Comman-
der-in-Chief of Army, Navy, and State Militias. Men,
money, and ships are voted by Congress, but thereafter
the Chief Executive is an autocrat. He can make or
break commanders ; he can move troops and plan and di-
rect campaigns, as well as dictating matters of life and
death to the civilians at home. I relate these things be-
cause opinion in Europe is unaware of any precedent
for the stern paternalism of the Wilson regime. Even the
America of today knows little of the "Tsarism" which
Lincoln, the country attorney of Illinois, assumed in three
tragic months of the Civil War. And in the words of the

324 AMERICA'S DAY

historian Rhodes : ' ' Never has the power of Dictator fallen
into safer and nobler hands."

It was loudly asserted in Central Europe that Americans
were incapable of that selfless discipline without which all
their strength would be frustrated.

Yet under Wilson the miracle was achieved. It culmi-
nated in "Garfield's Day" — an order from the Fuel Ad-
ministrator which shut down all industries (save those of
war) east of the Mississippi River. Millions of workers
stood at ease. The theatres were closed, there were can-
dles in skyscraper offices; and in the Stock Exchange
the brokers shivered in a freezing atmosphere wearing
greatcoats, sweaters, and ear-muffs. The object of this
order was to relieve congestion on the railroads, and get
waiting ships away to France. At one stroke the distilling
of whisky was stopped, and 40,000,000 bushels of grain
added to the available food.

The sovereignty of the State was steadily encroaching,
and loyal acceptance of its rule was mainly due to the
personality of the President. Business men submitted
with grace to unexampled dictation. They agreed to the
Government price for copper and steel and ships. The
coal retailer was obliged to sell at the 1915 margin plus
an increase of thirty per cent. Priority in railway trans-
port was insisted on ; men saw their own goods lying
derelict in warehouse or siding, whilst material of war
went swiftly forward. Huge taxes were paid, costly plants
turned over to the Government, unnecessary products cut
down arbitrarily.

Boards and Committees innumerable now bossed the
man of affairs. They criticized his cost-accounting; he
was told he must standardize his output on a model which
his rival had evolved. Or he handed over his factory
entire; he built or manufactured according to Board ideas
of price and labour conditions. The head of a Produce

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 325

Exchange had to warn his members against speculation
in futures, lest that hydra-headed Board shut down upon
trading in that particular commodity.

The new paternalism was helped by propaganda such
as impressed the lessons of America's War upon many
races dwelling in a continent of three million square miles.
In these appeals every language was used, from Czech to
Chinese. The issues were set out in the Greek Atlantis of
New York, and all the polyglot journals of that city: the
Busskoye Slovo, the Italian Progresso, the Yiddish For-
ward, the Magyar Figyelo, the Polish Dziennik Zwiazkowy.
For America is a very Babel of newspapers. This work
was decentralized, with State Governors and civic leaders
on their mettle to devise ways and means of reaching every
home — even in the desert sage-brush, the mining camps of
Colorado, and forest clearings of the lone North-West.
"Save a shovelful of coal every day," Mr. Garfield told
the housewife, "and we shall have fifteen million tons to
show for it at the year's end."

Mr. Herbert Hoover wrote novel theses about food econ-
omy for the schools. "We have in our abundance and in
our waste an ample supply to carry them and ourselves to
Victory. There is no royal road to food conservation. It
can be accomplished only through whole-hearted co-opera-
tion in the 20,000,000 kitchens and at the 20,000,000 tables
of the United States."

Foreign Minister Lansing drew upon his unique knowl-
edge of Prussian evil, and addressed millions of citizens
through the daily and weekly press. It was a tale to move
the most lethargic: "Yet — God help us! these things have
come to pass, and Iron Crosses have rewarded the perpe-
trators of these crimes." . . . Pulpits and "the pictures,"
aerial bombs full of leaflets, methods spectacular and se-
date— all were enlisted with unresting brio and purpose.
Veteran soldiers had a hand in the educative game. "We

326 AMERICA'S BAY

must finish it on the other side," General Leonard "Wood
warned America. "Otherwise they will finish it over
here."

This propaganda succeeded. Apathy was slowly fired
with love of country ; the hostile elements were stilled, the
hyphenate millions forced into lip-service at least to the
great American mission. Even the Irish began to warn
their brethren overseas not to expect sympathy for anti-
British ebullitions.

All this suasion can be traced to President "Wilson. He
sat alone in his study on the second floor of the White
House, tapping an old typewriter whose peculiar script is
a token of confidential communication. In this sanctum
was the slogan born: "Food will win the war!" Here,
in Lincoln's Cabinet Chamber, Wilson wrote his famous
Notes; his historic Messages to Congress, too, and less
formal exhortation to the care-free people whose guardian
he was. "We are upon a war footing," he urged, when
supporting his Fuel Controller. "And I am confident that
the people of the United States are willing to observe the
same sort of discipline which might be involved in actual
conflict itself." Sitting here alone (always alone), the
Chief Executive expounded the Prussian drift with per-
fect grasp of its pervasive devilry.

This moral preparation took a long time, and little was
done on the material side until the President could say,
"The eyes of the people are opened, and they see." Fac-
tion and conflict faced him everywhere. He had "big"
men to choose — and to dismiss, as he did Chairman Den-
man and General Goethals when they fell out over the
details of emergency ships. Most difficult of all, there
was the froth of sedition and pacifism of every hue to whip
from the Melting Pot of races.

This Dr. Wilson did with due severity. "I hear the
voices of dissent," he owned — "Who does not? I hear

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 327

the criticism and clamour of the noisily thoughtless and
troublesome. ... I hear men debate peace who know
nothing of its nature, nor the way in which we may at-
tain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirit. But I
know that none of these speak for America, nor do they
touch its heart. They may safely be left to strut their
uneasy hour and be forgotten." He spoke more plainly
to the Federation of Labour at the annual Convention in
Buffalo. "Any man in America, or anywhere else, who
supposes that free industry and enterprise can continue
if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power
fastened upon the world, is as fatuous as the dreamers
of Russia. ' ' So did the self-styled Watchman of the White
House "blow the trumpet and warn the people" of the
coming Sword.

Perhaps one day, in his lettered leisure, this scholar-
statesman will tell us how he kindled a mixed continent
to the Pacifist War of the world, so that in his Thanks-
giving Proclamation he could say at last — "In this Day
of revelation of our duty" . . . "there has been vouch-
safed to us, in full and inspiring measure, the resolution
and spirit of united action. We have been brought to one
mind and purpose. A new vigour of common counsel
and common deed has been revealed to us all."

The President had tussles with Congress after he came
before the Joint Session to asks for credits and extraor-
dinary powers. More American ships had been sunk ; the
position was very critical. A request had been made for
the co-operation of neutral Governments — "But I fear
none of them has thought it wise to join in any common
course of action."

The War Revenue Act passed the House after the cot-
ton-tax of $2.50 a bale had been violently rejected by the
solid South. The Food Bill was tangled up with prohi-
bition ; for in this measure extremists saw a heaven-sent

328 AMERICA'S DAY

opportunity to make the continent "bone dry," and abol-
ish strong drink for ever. Here again the President took
a hand, urging a speedy decision in view of food specula-
tion and rising prices, due to over-eager bidding from
Allied agents to the detriment of the American people.

The Senate resented this constant forcing of its pace;
behind closed doors there was hot retaliation upon the
Cabinet, who were said to thrust important measures upon
Congress without due form or consideration.

The fact is, the U. S. Constitution is out of date; the
Great War will overhaul it drastically. Every intelligent
American is aware of this; therefore Lord Northcliffe was
on safe ground when he said that in many ways the Re-
public was today much as she was in 1776.

For many years the executive branch of the Govern-
ment has been gaining upon the legislative in .actual power,
and it is the separation of these two which is now re-
vealed as a serious disability. Close association with
France in Revolutionary days brought the Montesquieu
theory to America, and it was written with fervour into
the State and Federal Constitutions.

A generation ago Woodrow Wilson himself described the
baleful effects of this system upon the Government. It
was also decried at the Constitutional Convention of 1915
by men like Elihu Root and Henry L. Stimson. "I be-
lieve," said the last-named statesman, "that by far the
greatest part of the inefficiency and corruption from which
we suffer in our Federal and State Governments can be
directly traced to that venerable heresy which keeps the
influence of our Executive out of our halls of Congress
and assemblies. That this is a political heresy has been
long and abundantly proven. ... It lingers on in the
United States, however, as the fount of most of our "trou-
bles, although cherished like a veritable Ark of the Cove-
nant. ' '

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 329

But rude hands are being laid upon that ark in an era
of militarism and anti-cultural expenditure. Already Sec-
retary McAdoo has warned the nation that "the future
holds a less roseate prospect for Government finance."
Senator Martin, Chairman of the Appropriations Com-
mittee, urged a closer scrutiny of the prodigious sums
which Congress was voting with such enthusiasm. Five
months of war showed appropriations totalling $20,000,-
000,000. "We are compelled to shut our eyes," Senator
Martin feared, "rather than hamper our men on the battle-
field ; but our duty to trim these estimates grows more
imperative every day. Impoverish the country if you
will, so that victory be ours; but, for God's sake, let us
not lavish money blindly, or we shall drift at last into peril
and panic."

In the Lower House yet another committee was pro-
posed to check the vast appropriations and — as the vet-
eran Senator Aldrich hinted — to save thirty cents on the
dollar, whilst getting the same results.

Here the two "divided" branches of Government clashed.
The President protested, as he had done before over the
Amendment to his Food Control Bill, and later over Sen-
ator Chamberlain's suggested War Cabinet and Ministry
of Munitions. Dr. Wilson has no illusions about the Con-
gressional Committee. "There is a very ominous prece-
dent in our history," he pointed out to Chairman Lever
of the Lower House, "which shows how such a supervision
would operate. I refer to the Committee on the Conduct
of the War, formed by Congress during the administra-
tion of Mr. Lincoln. It was the cause of constant and
distressing harassment, and rendered the President's task
all but impossible." That Inquisition became the censor
of both Army and Ministers for four years following its
first inquiry into the disaster of Ball's Bluff. It sum-
moned statesmen and soldiers before it, questioning them

330 AMERICA'S DAY

"like refractory schoolboys," and overruling the military
judgment of Generals Grant and Meade.

It will therefore be seen that, as historian of the United
States, Woodrow Wilson had significant lessons before him.
And from the first he joined issue with fussy amateurs and
well-meaning meddlers who had no grasp of America 's war
or the efforts it would entail.

In three months sixteen cantonments were built, each one
of them housing an Army Corps. On the mechanical side
were devices like the Liberty motor for high-powered
planes; a standard lorry, trench-diggers, motor batteries,
and new appliances for poison-gas, liquid flame, and lachry-
matory fumes. Congressional appropriations leaped to ten
or twenty times the sums normally voted, and contained
items never seen before, such as $277,000,000 for aero-
bombs. For the fiscal year ending June, 1918, the huge
sum of $8,911,000,000 is required for the Army alone.

It was the same with the Navy, which was to have a
personnel of a quarter of a million men. Yards are en-
larged, or new ones built, with shipways for vessels of all
grades. There are new naval foundries and machine-shops,
new piers and warehouses ; seaplane shops, operating bases,
and training camps for a further 85,000 seamen. The new
armour-plate and projectile factory at Charleston, W. Va.,
is the first to be erected west of the Alleghany Mountains.
An inland site was chosen for this naval forge in view
of attack from the air, with hostile warships as a possible
base.

These are official facts from the Bureaux of Secretaries
Baker and Daniels ; but it would be misleading to suppose
that America geared herself for so vast a conflict without
serious lapse and error. "Democracy," says Secretary
Lane of the Interior, "is not so efficient as Autocracy."
The fact was shown before the Senate Committee on Mili-
tary Affairs when unpleasant stories came from the Na-

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 331

tional Armj-. "In no camp," declared Senator Wads-
worth, "are there small-arms for half the men, so they
are drilling with broomsticks! At Camps Meade, Fulton,
and Spartanburg', I talked with machine-gunners who had
never laid eyes upon a machine-gun. Many of our boys
have no overcoats ; thousands wore light summer under-
wear in the bitterest of weather." The Governor of Ore-
gon complained that his guardsmen were housed in floor-
less tents, and there was an alarming shortage of blankets.
Three years ago General Leonard Wood attacked the War
Department for its inertia in such matters, and became a
target of persecution for his pains.

The Committee of Inquiry called before them General
Crozier, the Chief of Ordnance, and Quartermaster-General
Sharpe, whose evidence showed the American war-machine
overtaxed and borne down. General Crozier confessed
that no American artillery could appear in the European
field before the summer of 1918, and even then only 6-
inch guns, "middle-heavies" and lesser pieces. There was
vacillation and delay over rifle manufacture ; details of
rechambering and interchangeability of parts were badly
confused.

But when all is said, these are familiar stories in the
militarization of democracy. In America, as with us,
there was drastic house-cleaning in bureaucratic circles.
President Wilson is perhaps over-loyal to his Cabinet staff ;
he selected them in 1912-1913, when America never
dreamed of the cataclysm at hand, with all it involved of
politico-social revolution. His War Minister was once the
Pacifist Mayor of Cleveland, 0. — a civic reformer con-
cerned with three-cent tram-fares, and to "safe" the dance-
halls for exuberant youth. The First Lord of Wilson's
Admiralty was the editor of a country paper; and Mr.
Daniels' ideals of discipline in a democratic Navy were
too genial to last, The Presidential Council of Ten was

332 AMERICA'S DAY

chosen on strict party lines. All regions were represented
with due bias towards the South, to which Dr. Wilson
owed his victory. So far as Congress is concerned, Cab-
inet appointments are purely personal to the President,
and therefore apart from the Legislature, in which "the
Ministers have no seats.

This curious aloofness has been debated for fifty years,
and is now known for a flaw in the Constitution. Jefferson
never spoke face to face with Congress as Wilson does
today ; written Messages were sent by a White House clerk
to give the lawmakers "information of the state of the
Union." The Ten Executive Departments, though within
a stone 's-throw of the Capitol dome, might as well be in
Paris or London so far as Congress is concerned. The
result is a diffusion of energy which makes for delay and
muddle to a lamentable decree. Of course it cannot last.
President Wilson himself is in favour of seating Cabinet
officers in Congress for the better expedition of affairs,
particularly at a time like this.-

It is at least possible that the present Watchman of the
White House will see the passing of the Prussian Swofd,
and some attempt to establish that League of Nations
which is the prior and fundamental feature of his endur-
ing peace, and not— as the German Chancellor would have
it — a matter to be considered "after all the other ques-
tions in suspense have been settled." Wilson's second
term expires in 1920. Already America is scanning the
political horizon with no great hope of finding a successor
to the ablest Executive who ever led her to the vindication
of her ideals. At this writing the United States is still in
"her honeymoon of the war," but her Allies need have no
fear of her fortitude in the hap ahead, with its seesaw of
calamity and triumph, its test and trial of endurance on
the part of civilians as well as soldiers. "We are out to
win," is the Wilson note. And if I know anything of

THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 333

America, each set-back will only burn her purpose deeper
to make an end of that German curse which the President
has branded as ''the enemy of mankind."

CHAPTER XVII

GERMANY AND AMERICA IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT"

"So soon as we communicate and are upon a familiar
footing of intercourse, we shall understand one another.
And the bonds between the Two Americas will be such
that no influence the world may produce in future will
ever break them." (President Wilson to Delegates of the
Pan-American Financial Conference at Washington.)

The United States has three foreign problems which are
peculiarly her own:— (1) The integrity and stability of
Mexico, (2) the inviolability of the Latin Republics in
Central and South America, and (3) the policy of the
"Open Door" in China, which involves the question of
relations with Japan. The matter of Mexico is of the
first importance. So far back as 1826 Daniel Webster
laid stress upon this fact in the Lower House of Congress,
pointing out that whilst a foreign landing, say in the
River Plate, might be only a matter for diplomatic pro-
test, a similar attempt in the Mexican Gulf would call for
drastic action on the part of the United States.

But the factor of distance has shrunk since those days;
the hidden hand of Germany has raised afresh the spectre
of foreign aggression which alarmed Jefferson, Monroe,
and Calhoun. Germany's expansive policy, coupled with
pacific penetration in Central and South America (espe-
cially Brazil), has of late years roused the Washington
Government to a decisive course. The German aims were
plainly stated to the Imperial Reichstag by Bethmann-

334

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 335

Hollweg on March 30, 1911 — the .year of the Agadir coup
and imminent world-war.

"The condition of peaceableness is strength," the Chan-
cellor laid down. "And the old saying still holds good
that the weak shall be the -prey of the strong. . . . We
Germans, in our exposed position, are above all bound
to look this rough reality in the face. . . . Therefore the
world, and especially the weaker countries, should take
this warning to heart. For it implies more than passive
recognition of a fact; it is the declaration of a policy —
the policy of expansion which we consider indispensable
to the cause of world-peace and the existence of the Ger-
man Empire."

Here was the brigand code set forth in the twentieth
century. "Gentlemen," said the same high spokesman to
the same assembly three and a half years later, "we are
now in a state of necessity (Notwehr). And necessity
knows no law." Such was the Chancellor's apologia for
the martyrdom of Belgium which Germany was sworn to
protect. What wonder, then, that the Monroe doctrine
of "Hands off the New World" became an urgent concern
of President Wilson in his second term? America had
had her own Agadir alarms due to the dira necessitas of
expansive Deutschtum. There was the Samoan dispute
in 1889 ; the menace of Von Diederich to Admiral Dewey
at Manila in 1898; Roosevelt's ultimatum to Von Ilolleben
in the Venezuelan affair of 1902. And there were German
efforts to get a foothold in Haiti, and to acquire the
Danish islands in the Caribbean with a view to estab-
lishing a naval base on St. Thomas or St. John, and with
it a great entrepot for Central and South American trade
which should command the eastern entrance of the Panama
Canal.

Already the harbour of Charlotte Amalie was an ap-
panage of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. In 1902 Roose-

336 AMERICA'S DAY

velt and John Hay could have bought the Danish group
for $5,000,000, but the German "hand" nipped all nego-
tiation, and the treaty was defeated in the Copenhagen
Landsting by only one vote. By 1917 the price had risen
to $25,000,000; and on April 1 Mr. Lansing handed- a
cheque for that amount to the Danish Minister in Wash-
ington, thus closing a deal which had been vaguely debated
for fifty years.

That Germany has long looked upon Latin America as
her Promised Land admits of no doubt; the evidence is
overwhelming, apart from the intrigues published by the
Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. The design
is naively stated by all the Pan-German apostles. Wilhelm
Sievers points out that the "Empty Continent" is the only
white man's territory left — "therefore we must hasten to
take possession of it." Ludwig Riemer proposed an ex-
peditionary force of "technicians and engineers, scholars,
business men, and managers," who might effect the blood-
less conquest of this prize by the push-and-go of Prussian-
ism. Von Liebert was for concentrating Deutschtum in
the Argentine, Uruguay, and Brazil, so that "a powerful
body, united to the Fatherland by every tie, might organ-
ize that Greater Germany of which the Emperor spoke to
us in 1895."

The Pan-German Atlas of Paul Langhans, published at
Gotha in 1900, shows three-quarters of a million Germans
in the Latin Republics. And of all "our Antarctic Col-
onies," the most flourishing and cohesive were those of
Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina, and Parana in South-
ern Brazil.

These settlements owe their origin to an invitation from
the Brazilian Government in the first half of the nineteenth
century, with a view to developing vacant provinces of
vast extent and potential riches. In 1849 the Hamburger
Kolonisationverein was formed, and the following year a

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 337

barber named Blumenau founded the Brazilian colony
which bears his name today. It contains 40,000 Germans,
isolated like the rest from "inferior" Latin elements around
them. German schools and traditions foster the ideals of
Deutschheit in this land. Visiting merchants who use
the ports of Pelotas and Sao Pedro scout and scorn all
things Brazilian. Lutheran pastors come and stay for
years as politico-social missionaries ; they are maintained
from the homeland, and preach the divine right of Kaiser-
dom and the doctrine of Allmacht on the usual biological
lines.

There are associations in Germany which support the
teaching of German in these colonies; substantial grants,
up to half a million marks, figure in the Imperial Budget
for the same purpose. On their part the colonists have
their Vereine and patriotic clubs, as well as the ritual of
the Bierkomment to foster the sentiments of the Father-
land in remote highland pastures, in the ranches and coffee-
fazendas. The Federal Government in Rio is prevented
by the Constitution of 1891 from interfering with public
instruction in the States; here is another parallel with the
hyphenate problem in North America. The Brazilian au-
thorities have, however, closed the German shooting clubs
and confiscated over 100,000 rifles belonging to exuberant
colonists who talked of armed insurrection and complete
independence ( UnJiabhaengigkeit) .

Long before she severed relations with Berlin, Brazil
was aware of her hyphenate embarrassment. Herr von
Pauli, the German Minister in Rio, played the part of
plotter which Count Bernstorff played so long in Wash-
ington. Strikes and riots were fomented so as to hinder
and discourage the Government. Arms were smuggled
down the coast, wireless stations were discovered, with
crafty ramifications north and south. The State Govern
ment of Rio Grande moved Loyalist troops to Portj

338 AMERICA'S DAY

Allegre in view of a German rising. Uruguay took similar
steps on the frontier; she had news of a projected raid,
and took official counsel with Argentina with this event in
view.

Meanwhile the destruction of Brazilian ships (the Macao
was the fourth) with every circumstance of horror — espe-
cially in the case of the Parana — roused native feeling to
a dangerous pitch. Deutschheit was declared a national
danger to Brazil. The Germans were assailed by mobs in
Curitaba. Three hundred German buildings were burned
in Porto Allegre alone ; and Colonel Schmidt, the Governor
of Santa Catharina, was denounced as a traitor and a spy.
The Brazilian press was very bitter indeed; it assailed
its own Foreign Minister, Dr. Lauro Muller, because of
"the terrible doubt of Brazilians as to the predominance
of Germanism over his nationality." Dr. Muller resigned,
and was succeeded by Senhor Nilo Pecanha, a former
President of the Republic.

There was in this huge land the same awakening that
America felt ; the same alarm over unpreparedness, for
there were barely 25,000 soldiers to defend a country as
large as Europe. But there was also a patriotic surge,
led by poets like Olavo Bilac, and statesmen like Senator
Ruy Barbosa, the author of the Brazilian Constitution,
and a leading figure at the Second Hague Conference in
1907.

"The juridical questions of the present war," declared
Barbosa in the Municipal Theatre of Rio, "and the burn-
ing problems of neutrality, afford common ground for all
America, and especially for South America, where is found
upon Teutonic maps a Southern Germany. ... If the
Central Empires are victorious in this war, the German
nation, intoxicated with pride and with Europe prostrate
at her feet, will not hesitate to settle accounts with the
United States; and then, violating the doctrine of Mon-

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 339

roe, which our great neighbour is not yet strong enough
to uphold, she will proceed to seize in South America
those regions which the cartography of Pan-Germanism
has so often claimed as the natural seat of its sovereignty.
Such is my mature and profound conviction."

It is common knowledge in Latin America that Teuton
settlers despise their hosts and seek to dispossess them.
The notorious Karl von Luxburg warned the Berlin For-
eign Office, from his Legation in Buenos Aires, that "our
easy-going good nature" was a poor policy in South Amer-
ica— "where the people are only Indians under a thin
veneer." So the advocate of "Sink without a trace" fa-
voured an occasional flourish of the Mailed Fist if "our
political aims in South America" were to be successfully
achieved. As these included "the reorganization of South-
ern Brazil," it is clear that the excitement in the big Re-
public was amply justified.

It is this shadow of Prussianism which accounts for the
".continental solidarity," which Senor Francisco Tudela,
Foreign Minister of Peru, announced in a Note to Secre-
tary Lansing in Washington. Grave duties confronted
Peru, and the "necessity of defending her rights against
the new form of maritime warfare set up by Germany."
So Dr. von Perl was handed his passports, and he made
tracks for Ecuador, to which Republic he was also accred-
ited. The Foreign Minister in Quito promptly telegraphed
to his Legation in Lima, saying that the German Minister
would not be received in Ecuador. Cuba and Panama de-
clared war; Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bo-
livia, and Uruguay broke off relations. Chile and Argen-
tina swayed back and forth, a prey to German influence
and intrigue — though in the last-named State poets, peo-
ple, and the press were all but unanimous for war. The
vote in the Senate at Buenos Aires was twenty-three to
one in favour of a rupture; Dr. Romulo Naon, Argentine

340 AMERICA'S DAY

Minister in Washington, resigned his post in protest
against the neutral policy of President Irigoyen.

The Anti-German demonstrations following the Luxburg
expose were very violent, but the President continued to
block the people's will, as the Constitution permits him to
do. German interests in this Republic are exceptionally
strong; the Hamburg-Amerika Line has a steamer on the
stocks (the Cap Polonio) of 40,000 tons, intended for the
Argentine trade alone. In German hands are the most
thriving electrical concerns, banks, breweries, and meat-
packing plants, as well as a large share of the sugar, wine,
and quebracho industries. Many prominent Germans,
among them the present Under-Secretary for Foreign Af-
fairs, Baron von dem Busche-Haddenhausen, have married
into wealthy Argentine families. German nobles and in-
dustrial magnates own immense lands, one of the largest
holders being the Kaiser's brother-in-law, Prince Adolf of
Schaumburg-Lippe. Other great estates belong to com-
mercial concerns in Berlin, Diisseldorf, and Hamburg.

German designs upon Latin America took a new turn
after the Spanish-American War, when all other Powers
had acquiesced in the Monroe Doctrine. In October, 1900,
we find the Emperor laying the foundation-stone of the
Roman Museum at Saalburg and outlining his grandiose
scheme: "May our German nation in future, aided by
princes and people, their armies and citizens, become as
powerful, as strongly united and unique in sway, as
Rome's universal empire!" In this year also the new
Navy Bill was introduced to the Reichstag, and the Pre-
amble plainly stated that "Germany must have a fleet of
such strength that a war, even against the mightiest naval
Power, would involve risks threatening the supremacy of
that Power." The indiscreet Hohenlohe put this into plain
English when he said in his Memoirs that the new Navy
was meant for purely offensive purposes.

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 341

The position was simple enough in Teuton eyes. Britain,
the Saxon historian declared, was "a decrepit Power living
in lucky aloofness on a wealthy island." And Germany
was the bold inheritrix (Rechtsnachfolger) of her world-
dominions. No wonder, then, that the "Monroeismo" took
a new turn in this baleful light. Secretary Lansing told
the Latin delegates in Washington that it was now the
national policy of the United States, and Pan-Americanism
the prior principle of her international policy.

But until the Great War revealed Prussian methods, it
cannot be said that the Latin Republics hailed their north-
ern protector with any great enthusiasm. Brazil alluded
to this fact in a Note to her envoys abroad on the revoca-
tion of her neutrality and her new alignment with the
United States. "If there has hitherto been a lack of reci-
procity among the South American Republics, it is be-
cause the Monroe Doctrine permitted a doubtful interpre-
tation of their sovereignty." Current events now ranged
the greatest of all the Latin States beside her powerful
sister, since the foreign policy of all had a practical orien-
tation towards the common end of liberty and develop-
ment. The minor Republics followed the lead of Brazil.
President Tinoco of Costa Rica- discovered German intrigues
to overthrow his Government. Guatemala unearthed sim-
ilar plots "aimed at the safety and independence of the
whole of Central America." Even erratic Haiti had her
citizens slain by German torpedoes; and as her demands
"in the name of humanity" were ignored, the negro State
severed relations — to the great amusement of Berlin.

The predominance of the United States in the Western
Hemisphere may be said to date from the close of the
South American War of Independence, which lasted nearly
fifteen years and closed in 1824.

At that time Spain still had powerful armies in South
America; and the reconquest of her colonies was the

342 AMERICA'S DAY

avowed purpose of the crowned conspirators of the Holy
Alliance who, at Verona in 1822, secretly vowed to destroy
representative institutions and uphold the preposterous
principle of the Divine Right of Kings. At any rate this
is the version taught in the United States.

British aid, military as well as financial, was felt in the
Enipty Continent from the earliest days of its independ-
ence. And compared with Britain's commercial and in-
dustrial development, that of other nations is relatively
small. In listed securities today British investments total
at least £700,000,000, and to this must be added immense
sums in trade credits and private enterprise. From Mex-
ico to Chile British capital financed the Governments, built
railways, ports and harbours, opened up new lands, tilled
the soil, established plantations, worked the mines, raised
flocks and herds, and furnished banking facilities for do-
mestic and foreign use. European rivals came on the
scene only when the pioneer work was done. So that our
prestige has always been great: the "palabra de Ingles" —
the Englishman's word — is still a respected bond from
Vera Cruz to Valparaiso.

On the other hand Monroeism, with the implied trustee-
ship of the United States, has never been welcomed in
Latin America, which is extremely sensitive where sover-
eignty is concerned. This was very noticeable after the
Mexican trouble, when President Wilson claimed to act as
censor morion and to lead the lesser Republics, by force if
need be, along the path of constitutional reform. It is
pointed out that America herself has long outgrown the
Monroeism and become an Imperial Power, by virtue of the
Washington Treaty of Dec. 2, 1899. This gave her certain
islands of the Samoan Group ; there was also the annexa-
tion of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands after the war
with Spain. So far back as 1826, when Bolivar wished to
liberate Cuba and Puerto Rico, America vetoed the project

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 343

and it collapsed. In 1848 the United States expanded at
Mexico's expense, and at Colombia's in 1903.

So the Big Sister, it was said, was by no means free from
those designs of conquest which were thought peculiar to
the Old World. An alliance of the so-called A. B. C.
States (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) was at one time
widely mooted for preserving the balance of power ; and
Roosevelt's tour in 1913 was mainly intended to allay these
alarms and preach a new and modified version of Monroe-
ism. But the U. S. policy in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mex-
ico left the Latin nations more suspicious than ever. Pres-
ident Wilson's statement that America would not tolerate
any financial or industrial control of these States was openly
denounced in the Brazilian Chamber. It was taken to
mean "that under pretence of emancipating our Repub-
lics from the highly fanciful peril of European Imperial-
ism, the United States would simply submit them to its own
control."

Awkward evidence on this score was Secretary Olney's
assertion in the Venezuela-Guiana boundary dispute with
Great Britain. "Today," Cleveland's Foreign Minister
declared, "the United States is practically sovereign upon
this continent ; and its fiat is law upon the subjects to
which it confines its interposition." All authorities agree
that this claim is void unless America can back it with
armed forces commensurate with her imperial duties. To
an historian like Hiram Bingham the Monroe doctrine is
"an exploded shibboleth." To Roland Usher even the
Pan-American movement is a sentimental dream by reason
of racial barriers, language, religion, civilization, and in-
frequent intercourse. It is not Europe that Latin Amer-
ica fears, Professor Usher tells us, but the United States
with its new schemes of political and commercial aggran-
dizement.

The emergent fact is America's continuous growth since

344 AMERICA'S DAY

the precarious day of James Monroe ; hers is no exception
to the rule of nations, and she must needs adapt herself to
her changing destiny. So early as 1821 she showed a de-
sire to expand; the following year Florida was ceded by
Spain and organized as an American Territory. In -1825
and 1829 attempts were made to acquire Texas by pur-
chase; Louisiana had been bought in 1803 for $15,000,000.
And so the process went, with Indian, Mexican, and Civil
wars, and steady expansion westward till Alaska was ac-
quired from Russia in 1867. As a profession of chivalry
and defence of the weak, Monroeism was left behind; it
was never an international treaty, and became at last a
purely American policy, based on the welfare and con-
venience of the United States.

The Inter-oceanic Canal marked a new era of Imperial-
ism. In 1902 Congress empowered President Roosevelt to
acquire the derelict French ditch for $40,000,000. The
Spooner Act called into being the six-mile strip known as
the Isthmian Zone; and next emerged the new Republic
of Panama, shorn from Colombia by native rebels, backed
by the armed forces of the United States. The lesser Re-
public was bitterly aggrieved ; and though the Colombian
Pact, drawn by Mr. Bryan in 1914, bound America to pay
$25,000,000 as a douceur, mutterings of German intrigue
continued to reach the U. S. Senate, and delayed the ratifi-
cation. "We are told," declared Senator Lodge, "that
Colombia will furnish submarine bases in order that Ger-
many may assail our shipping and the Panama Canal.
Therefore we must buy off this Latin State and make
apology!" . . .

I may not stay to consider so gigantic an undertaking as
the Canal ; it was the grave of many American reputations,
and has disappointed the American people. Admittedly it
was a mistake to build a lock canal in a precarious region
of earthquake and tropic floods. The choice is all the

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 345

stranger, seeing that the engineers of five nations (includ-
ing our own) were called into consultation, and favoured
the sea-level system.

M. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a man of unique authority —
he was chief engineer of the Second Panama Company —
points out how this essential artery of military navigation
is now at the mercy of aerial bombs. And the wrecking of
gates and walls might separate for months the fleets of the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Moreover the Canal, as at
present constructed, could not give passage to those capital
ships of 110 ft. beam and 200,000 horse-power which
America has in view. It is therefore suggested that the
famous ditch be further excavated for 100 ft. and turned
into "the Strait of Panama." This would, of course, be a
sea-level affair, and its completion need not seriously inter-
fere with the working of the existing Canal — into which, by
the way, our Minister beheld two ranges of hills sliding with
uncanny persistence. Howbeit, America has a second
string to her bow in the Nicaragua route, which unofficial
estimates showed would be cheaper than the constant re-
moval of land-slides from the Culebra Cut of the Panama
Canal. The Nicaragua venture was suggested years ago
by Senator Morgan and Admiral J. G. "Walker. Work was
begun, but the project failed through lack of funds in 1893.

"We need all the friends we can attach to us in Central
America," President Wilson wrote to Senator Stone, Chair-
man of the Foreign Relations Committee. Yet the touchy
Latin States continued to find affronts. Costa Rica com-
plained that her territorial claims in the Nicaragua Canal
option had been ignored. Salvador, Honduras, and Guate-
mala lodged protests over the new American naval base
in Fonseca Bay, on the ground that their approval had
not been sought. Then Colombia put in a shadowy claim
to the two islands in question, asserting that the King of
Spain had awarded them to her 113 years ago. But enough

346 AMERICA'S DAY

has been said to show the mistrust with which the Yanqui
was viewed in Latin America before the Great War broke
out. His moves were disconcertingly abrupt. A lack of
punctilio marked them all, a certain want of simpatia which
the Germans were not slow to emphasize.

For years before the war, official America was puzzled
at the mysterious antagonism of many of the Latin Re-
publics. This is now known to have been due to German-
owned newspapers printed in Spanish and edited on anti-
American lines. The new Militarismus of America — an
Imperial America with the habit of war and great offen-
sive establishments — was artfully presented to the Latin
States as that of a new Colossus from whom everything
was to be feared. Sinister motives were ascribed to each
visit of the U. S. fleet : "To put the fear of big guns into
little countries," was how the Latin-American patriot,
Chavero, described it. Peru took offence when the cruiser
Tennessee called at Callao, and Secretary McAdoo refused
to land: there was rumour of bubonic plague in the port.
Tins touchiness was kept alive by a host of German
leagues and clubs from Mexico City, where the Society of
the Iron Cross was busy, down to Valparaiso; here the
central Deutsch-Chilenischer Bund is affiliated with forty-
four branches in as many towns. The aim of all intrigue
was to inflame public opinion in the Latin nations and
present German influence as a counterbalance to the new
"Monroeismo" and the growing aggression of the United
States. Hence the trouble in Cuba — in Honduras, Sal-
vador, and Nicaragua, too, with Lehmann, the German
Minister to Guatemala, as chief plotter and master mind.

These plans were periodically published by the State
Department in Washington, and also by the Foreign Re-
lations Committee of the Senate. The process of " tun-
nelling the Monroe Doctrine" was plainly shown all the
way from Paraguay to Haiti, where Germany had her eye

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 347

on a naval base* at Mole St. Nicolas. Hidden schemes were
now brought to light — the cancelling of Allied contracts
in South America, the stirring of sedition and resentment,
as well as the chain of wireless stations which played so
fatal a part in the destruction of Admiral Cradock's
squadron. In Nicaragua, German agents were outbidding
the American Treaty offer for a new Canal route, offering
two million dollars more.

All these moves were supported by a native press, by
local German Chambers of Commerce, too, and by ener-
getic bodies in Germany, such as the South American
League, of which Herr Dernburg is President, and Gustav
Schmoller, of Berlin University, the most eloquent advo-
cate. "South America is the land of the future," this
economist declared. "There is more for us in the Empty
Continent than in any part of Africa." Schmoller pic-
tures a new German Empire in the Western Hemisphere
when the Great War is over, and the formidable forces of
Deutschtum are once more loosed in industry and trade.

Hamburg has its Iberian-American Union, with a review
of its own published in Spanish — the Cultura Latino-Amer-
icana. There are also pamphlets and guide-books for com-
mercial houses interested in the ambitious program "when
we build up afresh in South America on the lines of Han-
seatic tradition and experience." The vast web of Ger-
man propaganda, closely linked with Weltpolitik and the
military machine, called for counter-efforts on the part of
the United States. Long ago Director-General John Bar-
rett, of the Pan-American Union in Washington, warned
his Government that such measures were urgently needed
in view of swarming German agents, whose efforts might
"completely nullify all the apparent advantages of Pan-
American co-operation and support in the war. ' '

As the war progressed and Wilson's leadership was
weighed, a notable change came over South American

348 AMERICA'S DAY

opinion. It is a fact that German methods of war shocked
all these nations, however lurid their own histories might
have been. No denunciation of the Kaiser equals in fury
the "Apostrofe" ("To a Crowned Assassin") which the
Argentine poet, Almafuerte, published in La Plata. Nov-
elists, essayists, classical scholars, and men of science were
soon pleading the Allied cause with less invective and much
more cogent reason : Dr. Luis Drago, who brought a South
American doctrine of his own to The Hague ; Paul Groussac,
Director of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires, Jose
Enrique Rodo, the Uruguayan writer, and Professor de
Medeiros e Albuquerque, who spoke for Brazil.

These intellectuals laid stress upon the impassable gulf
between Deutschheit and their own material interests, their
racial affinities and cultural traditions. "The psychology
of the Brazilian people," Professor de Medeiros pointed
out, "is radically and fundamentally opposed to that of
the German people. Their mutual antipathy is not a senti-
ment such as newspapers may inflame one day and quench
the next. It is a profound and essential antagonism, more
deeply seated than that of any European people, not ex-
cepting even the French." This writer reviewed the re-
peated German efforts in Brazil, beginning with the
military mission which the Kaiser proposed, and Marshal
Hermes de Fonseca was cajoled into backing, as a means
of reorganizing the Brazilian Army. The next offensive
was against the native press. Newspaper debts were
bought up, and skilful moves set afoot to compel embar-
rassed journals to espouse the German cause. After that,
pro-Germanism raised its head in the Rio Congress; but
national feeling ran too high, for Brazil was too well aware
of the Prussian danger in her midst.

Gradually the influence of President Wilson began to
reassure these Latin nations. Pan-American Congresses
were called to Washington, one of them with the specific

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 349

object of improving financial relationships. And in out-
lining his policy, Dr. Wilson implied that domestic peace
between the Latin States was a condition precedent to
the new era of Pan-American co-operation and prosperity.
First of all, the political independence and territorial in-
tegrity of every Republic should be guaranteed. All out-
standing boundary and other disputes were to be handled
by patient investigation, and settled by friendly means.
No State should abet or permit the equipping of revolu-
tionary expeditions against the Government of any other
State, nor allow munitions of war to be exported for that
purpose.

America now had millions to lend for the development
of her sister nations. Her merchant marine was being
restored; and as an earnest of it a new freight and pas-
senger service was started from New York to Valparaiso
by way of the Panama Canal, which saves four thousand
miles over the old Magellan route.

But when all is said, it is impossible to forecast the drift
of this Pan-American movement. The lesser Republics are
quick to resent any interference. Canada is not interested
at all. There are, moreover, foreign colonies and islands —
British, French, and Dutch — which Pan-American zealots
would purchase or "restore," as the Falklands to the Ar-
gentine Republic. This is the view of Mr. Charles H.
Sherrill, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of
the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. Another
ambitious scheme is the Pan-American Railroad from New
York to Buenos Aires, a distance of 10,471 miles. Many
links are already in existence, but 3309 miles remain to be
built, and it is doubtful whether the project will ever be
completed.

Other thinkers believe that time and fate will bring an
American Protectorate over all the territory between the
Rio Grande and the Isthmian Zone. The late Admiral

350 AMERICA'S DAY

Mahan was for limiting the Monroe doctrine to the defence
of the Canal itself. No foreign Power should be allowed
a foothold within striking distance of that strategic water-
way. Mahan thought that Monroeism, applied to the whole
South American Continent, would impose a weightier bur-
den than the Great Republic could bear. In any case it
is clear that President Wilson's first concern is to ensure
peace among the Latin States and to sublimate good from
the Great War by drawing the two continents together as
"an example to the world in freedom of institutions, free-
dom of trade, and intelligence of mutual service."

It is more than doubtful, however, whether peace can be
indefinitely kept among the Latin Republics. Chile is
especially feared, as an oligarchy with a truculent record.
In the war of 1879-83 she attacked and defeated both Bo-
livia and Peru, taking from the latter the nitrate fields of
Tarapaca and the provinces of Tacna and Arica. The
Chilean Army is German-trained, the country poor, but
undeniably ambitious. In 1898, over disputed goldfields,
she mobilized for war against Argentina ; but British
arbitration went against her, awarding her rival valuable
lands in Southern Patagonia. High up in the Andes the
two nations erected a dramatic statue of Christ, the Peace-
maker, and a bronze tablet below records the vow: "These
mountains shall crumble to dust ere Chile and Argentina
break the solemn pact which they registered at the Saviour's
feet."

Bolivia desires an outlet on the sea, and would no doubt
take over Tacna and Arica in case of further trouble be-
tween Chile and Peru. Colombia has a grievance of her
own against the last-named State; Venezuela could be
relied upon to invade Colombia and seize lands which are
likewise in dispute. Lastly, Paraguay has territory to
redeem from the Argentine, and believes that she might
count upon Brazilian aid in the attempt in view of yet

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 351

another long standing feud. He is indeed a pink thinker
who imagines perpetual peace among these proud and
primitive Republics. Their finances are still chaotic, and
caste is glaringly marked. Beside a small and lavish aris-
tocracy is a politico-military party, variable as the moon
and freaked with lawless "dictatorships," like those of
Cipriano Castro in Venezuela and Jose Santos Zelaya in
Nicaragua. Below* these ranks are the masses, commonly
sunk in ignorance and squalor, and all too easily led by the
loudest pretender. Illiteracy in Guatemala reaches 92 per
cent. Therefore the new armed might of the United States,
well and wisely used as it will be in defence of Democracy
and Right, cannot fail to be a blessing to the South Ameri-
can peoples, whose delegates President Wilson greeted in
Washington with no formal welcome, but one "from the
heart as well as from the head."

The Empty Continent, as it is called, contains one-eighth
of the land-surface of the earth, and has barely the popula-
tion of the British Islands. Argentina alone is almost as
large as our Indian Empire. Roughly speaking, Brazil has
the same area as the European continent ; a single province
of Peru (Loreto) is larger than Austria-Hungary by 40,000
square miles. It is a mistake to suppose that Spanish and
Portuguese are the only languages spoken. In Tierra del
Fuego, a country no bigger than Scotland, three distinct
dialects are used, and five or six in the Paraguayan Chaco.
It is no wonder that Germany mapped out an Empire in
these parts, for there is no limit to the riches of this un-
developed world.

Since food has proved a vital factor in the Great War, it
is worth while to consider South American supplies — al-
ways bearing in mind that not one-tenth of the area suit-
able for the raising of such products is at present under
cultivation. Countries bordering on the Caribbean and
the Mexican Gulf alone stand ready to supply 300,000 head

352 AMERICA'S DAY

of cattle every year. Three-fourths of the Latin States
have in recent years become exporters of food-animals or
meat; and foremost among these are Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay, and Venezuela. Mexico sends the United States
4,000,000 lbs. of meat each year. Of beef, Latin America
exported last year 340,000 metric tons, valued at $104,000,-
000. This came largely from Argentina and the south;
but the immense plateaus and uplands of Central America
and northern South America are perfectly adapted for the
raising of flocks and herds on a huge scale.

Of wheat, maize, and other grains the export was 6,000,-
000 metric tons, worth $160,000,000; of sugar, 3,236,000
tons, worth $271,000,000 ; of coffee, 18,000,000 bags, worth
$191,000,000; of cacao, 126,000 tons, worth $35,000,000.
Coco-nuts and pines represented $3,500,000; every week
saw 116,000,000 bananas delivered to the United States
alone. These products are capable of indefinite expansion,
and in this work America is now taking an energetic hand.

Apart from meat, Latin- American exports for last year
totalled $774,000,000. Special efforts are now being made
to grow sugar. Suitable areas in Brazil are thirty times
greater than those of Cuba, which last year produced three
million metric tons. Peru and San Domingo could increase
ten-fold their present cane cultivation, and great tracts of
Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecua-
dor are likewise suitable for this valuable crop.

Three-fourths of Latin America can easily furnish sub-
stitutes for the staple grains. Yams, for instance ; manioc
and banana-flour, rice, beans, figs and coco-nuts. On both
sides of the Equator are lands with extraordinary climatic
advantages. Even in waste places valuable products are
found, like the stunted tagua-palm, whose big seeds yield a
vegetable ivory for which Hamburg devised special ma-
chinery of manufacture. Three corn crops a year are often
possible in Latin America; and Washington is now send-

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 353

ing agricultural chemists and experts into the sister States
to demonstrate new ways of farming and marketing. Mr.
C. H. Townsend, of the Bureau of Entomology, points to
the State of Amazonas, in Brazil, as by far the richest on
earth in regard to possible human subsistence. Every
conceivable food-stuff could here be grown. Yet the cap-
ital city of Manaos, and other important centres, are
actually compelled to import supplies, such is the lack of
development in a peerless State more than three times the
size of the German Empire, though with a smaller popula-
tion than the city of Bradford.

Pan-American advocates point out that up till 1914
almost all the Government and private loans of the Latin
States were raised in Europe. This supply has been cut
off, and is unlikely to be renewed for many years after the
war. Therefore the financing of Latin America is become
a matter for the United States, and must in every way be
beneficial on the prudent lines laid down by President
"Wilson. It is thought that if $500,000,000 were invested
in the twenty Republics during the next five years, it
would result in an increase of Pan-American trade to a
like amount.

But first of all, the banking interests of the United States
and their bond-buying constituencies must be educated in
Pan-American possibilities. Nor should this be difficult,
thanks to the impetus given to bond-buying by the famous
Liberty Loans. One of these was taken up hy four million
investors, whereas less than 300,000 Americans had previ-
ously owned Government bonds ; they preferred municipal
issues at home, and mining, railroad, and industrial stocks,
which were subject to erratic fluctuation and market
manipulation. Unfortunately the Latin States are asso-
ciated in the American mind with periodic revolutions and
political instability. Cartoonists have long pictured the
bravo who seizes the reins of government with no larger

354 AMERICA'S DAY

following than a few ragged peons and a mule. Pan-
American apostles now point out that this comic-opera
regime is over, and the United States intent upon the eco-
nomic soundness of the whole hemisphere.

In round figures, American trade with the Latin States
for 1917 showed an increase of three hundred per cent, over
the figures for 1914. Nine months' imports (especially cop-
per) from Chile were greater by $53,000,000 than they
were two years previously. Those from Peru were $17,-
000,000 up, and so in proportion with Uruguay, Colombia,
and Ecuador. The increase in exports from the United
States was equally large. Peru is extending her cotton
production, Brazil is exporting five times more beef cattle
than she did in 1916; Argentina is striving to make up
for Australia's restricted export of wool.

It is the belief of Director Barrett of the Pan-American
Union that five years after peace is declared, Latin
America's commerce will reach five billion dollars,
evenly divided between Europe and the United States.
The National City Bank of New York, America's most
powerful financial concern, has inaugurated the new era by
opening branches in Rio and Buenos Aires, in Santos, Sao
Paulo, Bahia, Montevideo and Santiago. This is but a
beginning. The same bank publishes a magazine called
The Americas, and this contains valuable information for
traders who wish to enlist in the new "economic offensive"
which the United States is planning after the war on both
Government and private lines.

Meanwhile the Pan-American Union in Washington has
taken a fresh lease of life for the coming Day. This is an
International Bureau of Information, maintained by the
twenty Latin Republics and the United States. It is
housed in a very handsome building, which Mr. Carnegie
gave at a cost of a million dollars. American diplomats
like Mr. C. H. Sherrill, a former Minister in Buenos Aires,

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 355

and consular agents like Mr. E. B. Filsinger write books
and pamphlets to promote the growth of Pan-American-
ism. The last-named was president and commissioner of
the Latin-American Trade Association. These prudent
guides explain the tariffs and customs laws, the perils of
unstable exchange and the peculiar tastes and prejudices
of South American importers, with whom Yankee hustle
may be grievously out of place. Therefore stress is laid
upon the social side of business deals; the value of cour-
tesy and tact, which "cut so little ice" north of the Mex-
ican Line, where goods and price are the most appealing
factors.

The whole of this trade offensive — it is by no means
confined to Latin America — has shrewd backing from the
American Government and its bureaucracies. Gone for
ever is the shirt-sleeves diplomacy and "political" Con-
sular Service of the United States; both were overhauled
during the four terms of Roosevelt and Wilson. The Re-
organization Act of April 5, 1906, graded all the American
consuls. It provided for inspection and supervision, it
required all official fees to be accounted for and turned
into the Treasury, at the same time providing adequate
salaries, and thoroughly Americanizing the service by in-
sisting that all officers of over $1000 a year should be citi-
zens of the Republic.

As usual, unlimited power in this matter was vested
in the President. With these reforms went a new merit
system devised by Secretary of State Root. This consisted
in an efficiency-record of each consul: his ability, prompt-
ness, and diligence; his personal conduct whilst in office,
and the character of his trade reports to the Department.
These records are consulted by the Secretary of State,
and brought to the President's notice with a view to pro-
motion, transfer, or retention in office. In this way a
good man was assured that his work would not be for-

356 AMERICA'S DAY

gotten by a new Administration; and his service to the
nation's commerce was made independent of the ebb and
flow of party politics. The Department of Commerce
and Labour publishes a daily brochure of Consular Re-
ports and Foreign Trade Opportunities. Here is a college
in Buenos Aires asking for school and laboratory supplies.
A Dutch house inquires about maple rollers for making
wall-paper; the Chilean Government is about to invite
tenders for seventy-nine miles of railway (with important
bridges) from Asorno to Puerto Montt.

Shoes for the Balkan States, horses for British artillery,
motor-cars for India, a meat-packing plant for Serbia ;
trams for Salonica, water-pipes for Tsing-tau, candles for
Uruguay, cheap jewels for Korea, with hints on packing
and pilfering en route, together with sad reflections on the
Turk and the guileful Chinee. These reports, acute and
terse, are extraordinarily interesting. They tell of markets
for all goods, from a gramophone to a case of chewing-
gum ; orange-wrapping machinery, street sprinklers, and
portable houses for Central and South America. More-
over, the consuls take note of every foreign institution
likely to be of service; and from the frequency, variety,
and intelligence of these remarks, a man is judged and
weighed. Of course the great staples sell themselves —
cotton, petroleum, grains, and ores. It is in finding mar-
kets for manufactured goods that the American consuls
are so clever ; and due meed is properly given them in State
Papers when the Government deals with the huge increase
of trade which recent years have seen.

In the Latin States the rivalry between American and
German consuls became intense before the Great Republic
declared war and gave a lead to her sister nations, grap-
pling them to her with new ties — "now that all trust in
treaties and international loyalty is gone." I quote from
Brazil's regretful Note to the Holy See.

IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 357

It was America's task to attack the net of commerce
and finance with which Germany had covered the Empty
Continent. A start was made with a "black-list" of
nearly two thousand enemy firms — banks, business houses,
merchants, public utility concerns, and the like. America
never thought she would have a black-list ; her President
and State Secretary had said as much. Had she not al-
ready protested over similar measures taken against her
own firms by the British and French Governments? But
war is a great teacher. In July, 1917, Washington began
to black-list the largest and most dangerous combinations
of German capital in Latin America; billions of dollars
were here represented. Exports to these concerns were for-
bidden by law or made subject to license. Imports from
them were only permitted in liquidation of American
debts.

In this work the War Trade Board was assisted by
commercial attaches and consuls, who, in order to minimize
inconvenience, furnished the names of non-enemy firms as
substitutes for the proscribed concerns. The latter had
been politically active, aiding German raids and plots, fo-
menting strikes in the familiar style; furthering German
aims and paying for propaganda which had reached amaz-
ing proportions. The new theory forced upon England
and the United States by the German patriotismus was that
an enemy was an enemy — not only in his own country, but
wheresoever he was found. To what extent German in-
terests in South America will recover after the war, it is
not yet possible to say. Certain it is that the United States
will use her opportunity to the utmost — not in mere trade
alone, let me hasten to say, but also in firm and tactful
leading of these nations towards political stability and
reconstruction.

As a belligerent Power on a great scale, America's mis-
sion has often been stated by President Wilson. "It is

358 AMERICA'S DAY

for us a war of high principle," he claims, "debased by
no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation. Our object
is to vindicate Peace and Justice in the life of the world
. . . and to set up among the really free and self-governed
peoples such a concert of purpose and action as will hence-
forth ensure those principles."

CHAPTER XVIII

"our own eastern question"

("There had undoubtedly arisen between the peoples of
Japan and the United States an unfortunate misconcep-
tion of each other's motives in regard to China. . . . The
tendency to mistrust spread to such an extent as to as-
sume alarming proportions.

"We know now that it was fostered by a campaign of
falsehood, secretly carried on by agents of the German
Government, which, as part of its foreign policy, thought
it well to alienate America and Japan, hoping, in the event
of trouble with either Power, to have in the other at least
a friend, and possibly an ally. . . ." — Secretary of State
Robert Lansing.)

Looking into the future, America is a little anxious
over her military transformation. Is it likely to be per-
manent? Will the times return to their primitive gold
when this era of blood and iron has passed; or is the
divine precept, "Bear ye one another's burdens," to be
carried out indefinitely with bayonet and bomb? The
veteran, Dr. Eliot of Harvard, is afraid the great Lesson
will leave untouched the unholy feud which Lucretius
saw in the fiercely battling forces of the world. Already
Bills have been brought into Congress to fasten military
service upon the United States. War Secretary Baker,
in his annual report, soothes a pacific people by deferring
policy in this regard until peace comes again, and perhaps
with it a rational measure of disarmament and guarantees.

359

360 AMERICA'S DAY

This is also the President's view, and that of the masses in
the main who are content to wait and see, bearing in mind
the old racecourse maxim, "When it's wet, do not bet."

There still lingers in the United States a body of opinion
which dreads preparation for war, and would somehow
compromise with the monster of militarism, lest Force come
to be regarded as the sole hope of liberty in the twentieth
century as it was in the seventeenth. It is worth while to
notice this wistful sentiment as I pass, for although quies-
cent now it is likely to reassert itself at the first opportunity.
The military machine, these pacifists contend (they are
found in Congress as well as out of it), is a dangerous
possession — explosive, impersonal; responding to the light-
est touch, as the avalanche moves to the perching bird
or the slam of a cottage door in the Alpine valley. It is a
feeling of this kind which Congress has always opposed to
the arming of the United States, quoting the desideratum
of "William James with inveterate hope. "One hears," the
philosopher said, "of the mechanical equivalent of heat.
What we now need to discover in the social realm is the
moral equivalent of war — something heroic that will spread
to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as com-
patible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be
incompatible."

Of this wordy stuff and the hindrance it entailed, Gen-
eral Crozier, of the Bureau of Ordnance, spoke quite
frankly in his evidence before the Military Committee of
the Senate. For years, the witness pointed out, Congress
had cut down the appropriations for artillery until they
were "absolutely inadequate." The result was that the
work of years had to be crowded into a few hurried months,
with the inevitable "difficulties and present partial delays,"
to which the President alluded in his reply to Count
Hertling and Count Czernin. The American Press passed
all the errors and muddles in angry review — the personal

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 361

friction and resignations; the absurd red tape, the disap-
pointments and failure to accomplish enormous programs
in hand. Blame for these things, as the Washington Star
pointed out, should not be laid upon present-day officials,
but upon "past Congresses, acting under the influence of
ranting spell-binders and dreaming millennialists. "

It must be said that these are today a shrinking band —
especially since Viscount Ishii sprang his Japanese "Mon-
roe Doctrine for Asia" on the United States in 1917.
This supplements the Root-Takahira Agreement of 1908,
which in turn reaffirmed Secretary Hay's policy of the
Open Door in China to which the Powers agreed in 1900.
The text of the Ishii-Lansing Memorandum is in part as
follows : ' ' In order to silence mischievous reports which
have from time to time been circulated, it is believed by us
that a public announcement once more of the desires and
intentions shared by our two Governments is advisable.

"The Governments of the United States and Japan
recognize that territorial propinquity creates special rela-
tions between countries, and consequently the United
States recognize that Japan has special interests in China
— particularly in the parts to which her possessions are
contiguous.

"The territorial sovereignty of China, nevertheless, re-
mains unimpaired, and the Government of the United
States has every confidence in the repeated assurances of
the Imperial Japanese Government that, while geographical
position gives Japan such special interests, there is no de-
sire to discriminate against the trade of other nations,
or to disregard the commercial rights heretofore granted by
China in treaties with other Powers.

' ' The Governments of the United States and Japan deny
that they have any purpose to infringe in any way the
independence or territorial integrity of China; and they
declare, furthermore, that they always adhere to the prin-

362 AMERICA'S DAY

ciple of the so-called 'Open Door,' or equal opportunity
for commerce and industry in China."

Now the good faith of America in this matter is beyond
dispute, whereas the record of Japan is one of aggression.
Her Twenty-One Demands, put forward by the Okuma-
Kato Ministry in 1915, were calculated to destroy the
sovereignty of China altogether. The notorious "Group
V" of these demands aimed at complete control by Japan
of the public life of China, together with its army and
munitions of war. So that American opinion, especially on
the Pacific Slope, was far from pleased with the new Eastern
Monroe Doctrine, which the "yellow Prussian" put for-
ward at a time when the white Powers were locked in
deadly conflict.

Let me say at once that I deal first of all with America 's
version, passing later to that of Japan, and explaining
friction and mistrust of long standing over the great world-
markets of awakening Asia. For China is a land of in-
calculable riches; it comprises one-twelfth of the earth's
surface, and has a population of 400,000,000 souls. With
Japan in possession, the pessimists say, she would in time
become a menace to the world. She would realize her
Pan-Asiatic dream, with industrial wealth beyond com-
pute ; an immense navy, and an army of possibly twenty
million men recruited chiefly from her Chinese vassals,
whose fighting quality, given modern weapons and scien-
tific leading, have been proved in many fields. Unhappily
this martial spirit has been mainly shown in civil wars.

The break-up of China, so long expected, may well be at
hand by some coup de main, such as these lawless days have
made familiar to us all. For China is a loose chaos of
many tongues, with no national spirit informing it. A sin-
gle province — silken Sze-chuan — is larger than France,
and in its red basin lie the largest coal-fields in the world.
Food crops grow twice, and even thrice in a year. Here,

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 363

then, is an unexploited world — a derelict which expansive
Japan, through all her statesmen from Hayashi in 1895 to
Terauchi in 1918, has marked as the proper sphere of an
economically poor and cramped, though proud and ambi-
tious people.

The late Sir Robert Hart, who gave his life to China's
service, was for ever haunted by the fate of his adopted
land. "The ship may go down in the night," he would
say, as he paced the floor in the small hours. Assuredly
the night of world-war has not bettered China's chances
of weathering the storm. Nor has America any illusions,
as she reviews the history of the past twenty years, culmi-
nating in Viscount Ishii's mission, which was a portent of
momentous change. Precisely what pressure and promise
were brought to bear upon the United States in this matter
is a diplomatic secret, and must remain so for a time.
"None of us doubt," writes the typical American humorist,
"that Japan has Pacific intentions!"

Californian papers were more downright, reminding their
readers of Korean "scraps of paper," now added to the
historic heap. Three of these guaranteed the "integrity
and independence" of that debased and wretched State.
The last of them was made only two years before the total
absorption of the Hermit Kingdom by Japan. The very
name of Korea was then blotted from the map ; it was
rechristened Chosen, and became a province of the expan-
sive Empire by reason of that same propinquity which
America now concedes as a ground of special interests.
And so with Manchuria, wrested from Russia a few years
later under public promise of its restoration to China. It
is now a Japanese sphere. So also is Eastern Inner Mon-
golia, together with Fukien and the Shantung promontory
— this last taken over with the conquered German zone,
including perpetual rights, and the railway from Tsing-tao
to Tsinanfu, the provincial capital.

364 AMERICA'S DAY

America complains that propinquity and special interests
appear to be links in an endless chain which, with avowed
purpose, Japan is pursuing into the very heart of helpless
China. Before the war, the Yang-tse Valley was regarded
as a British sphere, even as Fukien was Japanese. But the
Twenty-One Demands included joint ownership of the
Han-yeh-ping holdings near Hankow.

After forty centuries China remains a nebulous welter
with no Government as we understand it; the main street
of her heedless capital is today policed by foreign soldiers.
It is impossible to convey the lack of nationhood which
this Asiatic prize presents — "the only country on earth,"
as one of her intellectuals said, "which finds it necessary
to give compensation for the withdrawal of wholly un-
tenable demands."

Has China any disinterested friend? Undoubtedly she
has in the United States, which, on John Hay's recommen-
dation, remitted half the yearly indemnity payable on ac-
count of the Boxer havoc of 1900. This money — nearly
$12,000,000 — was devoted to the education of Chinese boys
in academics and technical schools of the first rank in the
United States. It would take too long to instance all the
goodwill manifestations of America for the Chinese peo-
ple. In June, 1900, when the Allied ships opened fire on
the Taku Forts, it was the U. S. commander, Admiral
Kempff, who alone refused to take part in the bombard-
ment, warning his colleagues that it would unite and in-
flame all factions against the foreigners.

That China was mindful of this friendship is seen by
the vote in the Pekin Parliament to erect a monument
to John Hay, who, in 1899, gave a practical turn to
America's concern over the impending break-up of the
Empire. The war with Japan, five years before, had
demonstrated China's military impotence in the face of a
foreign foe. And now the Powers of Europe were plainly

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 365

bent on spoliation. Japan had seized Formosa and im-
posed a fine of $185,000,000 on her late enemy; the orig-
inal demand was much larger. Russia had taken Port
Arthur, and was extending her influence in Manchuria.
Germany had occupied Kiao-chau, Britain had appropri-
ated Wei-hai-wei, France added to her Asiatic domains
certain Chinese territory in the south. Concessions for
railways, mines, and special privileges were being extorted
month by month ; and the nineteenth century closed with
the dissolution of the Chinese Empire predicted on all
sides.

It was on September 19, 1899, that John Hay, then
Secretary of State, addressed his Open-Door Note to the
predatory Powers. It was an adroit move, and, for a
time at least, stayed further encroachment as well as en-
hancing American prestige. Hay was trying to develop
an alternative to those "spheres of influence" which bade
fair to devour the Asiatic domain. Replying to him in
an exchange of Notes, the Powers agreed to base future
policy, not upon individual spheres, but upon the common
interests of all. Nevertheless the military might of Japan
— already proved against a great European Power — her
pressing needs, and trade energy were soon assailing the
"Open Door."

So far back as 1895, when peace with China was con-
cluded, Count Tadasu Hayashi stated the conqueror's plan
in these words: "What Japan must now do is, remain
quiet for a while in order to lull the suspicion of her which
exists. Let her meanwhile strengthen the bases of her
national power; let her watch and wait for the oppor-
tunity which will one day surely come to her in the Orient."
It is plaintive America's case that the Great War has fur-
nished this opportunity; and the Manufacturers' Export
Association said as much to Secretary of State Lansing
in a notable letter, written in 1916. All indications, the

366 AMERICA'S DAY

members declared, "pointed to the fact that Japan, taking
advantage of the occupation of other world-Powers with
their own affairs, was about to take strong measures in
carrying out her designs in China, and that in a manner
which may seriously affect the interests of American trade,
and promises to nullify the 'Open Door' policy to which
Japan, in common with other Powers, is committed."

The Association did not confine itself to vague fears,
but reminded the Foreign Minister that "the history of
Japanese activity in Manchuria is the history of an all
but complete extinction of American commerce." The
weapons used were preferential rates and vexatious hold-
ups of foreign goods. Here was a sphere in which a trade
of $24,000,000 speedily dropped to below $3,000,000, and
is still on the downward grade. So far as America was
concerned, Manchuria was another Korea. In 1907 the
trade in grey cotton shirting and sheetings for that State
was evenly divided between Great Britain and Japan.
Six years later our share was eight per cent., and that of
Japan ninety per cent. In the same interval American
trade with Korea fell off seventy-five per cent. Here
again were special freight rebates for the Japanese, spe-
cial customs dues to their own people at Au-tung, and
loans from the Yokohama Specie Bank at four and a half
per cent., which was much below the prevailing rate.

Another element which disturbed America was the se-
cret Treaty between Russia and Japan, signed on July 3,
1916. This appears to have had a definite military aim in
keeping China free from the influence of a third Power.
Manchurian railroads and munitions of war were also in-
cluded in a deal which may well have conflicted with Ar-
ticle III of Great Britain's own alliance with Japan, re-
newed five years previously. Here the high contracting
parties declare that neither shall enter into another agree-
ment without consulting her partner.

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 367

It is well known that secret diplomacy of this kind is
very repugnant to the United States, whose love for above-
board methods and popular assent have been so often
set forth in President Wilson's speeches. It will be re-
membered that the Bolsheviki of Petrograd published all
the secret treaties they could lay hands upon in the Rus-
sian archives. These embarrassing papers dealt with the
fate of the Dardanelles and Persia, the future of Asiatic
Turkey and the left bank of the Rhine, as well as induce-
ments to Greece, Rumania, and Italy. In the latter case
the whole Dalmatian coast was added to the Trentino,
South Tyrol, Trieste, and Istria. Thus the Adriatic was
to become an Italian lake, with Austria-Hungary cut off
from her seven strategic gulfs and naval bases. President
Wilson referred to these furtive bargains, warning states-
men not to ignore the wide-awake opinion of democracy,
nor to attempt "any such covenants of selfishness and
compromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna.
The thought of the plain people, here and everywhere
throughout the world — the people who enjoy no privilege,
and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of
right and wrong, is the air all Governments must hence-
forth breathe if they would live." Only upon that basis
was there a promise of stability beyond that of the bad
old order — "the arbitrary decisions of a few negotiators
striving to secure, by chicanery or persuasion, the inter-
ests of this or that dynasty or nation."

It was this passion for the square deal which led to
publication of the Ishii-Lansing Agreement last year. Its
reception, I must say, was rather mixed, and many Amer-
ican thinkers sided with Chinese publicists at home and
abroad who posed an awkward parallel. "We feel you
have departed from your traditional friendship," these
last complained, "in conceding the Japanese demand.
China is an independent nation and ought not to be made

368 AMERICA'S DAY

the subject of negotiation between foreign countries. Now
suppose Japan and the United States signed another agree-
ment— with 'Mexico' substituted for 'China.' Do you
think that would improve Mexican- American relations?"

German comment on the Ishii Agreement was that it
deferred indefinitely "that war between Japan and the
United States which has become a fixed idea with the aver-
age German, and a definite element in our Government's
political calculations." Another expert thought that Ger-
many would have Japan to deal with at the peace-table
as regards Tsing-tau, and that place in the Orient sun
which divine right had decreed to the Herrenvolk, as the
Kaiser so often declared in his character of seer and
prophet. "Who can foresee," Wilhelm put to his peo-
ple, "what events may take place in the Pacific in days
to come — days not so far distant as some believe, and for
which we must steadily prepare?"

The Frankfurter Zeitung had an able article from its
former correspondent in the Far East, and this may be
taken as typical of German trade aims. ' ' China is the land
of the future for the industry and enterprise of the world ;
we must allow no blocking of our road in that spacious
quarter. After the war we shall see fierce vying in the
Asiatic field, and we Germans will face not only individ-
ual competition, but also State-aided concerns, like the
American International Corporation." The Cologne Ga-
zette went over the same ground, and then turned to a
grander theme — a German-Russian-Japanese coalition
which was "a syndicate for the division of the world,"
with promising partners for the German job, which was
of course to secure the lion's share.

It may be recalled that Mr. Gerard, as U. S. Ambassador
in Berlin, heard a good deal about this Teuto-Russo-
Japanese offensive. Financiers and members of the

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 369

*
Reichstag assured him that Germany "would be forced"
into such a pact if America threw her weight into the Allied
cause, and thus brought about what Von Tirpitz called
"the Anglo-Saxon tyranny." It was Germany's wish that
the United States should "stay at home," as Bismarck
thought Russia ought to do. All the world knows how
German intrigue worked to keep America "at home."
She was constantly reminded that she now had Imperial
problems of her own, including an Eastern Question in
which her Teuton "friend" took an extraordinary inter-
est. Mr. Gerard himself tells of a strange talk with the
Kaiser at the New Year's reception of Ambassadors in
1914, six months before the outbreak of war. The Diplo-
matic Corps were lined up like dragoons, six feet apart,
in one of the palace halls when the Emperor entered with
his staff. "He stayed longest with the Turk and myself,
thereby arousing the curiosity of the others, who suspected
that the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the com-
pliments of the season. And he did. "What the Emperor
said to me is of interest to every American, for it shows
his subtlety of purpose. The Kaiser talked at length about
what he called Japan's designs upon the United States.
He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and
an army of Japanese colonels." America must be kept
at home, and at all costs prevented from joining hands with
Great Britain in an "Anglo-Saxon domination." Later
on the German press took up the theme, and dealt simul-
taneously with this new menace to the Fatherland. For
it might well offset the European system where docile
States were to be ranged like satellites around the central
German sun. In this connection a certain telegram of
the Kaiser to Tsar Nicholas should be recalled. It was
dispatched after the Dogger Bank affair, and made use of
the term "Anglo-Saxon," as if to show that even then

370 AMERICA'S DAY

Wilhelin pictured Britain and America united against
him on his trampling march from Antwerp to the marts
and strongholds of Eastern Asia.

Evidence was also published in revolutionary Russia —
that enfant terrible of the chancelleries — showing that the
German Emperor made overtures to Japan. The latest of
these was on the eve of the fall of Tsing-tau, when a sep-
arate peace was mooted on the Mikado's own terms; the
only stipulation being that Japan should attack Russia
as a preliminary to the Pan-Asiatic scheme which Okuma's
Government was supposed to cherish. This proposal was
scornfully rejected, and the Kaiser's message turned over
to the British Ambassador in Tokio. For German intrigue
in the Far East, especially with a view to commercial
rivalry after the war, had been throughout inimical to
Japan. Propaganda was carried on in the right Chinese
quarters, which is to say among Pekin officials ; merchants
of the Treaty Ports who handle foreign trade, and Young
China representatives in Parliament and the Provincial
Assemblies, where Western thought is developing.

It is not to be denied that German prestige stood high
with the Chinese military caste. Great play was made
with the war-map ; subsidies were granted to native jour-
nals which were supplied with German news by the Ost-
Asiatische Service. Nor was there any lack of agents
drilled in what America calls "the gimlet ways of a spy-
and-bully system." Witness the two years' tour of Otto
von Hentig from far Yarkand back to the security of the
German Consulate in Hankow, leaving a trail of slaughter
and confusion behind him. Something like $15,000,000 a
year was paid by the Chinese Government to the Deutsch-
Asiatische Bank: this included Germany's share of the
Boxer Indemnity, and also interest on the two Anglo-
German loans. So there was plenty of money available for
evil work against the Allies; for support of the Manchu

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION'' 371

movement (there were German gunners in that coup
d'etat) and above all for the fertilization of future com-
mercial fields. "Germany looks ahe.ad, " as the Emperor
remarked in his "far-stretching horizon" speech. It is
therefore clear that the elimination of such a rival was
a necessity for Japan, and she set about the task with
rare vigour.

When Marshal Terauchi 's Government saw America com-
mitted to war, it was decided to send a Plenipotentiary who
should state in clear terms the new Asiatic policy of Japan,
and at the same time dispel the mistrust and irritation of
years between the two nations. For this mission the ablest
of envoys was chosen — Viscount Kikujiro Ishii, a man of
extraordinary fluency and grace, trained under Komura,
who was the father of Japanese diplomacy. Ishii was
Ambassador to France in 1912, and three years later he
became Foreign Minister under Okuma. "Our message
this day," he declared on landing in San Francisco, "is
that, through shadow or shine, America and Japan are
bound together for the same goal. Your sons and ours
must have good neighbourhood assured. We must live
so that the word or deed of neither may be viewed aslant;
that venomous tongues, hired slander, and sinister intrigue
such as has victimized us both, can only in future serve to
draw us closer together for mutual protection and the
common welfare of all."

At the same time there was throughout this envoy's
speeches a quiet insistence upon prior rights. "Circum-
stances for which we are in no sense responsible give us
special interests in China. . . . Our Chinese, friends,"
Ishii explained at a banquet on his return to Tokio, "tell
us that China and Japan are like the two wings of a bird,
the one indispensable to the other." I saw cartoons in
California showing that bird in mocking flight, leaving
Uncle Sam completely in the lurch ! Meanwhile Viscount

372 AMERICA'S DAY

Ishii, by reason of his success, was appointed Ambassador
in Washington, replacing Aimaro Sato, who was barely
established in his post — the graduate of an Indiana Uni-
versity and but recently hailed as the ideal Japanese en-
voy.

Sixty-five years have passed since the Roosevelt of his
day, President Fillmore, sent Commodore Perry to open
relations with the shy Twilight Children whom Francis
Xavier had long before found "very desirous of being in-
structed." But Japan of the Shogunate days had no zest
for foreign ways or creeds; nor can it be said that her
visitors, whether traders, missionaries, or naval officers,
made a pretty showing in that mysterious land. They
were all cleared out in 1637, and Christianity was put un-
der a ban. Then followed two centuries of seclusion, when
Japan was fenced in a feudal world untroubled by sophists,
economists, or calculators. Of course it could not last.
Rumour of Russian encroachment began to reach those
lovely islands. England's Opium War in China caused a
faint stir; the French and Dutch gave warning that the
Christian nations were looking eastward for new marts of
trade. But it was America who led the way, after abortive
attempts on the part of whalers and castaways to obtain
concessions.

As early as 1846 official Washington took a hand — always
be it noted with an "armed prayer" to the mediaeval Sho-
gunate. Yet Commodore Biddle could get no more than
an anchorage in Yedo Bay for his ninety-gun ship ; the
intruder was plainly told there was "nothing doing." By
1850 American interests were more clamorous. There
were sailors marooned in Japan at this time, and Cali-
fornia's gold had turned men's eyes to the Pacific and
alluring isles beyond. Two years later President Fill-

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 373

more's Cabinet arranged the Perry Expedition with elab-
orate care. Books were bought, scientists and interpreters
selected ; charts to the value of $30,000 were procured from
Holland, and American wares got ready on a tempting
scale. It is curious that the United States should have
taken such a step at this time, for there was trouble in
Cuba, and feeling was very bitter between North and
South over the slavery question.

Perry's mission wore a minatory look. He sailed from
Norfolk with a squadron of four warships, nor did he
"speak softly," as Roosevelt advised America should do
when she carries the "Big Stick." On the contrary, the
message sent to the Mikado spoke of a still greater armada
which was "hourly expected." The Commodore explained
that, "should it become necessary," he would return the
following spring "with a much larger force. But it is
hoped that the Government of Your Imperial Majesty
will render such return unnecessary by acceding at once
to the very reasonable and pacific overtures contained in
the President's letter." This last ran as follows : "These
are the only objects for which I have sent Commodore
Perry, with a powerful squadron, to pay a visit to Your
Imperial Majesty's renowned city of Yedo — Friendship,
commerce, a supply of coal and provisions, and protec-
tion for our shipwrecked people.

Millard Fillmore. ' '

Having thoroughly shaken up the Shogun, together with
the Emperor and his people, Perry sailed away and went
back again in February, 1854, with an imposing fleet of
ten warships. The result was the first Treaty with Japan
— America's earliest "Open Door" in the Far East. Eng-
land, Holland, Russia, and France were soon elbowing
each other in that door.

But Japan herself was by no means unanimous over the

374 AMERICA'S DAY

passing of her ancient order. Friction arose between the
Shogun in Yedo and the Mikado in Kyoto — a shadowy
figure who dwelt apart, leaving mundane rule to his
hereditary lieutenant. The feudal lords and warriors were
in favour of continued isolation : the Liberals urged inter-
course and compromise with pushful nations overseas.
Ten years of rancour and civil strife drove the division
deeper; and in 1863 the Shogun issued an order expelling
all foreigners. The arrogance and greed of these intruders
recall the righteous blaze of St. Francis Xavier, the apostle
of India and also of these "Islands in the Hope of God."
"Every one here," said the sixteenth-century Jesuit, "takes
the same road — rapio, rapis. And I am terrified to see
how many moods and tenses of the wretched verb those
who come this way can invent. ' '

New envoys and Treaty Rights called upon the Mikado,
under threat of war, to rescind his deputy's decree. Then,
at the suggestion of Sir Harry Parkes, the Powers took
steps to eliminate the Shogun altogether; in 1868 the
Emperor Mutsuhito abolished his alter ego, and became
the actual as well as the formal head of the Government.
The capital was now moved to Yedo, which was renamed
Tokio or "the Metropolis of the East." Four years later
the feudal lords, together with their Samurai retainers,
gave up their rights in order that Japan might be brought
into line with modern progress. How effectually this has
been done may be seen in any picture-book of today.
For the pretty people are no longer concerned with ex-
quisite trifles and cherry-blossom festivals, but with fac-
tory and forge; with skyscrapers and docks, department
stores, and mushroom fortunes, like that of Shinya Uchida
of Kobe, who made five million yen in a single year of
war, chiefly out of shipping, which returned him a divi-
dend of six hundred and fifty per cent. The narikin, or

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 375

"man turned into gold," is an envied figure in the indus-
trial Empire of today.

Japan's assimilation of Western ways, her rise to power,
with armed assertion and suave diplomacy — here is a
portent without parallel in the drama of history. No
sooner was the so-called Restoration complete than the
Mikado took a public oath "to seek for wisdom in every
quarter of the earth." Gradually a Parliament came into
being ; a new bureaucracy, a system of education, and mili-
tary service on the French and German lines.

Meanwhile the lesson of force — first taught hy American
ships and guns — was quietly developing. The quarrel
with China over Korea revealed a new Power schooled in
modernity to the alarm of her teachers and those who
had broken into her feudal life. Eight months of war
saw China overwhelmed and suing for a peace of terri-
torial cession and indemnity. Korea was cleared by the
"toy people," who now loomed as alarming warriors.
Manchuria was invaded, the Liao-tung peninsula occu-
pied, together with its stronghold, Port Arthur. The
Japanese were preparing to advance upon Pekin when
China gave way and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki on
April 14, 1895.

Here the Powers of Europe stepped in — especially Rus-
sia, whose concern for Far Eastern peace pressed upon
the upstart conqueror the return of Liao-tung to humili-
ated China. There was no course open but submission
to this demand ; it rankled keenly, however, and sowed the
seeds of a new war, for which Japan prepared by sea and
land, as well as by industrial activity. The five years
that followed showed the European Powers scrambling
for rights, leases, and naval bases in China. Port Arthur
itself was now acquired by Russia, who had forced Japan
to restore that fortress to its rightful owner. Then came

376 AMERICA'S DAY

the Boxer Rebellion with its national motto : ' ' Uphold the
dynasty and drive out the foreigners."

It was at this time that America moved in the matter
of China's "Open Door." Japan was watching Russian
moves in Manchuria, where railways were being laid,
troops poured in, and defences strengthened. The little
men, nursing resentment and conscious of growing
strength, began to fear for theiu mainland markets, so the
hour of challenge was very near.

In 1902 Japan received a momentous lift through her
alliance with Great Britain; for the first time an Asiatic
nation was received in the European comity on equal
terms. Thus fortified, Japan fixed a period for the Rus-
sian evacuation of Manchuria. But Russia quibbled, and
put forward demands of her own. For two years di-
plomacy did its best, and then the sword was drawn —
with disastrous results for the Tsar's forces by sea and
land. When all was over, President Roosevelt was ap-
pointed mediator between the belligerents. They met on
American soil, at Portsmouth, N. H., where Count Witte
and Baron Rosen faced Komura and Takahira in a "rea-
sonable" bargain. From that day Japan advanced by leaps
and bounds. Her imperial progress made little noise in
the Western world: it had for its goal the hegemony of
the Far East, and recognition of the "little people" as a
very great people indeed, with a future of splendid sway.

Before the war with Russia, Count Okuma laid down
the new law as a hint to the United Sates: "A Japanese
must be respected wherever he goes, for we yield to none
in our citizen pride." Now the Sage of Washeda is the
Bismarck of Japan — the idol of the nation and supposedly
of anti-American bias: this was seen when the sale of
the Philippine Islands was mooted in the Washington Con-
gress by Senators with little grasp of foreign affairs.

Okuma remains a Samurai of the Ages, revering the

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 377

Emperor and upholding the sword. He can recall a Japan
that was impotent as Siam; he has watched her exports
grow from next to nothing to $800,000,000 a year. The
aged statesman has seen the native junk replaced by home-
built Dreadnoughts, like the mighty Fuso from the Kure
Yard, and her sisters the Yamashiro, Ise, and Hiuga re-
spectively from Yokosuka, Kobe, and Nagasaki. Each of
these great ships carries twelve 14-inch and sixteen 6-inch
guns. In Vice-Admiral Kondo the Empire has a naval
architect whose pioneer designs are watched with pro-
fessional interest by foreign experts. It is Japan's desire
that all structural work and equipment of her navy shall
come from domestic sources. Therefore the Government
foundry at Wakamatsu supplies the steel. From the Kure
arsenal come armour plates, with forgings and castings,
which are also made by private concerns, of which the
largest is in Kobe. Guns are made at Mormoran, in the
Hokkaido.

Okuma's life-span has also witnessed a railroad miracle,
of which the Korea-Manchuria Express is perhaps the
most impressive sj^mbol. There is no more luxurious train
in the Old or New Worlds. At Fusan pier it connects
with the channel steamer service of the Imperial Govern-
ment Railways. The train runs to and from Chang-chun
by way of Mukden and the South Manchuria system, cross-
ing a stately swing bridge over the historic Yalu River,
and thus offering the safest and quickest route between
Japan and Chosen (Korea), Manchuria, China, and Eu-
rope over the Trans-Siberian Railway. No wonder Amer-
ica views with concern this "social climber among the
nations," who moves without haste or rest to her appointed
goal. For in her own sphere Japan can now defy the
world, hedged about as she is by the stormiest seas, and
armed with natural features which lend themselves to im-
pregnable defence.

378 AMERICA'S DAY

Yet observe this infant Power in 1870, when, as it were,
hat in hand, she tried to borrow a paltry million in the
money market of London. It was grudgingly given her — .
at twelve per cent, interest. As security the Customs
revenue was pledged, and the loan rigidly earmarked lor
specific purposes. Even so, our leading financial paper
poured derision upon credulous capitalists who could lend
money to a people whose national bankruptcy and in-
dustrial incapacity were notorious. We are today over
£30,000,000 in Japan's debt; and the little people now
have an export trade of 1,600,000,000 yen, or £160,000,000
a year. The war has indeed brought Japan unprecedented
prosperity. Her "flush-time" dates from the spring of
1915, when Allied orders were first placed and the Island
Empire began to profit by the universal dislocation of
trade, and the absence of German and Austrian competi-
tion. Electric wire and appliances, antimony and sheet
glass, paper and toys, celluloid, matches, and raw silk —
these are but a few of the commodities for which the
nations turned to Japan.

The Government's policy of State initiative and direc-
tion is being anxiously watched in the United States.
Japanese commissioners have been sent abroad to study
local trade conditions, and inform the authorities at home
on scientific lines. Root-and-branch elimination of Ger-
man and Austrian trade is aimed at in the Far East;
but it is absurd to suppose that this campaign will make
no effort to supplant British and American interests of
long standing.

The transformation of Japan is complete, her genius
for colonization demonstrated during Marshal Terauchi's
seven-year clean-up in decayed Korea. Nothing that
America ever did in Cuba, Panama, or the Philippines can
eclipse that orgy of social, administrative, and agricultural
reform, which the Mikado himself inaugurated with a gift

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 379

of seventeen million yen from his privy purse. Mean-
while Japan's Army was growing fast; it is today at
double divisional strength, armed and staffed with Prus-
sian foresight and skill. Her military strength is but
dimly apprehended by outsiders, even those who have
seen this marvellous race pass from the Stone Age to the
Flying Age in their own time.

Whether this material progress is a good thing is open
to doubt in our present mood of disillusion. "Hitherto,"
says Mill, "it is questionable if all the mechanical inven-
tions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any hu-
man being. They have enabled a greater population to
live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an
increased number to make fortunes." The war-million-
aire of Tokio; stock speculators of the Kabuto-cho, the
narikins of shipping and dye-stuffs, iron and steel — these
have lavish mansions on the Ginza, with gorgeous cars
and works of art: they will pay five thousand dollars for
a single Nabeshima plate. But the working girl remains
a slave; the Japanese printer, if paid at the American
rate for a forty-eight hour week, would draw no more
than a dollar for his labour. A cotton-mill doctor of the
Nagano prefecture found forty per cent, of the young
girls affected with consumption. They worked fifteen
hours a day; they were poorly fed, with only five minutes
for a meal. "These hands dwell promiscuously in tiny
rooms which scarcely know the sunlight. And at night
they sleep face to face, two girls on each six-foot mat.
. . . Employers are too engrossed in their own profits to
pay heed to these terrible conditions of labour."

The Japanese wage-scale bears no comparison with that
of Europe or the United States. A female silk-spinner
gets 15 cents a day, a male weaver 21 cents, a dyer 25
cents, tailors 27 cents, shoemakers 30 cents, carpenters
36 cents, stone-cutters 50 cents. Here I approach the eco-

380 AMERICA'S DAY

nomic and social problem of the yellow man, which has
for many years made bad blood between Japan and the
United States.

The position is stated by Viscount Kentaro Ilaneko, a
Privy Councillor and former Minister of Justice ; he is
also an LL.D. of Harvard University. "Had we remained
a China or Korea," this statesman says, "the clamour of
this race question would never have reached so acute a
pitch. As it is, Japan emerged from her foreign wars
with a splendid organization, and as civilized as the fore-
most nations of Europe and America, imposing respectful
consideration upon them all, and breaking — to the resent-
ment of some — the tradition that the white peoples are
essentially superior to Asiatics."

It is well to remember that we are here dealing with a
proud and energetic people, acutely sensitive to foreign
criticism and desirous of admiration and praise. During
the Russo-Japanese War, American feeling favoured the
"little men," but the signing of the Portsmouth Treaty
brought about a change. Japan, it seemed, was no longer
docile or submissive. She declined the proposal of Secre-
tary of State Knox that she should hand over the South
Manchurian railways (which had cost a hundred thousand
lives), and accept instead a settlement in money. The
implied threat of insistence was this time ignored; for
Japan was no longer to be browbeaten by the older Pow-
ers, one of whom she had just humbled by force of arms.

Once again, then, America saw the "Open Door" in
China closing, and markets of vast potential value in the
shadow of a new Oriental sword. Japan protested there
was room for all — with herself as the dominant partner.
"It is a great mistake," said Kikisahuro Fukui, one of the
Empire's foremost merchants, "for any nation to do busi-
ness in the Far East without considering Japan's commer-
cial and geographical advantages. She should be regarded

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 381

as a colleague rather than a competitor. The Germans
are already aware of this ; and the General Electrical Com-
pany of Berlin entered into successful co-operation with
the Shibaura Engineering Works of Tokio. For we have
need, and long shall need, the technical skill and genius
of the Western world."

As for America, she wanted the yellow man's trade, but
not the yellow man himself. Hence many years of fric-
tion, with newspaper "wars" and jingo flourishes in
Tokio, as well as in New York and San Francisco. For
Japanese settlers were all too successfully competing with
the white man in the three Pacific States of Washington,
Oregon, and California. Still farther north is British
Columbia, which also has its yellow problem. Here the
Chinese Exclusion Act shut out the earlier intruder unless
he possessed £100 ; but the question of Japanese immi-
grants is much more delicate because of the power behind
them, the racial pride, and growing vehemence of Govern-
ment claims. Australia, too, has a jealous eye upon her
Asiatic neighbours. "It is well known," says the Frank-
furter Zeitung, "that Japanese longings are directed to
the Northern Territories which a dog-in-the-manger atti-
tude cannot indefinitely withhold from colonization." A
"White Australia" is undoubtedly the Commonwealth's
ideal !

Here the Immigration Act of 1901 blocked all Hindus,
Chinese, and Japanese, for it ordained a literacy test of
fifty words' dictation "in a European language." Which
one was not specified, so the failure of the most cultured
Asiatic is a foregone conclusion. Early in the war, Ger-
man New Guinea and Samoa fell to expeditions from
Australia and New Zealand respectively. Japan disposed
of Tsing-tau and the Marshall Group, so that "Das
Deutsche Siidsee Schutzgebiete " was soon a thing of the
past, buried with due honours by the Berlin press. Jap-

382 AMERICA'S DAY

ane.se warships were policing the Pacific lanes, and escort-
ing the transports and food-ships of Australasia. Great
Britain was much beholden to the little people— but Aus-
tralia was still entirely White, and quite unmoved -by
hints of expediency and concessions.

For example there was German New Guinea, a rich land
which the Japanese could develop amazingly. But noth-
ing could induce Australia "to bring the Asiatic menace
to our back door." The other alternative — colonization of
the Northern Territories by the Japanese — was still more
dreaded, and the mere idea rejected with scorn.

I allude to Australia and the opposition of her Labour
Unions, because the analogy with Western America is com-
plete in this regard. Both democracies accept the black
man because he is there and does not count; it is grotesque
to suppose that the negro has equal rights with the white
man in the United States whatever be the Constitutional
theory. But at all costs the "yellow streak" must be kept
from spreading. Labour has always been a precarious
commodity on the Pacific Coast of America. An unlimited
source of supply was closed in 1882, when Congress passed
an Act prohibiting Chinese immigration. This was in re-
sponse to a demand from the three States affected. Asiatic
labour, it was pointed out, lowered the standard of living.
What decent American could hope to compete with the
ten-cent standard of the "Chink"?

After the Exclusion Act the price of labour rose, and
fruit farmers were at their wits' end for season pickers and
packers of enormous crops which called for rapid handling.
In 1887 four Japanese appeared in the Vaca Valley region
of California : These were the pioneers. Between 1890
and 1900 twenty-five thousand came — nimble, intelligent
fellows, who moved in gangs under clever bosses, and solved,
as it seemed, the labour problem of* a rich land. Death and
departures were soon reducing the proscribed Chinese.

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 383

There was no law against the new yellow men, who were
not long in finding their American legs. They began to
buy up land, to form unions and demand larger wages.
And they had a passion for tenantry, these quiet invaders
of the Coast.

If the owner of a farm or citrus orchard would not sell,
he was faced with a labour boycott, and gave way at last
perforce. That was the beginning of Japanese colonies.
White neighbours moved away; new homeseekers would
not settle in a yellow region. Orchard displacement in the
Vacaville and Newcastle sections was soon on a sweeping
scale, and in time most of California's strawberry crop was
in Japanese hands. They also controlled the celery output
of the south, and the great market gardens which supplied
the cities of Los Angeles and Sacramento. And the Japs
were uncannily efficient with prehistoric tools which, ap-
plied to unlikely swamps bought for a song, presently
yielded a huge harvest. Meanwhile in the towns the Jap-
anese invasion was causing alarm, not only in common
white and semi-skilled labour circles, but also among the
small traders — barbers, cook-shop men and storekeepers.

The white laundry folk formed Anti- Japanese Leagues;
the yellow men met these with protective unions, and won
the day with their steadfast resolve to "do it for less."
Economic defeat deepened racial prejudice into downright
hate, and the Japanese was ostracized with penal restric-
tions which he was quick to resent. Thus the little men
were excluded from the public bathing places of San
Francisco. Their children were segregated in Asiatic
schools; and at last the Pacific States, led by California,
proposed a Federal Law shutting out these Asiatics alto-
gether. This was very embarrassing to the Washington
Government, because there was a definite treaty permitting
the Japanese to come and settle in the United States like
any other race of the Melting Pot.

384 AMERICA'S DAY

However, there was no arguing with California, where
riot and disorder, arson and murderous outrage were di-
rected against the yellow men, despite grave warning from
Tokio, and protests from the Ambassador in Washington.
California pleaded her State Rights as a sovereign com-
monwealth of the Union. This was exclusively her affair.
She must settle it in her own way, and threatened Presi-
dent Roosevelt with secession if he insisted on coercing the
Coast people in a matter which concerned them alone.
After all, was not the naturalization law limited "to aliens
being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity
and persons of African descent"? Here was the last straw
in heaped-up injury. Japan was debarred from a citizen
privilege which the lowest negro could claim in a huge de-
mocracy where equal opportunity for all was the first
commandment of the national creed ! After many alarums
and excursions, including the dispatch of sixteen warships
round the Horn into the Pacific, Roosevelt and Root made
a bargain with Japan that no more passports should be
issued to labourers.

In 1913 the Californian Parliament passed the Anti-
Alien Land Bill, a vague measure which limited Japanese
tenure to a three years' lease. Four other States passed
similar laws, to the growing anger of the Tokio Foreign
Office and a clamorous native press. "We must have room
to grow," these papers pointed out. "More than seventy
per cent, of our people get a living on the land — poor
enough land at that. We have a population of 357 to the
square mile, as against America's 31 and California's 17.
Our excess of births over deaths is 600,000 a year. Then
where shall we turn?" Ernst Haeckel, the German, was
right when he predicted wars of dispossession, with crowded
nations struggling for existence in a pegged-out world,
"where the strongest and most resourceful will alone sur-
vive."

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 385

It is well to state both sides of the case. That of Japan
is a claim to peaceful expansion in quest of the raw ma-
terial so vital to her manufactures. "What wrong has she
done America?" she asks. Six thousand miles of sea sep-
arate a poor group of islands, containing over fifty million
souls — only sixteen per cent, of whose lands are arable —
from a fabulously rich people of over a hundred millions,
owning a fertile continent as large as Europe. And Amer-
ica's national wealth, when compared with Japan's, is
like John Rockefeller's billion beside the coppers of a gut-
ter newsboy. Japan insists that the maintenance of peace
is a cardinal principle in her development of new Asiatic
spheres, now opening to her beneficent sway. She rests
upon her proven quality in war, and points to the patience
with which she has endured years of insult from the United
States, who in turn regards a solemn treaty as a scrap of
paper, and shuts out the Japanese as though they were
felons of the Black Hand or the Camorra.

"When we strike," the little man informs America, "we
do it without counting the cost, in the true bushido spirit.
And when our heroes fall in battle, their families do not
droop in mourning, but put on gala dress to receive the
visit of friends who congratulate them on the high honour
which their sacrifice has brought. A formidable outlook,
it may be, judged by Western standards ; it is one to be
reckoned with in the continual baiting and thwarting of
Japan. It is only economic pressure that drives us from
home. We produce the finest rice, but we can't afford to
eat it. We ship it abroad, and import inferior stuff for
our own people. China was our last chance — 'the oppor-
tunity of ten thousand years,' as Okuma called it. We
shall do there on a vast scale what Terauchi did in Korea,
what Lord Cromer did in Egypt, what Governor Taft did
in the savage Philippines. Supremacy in China is nat-
urally ours, because of racial affinity with the people and

386 AMERICA'S DAY

geographical contiguity. We shall not close your Open
Door, but only set our watchmen in it — the sturdy little
fellows you despise and reject because they are better
farmers than your own. Consider Kinya Shima, of Stock-
ton, Cal., who cornered the potato market with a million
dollar deal, out-manoeuvring his American rivals. An-
other of our people hired some land near Los Angeles,
at a cash rental of twelve dollars an acre. The owner
had offered it rent free to the poor of the town, yet there
were no takers. Soon the j^ellow man's trucks were creak-
ing cityward with produce, and your people stood sourly
by. 'Look at that damned Japanese,' they muttered, 'tak-
ing the bread from our children 's mouths ! '

"San Francisco started the Japanese Exclusion Leagues.
Reckless mobs, inflamed by the Labour Unions, ran amuck
in the yellow quarters. Now mark the difference between
the Asiatic peoples in your midst. The Hindus wept help-
lessly when assailed. The Chinese ran away and hid, but
the Japanese stood their ground and fought, leaving their
mark upon the ruffian horde, which outnumbered them
a hundred to one. It is well to remember that we are of
the warrior caste ; you can ignore this only at your peril.
'Scratch a Japanese,' as Inazo Nitobe reminds us, 'and
you will find a Samurai.' "

For years the Japanese peril figured in American news-
papers and magazines. "In May, 1913," Captain Hobson
told the House Committee on Naval Affairs, ' ' and for weeks
afterwards, our gunners on Corregidor Island were busy
day and night. The harbours were mined, Federal troops
were dispatched. Our warships were got ready for the
Pacific Coast. Secretary Daniels is present. Does he deny
the imminence of war with Japan at that time?" There
were also rumours of preparation in Manila, where a
Japanese descent was feared, with transports convoyed by

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 387

a great fleet for the seizure of the Philippines group, which
Dewey called "the key of the Pacific."

When Rear- Admiral Yashiro was at Pasadena, and a ball
was arranged at the leading hotel, the Californian belles
were heard to say "They would just as soon dance with
niggers." That festivity was cancelled ; so was the visit of
school children to the Japanese fleet, all dressed in their
best and carrying the flags of both nations. A curt tele-
gram from the "nigger" Admiral, and his sudden depar-
ture, added another unpleasant episode to the long list.
At this time the press of Japan was rehearsing them all,
and calling upon its rulers in a fashion which could not
be ignored. Apology and redress — or war with America
was the popular Japanese demand. It was not alone voiced
by "yellow" journals like the Yorozu Choho, but by sober
organs like the Asahi of Osaka, and the Hochi of Tokio,
which reflects the views of the Doshikai party, of which the
Marquis Okuma is the leader. The Newspaper Law of the
Restoration was invoked to restrain this newspaper fury.
It subsided somewhat, in view of the Gentlemen's Agree-
ment which shelved the immigration question, without de-
ciding it at all. "If as a result of this visit," Viscount
Ishii said at the Japan Society's dinner in New York, "the
two peoples will but believe that their mutual distrust, sus-
picion, and doubt are the result of careful German Kultur
during the past ten years, then we shall have done much
for ourselves and for you. ' '

But America fancies that the Prussian name has seen
too much service in this connection. She found nothing
German in the repugnance which her Pacific States dis-
played towards the yellow man. And she got a great shock
in 1915, when the Twenty-One Demands were sprung upon
China, and at the same time concealed in part from Eng-
land, France, Russia, and the United States. China her-
self hastened to supply the omissions, and the discrepancy

388 AMERICA'S DAY

in the two versions created a very bad impression which
no subsequent "conversations" quite removed.

America draws a parallel between German designs upon
derelict Russia and Japanese encroachment upon China's
weakness. Both victims are dangerous, the Americans
think. Both have enormous reserves of strength, despite
their seeming looseness; each of these patient races may
gird themselves afresh in the vast interior of their country,
so as ultimately to smother the invader. The Chinese are
a long-suffering folk, with no love for foreign wars. They
are well aware of their own lack of nationhood; they are
ready and willing to co-operate with others in the work of
their own guidance and regeneration. But if Japan denies
China a controlling voice in her own destiny, then indeed
there is danger ahead. "Better be dashed to fragments as
a jewel of jade than held together as a lump of brick," so
said Liang Chi-chao, the reformer of Canton, when Japan
declared war in 1894.

Since the war began, the diplomacy of Japan has been
carefully watched in Pekin and Washington, where Tokio's
act and deed are taken as sounder guides than the melli-
fluence of political missionaries. Japan's "extra-textual"
readings have long worried China, who believes with Kung
Fu-tze that "sincerity is the beginning and end of all
things." Japan has throughout protested the peacefulness
of her aims — provided her expansion is not blocked. For
this reason America carries the parallel with Prussia a
step further. Undoubtedly Japan is now a military power
of the first rank — formidable, scientific, and precise. Here,
as in Germany, loyalty to the State and the sacred person
of the Emperor is erected into a religion. That able
writer, Iichiro Tokutomi, editor of the Tokio Kokumin,
defines the cultns as a "centripetal Mikadoism." "The
Mikado is the centre of our nation," this author says in his
work, Japan to America. "Considered as a body politic

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 389

it has him as its sovereign. Considered as a race, it has
him as leader; and as a social community it has the Em-
peror for its nucleus."

It cannot be supposed that ecstasy of this kind wakes
any sympathy in Republican China or the United States.
Neither does the Prussian worship of force which is en-
shrined in the imperial psyche of Japan. " Bushido," says
Professor Inazo, the foremost authority on the subject,
' ' made the sword its emblem of prowess and power. When
Mohammed declared the sword to be the key of heaven and
hell, he was but echoing a Japanese sentiment." America
remembers that the German sword has a monstrous statue
of its own — surely the only one extant — a broad blade
reared skyward in a mailed fist on the lake at Friedrichs-
hafen, where Zeppelin built his gas-bags for civilian mur-
der in the night. It may be well that President Wilson's
war-aim — to "make the world safe for democracy" — ap-
plied equally in the East as it does in the West.

The intellectuals of Japan admit that Germany is ad-
mired in their country, as it is among the military cliques
in China, who block and blight every prospect of unity and
reform. According to Professor Anesaki, who was ex-
change lecturer at Harvard in 1913-15, many leaders of
Japanese politics and industry sympathize with Germany's
aim to win a place for herself in the sun. "The only rem-
edy for Pro-Germanism among us," the Professor thinks,
"is to convince our people of the futility of Teutonic
methods. To do this the Allies must be successful — not
only in the naval and military way, but also in social,
moral, and educational reconstruction after the war." In
other words, the Allies must produce a superior Kultur
of their own.

Another witness is Motosada Zumoto, proprietor of the
Japan Times, of Tokio. "It is natural," says this alert and
able man, "that the scientific mind and thoroughness of

390 AMERICA'S DAY

the Teuton should appeal to us Japanese. Moreover, Ger-
many's martial efforts move Japan through the bushido
ideal of blooming and falling quickly ; of heroic effort at
any cost — the Weltmacht oder Niedergang! — even though
it be foredoomed to defeat. ' ' It was this affinity of the two
Powers, coupled with the mention of Japan in the Zimmer-
mann-Eckhardt plot, which suggested to the United States
the peril of a possible German-Japanese Alliance, in which
disintegrated Russia might figure as a passive tool. On
their part the Germans respect Japan, and warn her that
her chance is passing "to conquer the great unmilitary
America in a short surprise war."

"One must admit," we read in the semi-official press of
Berlin, "that Wilson is wise in harnessing his man-power
and industry at this time. It is an extraordinary oppor-
tunity, and, of course, only half aimed at Germany.
Moreover, once accomplished, Japan's advantage will be
over. Therefore America's moment is skilfully chosen.
She puts off her weakness without the reproach of militar-
ism at home and abroad. Nor can Japan protest, but
only clasp the new friend to her heart. Hence all the
palavers and understandings. Hence the sending home
of Ambassador Guthrie's body on a warship and the mis-
sion of thanks on the part of America's Asiatic squadron,
with the Mikado lunching with Admiral Knight, and mak-
ing the usual pretty speeches."

The Germans maintain that it was Guthrie's successor
in Tokio, Dr. Paul Reinsch, who persuaded the Chinese
Government to declare war. The President, Li Yuan-
hung, was convinced that Germany would be victorious.
Vice-President Feng was of like mind for a time ; Premier
Tuan and the conservative generals were undecided. But
Young China followed America's lead — first in protest,
then in severance of relations, at last in open 'hostility,
with all it entailed of repudiation and confiscation; of

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 391

dismissal of German officials and general elimination of
Teutonic influence. In this way was Japan outwitted, for
she had announced her intention of speaking for China
at the Peace Conference of the Powers.

It must be owned that since 1914 the affairs of China
present a tangle which defies unravelling. There were
coups and counter-coups, mandarin plots, and continuous
strife between the radical South and a reactionary North.
And always in the background were the ant-like millions
leading the same old life in Asiatic spaces, knowing little
of the political game, or the very meaning of a Republic.
"We are like cabbages with our roots in the air," explained
the illiterate despot, Chang Hsun, the "Butcher of Nan-
king" and feudal lord of Hsu-chow-fu; once a ma fit, or
groom, he became a king-maker in this topsy-turvy land,
with a following of forty thousand men.

Through all the turmoil America's voice was raised in
earnest exhortation ; her efforts were unceasing to restore
order in the chaotic "cabbage-field" of Asia. It was the
"sincere hope" of the State Department, officially ex-
pressed to the Chinese, "that factional disputes may be
set aside, and that all parties will work to re-establish and
co-ordinate the Government and secure China's position
among the nations." I need only refer in passing to the
attempt to restore the Manchu dynasty in the person of
the eleven-year-old boy, Hsuan Tung, who was hauled
from his bed in the small hours to mount the most pre-
carious of thrones. His sponsor, the bandit chieftain
Chang Hsun, was soon denounced as a traitor, and fled
for shelter to the Dutch Legation with a price upon his
head.

But Chinese politics are too bewildering to follow. That
strong man, President Yuan, himself plotted for the throne
for twenty years, and at last passed a hundred days as
uncrowned Emperor — losing his nerve in the interval, and

392 AMERICA'S DAY

at last dying miserably of Bright 's disease. That was
the end of the Hung Hsien, or Era of Brilliant Prosperity,
in which Yuan's American adviser, Dr. Frank J. Good-
now of Baltimore, had a professional — or rather a profes-
sorial— hand.

America is a long way off: Japan is at China's door,
and now committed to exploitation — if possible with Amer-
ican money, as Baron Shibusawa's mission showed in the
autumn of 1915. Japanese expansiveness is by no means
a new policy; it goes back to the dream of conquest cher-
ished by the great dictator, Ilideyoshi, at the close of the
sixteenth century. It was urged in 1859 by Yoshida
Shoin, the Choshiu Samurai, who may be called the
Treitschke of awakening Japan. It was from this phi-
losopher that Kido, Ito, Inouye, and the rest of the "Meiji
Heroes" learned their earliest lessons in statecraft and
national destiny. "The foreign policy of Japan does not
change with the Cabinet," Marshal Terauchi said, when
he succeeded Okuma as Prime Minister. The soldier-
statesman spoke very curtly about the charges of "mili-
tarism and territorial aggrandizement" which had been
bandied about in Europe and the United States. "It is
unnecessary for me to assure any one of Japan's good
faith, or to waste words in contradicting and denying the
mischievous rumours and unwarranted presumptions of
those who misinterpret my motives, or forecast my future
actions."

Will Japan realize her project of a protectorate over
China, with all that it entails of power-politics and change?
Who can say with any certainty? The boldest prophets
have been confounded in the course of this war. Even
the cock-sure German is often subdued, and talks of the
Incalculable in human affairs — the folly of forecasting the
fate of nations, or measuring their drift by nicely reckoned
laws of more or less. "It is part of probability," says

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 393

Aristotle in the Ethics, "that many improbabilities will
happen." Who could have predicted the heroic stand of
little Belgium or the collapse of mighty Russia in the
face of the same foe — with millions of men, in the latter
case, flatly refusing to fight, and lynching their own ad-
mirals and generals? As for China, no two opinions, na-
tive or foreign, coincide about its future; though many
observers who have spent their lives in the land detect a
new sense of unity — a definite transition from the "family"
to the national stage, such as may portend the fusion of
four hundred million people into a polity which no alien
race could ever hope to control.

Meanwhile China's millions live in a state which Amer-
ican travellers describe as "only half a hop ahead of hun-
ger." The currency is a maddening thing; in Pekin alone
nine imaginary taels are in circulation, yet accounts are
actually settled in dollars. The measure of silk varies with
the city in which you bought it. Language, politics, and
problems, all are provincial rather than national. And
China remains a roadless land, with each journey an ad-
venture, and many perils in the way.

It is true that change is astir; but can these hordes
be roused before the domination of Japan is complete?
Here is America's fear; this is her own Eastern Question.
It should be remembered that the Panama Canal, by de-
veloping the Western Seaboard of the United States, has
opened immense prospects of Asiatic trade. America is a
Pacific as well as an Atlantic Power, with strategic bases
of imperial reach in both oceans.

She has hitherto been weak in a military way, unable
to help the helpless nations save by moral means which
are now seen to be worse than ineffectual. America's
treaty with Korea, signed at Seoul on May 18, 1893, could
only offer "good offices to bring about an amicable ar-
rangement ... if other Powers deal unjustly or oppres-

394 AMERICA'S DAY

sively with Korea." Yet America was the very first na-
tion to express approval of Japan's decree of suzerainty
over that crumbling kingdom. Again, the United States
was committed to protest on China's behalf when Tsarist
Russia began to absorb Manchuria. No such protest was
made, for it could have nothing behind it but a pious
wish : the champion of Liberty was always without helm
or sword. "If you can't protect your own citizens in
Mexico, ' ' said a typical Chinese intellectual in Washington,
"how can we expect you to stretch across the Pacific to
protect us?"

So it came back at last to brute force and the Big Stick,
which no nation may neglect save at the risk of ruin, as the
Russian visionaries found when it was too late. Senator
Chamberlain of Oregon brought out this fact in a three-
hour speech which moved the Upper House profoundly,
and reverberated from sea to sea among a resolute people
arming for Democracy's War. "From Washington's Let-
ters," Mr. Chamberlain said, "from Bunker Hill to the
Mexican Border affrays of 1916 — throughout our whole his-
tory — we have never had a military organization or a mili-
tary policy. Nothing but luck and aloofness have saved
us, and now we must save ourselves. ' '

War Secretary Baker put up a brave defence of his
Department; but it is clear the machinery broke down in
all directions under unexampled strain. "It was like try-
ing to run a British tank," one heard in the Senate lobbies,
"with the engine of a Ford runabout!" Sober historians
like Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard rehearsed again the
unreadiness of 1775, 1861, and 1898. In all cases "mate-
rial had to be made ready after the war began." . . . "In
April, 1917, we went to war with the most powerful
oligarchy the world has ever seen, on the basis of a fairish
Navy and a Regular Army of a hundred thousand men.

''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 395

But there was not a single aeroplane. Not one battery of
big guns, not enough rifles for the first Army, no regiment
of them trained to the trench, wire, and bomb methods of
the new warfare. That is why we now pour out men,
mone3r, and munitions to erect the proper engine of war and
catch up with our own enthusiasm."

Japan also is a student of war by sea and land and air.
As early as September, 1914, her cruisers and destroyers
left Yokosuka to search the Marianne, Caroline, and Mar-
shall Groups for our common enemy. When Tsing-tau fell,
after a ten weeks' siege, Japanese naval activity widened.
It patrolled the Pacific; it co-operated with us in the
Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Important missions
were undertaken at the Straits ; over transport routes of
the South Seas, in the South Atlantic too, and lastly in
the Mediterranean under Admiral Tetsutar Sato, whose
destroyers rescued British troops and nurses from the tor-
pedoed Transylvania.

The Mediterranean squadron brought with them sea-
planes, which were soon scouting for submarines with all
the scientific elan which we take for granted in this race,
to whom no AVestern miracle comes amiss. Japan had her
own aviators aloft over the German fortress of Tsing-tau
in China. Riddled with bullets, the machines continued to
observe, and sailed away when their work was done. I
need hardly emphasize the professional zeal with which
Japanese attaches follow the colossal struggle on land, and
communicate its lessons to the Supreme War Council in
Tokio. Meanwhile the Japanese Army was re-armed with
a new rifle, the invention of Colonel Kijiro Nambu, a pro-
fessor of ballistics of international repute. This weapon
is a notable improvement upon the Murata rifle, which it
has now superseded. In all directions the machinery of
war was improved. "The world will be astonished," said

396 AMERICA'S DAY

Baron Hayashi, now Japanese Ambassador in Rome, "when
it learns all that we have done, and shall do in the future."
This significant hint no doubt referred to the projected
operations in Eastern Siberia, with Vladivostok as a base.

Both Japan and the United States will therefore emerge
from the war as great military Powers. Their future
relations depend upon the fate of China and Pacific prob-
lems bound up with it, political, economic, and strategic.
Earnest efforts, following the Ishii Mission, are being made
to improve these relations. Thus Japan has her ' ' East and
West News Bureau," an association for promoting cor-
diality between the two nations. Its director is Dr. Iye-
naga, who is also linked with the University of Chicago
as a lecturer. Mr. Samuel Gompers of the American Fed-
eration of Labour now cables fraternal greetings to Presi-
dent Suzuki, of the Workers' Friendly Society of Japan:
"The most important duty of our movements is to main-
tain frank and friendly terms between our respective coun-
tries, and endeavour amicably to solve vexatious prob-
lems."

Asked whether America would fight for the Open Door
in China, President Roosevelt declared that she would.
His successor, Mr. W. H. Taft, held the contrary opinion,
doubting whether Americans were sufficiently interested
in Far Eastern affairs to make any substantial sacrifice for
them. The present Administration sent Notes of great
vigour to Tokio and Pekin over the Twenty-One Demands.
President Wilson's Government confessed itself "greatly
disturbed" over the further Japanese aggression which
followed the squabble in Chen-chia-tun. But those were
the days of America's "wooden sword," when protests from
her were filed or ignored as a matter of course. With the
habit and harness of war she will receive a very different
hearing. America will in future have something stronger
than "good offices" to offer her Allies and proteges, whether

"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 397

Britain or Belgium; France, China, Mexico, or the Latin-
Republics,— to whom by the way the Monroe Doctrine was
become a somewhat threadbare mantle of protection from
foreign foes.

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING

"Will you not convey to His Majesty my appreciation
of his sentiments, my confident expectation that the great
principles of truth, liberty, and honour, which the people
of this country hold so dear, will increasingly serve as a
broad, solid foundation upon which the friendship and
cordial relations of the two Governments may rest and
develop ?

"I believe that the righteous cause we are now prose-
cuting will bind more closely the people of the United
States to the people of Great Britain." — (President Wil-
son to Earl Reading, British High Commissioner in Wash-
ington.)

The above speech is a momentous break with tradition.
Before the Great War there was no European nation which
America esteemed so highly as Germany ; there was but
one nation in all the world for which America had an
hereditary dislike, and that was England. The Scotsman
escaped this feeling. As for the Irish, whether as citizens
or as an "oppressed" people overseas, they were, of course,
viewed with peculiar sjmipathy. Were they not living sym-
bols of that "absolute Tyranny" which is impressed upon
every American child in the Declaration of Independence,
with its scathing indictment of King George the Third as
a prince who ' ' is unfit to be the ruler of a free people ' ' ?

The fallacy of "cousinship" with the United States was
persistently held in this country in the face of all the
facts, and the irritation it roused, by reason of the implied

398

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 399

condescension of which Lowell complained. War with
America was stoutly declared to be unthinkable by British
writers — as though it had not loomed again and again
since 1814, when John Quincy Adams met Lord Gambier
in the old Carthusian Convent at Ghent, both sides smart-
ing under humiliation, and signed at long last a treaty
which left open more questions than it settled, especially
the right of search at sea.

Our ruling classes of that time despised the young Re-
public. They believed it would soon break up, just as
Gladstone, Russell, and Derby did at a later day, when
Lincoln was at his wits' end to save the Union from dis-
ruption. The Treaty of Ghent left bad blood between
the two nations, and it was a sullen affair in the making.
After four months of obstinate haggling, it was only popu-
lar pressure on both sides which forced the Commission-
ers to. sign a covenant of peace. On our part we declined
to grant the United States the privilege of trade with the
British-American colonies. Canada's haunting fear was
not yet laid with regard to her neighbour's territorial
designs.

On her side America resented British "arrogance" with
Jeffersonian warmth, and rejoiced that she had for the
second time humbled the haughty mistress of the seas.
Then in the "roaring forties" — a period of expansion and
pioneering to the South and West — there were boundary
disputes and border incidents in Oregon and Maine which
once more threatened Anglo-American relations. There
were quarrels over Mexico and the Isthmus, and over the
steps which our officers took to repress the slave trade.
The Civil War saw latent antagonism flame up afresh.
Rupture was very near when the Confederate envoys, Sli-
dell and Mason, were seized at sea on an English ship and
carried off as prisoners to Fort Warren by Captain Wilkes.
Palmerston demanded an "instant apology for a violation

400 AMERICA'S DAY

of international law." Troops were despatched, war was
declared inevitable, and prayers were offered in the Wash-
ington Senate. It was one of those occasions when Amer-
ica mourned her impotence at sea, and wished she had a
navy capable of curbing "the sway of an arbitrary tri-
dent."

From the very first a peculiar touchiness is discernible
in the State Department's dealings with Great Britain: a
liability to sudden anger with little provocation, as Cleve-
land's Message showed in 1895 over the Orinoco swamps
of Venezuela, to which British Guiana laid claim. This
alleged infringement of the Monroe Doctrine was declared
in the Message to be "a wilful aggression upon the rights
and interests of the United States." American protests
to Great Britain, by the way, are seldom couched in the
suavest terms — even those received after 1914, over the
hold-up of American mails, our "hovering" cruisers, the
Black List of traders, the status of "merchant" subma-
rines like the Deutschland, and lastly our "so-called" Block-
ade, which was dealt with in a Note of quite forcible lan-
guage.

Yet for a hundred years Anglo-American peace has re-
mained unbroken, thanks to the sound sense of both de-
mocracies, who insisted upon finding a way out before
extremes were reached.

During the American Civil War our neutrality was of a
kind that vexed both belligerents and left us with few
friends at the close, either in the North or the South.
This irritation grew more intense when the struggle was
over, thanks to unscrupulous angling for the Irish vote,
and partly through the growth of American imperialism.
The Irish question, I may say at once, has always lamed
our relations with the Republic. Since 1914 German
propaganda has made damaging use of it, pointing to the
gulf between Britain's precept and practice in her treat-

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 401

ment of the weaker nations. Ireland, Egypt, and India
are specifically named in pamphlets and speeches addressed
to people who have little or no knowledge of the facts.
In America the Irish have a political power out of all
proportion to their numbers. And having joined forces
with disloyal German elements in the early days, they
were able to hinder America's war-will, adding to the con-
fusion of her neutral time.

At home and abroad Irish hostility has been unwaver-
ing, and it cropped up in each Anglo-American dispute.
As leader of the Nationalist Party, Mr. John Redmond
sent the following message to New York at the time of
Grover Cleveland's threat over the Venezuelan affair: "If
war results from the reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine,
Irish national sentiment will be solid on the side of Amer-
ica. For with Home Rule rejected, Ireland can have no
feeling of friendliness for Great Britain."

It were absurd to deny that such seeds as these fell
upon stony ground in the United States, whose very
founder threw off the "despotism" of a British king who,
with his hireling soldiers, was accused of "cruelty and
perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages,
and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation."
Nor did George Washington acquit the British people of
a share in "these usurpations" when he wrote his wrath-
ful Declaration. "We have appealed to their native jus-
tice and magnanimity," he said, "and we have conjured
them by the ties of our common kindred. . . . They, too,
have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity."

Here we see the root of an Anglophobia which lasted a
hundred and forty-one years. It coloured all intercourse,
social, economic, and political ; and as America grew, it
was kept alive by the most assertive aliens in her midst.
Dislike of England hampered the ablest and sanest of
State Secretaries — men who had vision enough to put prej-

402 AMERICA'S DAY

udice away, as Jefferson did, and were willing to "marry
ourselves to the British fleet and nation" whose cham-
pionship America had already known in serious crises.

John Hay's Anglo-Saxon policy received no support;
the cry of "Subservience to England" spoiled his sagacious
drift, especially during the Boer War. Hay gives us many
hints of the strong currents against him at this time.
"That we should be compelled," he mourns, "to refuse the
assistance of the greatest Power in the world in carrying
out our own policy, because all Irishmen are Democrats
and some Germans are fools, is enough to drive a man
mad ! ' ' Already the hyphenate problem was acute, clog-
ging American statecraft, and renewing the ancient bitter-
ness every Fourth of July with hymns of hate which did
more harm than the fireworks: and they were very deadly
indeed, as every American knows. Writers in our news-
papers who took the "cousinship" line appeared to ignore
the fact that America's greatest holiday was an orgy of
Anglophobia. The sight of a British flag on "The Fourth"
could and did provoke a serious riot. Anglo-American
history in the schools recalled heroic deeds of the minute-
men and farmers against the red-coats, whom England's
German King sent "to complete the works of death, deso-
lation, and tyranny" in his own long-suffering Colonies.

Speaking at Plymouth ("where the Mayflower last left
land"), Ambassador Page alluded to this fallacious teach-
ing and the mischief it wrought. "On the American side,"
Dr. Page was glad to say, "the disproportion and wrong
temper of these books is fast disappearing. Newer texts
are correcting this old fault." The Ambassador also pro-
posed for British schools a modern book about the United
States ; its foremost men, its social structure, and ideal aims
for the betterment of humanity. In short, a work which
should be to children what Lord Bryce's American Com-
monwealth is to students of a more mature age.

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 403

There is no gainsaying the need for this restatement on
both sides, and particularly the part which Great Britain
played as America's friend during the German intrigues of
1898. Cleveland's ringing renewal of the Monroe Doctrine
was resented by the Central Powers ; and when the quarrel
with Spain developed, Von Holleben and Hengelmuller —
the Bernstorff and Dumba of their day — were soon urging
intervention upon the whole Diplomatic Corps in Washing-
ton. America knew that Germany had designs of her own
in the Caribbean; she was nevertheless determined to lib-
erate Cuba and vindicate her own claim to the hegemony
of the New World. In the critical weeks that followed the
sinking of the Maine, German overtures were made to
France and England with a view to thwarting American
aims. John Hay was then Ambassador at our Court; he
was presently able to inform his Government that Britain,
far from being a party to the plot, took a sturdy stand by
the side of the United States.

Of course if Germany had had her way nothing could
have saved America from humiliation. For with three of
the greatest fleets barring the Cuban coast, she could never
have approached the island, much less landed an army
there. The war with Spain must have ended ignomini-
ously, for resistance could only have brought about dis-
aster. The Atlantic seaboard would have been at the
mercy of a new Triple Alliance ; all the cities from East-
port down to Charleston lay open to attack and occupation,
with possible indemnities and national abasement.

John Hay persevered with his Anglo-Saxon scheme, and
found a staunch friend in Joseph Chamberlain, whose
speech at Birmingham on May 11, 1898, is now widely
quoted in the United States. "What is our next duty?"
Mr. Chamberlain asked. "It is to establish and maintain
bonds of permanent amity with our kinsmen across the
Atlantic. For there is a powerful and a generous nation.

404 AMERICA'S DAY

They speak our language, they are bred of our race. . . .
I don't know what the future has in store for us; I don't
know what arrangements may be possible. But this I do
know and feel — that the closer, the more cordial and fuller
and definite these arrangements are, with the eonsent of
both peoples, the better it will be for us both and for the
world. I will even go so far as to say that, terrible as
war may be, war itself would be cheaply purchased if, in
a great and noble cause, the Stars and Stripes and the
Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon
alliance."

Writing to Senator Lodge from London, Ambassador
Hay referred to "Chamberlain's startling speech": "It
was partly due to a conversation I had with him, in which
I hoped he would not let the Opposition have a monopoly
of goodwill expressions for America." This goodwill took
a dramatic turn in Manila Bay. Here the truculent Ger-
man commander, Von Diederichs, assumed a threatening
attitude towards Admiral Dewey, who was greatly per-
plexed thereat. That veteran sailor told the story to the
late Earl Grey at a Senatorial banquet in Washington
in 1905, and Lord Grey repeated it in the House of Lords:

"Admiral Dewey told me that the presence of German
cruisers of heavier displacement than his own caused him
to realize the danger menacing his country in the event
of those ships taking hostile action; and of this he had
reason to be apprehensive. He described how the Amer-
ican Fleet watched in silent anxiety the visit of the Ger-
man Admiral to Captain Chichester's ship, and the intense
relief with which they saw, shortly after Von Diederichs'
return, the two British cruisers, Immortalite and Iphigenia,
hoist their anchors and move to a position which placed
them in the direct line of fire between the German and
American vessels. No action has ever done more to pro-
mote the friendly feelings of one nation for another than

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 405

this of Captain Chichester, which is well known to every
officer in the United States Navy."

Yet outside that Service the old dislike of England per-
sisted, greatly to the disappointment of John Hay. He
was now America's Foreign Minister. "All I've ever done
with Britain," he wrote in plaintive key to his predecessor
in that high office, "is to wring concessions from her with
no compensation. And yet these idiots say I'm no Amer-
ican, because I don't cry 'To hell with the Queen,' at every
breath!"

Hay was abused as an Anglomaniac, as Lowell had been,
and by the same Irish irreconcilables. Even close friends
of his, like Lodge, were afraid there was something in the
air of St. James's which turned the sturdiest Yankee into
a bit of a courtier, with undue leanings to the English
side.

I have said that Germany was esteemed by the Ameri-
can people, and that dislike of England was a persistent
tradition. The reversal of these sentiments is a curious
study in national psychology, and the cause can be traced
to reasons of American safety. Quite apart from the fact
that Germany was a very good customer, taking $235,000,-
000 worth of cotton and copper alone each year, she had
come to be regarded as the post-graduate schoolhouse of
the United States. Every ambitious youth who could af-
ford it took a course at a German university, because this
gave him a better send-off in a career than any diploma
from an American technical school. And hyphenate pro-
fessors, like the late Hugo Miinsterburg of Harvard, worked
hard to heighten the prestige of the only Kultur which was
one day destined to improve with guns God's moulding of
the world.

Miinsterburg 's Psychology and Industrial Efficiency is
something of an American classic. It was William James
who invited this scholar from Freiburg, and at the same

406 AMERICA'S DAY

time Von Hoist, on the strength of his American history,
was called to the newly-founded University of Chicago.
These imported high-brows soon saw "the failures and
deficiencies of American civilization," and set about mend-
ing them with characteristic zeal. According to Miinster-
burg, they were due to "a lack of that social idealism
which gives meaning to our German life"; and in the
summer of 1898 he confided to Ambassador von Holleben
his plan of foisting the true Fichtean brand of Kultur on
the United States.

Germany's "official contact" was promptly secured for
this missionary work, first for Harvard and then for
Chicago. At length Munsterburg was able to chant his
triumph, for on March 6, 1902, the Kaiser's brother, under
that hyphenate roof in Ware Street, Cambridge, handed
over the documents and gifts of the Germanic Museum at
Harvard. ' ' The official Americans, ' ' the Professor tells us,
"were led by David Jayne Hill, who was later on Ambas-
sador in Berlin. Towering over the German group stood
one of the mildest-looking of men, Alfred von Tirpitz,
and next to him, Admiral Robley D. Evans. Many other
Americans and Germans of renown listened to the speeches,
which culminated in Prince Henry's spontaneous plea that
the friendship between America and our Fatherland might
never be broken."

Debris de toiles d'arraignce que le vent emporte!

There was no talk in those' days of Prussian militarism.
The thing was known, of course, but Americans laughed
at it as a peculiar hobby — a national aberration, marked
with schlager-slashes on the faces of students from Alte
Heidelberg.

But the German was thorough : he was a fellow of in-
eradicable purpose ; a first-class stayer and timber-topper
in the long and tricky Grand National race, of which the
prize was supremacy in the world of commerce. Compared

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 407

with this apostle of Die Thatigkeit — the restless activity
which Goethe said proved the Man — his English rival cut
a poor figure, resting as he did upon his father's oars and
"glorying in the name of Briton" — like George the Third
of obstinate and execrable memory.

The English (America thought) were the most insular
of peoples, and that in the narrowest, most irritating sense
of the word. "They don't say much," as the French
statesman remarked when dealing with the notorious
morgue Britannique. "And you can't tell them anything
at all!"

Such, then, were the estimates which America held of
the two foreign nations in which she was most interested.
This estimate held good in 1914; it was not greatly dis-
turbed during the "flush time," nor did the fulminations
of the Eastern press bring about any noticeable change.
Indeed, to speak frankly, there seemed to be one law for
Germany and another for Great Britain where dealings
with the State Department were concerned. The mere
presence of our cruisers was a vexatious fact ; yet a Ger-
man submarine (the U-53) could enter an American port,
collect information, and then sally forth to sink merchant
vessels, leaving the work of rescue to destroyers of the
Narragansett Bay station under Admiral Knight: this
was in October, 1916. Protest from four of the Allies,
including Japan, drew a sharp reply from AVashington,
which expressed its "surprise" at the implied dictation,
and "reserved its liberty of action in all respects." Mr.
Lansing's naval advisers told our Ambassador "there was
no reason for treating the submarine otherwise than is
customary in the case of an ordinary warship visiting a
foreign port."

It may seem ungracious to recall the American Notes
dealing with that thorny question, the "freedom of the
seas," which President "Wilson put in the forefront of his

408 AMERICA'S DAY

fourteen proposals for an enduring peace after "this, the
culminating and final war for human liberty." But those
Notes inflamed feeling against us, especially in the South-
ern States, where our declaration of cotton as contraband
of war came as a great blow. In both Houses of Congress
retaliatory embargoes were proposed upon commodities use-
ful to the Allies — first munitions of war, and then food-
stuffs. In the latter case rising prices made the masses
welcome that move as one likely to reduce the cost of liv-
ing, so it had a fleeting measure of popular support.

Then the Battle of Jutland was hailed in New York as a
German victory; the "re-write man" of the Hearst jour-
nals used the word "overwhelming," and was thereafter
denied the use of mails and cables by our Government for
systematic distortion of official news. No doubt our Ad-
miralty was in part to blame by reason of its maladroit
reports. For even the New York World, which never had
pro-German leanings, came out with a big cartoon showing
the British Lion emerging from the waves with a black eye
and a tin can tied to his tail. "In spite of conflicting re-
ports from Berlin and London," the World leader said,
"and a common suppression of details, it is plain that the
British Fleet was outmanoeuvred, outshot, and outfought by
its adversary."

In those early days Germanism swept the United States
with gusty ecstasies of all-pervasive tinge. Deutschheit
was backed by a propaganda which covered the continent
from sea to sea, and was aided by the Irish — by Sinn
Feiners and Clan-na-Gaelers, Ancient Hibernians, Irish
Leaguers, Friends of Freedom, and an Irish press so vin-
dictive that it was at last forbidden the mails by Post-
Master Burleson. Senators Martine and Phelan brought
forward extravagant motions, like the one requesting
President Wilson to intercede for Roger Casement and the
' ' Irish Martyrs. ' ' Indiscretion of this kind did not prevent

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 409

America's leading men from sympathizing strongly with
the Irish cause. President Wilson himself accepted a
statue of Robert Emmett, and he received Mrs. Sheehy
Skeffington at the White House with unusual warmth.

So that, swayed with emotion from millions of her citizens,
it is not surprising that at one period America was inclined
to believe that the German would win the war and vindi-
cate his clamorous claim to super-manhood among the races.
Even the native humorist, friendly to our cause, was
afraid of the Kaiser's sledge-hammer strokes in East and
West. He described them in prize-ring jargon, such as
everybody understands. "The Divine Right is working
like a piston," this wag was grieved to say. "And unless
the Allies can put over a rib-roasting left, it's the sleep-act
for theirs, and a sad count over the champion that was!"
This detachment, with all its levity and unconcern, woke
angry remonstrance in England and France — especially
when it was known that Captain (now Admiral) Sowden
Sims had been asked to revise his professional report of the
Battle of Jutland, lest its eulogy of British tactics should
offend the German elements in the United States.

That those elements were able to influence policy is
beyond a doubt. German-American shippers and traders
were loudest of all in the outcry against our right of search
at sea ; our seizure of neutral mails and contraband of
war, and lastly over the Black List — "an arbitrary and
sweeping practice," which the American Note was afraid
would have "harsh, even disastrous effects upon the com-
merce of the United States." We had a hostile press over
there at this time.

The severity of the saner papers became rabid abuse in
those of the Hearst chain, and the German language jour-
nals, from Sacramento to St. Louis, became extraordinarily
scurrilous. It was purely time to remind present-day
America of the historic part which the British Fleet has

410 AMERICA'S DAY

played; so Mr. Balfour began with a dissertation on the
Freedom of the Seas. "England and Holland fought for
it in times gone by," Mr. Balfour told our ruffled friends,
"and to their success the United States may be said to .owe
its very existence. For if, three hundred years ago, the
maritime claims of Spain and Portugal had been admitted,
whatever else North America might have been, it would not
have been English-speaking. It would neither have em-
ployed the- language nor obeyed the laws, nor enjoyed the
institutions which, in the last analysis, are of British
origin."

America's stand over the right of search at sea is an
historic tradition; it goes back to Benjamin Franklin, who
negotiated a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Prussia,
in which it was agreed that private property should not be
seized. Of course in those days the sea affair was mere
lunar politics to Prussia, seeing that she had no fleet worthy
of the name, nor any call for it until 1848, when Prince
Adalbert wrote his "Memorandum Concerning the Estab-
lishment of a German Navy." It was mainly our right of
search at sea which caused the Anglo-American War of
1812. In 1856 the United States disagreed with the Dec-
laration of Paris, because the contracting Powers would
not admit her maritime view of "free ships and free
goods."

John Hay impressed this upon his delegates to The Hague
in 1899. "You are authorized to propose the principle
of extending to strictly private property at sea the im-
munity from destruction or capture by belligerents which
such property -already enjoys on land." This the State
Secretary thought "worthy of being incorporated in the
permanent law of civilized nations." Both McKinley (in
1898) and Roosevelt (in 1903) sent Messages to Congress
reaffirming this claim. It received national sanction by a
joint resolution of both Houses, passed on April 28, 1904.

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 411

And three years later Secretary Root armed America's
envoys again with the old sea-heresy, which they took with
them for the second time to The Hague.

In 1812, as in 1915-16, the British (and French) re-
straint of neutral trade had exasperated American opin-
ion. Yet in their own Civil War President Lincoln brought
sea-power to bear upon the Confederacy with crushing
effect. His Proclamation, dated April 19, 1861, deems it
"advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within
the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United
States, and of the law of nations in such case provided."

We were grievous sufferers by this drastic step, which,
although it saved the Union, dislocated our trade and in-
flicted the direst misery upon our people. Lancashire drew
her cotton from the blockaded States, and when supplies
were cut off, thousands of mill-hands were thrown out of
work. Later on they were brought to the verge of starva-
tion, and their employers faced with downright ruin. Yet
from those famishing homes the Slave Emancipator got a
message of sturdy support for his cause. Lincoln replied
to this in a very moving letter to our Manchester hands.
"I cannot but regard your utterance," he wrote, "as an
instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been
surpassed in any age or any country. ... I do not doubt
that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained
by your great nation ; and on the other hand, I have no
hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration,
esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship
among the American people."

It is no wonder, therefore, that America's agitation for
the freedom of the seas died down before the parallel cases
we put to her, with modifications made necessary by the
great size of ships and the impossibility of adequate search
on the high seas. A Naval Board advised the American
Government that: "No difference . . . can be seen be-

412 AMERICA'S DAY

tween the search of a ship of 1000 tons and one of 20,000
tons, except possibly a difference in time for the purpose
of establishing fully the character of her cargo and the
nature of her service and destination." The absurdity
of this contention was soon realized, and American jurists
of high repute upheld the British view. Thus Professor
S. E. Edmunds of St. Louis University, comparing our
blockade of Germany with that of the Confederate ports
during the Civil "War, declared our action amply justified.
"A sense of consistency should make us mute," concludes
this American authority on international law.

It is a mistake to suppose, however, that the matter
is definitely settled ; on the contrary, it has figured fre-
quently in Presidential utterance as the considered policy
of the United States. As Article II in Dr. Wilson's pro-
gram of the world 's peace, it follows the abolition of secret
diplomacy, and is thus phrased: "Absolute freedom of
navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters, alike
in peace and in war, except as the. seas may be- closed, in
whole or in part, by international action for* the enforce-
ment of international covenants."

Thus it is evident that in any future conflict America
looks for co-operation, which has been denied her during
the most merciless of all wars. President Wilson did ap-
peal for neutral support, and appealed in vain, as he told
his people with regret. The non-belligerent nations were
all Sinn Feiners, all concerned with "Ourselves Alone,"
and no doubt intimidated by "frightful" German meth-
ods as carried out in Belgium — Jam pro.cimus ardet Uca-
legon. Even German thinkers have commented upon this
Levite shrinking attitude. "The nations," says Rudolf
Eucken of Jena, "are no longer ruled by ideals, but by
interests; they preach open egoism, and apply it with new
zeal to the practical philosophy of life." The Pope made
a moving appeal for peace — "Must the civilized world

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 413

become nothing but a field of death?" And, like Presi-
dent Wilson, His Holiness urged that "the moral force of
Right should take the place of the material force of arms."
But here, surely, is the crux of the tragedy. For in such
a war as this, all the belligerents believe they have Right
on their side.

Germany sees herself as der Hort des Friedens — the
Rock of Peace, assailed by floods of jealousy and fear.
Von Kirchhoff, the Bavarian General facing the French
near Peronne, during the battles of the Somme, broke
down and cried before the American pressmen when he
recalled the Allied taunt of "Huns and barbarians," ap-
plied to the legions under him who were dying daily for
the Fatherland. "Justice, loyalty, and truth are fighting
on our side," the Emperor told his Brandenburg Grena-
diers on the Tagliamento plain. And in an Order to both
services, he declared that "the gallant exploits of our sub-
marines have secured to my Navy glory and admiration
for ever." What argument is possible with sentiments
like these? The fatal fact is that they are sincerely held,
and that the clash of Right against Might must make war
a condition of eternal recurrence.

America herself — the most peaceful of all democracies —
felt this in her Civil War, when North and South fought
with a furious conviction which became a religion. "The
men were in dead earnest," we learn from that scholarly
pacifist, David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford Univer-
sity. "Each believed that his view of State Rights and
national authority was founded on the solid rock of Right-
eousness and fair play." So it must be to the end, when
feeling runs high and there is hopeless divergence of
causes.

In peace proposals addressed to the Powers, Pope Bene-
dict would assure "the supremacy of Right" by simulta-
neous and reciprocal disarmament, and a system of arbi-

414 AMERICA'S DAY

tration backed by a League of Nations. This follows the
American plan. But the Pope as well as President Wil-
son contends for "the true liberty and community of the
seas, which on the one hand would remove many causes
of conflict, and on the other would open to all new sources
of prosperity and progress." Now this aim strikes at the
very root of the British Empire and bids fair to be the
gravest of all the problems before the plenipotentiaries of
Peace. The German Government referred to it when re-
plying to the Pope 's Note ; it was among the ' ' definite rules
and safeguards" which were to ensure "the fortifying
moral strength of Right." Germany was ready to sup-
port "every proposal which is compatible with our vital
interests." The Imperial Chancellor was in ostentatious
agreement with President Wilson over the freedom of the
seas in war and peace. Was it not "also demanded by
Germany as one of the first and most important require-
ments of the future?" "There is, therefore," Count
Hertling continued, "no difference of opinion here."

But there is ambiguity everywhere in scope and defini-
tion of this aim. Few of its advocates are so frank as
Herr Dernburg who, as propagandist in New York, ex-
plained why sea-poAver should be hobbled and land-power
left free : why war should be banished from the element
in which Germany was weak, and left to ramp in the re-
gion of her proven strength. When the Lusitania was
destroyed, Von Jagow, who was then Foreign Minister in
Berlin, described that fearful crime as a blow for the
freedom of the seas, and consequently a service to the
whole world. But as these "services" multiplied, with
American victims drowned again and again, the logic of
the argument grew more than doubtful, even in the Amer-
ican West, whose moral indolence a German industrial
magnate like Walter Rathenau surveyed with grave amaze-
ment.

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 415

"The most important element in the freedom of the
seas," declared Mr. • Roosevelt bluntly, "is freedom from
murder. And until our Government takes an effective
stand, its talk of freedom can only expose it to ridicule."
This view gained ground with each succeeding outrage,
and at the same time the ancient estimate- of Britain under-
went a profound change. Count Bemstorff's prompting
about British "navalism" was now coldly received — as
Mendoza's was long ago when he complained to Elizabeth
about the intrusion of her ships into the waters of the
Indies. American experts like Admiral Mahan were read
again, and sea-power began to loom in quite a new light.

It was now recalled that without a blockade, ruthlessly
enforced, the rebel States of the 'Sixties would never have
been subdued. The sale of their cotton would have bought
munitions of war, and America as we know it would surely
have broken up. Then there was Mahan 's testimony to
Britain's benign use of her sovereignty at sea. He admits
that from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf, and from the At-
lantic to the Pacific, freedom has been maintained by cap-
tains of English breed, such as have for centuries im-
peached the would-be conqueror afloat.

"If it were not for this British mastery," mused the
Wall Street journal at last, "where would our export trade
be today?" In other quarters the Monroe Doctrine was
historically reviewed, together with the opinions of it held
by reactionary statesmen of the Central Powers. Thus it
was to Metternich a calamitous consequence of free-footed
democracy. Bismarck called that doctrine "an interna-
tional impertinence." But Great Britain was behind it
throughout, and for this reason history itself took on new
meanings; Americans marvelled how that legacy of dislike
could ever have come down to them.

Why, it was German despotism which America fought in
her Revolutionary War! Two of the Georges were Ger-

416 AMERICA'S DAY

mans who hated England and barely spoke her tongue.
The Third of that line was brought up by a narrow-
minded German mother to be ''King," as she impressed
upon him. And he it was who steered the State into what
Goldwin Smith called "the most tragical disaster in Eng-
lish history." It was therefore a civil war, that of 1776,
with the liberties of all at stake, whether at home in Eng-
land, or in the American Colonies. Had not Chatham
withdrawn his son from the Army "so that he might not
fight in the unhappy war with our fellow-subjects"? The
Earl of Effingham resigned his commission, and received
the civic thanks of London and Dublin for his action.
General Amherst also declined to serve ; Sir William Howe
was reluctant, but King George insisted, and the soldier
obeyed under the duress of his military oath. This is the
new English history, as taught today in the United States.

The late John Redmond took it down to 1910. Mr. T. P.
O'Connor brought the story to this present year; and the
result is a change of heart which may fairly be called epoch-
making. There were no signs of it in the Catholic press of
America which now scathed the " All-f or-Ireland " sabotage
and plots which the Department of Justice had discovered.
The Chicago Citizen mourned the fact that "Irish names,
some of them prominent, have been tainted with disloyalty
and tarnished with German gold."

The Catholic Transcript of Hartford recalled the Pas-
toral Letter of Cardinal Logue dealing with Young Ire-
land's "pursuit of a dream which no man in his sober
senses can hope to see realized — the establishment of an
Irish Republic ... by hurling an unarmed people against
an Empire which has five millions of men under arms, fur-
nished with the most terrible engines of destruction which
human ingenuity could devise."

However, Irish-American citizens were less concerned
with folly in the Motherland than with treasonous action

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 417

against the Stars and Stripes — "the flag which has given
asylum and liberty to so many millions of our race. ' ' These
loyalists formed a new party, and sent out an earnest ap-
peal to compatriots at home and abroad not to embarrass
the cause of the Allies by vindictive action against Eng-
land.

The German intrigue was far more formidable, and for
many reasons it kept the State Department in a state of
indecision. Large American supplies were reaching our
enemy through neutral ports. Thus in the early days,
when we held up cotton cargoes on their way to Sweden,
the quays and warehouses of Gothenburg were heaped high
with the staple, yet Swedish spinners were complaining
they had none for their own use. One significant contract
with a German firm came into our hands ; it was for 50,000
bales at double the price which cotton was fetching in any
other country. All of it was consigned to neutral ports,
and when we seized a shipment there was no trace in the
papers of enemy destination. Every device that guile
could suggest was employed in this nefarious traffic from
the United States. Thousands of tons of meat, documented
for a neutral port, were sent to non-existent firms. Other
consignments were addressed to lightermen or dock la-
bourers. Others again to a baker, an hotelkeeper, and a
maker of musical instruments.

In the three years prior to the war Sweden's average
import of lard from America was but 638 tons. In 1915
the figure leapt to 9029 tons. Norway's imports of pork
and bacon showed a similar bound; in 1916 she supplied
Germany with 868,500 tons of food. The Allies protested,
of course, but their demands were in various ways evaded,
as by the erection of canning factories at Hamburg for
Norwegian sardines and oil. As for Denmark, so late as
June, 1917, she was sending across the frontier seven
thousand head of cattle every week; and her American

418 AMERICA'S DAY

imports of indispensable fats presented a glaring case.
Thus the intake of cottonseed oilcake was thirty times
greater in 1915 than in the preceding year. Sweden's
traffic was mainly in munitions of war. It was Holland's
popular boast that she was "Germany's bread-basket";
and when the Allies tried to stop the supplies of pork,
Richard von Kiihlmann, who was then German Minister at
The Hague, said he had no objection to offer, since "a
Dutch pig was only American maize on four legs."

These facts were brought to the notice of the Washington
Cabinet, for the United States was regarded by these neu-
trals as an inexhaustible source upon which they might
draw after having sold to the Central Powers at enormous
profit. After declaring war President Wilson shut down
upon this traffic. He declared an embargo upon American
products in order that these might not be made "the occa-
sion of benefit to the enemy, either directly or indirectly."
Washington was soon filled with plaintive missions from
"the necessitous little nations." The envoys presented
specious documents, but America's Export Council was
inexorable. Fifteen Dutch ships were held up at Balti-
more, and fifty more at New York laden with millions of
bushels of wheat and maize, as well as oilcake, bacon and
lard.

Mynheer van den Wielen had a piteous tale of misery in
Holland; but the intelligence Bureau of the State Depart-
ment proved to him that Dutch food imports had shown
an excess over home consumption which was enough to
provision 1,200,000 soldiers for a year! The Norwegian
Mission, under Fritjof Nansen, was severely heckled by
caustic Americans. "You have it in your power to starve
us," the famous explorer said, "but we hope and believe
you will help us instead. A million tons of our merchant
fleet have been sunk, and six hundred of our seamen
drowned." America asked why Norway had fed her mur-

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 419

derous assailant, and even provided the nickel for the
German torpedoes which did the work? Here is one of the
darkest problems of the war, and a fruitful theme for mis-
anthropy.

It will be seen that step by step the United States swung
into line with the British view of sea-power. We plied her
with precedents in her irritable time, quoting facts from
her own Civil War and the war with Spain. "If the ship's
papers," American cruisers were instructed in 1898, "in-
dicate the presence of contraband, the ship should be
seized." In Lincoln's day Secretary of State Seward said
he was very sorry for the distress in England occasioned
by the blockade; but who could expect him to sacrifice
the American Union for cotton? And therewith he baf-
fled the blockade-runners of neutral ports. Moreover, the
Supreme Court extended the doctrine of continuous voy-
age, so as to cover all cases of trickery intended to break
the blockade. This became more and more effective; until
Seward could say that, "Cotton commands four times the
price in Manchester and Rouen that it does in New Or-
leans."

These cogent arguments were working in the American
mind, and they served to offset the mischief -making efforts
of Germany, both directly from Berlin and also through the
Embassy in Washington, whose influence was at last on the
wane. In one of the Notes which Von Jagow handed to
Mr. Gerard — it was a reply to further protest against the
submarine — America was reminded that she had it in her
power to confine the war to belligerent forces, had she been
"determined to insist against Great Britain, on incontest-
able rights to the freedom of the seas. ' ' As matters stood,
the German people saw only protests against the "illegal
methods" of their enemies, and an American demand that
Germany "who is struggling for existence, shall restrain
the use of her effective weapon. ' '

420 AMERICA'S DAY

On our side surprise was expressed that Secretary of
State Lansing did not see eye to eye with us about the new
status of the submarine, especially after the havoc wrought
by U-53 off Nantucket. But impulsive action is wholly
foreign to the tradition »of the State Department. It is a
slow-moving Bureau, entirely undemocratic, and charged
with domestic as well as foreign duties — including the over-
sight of a Presidential election every four years. Amer-
ican vacillation in regard to armed merchant vessels and
submarines was due to representations from naval advisers
who were watching the development of the under- water
craft with a single eye to national needs of the future. A
Memorandum was handed to Mr. Lansing pointing out the
enormous coast line of the United States, and the peculiari-
ties of many of its harbours, which might well make the
submarine a suitable weapon, alike for attack and defence.

The auxiliary cruiser, the strategists said, could work
havoc in war-time with American commerce, so it might
be well to avoid any policy which could be cited here-
after to hamper the free use of the invisible boat. So
defective were the coast defences, that it would be im-
possible to resist the landing of an army backed by pow-
erful warships unless the underwater weapon were given
the fullest play.

Moreover, to insist that a submarine should visit and
search a liner before attacking her might one day place
America at the mercy of an enemy with a large merchant
marine, and therefore able to equip raiders incomparably
more destructive than even the notorious Alabama. Alto-
gether the sea affair was fraught with perplexing possi-
bilities to a great democracy beset on every side and con-
sidering the future in the light of a lurid war-time day.
In the meantime America was suffering from a German
blockade. Her ships were held up in port ; tankers of the
Standard Oil had been recalled and added to the dock

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 421

congestion, which was already serious. At length there
was nothing for it but to put guns on board and to assume
that armed neutrality which is the half-way house to war.
For this purpose a hundred million dollars was voted by
Congress, and the liner St. Louis set forth as a pioneer
equipped for any encounter.

So at long last the warnings against British Seeherr-
schuft and maritime tyranny recoiled upon Germany: she
was soon to figure as the "furious and brutal Power" in
a Presidential Note, "whose word we cannot take as a
guarantee of anything that is to endure." American
travellers began to ask what complaint had Germany to
make about the freedom of the seas before she made her
pounce in 1914? "I sat on the club verandah at Singa-
pore," Mr. Poultney Bigelow testified, "and counted
twenty-seven funnels of a single German line. Then I
crossed to North Borneo, also on a German line which
carried the British mails. Later on I went to Siam —
likewise on a German line. After that to Australia, to
Java and the Eastern Archipelago. And always in ships
of that same concern."

New York newspapers published the large-scale maps
which the Hamburg-Amerika and Norddeutscher Lloyd
Steamship Lines used to display so proudly in their London
windows, showing every known sea-lane traversed by
them, from China to Peru. "Absolute freedom," as de-
fined by Germany, means the abolition of blockade
(Absperrung) except within the limits of territorial waters;
and this modern weapons have made impracticable. It
forbids the right of search for enemy goods or munitions
of war. Contraband is not to be seized. German mari-
time trade should therefore swarm unchecked, leaving the
naval preponderance of the Allies a helpless nullity in the
greatest of all wars. These contentions looked absurd to
America — though she was hurried into war without having

422 AMERICA'S DAY

decided the question to her entire satisfaction. For this
reason she regards the freedom of the seas as only in abey-
ance; we shall no doubt see her envoys, for the third and
last time, take a decisive stand upon the subject at the Con-
ference of Peace.

It is well to remember that America wishes to keep a
free hand in her war against the German autocracy.
President Wilson's deputy, Colonel E. M. House, made
this quite clear at Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay.
For the old mistrust of entangling alliances is still strong,
and the devious statecraft of Europe can never be agree-
able to the United States, whose distaste for expedients
is almost prudish when these conflict with her standards
and ideals. This was seen in her reluctance to give formal
assent to Japan's move in Eastern Siberia, with Vladivostok
as a base and the railway junction of Harbin as an ob-
jective of high importance in the preservation of Far
Eastern peace. In American eyes such an invasion was
morally indefensible without a direct mandate from the
Russian people : and no foreign guarantees could take the
place of this national sanction.

It is America's pride that she went to war for no ma-
terial gain, but through love of liberty and sympathy
with the struggles of all the peoples, both great and small.
For this reason a typical English statesman like Arthur
Balfour called the Day of her entry "one of the most
important in the annals of mankind." Mr. Asquith, in the
historic debate of felicitation in our Parliament, ventured
to doubt "whether even now the World realizes the full
significance of the step which America has taken." France
weighed the wealth of her sister Republic; the man-power
and material resources, allotting her at last the supreme
role of a decisive factor in the war.

But no sign was so significant as the drawing together
of Great Britain and the United States, of which the

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 423

symbol was the Stars and Stripes floating from the Victoria
Tower of Westminster— the first foreign flag ever dis-
played by the Mother of Parliaments. The periodical lit-
erature of America soon teemed with tribute to the effort
and purpose of Great Britain. Our new armies were
praised; our Navy's shield over all the seas, our genius
for colonizing, and a commercial policy throughout the
Empire which was a standing marvel to our German rivals
in the old days. University Presidents dwelt on the eth-
ical side of English rule in India, Egypt, and the Africas.
The Britain of today was presented in glowing propaganda,
and the paeans of Emerson recalled — he was afraid that if
he lingered too long among us his patriotism would suffer!

"Mother of nations," wrote the pink-thinking Sage of
Concord, in his apostrophe to England, "Mother of heroes,
with strength still equal to the time; still wise to enter-
tain, and swift to execute the policy which the mind and
heart of mankind require at the present hour!" These
transports passed, of course, and left the idealist with a
considered verdict upon the Englishman, whose "stuff or
substance seems to be the best in the world. I forgive
him all his pride. My respect is the more generous in that
I have no sympathy with him, only an admiration."

But the martial spirit of our race in the gravest trial,
and its achievement in the three elements of war since
1914 have aroused more than admiration in the United
States. Her ablest writers, together with historians, la-
bour leaders, and members of Congress, were sent over
to report this unsuspected psyche, and with it the indus-
trial surge which has turned our country into an arsenal,
and so quickened its productive power as to make the
Britain of tomorrow the keenest of all commercial rivals
in the fields of peace.

How mistaken was even so able an observer as John
Hay, when he lamented the "degeneracy" of England in

424 AMERICA'S DAY

1900. This was the burden of many messages which Amer-
ica received, with a wealth of detail that woke the read-
er's wonder and warmed him to enthusiasm at last. After
all, he mused, there must be something in Hegel's claim
that "wars invigorate humanity, just as storm preserves
the sea from putrescence." America had but to look at
home to see the shock of war working out her people's
destiny. For the first time duty and sacrifice were put
above the dollar, alike by the rich and the obscure, in mat-
ters of great moment and in trifles too. Here was the boy
soldier in Lorraine advising his mother to "quit sending
candy." "It tastes fine," he agreed in a wistful letter
home. "But it seems we're short of ships, and we want
all the space we can get for cartridges."

And, stripping to the fight, America shed her old illu-
sions and traditions. Her prescient statesmen and think-
ers now openly urged her to join hands with Great Britain
as "the conscious and leagued custodians of the world's
peace"; I quote from the Plymouth speech of Ambas-
sador Page. "To undertake this," he pursued, "our com-
radeship must be perpetual, and our task is to see that it be
not broken, nor even strained . . . for we are laying new
foundations of human freedom." With profound feel-
ing the senior American diplomat vowed himself to this
work: "Whatever years remain of my working life I.
propose to devote to this and nothing else — to the bring-
ing about of a closer fundamental and lasting acquaintance
between the people of this Empire and those of the United
States. . . . We understand each other better than any
two great nations, so let both turn to the task. For upon
our united shoulders henceforth and for ever, so far as
we can see, the peace of the world must rest. ' '

Surely these earnest words, and the dangers that loom
ahead, foreshadow an Anglo-American Alliance? For this
was the "marriage" which that famous democrat, Thomas

NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 425

Jefferson, found the most natural of all when he looked
across the seas for a partner to share America's peril.
Nearly fifty years before that crisis came, Jefferson had
drafted the historic Declaration of Independence. He was
later on President Washington 's Secretary of State ; and
in his long career he had moulded the young Republic, and
held every office in its gift, retiring at last laden with
honour and prestige, to direct and advise his successor at
the White House. Naturally, then, it was to Jefferson that
President Monroe turned for counsel when Richard Rush,
U. S. Minister in London, sent over the two letters of
Canning which offered the support of England against the
New- World designs of Metternich and the Holy Alliance.
"With Great Britain on our side," Jefferson told Monroe,
"we need not fear the whole world!"

THE END

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