America and the World War

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AMERICA

AND

THE WORLD WAR

BOOKS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

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AMERICA

AND

THE WORLD WAR

BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

191S

Copyright, igis, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published January, 1915

PRAYER FOR PEACE

Now these were visions in the night of war:

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,
Sent down a grievous plague on humankind,
A black and tumorous plague that softly slew
Till nations and their armies were no more —

And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,
Decreed the Truce of Life: — Wings in the sky
Fluttered and fell; the quick, bright ocean things
Sank to the ooze; the footprints in the woods
Vanished; the freed brute from the abattoir
Starved on green pastures; and within the blood
The death-work at the root of living ceased;
And men gnawed clods and stones, blasphemed and
died —
And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer.
Bowed the free neck beneath a yoke of steel.
Dumbed the free voice that springs in lyric speech.
Killed the free art that glows on all mankind,
And made one iron nation lord of earth.
Which in the monstrous matrix of its will
Moulded a spawn of slaves. There was One Might-
And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer.
Palsied all flesh with bitter fear of death.

298974

VI PRAYER FOR PEACE

The shuddering slayers fled to town and field

Beset with carrion visions, foul decay,

And sickening taints of air that made the earth

One charnel of the shrivelled lines of war.

And through all flesh that omnipresent fear

Became the strangling fingers of a hand

That choked aspiring thought and brave belief

And love of loveliness and selfless deed

Till flesh was all, flesh wallowing, styed in fear,

In festering fear that stank beyond the stars —

And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,

Spake very softly of forgotten things,

Spake very softly old remembered words

Sweet as young starlight. Rose to heaven again

The mystic challenge of the Nazarene,

That deathless affirmation: — Man in God

And God in man willing the God to be . . .

And there was war and peace, and peace and war,

Full year and lean, joy, anguish, life and death,

Doing their work on the evolving soul,

The soul of man in God and God in man.

For death is nothing in the sum of things.

And life is nothing in the sum of things,

And flesh is nothing in the sum of things,

But man in God is all and God in man,

Will merged in will, love immanent in love.

Moving through visioned vistas to one goal-

The goal of man in God and God in man.

And of all life in God and God in life —

The far fruition of our earthly prayer,

"Thy will be done!" . . . There is no other peace I

William Samuel Johnson.

FOREWORD

In the New York Evening Post for September
30, 18 14, a correspondent writes from Washing-
ton that on the ruins of the Capitol, which had
just been burned by a small British army, various
disgusted patriots had written sentences which
included the following: "Fruits of war without
preparation" and ** Mirror of democracy." A
century later, in December, 19 14, the same
paper, ardently championing the policy of na-
tional impreparedness and claiming that democ-
racy was incompatible with preparedness against
war, declared that it was moved to tears by its
pleasure in the similar championship of the same
policy contained in President Wilson's just-pub-
lished message to Congress. The message is for
the most part couched in terms of adroit and
dexterous, and usually indirect, suggestion,, and
carefull3~ avoids downright, or indeed straight-
forward, statement of policy — the meaning being
conveyed in questions and hints, often so veiled
and so obscure as to make it possible to draw
contradictory conclusions from the words used.
There are, however, fairly clear statements that we

viii FOREWORD

are "not to depend upon a standing army nor
yet upon a reserve army," nor upon any efficient
system of universal training for our young men,
but upon vague and unformulated plans for en-
couraging volimteer aid for militia service by mak-
ing it **as attractive as possible" ! The message
contains such sentences as that the President
"hopes" that "some of the finer passions" of
the American people "are in his own heart";
that "dread of the power of any other nation
we are incapable of"; such sentences as, shall
we "be prepared to defend ourselves against
attack? We have always found means to do
that, and shall find them whenever it is neces-
sary," and "if asked, are you ready to defend
yourself? we reply, most assuredly, to the utmost."
It is difficult for a serious and patriotic citizen to
imderstand how the President could have been
willing to make such statements as these. Every
student even of elementary American history-
knows that in our last foreign war with a for-
midable opponent, that of 1812, reliance on the
principles President Wilson now advocates brought
us to the verge of national ruin and of the break-up
of the Union. The President must know that at
that time we had not "found means" even to
defend the capital city in which he was writing
his message. He ought to know that at the pres-
ent time, thanks largely to his own actions, we

FOREWORD ix

are not "ready to defend ourselves" at all, not
to speak of defending ourselves "to the utmost."
In a state paper subtle prettiness of phrase does
not offset misteaching of the vital facts of na-
tional history.

In 1 8 14 this nation was paying for its folly ini/
having for fourteen years conducted its foreign )
policy, and refused to prepare for defense against 5
possible foreign foes, in accordance with the views
of the ultrapacificists of that day. It behooves
us now, in the presence of a world war even vaster
and more terrible than the world war of the early
nineteenth century, to beware of taking the advice
of the equally foolish pacificists of our own day.
To follow their advice at the present time might
expose our democracy to far greater disaster than
was brought upon it by its disregard of Wash-
ington's maxim, and its failure to secure peace
by preparing against war, a hundred years ago.

In his message President Wilson has expressed
his laudable desire that this cotmtry, naturally
through its President, may act as mediator to
bring peace among the great Etiropean powers.
With this end in view he, in his message, deprecates
our taking any efficient steps to prepare means for
our own defense, lest such action might give a
wrong impression to the great warring powers.
Furthermore, in his overanxiety not to offend the
powerful who have done wrong, he scrupulously

X FOREWORD

refrains from saying one word on behalf of the
weak who have suffered wrong. He makes no
allusion to the violation of the Hague conventions
at Belgium's expense, although this nation had
solemnly undertaken to be a guarantor of those
conventions. He makes no protest against the
cruel wrongs Belgiimi has suffered. He says not
one word about the need, in the interests of true
peace, of the only peace worth having, that steps
shoiild be taken to prevent the repetition of such
wrongs in the future.

This is not right. It is not just to the
weaker nations of the earth. It comes perilously
near a betrayal of our own interests. In his
laudable anxiety to make himself acceptable as a
mediator to England, and especially to Germany,
President Wilson loses sight of the fact that his
first duty is to the United States; and, moreover,
desirable though it is that his conduct should
commend him to Germany, to England, and to
the other great contending powers, he should
not for this reason forget the interests of the small
nations, and above all of Belgiimi, whose grati-
tude can never mean anything tangible to him or
to us, but which has suffered a wrong that in
any peace negotiations it should be our first duty
to see remedied.

In the following chapters, substantially repro-
duced from articles contributed to the Wheeler

FOREWORD xi

Syndicate and also to The Outlook, The Inde-
pendent, and Everybody's, the attempt is made to
draw from the present lamentable contest cer-
tain lessons which it wotild be well for our peo-
ple to learn. Among them are the following:

We, a people akin to and yet different from all
the peoples of Europe, should be equally friendly
to all these peoples while they behave well,
should be courteous to and considerate of the
rights of each of them, but shotdd not hesitate
to judge each and all of them by their conduct.

The kind of "neutrality" which seeks to pre-
serve "peace" by timidly refusing to live up to
our plighted word and to denounce and take
action against such wrong as that committed in
the case of Belgium, is imworthy of an honorable
and powerful people, Dante reserved a special
place of infamy in the inferno for those base
angels who dared side neither with evil nor with
good. Peace is ardently to be desired, but only
as the handmaid of righteousness. The only
peace of permanent value is the peace of right-
eousness. There can be no such peace until well-
behaved, highly civilized small nations are pro-
tected from oppression and subjugation.

National promises, made in treaties, in Hague
conventions, and the like are like the promises of
individuals. The sole value of the promise comes
in the performance. Recklessness in making

/

xii FOREWORD

promises is in practice almost or quite as mis-
chievous and dishonest as indifference to keeping
promises; and this as much in the case of nations
as in the case of individuals. Upright men make
'few promises, and keep those they make.

All the actions of the ultrapacificists for a gen-
eration past, all their peace congresses and peace
conventions, have amounted to precisely and ex-
actly nothing in advancing the cause of peace.
The peace societies of the ordinary ^pacificist
type have in the aggregate failed to accompHsh
even the smallest amoimt of good, have done
nothing whatever for peace, and the very small
effect they have had on their own nations has
been, on the whole, slightly detrimental. Al-
though usually they have been too futile to be
even detrimental, their imfortimate tendency has
so far been to make good men weak and to make
virtue a matter of derision to strong men. All-
inclusive arbitration treaties of the kind hitherto
proposed and enacted are utterly worthless, are
hostile to righteousness and detrimental to peace.
The Americans, within and without Congress,
who have opposed the fortifying of the Panama
Canal and the upbuilding of the American navy
have been false to the honor and the interest of
the nation and should be condemned by every
high-minded citizen.

In every serious crisis the present Hague con-

FOREWORD xiii

ventions and the peace and arbitration and neu-
trality treaties of the existing type have proved
not to be worth the paper on which they were
written. This is because no method was pro-
vided of securing their enforcement, of putting
force behind the pledge. Peace treaties and
arbitration treaties unbacked by force are not
merely useless but mischievous in any serious
crisis.

Treaties must never be recklessly made; im-
proper treaties should be repudiated long before
the need for action under them arises; and all
treaties not thus repudiated in advance should be
scruptilously kept.

From the international standpoint the essential
thing to do is effectively to put the combined
power of civilization back of the collective pur-
pose of civilization to secure justice. This can
be achieved only by a world league for the peace
of righteousness, which would guarantee to en-
force by the combined strength of all the nations
the decrees of a competent and impartial court
against any recalcitrant and offending nation.
Only in this way will treaties become serious docu-
ments.

Such a world league for peace is not now in
sight. Until it is created the prime necessity for
each free and liberty-loving nation is to keep itself
in such a state of efficient preparedness as to be

xiv FOREWORD

able to defend by its own strength both its honor
and its vital interest. The most important
lesson for the United States to learn from the
present war is the vital need that it shall at once
take steps thus to prepare.

Preparedness against war does not always
avert war or disaster in war any more than the
existence of a fire department, that is, of prepared-
ness against fire, always averts fire. But it is
the only insurance against war and the only in-
surance against overwhelming disgrace and dis-
aster in war. Preparedness usually averts war and
usually prevents disaster in war; and always
prevents disgrace in war. Preparedness, so far
from encouraging nations to go to war, has a
marked tendency to diminish the chance of war
occurring. Unpreparedness has not the slightest
effect in averting war. Its only effect is immensely
to increase the likeHhood of disgrace and disaster
in war. The United States should immediately
strengthen its navy and provide for its steady
training in purely military fimctions; it should
similarly strengthen the regular army and pro-
vide a reserve; and, furthermore, it should pro-
vide for all the yotmg men of the nation military
training of the kind practised by the free de-
mocracy of Switzerland. Switzerland is the least
"militaristic" and most democratic of republics,
and the best prepared against war. If we follow

FOREWORD XV

her example we will be carrying out the precepts
of Washington.

We feel no hostility toward any nation engaged
in the present tremendous struggle. We feel an
infinite sadness because of the black abyss of war
into which all these nations have been plunged.
We admire the heroism they have shown. We
act in a spirit of warm friendliness toward all of
them, even when obliged to protest against the
wrong-doing of any one of them. j

Our cotmtry should not shirk its duty to man- r
kind. It can perform this duty only if it is true/
to itself. It can be true to itself only by definitely
resolving to take the position of the just man
armed; for a proud and self-respecting nation of
freemen must scorn to do wrong to others and
must also scorn tamely to submit to wrong done
by others.

Theodore Roosevelt.

Sagamore Hill,
January i, 1915.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Foreword vii

CBAFTER

I. The Duty of Self-Defense and of

Good Conduct toward Others i

II. The Belgian Tragedy .... 15

III. Unwise Peace Treaties a Menace

TO Righteousness 44

IV. The Causes of the War ... 60
V. How TO Strive for World Peace 74

VI. The Peace of Righteousness . . 88

VII. An International Posse Comita-

Tus 104

VIII. Self-Defense without Milita-
rism 128

IX. Our Peacemaker, the Navy . . 156

X. Preparedness against War . . 174

XI. Utopia or Hell? . . . . . 220

XII. Summing Up 244

CHAPTER I

«

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE AND OF
GOOD CONDUCT TOWARD OTHERS

IN this country we are both shocked and
stunned by the awful cataclysm which has
engulfed civilized Europe. By only ^ a few
men was the possibility of such a wide-spread
and hideous disaster even admitted. Most per-
sons, even after it occurred, felt as if it was un-
beHevable. They felt that in what it pleased
enthusiasts to speak of as "this age of enlighten-
ment" it was impossible that primal passion,
working hand in hand with the most modem
scientific organization, should loose upon the
world these forces of dread destruction.

In the last week in July the men and women of
the populous civilized countries of Europe were
leading their usual ordered lives, busy and yet
soft, lives carried on with comfort and luxury,
with appliances for ease and pleasure such as
never before were known, lives led in a routine
which to most people seemed part of the natural
order of things, something which could not be
disturbed by shocks such as the world knew of

2 ^' *. THE WORLD WAR

old. A fortnight later hell yawned under the
feet of these hard-working or pleasure-seeking
men and women, and woe smote them as it smote
the peoples we read of in the Old Testament or
in the histories of the Middle Ages. Through
the rents in our smiling surface of civilization the
volcanic fires beneath gleamed red in the gloom.

What occurred in Europe is on a giant scale
like the disaster to the Titanic. One moment
the great ship was speeding across the ocean,
equipped with every device for comfort, safety,
and luxury. The men in her stoke-hold and
steerage were more comfortable than the most
luxurious travellers of a century ago. The peo-
ple in her first-class cabins enjoyed every luxury
that a luxurious city life could demand and were
screened not only from danger but from the
least discomfort or annoyance. Suddenly, in one
awful and shattering moment, death smote the
floating host, so busy with work and play. They
were in that moment shot back through immea-
surable ages. At one stroke they were hiu-led
from a life of effortless ease back into elemental
disaster; to disaster in which baseness showed
naked, and heroism burned like a flame of light.

In the face of a calamity so world-wide as the
present war, it behooves us all to keep our heads
clear and to read aright the lessons taught us;
for we ourselves may suffer dreadful penalties if

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE 3

we read these lessons wrong. The temptation
always is only to half -learn such a lesson, for a
half-truth is always simple, whereas the whole
truth is very, very difficult. Unfortunately, a
half-truth, if applied, may turn out to be the
most dangerous type of falsehood. .

Now, our business here in America in the face i/
of this cataclysm is twofold. In the first place it -
is imperative that we shall take the steps neces- j
sary in order, by our own strength and wisdom, to i /
safeguard ourselves against such disaster as has
occurred in Europe. Events have shown that
peace treaties, arbitration treaties, neutrality
treaties, Hague treaties, and the like as at pres-
ent existing, offer not even the smallest protec-
tion against such disasters. The prime duty of /
tlie moment is therefore to keep Uncle Sam in /
such a position that by his own stout heart and ,
ready hand he can defend the vital honor and '
vital interest of the American people.

But this is not our only duty, even although it
is the only duty we can immediately perform.
The horror of what has occurred in Europe, which
has drawn into the maelstrom of war large parts
of Asia, Africa, Australasia, and even America, is
altogether too great to permit us to rest supine
without endeavoring to prevent its repetition.
We are not to be excused if we do not make a
resolute and intelligent effort to devise some

4 THE WORLD WAR

//Scheme which will minimize the chance for a re-
currence of such horror in the future and which
will at least limit and alleviate it if it should occur.
ftn other words, it is our duty to try to devise
Isome efficient plan for securing the peace of
righteousness throughout the world.

That any plan will surely and automatically
bring peace we cannot promise. Nevertheless, I
think a plan can be devised which will render it
far more difficult than at present to plunge us
into a world war and far more easy than at pres-
ent to find workable and practical substitutes
even for ordinary war. In order to do this, how-
ever, it is necessary that we shall fearlessly look
facts in the face. We cannot devise methods for
securing peace which will actually work unless we
are in good faith willing to face the fact that the
present all-inclusive arbitration treaties, peace
conferences, and the like, upon which our well-
meaning pacificists have pimied so much hope,
have proved utterly worthless under serious
strain. We must face this fact and clearly imder-
stand the reason for it before we can advance an
adequate remedy.

It is even more important not to pay heed to
the pathetic infatuation of the well-meaning per-
sons who declare that this is "the last great war."
During the last century such assertions have
been made again and again after the close of

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE S

every great war. They represent nothing but an
amiable fatuity. The strong men of the United
States must protect the feeble; but they must not
trust for guidance to the feeble.

In these chapters I desire to ask my fellow
countrymen and countrywomen to consider the
various lessons which are being writ in letters of
blood and steel before our eyes. I wish to ask
their consideration, first, of the immediate need
that we shall realize the utter hopelessness under
actually existing conditions of otu- trusting for
otu- safety merely to the good-will of other powers
or to treaties or other "bits of paper" or to any-
thing except our own steadfast courage and pre-
paredness. Second, I wish to point out what a
complicated and difficult thing it is to work for
peace and how difficult it may be to combine
doing one's duty in the endeavor to bring peace
for others without failing in one's duty to seciu-e
peace for one's self; and therefore I wish to point
out how imwise it is to make foolish promises
which imder great strain it would be impossible
to keep.

Third, I wish to try to give practical expression
to what I know is the hope of the great body of
our people. We should endeavor to devise some
method of action, in common with other nations,
whereby there shall be at least a reasonable
chance of securing world peace and, in any event,

6 THE WORLD WAR

of narrowing the sphere of possible war and its
horrors. To do this it is equally necessary un-
flinchingly to antagonize the position of the men
who believe in nothing but brute force exercised
without regard to the rights of other nations, and
unhesitatingly to condemn the well-meaning but
imwise persons who seek to mislead our people
into the belief that treaties, mere bits of paper,
when imbacked by force and when there is no
one responsible for their enforcement, can be of
the slightest use in a serious crisis. Force im-
backed by righteousness is abhorrent. The effort
to substitute for it vague declamation for right-
eousness unbacked by force is silly. The police-
man must be put back of the judge in interna-
tional law just as he is back of the judge in mu-
nicipal law. The effective power of civilization
must be put back of civilization's collective pur-
pose to secure reasonable justice between nation
and nation.

First, consider the lessons taught by this war
as to the absolute need imder existing conditions
of our being willing, ready, and able to defend
ourselves from tmjust attack. What has befallen
Belgium and Luxembourg — not to speak of China
—during the past five months shows the utter
hopelessness of trusting to any treaties, no matter
how well meant, imless back of them lies power
sufficient to secure their enforcement.

>^

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE 7

At the outset let me explain with all possible
emphasis that in what I am about to say at this
time I am not criticising nor taking sides with
any one of the chief combatants in either group of
warring powers, so far as the relations between
and among these chief powers themselves are
concerned. The causes for the present contest
stretch into the immemorial past. As far as the
present generations of Germans, Frenchmen,
Russians, Austrians, and Servians are concerned,
their actions have been determined by deeds done
and left undone by many generations in the past.
Not only the sovereigns but the peoples engaged
on each side believe sincerely in the justice of
their several causes. This is convincingly shown
by the action of the Socialists in Germany, France,
and Belgiimi. Of all latter-day political parties
the Socialist is the one in which international
brotherhood is most dwelt upon, while interna-
tional obligations are placed on a par with national
obligations. Yet the Socialists in Germany and
the Socialists in France and Belgitmi have all
alike thrown themselves into this contest with
the same enthusiasm and, indeed, the same bitter-
ness as the rest of their coimtrymen. I am not
at this moment primarily concerned with passing
judgment upon any of the powers. I am merely
instancing certain things that have occurred, be-
cause of the vital importance that we as a people

8 THE WORLD WAR

shotdd take to heart the lessons taught by these
occurrences.

At the end of July Belgium and Luxembourg
were independent nations. By treaties executed
in 1832 and 1867 their neutrality had been guar-
anteed by the great nations roimd about them —
Germany, France, and England. Their neutrality
was thus guaranteed with the express purpose of
keeping them at peace and preventing any in-
vasion of their territory during war. Luxem-
bourg built no fortifications and raised no army,
trusting entirely to the pledged faith of her
neighbors. Belgium, an extremely thrifty, pro-
gressive, and prosperous industrial coimtry, whose
people are exceptionally hard-working and law-
abiding, raised an army and built forts for purely
defensive purposes. Neither nation committed
the smallest act of hostility or aggression against
any one of its neighbors. Each behaved with
absolute propriety. Each was absolutely innocent
of the slightest wrong-doing. Neither has the
very smallest responsibility for the disaster that
has overwhelmed her. Nevertheless as soon as
the war broke out the territories of both were
ovemm.

Luxembourg made no resistance. It is now
practically incorporated in Germany. Other
nations have almost forgotten its existence and
not the slightest attention has been paid to its

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE 9

fate simply because it did not fight, simply be-
cause it trusted solely to peaceful measures and
to the treaties which were supposed to guarantee
it against harm. The eyes of the world, however,
are on Belgium because the Belgians have fought
hard and gallantly for all that makes life best
worth having to honorable men and women.
In consequence, Belgium has been trampled
imder foot. At this moment not only her men
but her women and children are enduring misery
so dreadf 111 that it is hard for us who live at peace
to visualize it to ourselves.

The fate of Liixemboiu*g and of Belgium offers
an instructive commentary on the folly of the
well-meaning people who a few years ago insisted
that the Panama Canal should not be fortified
and that we should trust to international treaties
to protect it. After what has occurred in Europe
no sane man has any excuse for believing that
such treaties would avail us in our hour of need
any more than they have availed Belgitim and
Luxembourg — and, for that matter, Korea and
China — ^in their hours of need.

If a great world war should arise or if a great
world-power were at war with us under conditions
that made it desirable for other nations not to be
drawn into the quarrel, any step that the hostile
nation's real or fancied need demanded would
unquestionably be taken, and any treaty that

lo THE WORLD WAR

stood in the way would be treated as so much
waste paper except so far as we could back it by
force. If under such circumstances Panama is
retained and controlled by us, it will be because
our forts and garrison and oiu* fleets on the ocean
make it unsafe to meddle with the canal and' the
canal zone. Were it only protected by a treaty
— that is, imless behind the treaty lay both force
and the readiness to use force — the canal would
not be safe for twenty-four hours. Moreover,
in such case, the real blame would lie at our own
doors. We would not be helped at all, we would
merely make ourselves objects of derision, if
tmder these circtmistances we screamed and clam-
ored about the iniquity of those who violated the
treaty and took possession of Panama. The
blame would rightly be placed by the world upon
our own supine folly, upon our own timidity and
weakness, and we would be adjudged unfit to hold
what we had shown ourselves too soft and too
short-sighted to retain.

/ The most obvious lesson taught by what has
/occurred is the utter worthlessness of treaties
(unless backed by force. It is evident that as
things are now, all-inclusive arbitration treaties,
neutrality treaties, treaties of alliance, and the
like do not serve one particle of good in protect-
ing a peaceful nation when some great military
power deems its vital needs at stake, imless the

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE n

rights of this peaceful nation are backed by force.
The devastation of Belgium, the burning of Lou-
vain, the holding of Brussels to heavy ransom,
the killing of women and children, the wrecking
of houses in Antwerp by bombs from air-ships
have excited genuine sympathy among neutral
nations. But no neutral nation has protested;
and while unquestionably a neutral nation like
the United States ought to have protested, yet
the only certain way to make such a protest
effective would be to put force back of it. Let
our people remember that what has been done to
Belgium would unquestionably be done to us by
any great military power with which we were
drawn into war, no matter how just our cause.
Moreover, it would be done without any more
protest on the part of neutral nations than we
have ourselves made in the case of Belgiimi.

If, as an aftermath of this war, some great Old-
World power or combination of powers made war
on us because we objected to their taking and
fortifying Magdalena Bay or St. Thomas, our
chance of sectiring justice would rest exclusively
on the efficiency of our fleet and army, especially
the fleet. No arbitration treaties, or peace trea-
ties, of the kind recently negotiated at Washing-
ton by the bushelful, and no tepid good-will of
neutral powers, would help us in even the small-
est degree. If our fleet were conquered, New

12 THE WORLD WAR

York and San Francisco would be seized and
probably each woiild be destroyed as Louvain
was destroyed unless it were put to ransom as
Brussels has been put to ransom. Under such
circumstances outside powers would undoubtedly
remain neutral exactly as we have remained neu-
tral as regards Belgiimi.

Under such conditions my own view is very
strongly that the national interest would be best
served by refusing the payment of all ransom
and accepting the destruction of the cities and
then continuing the war imtil by our own strength
and indomitable will we had exacted ample
atonement from our foes. This would be a
terrible price to pay for unpreparedness ; and
those responsible for the unpreparedness would
thereby be proved guilty of a crime against the
nation. Upon them would rest the guilt of all
the blood and misery. The innocent would have
to atone for their folly and strong men would
have to imdo and offset it by submitting to the
destruction of our cities rather than consent to
save them by paying money which would be
used to prosecute the war against the rest of the
country. If our people are wise and far-sighted
and if they still have in their blood the iron of
the men who fought imder Grant and Lee, they
will, in the event of such a war, insist upon this
price being paid, upon this course being followed.

THE DUTY OF SELF-DEFENSE 13

They will then in the end exact, from the nation
which assails us, atonement for the misery and
redress for the wrong done. They will not rely
upon the ineffective good- will of neutral outsiders.
They will show a temper that will make our foes
think twice before meddling with us again.

The great danger to peace so far as this coun-
try is concerned arises from such pacificists as
those who have made and applauded our recent
all-inclusive arbitration treaties, who advocate
the abandonment of our policy of building battle-
ships and the refusal to fortify the Panama Canal.
It is always possible that these persons may suc-
ceed in impressing foreign nations with the belief
that they represent our people. If they ever do
succeed in creating this conviction in the minds
of other nations, the fate of the United States
will speedily be that of China and Luxemboiirg, or
else it will be saved therefrom only by long-drawn
war, accompanied by incredible bloodshed and
disaster.

It is those among us who would go to the front
in such event — as I and my four sons would go —
who are the really far-sighted and earnest friends
of peace. We desire measures taken in the real
interest of peace because we, who at need would
fight, but who earnestly hope never to be forced
to fight, have most at stake in keeping peace.
We object to the actions of those who do most

14 THE WORLD WAR

talking about the necessity of peace because we
think they are really a menace to the just and
honorable peace which alone this country will in
the long run support. We object to their actions

/because we believe they represent a course of
{ conduct which may at any time produce a war

\ in which we and not they would labor and suffer.
In such a war the prime fact to be remembered
is that the men really responsible for it would not
be those who would pay the penalty. The ultra-
pacificists are rarely men who go to battle. Their
fault or their folly would be expiated by the blood
of coimtless thousands of plain and decent Amer-
ican citizens of the stamp of those, North and
South alike, who in the Civil War laid down all
they had, including life itself, in battling for the
right as it was given to them to see the right.

CHAPTER II

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY

PEACE is worthless unless it serves the
cause of righteousness. Peace which con-
secrates militarism is of small service.
Peace obtained by crushing the liberty and life
of just and unoffending peoples is as cruel as the
most cruel war. It should ever be our honorable
effort to serve one of the world's most vital needs
by doing all in our power to bring about conditions
which will give some effective protection to weak
or small nations which themselves keep orde;*
and act with justice toward the rest of mankind.
There can be no higher international duty than
to safeguard the existence and independence of
industrious, orderly states, with a high personal
and national standard of conduct, but without
the military force of the great powers; states,
for instance, such as Belgitmi, Holland, Switzer-
land, the Scandinavian countries, Uruguay, and
others. A peace which left Belgium's wrongs un-
redressed and which did not provide against the
recurrence of such wrongs as those from which
she has suffered would not be a real peace.

IS

l6 THE WORLD WAR

As regards the actions of most of the com-
batants in the hideous world-wide war now raging
it is possible sincerely to take and defend either
of the opposite views concerning their actions.
The causes of any such great and terrible contest
almost always lie far back in the past, and the
seeming immediate cause is usually itself in major
part merely an effect of many preceding causes.
The assassination of the heir to the Austro-
Hungarian throne was partly or largely due to
the existence of political and often murderous
secret societies in Servia which the Servian
government did not suppress; and it did not sup-
press them because the ** bondage" of the men
and women of the Servian race in Bosnia and
Herzegovina to Austria was such a source of ever-
present irritation to the Servians that their own
government was powerless to restrain them.
Strong arguments can be advanced on both the
Austrian and the Servian sides as regards this
initial cause of the present world-wide war.

Again, when once the war was started between
Austria and Servia, it can well be argued that it
was impossible for Russia not to take part. Had
she not done so, she would have forfeited her
claims to the leadership of the smaller Slav peo-
ples; and the leading Russian liberals enthusias-
tically support the Russian government in this
matter, asserting that Russia's triumph in this

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 17

particular struggle means a check to militarism,
a stride toward greater freedom, and an advance
in justice toward the Pole, the Jew, the Finn,
and the people of the Caucasus.

When Russia took part it may well be argued
that it was impossible for Germany not to come
to the defense of Austria, and that disaster would
surely have attended her arms had she not fol-
lowed the course she actually did follow as re-
gards her opponents on her western frontier. As
for her wonderful efficiency — her equipment, the
foresight and decision of her General Staff, her
instantaneous action, her indomitable persistence
— there can be nothing but the praise and ad-
miration due a stem, virile, and masterful peo-
ple, a people entitled to hearty respect for their
patriotism and far-seeing self-devotion.

Yet again, it is utterly impossible to see how
France cotdd have acted otherwise than as she
did act. She had done nothing to provoke the
crisis, even although it be admitted that in the
end she was certain to side with Russia. War
was not declared by her, but against her, and she
could not have escaped it save by having pursued
in the past, and by willingness to pursue in the
future, a course which would have left her as
helpless as Luxembourg — and Luxembourg's fate
shows that helplessness does not offer the small-
est guarantee of peace.

1 8 THE WORLD WAR

When once Belgium was invaded, every cir-
cumstance of national honor and interest forced
England to act precisely as she did act. She
could not have held up her head among nations
had she acted otherwise. In particular, she is
entitled to the praise of all true lovers of peace,
for it is only by action such as she took that
neutrality treaties and treaties guaranteeing the
rights of small powers will ever be given any
value. The actions of Sir Edward Grey as he
guided Britain^s foreign policy showed adherence
to lofty standards of right combined with firm-
ness of courage imder great strain. The British
position, and incidentally the German position,
are tersely stated in the following extract from
the report of Sir Edward Goschen, who at the
outset of the war was British ambassador in
Berlin. The report, in speaking of the inter-
view between the ambassador and the German
imperial chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg,
says:

The chancellor [spoke] about twenty minutes. He
said the step taken by Great Britain was terrible to a
degree. Just for a word, "neutrality," a word which in
war time had been so often disregarded, just for a scrap
of paper, Great Britain was going to make war on a
kindred nation. What we had done was unthinkable.
It was like striking a man from behind while he was
fighting for his life against two assailants.

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 19

I protested strongly against this statement, and said
that in the same way as he wished me to understand
that for strategical reasons it was a matter of life or
death to Germany to advance through Belgium and
violate the latter's neutrality, so I would wish him to
understand that it was, so to speak, a matter of life or
death for the honor of Great Britain that she should keep
her solemn engagement to do her utmost to defend
Belgium's neutrality if attacked. A solemn compact
simply had to be kept, or what confidence could any one
have in England's engagement in the future?

There is one nation, however, as to which
there is no room for difference of opinion, whether
we consider her wrongs or the justice of her
actions. It seems to me impossible that any
man can fail to feel the deepest sympathy with a
nation which is absolutely guiltless of any wrong-
doing, which has given proof of high valor, and
yet which has suffered terribly, and which, if
there is any meaning in the words "right" and
"wrong," has suffered wrongfully. Belgium is
not in the smallest degree responsible for any of
the conditions that during the last half centiuy
have been at work to impress a certain fatalistic
stamp upon those actions of Austria, Russia,
Germany, and France which have rendered this
war inevitable. No European nation has had
anything whatever to fear from Belgiimi. There
was not the smallest danger of her making any
aggressive movement, not even the sUghtest ag-

20 THE WORLD WAR

gressive movement, against any one of her neigh-
bors. Her population was mainly industrial and
was absorbed in peaceful business. Her people
were thrifty, hard-working, highly civilized, and
in no way aggressive. She owed her national
existence to the desire to create an absolutely
neutral state. Her neutrality had been solemnly
guaranteed by the great powers, including Ger-
many as well as England and France.

Suddenly, and out of a clear sky, her territory
was invaded by an overwhelming German army.
According to the newspaper reports, it was ad-
mitted in the Reichstag by German members
that this act was "wrongful." Of course, if
there is any meaning to the words "right" and
"wrong" in international matters, the act was
wrong. The men who shape German policy take
the ground that in matters of vital national mo-
ment there are no such things as abstract right
and wrong, and that when a great nation is
struggling for its existence it can no more con-
sider the rights of neutral powers than it can
consider the rights of its own citizens as these
rights are construed in times of peace, and that
everything must bend before the supreme law of
national self-preservation. Whatever we may
think of the morality of this plea, it is certain
that almost all great nations have in time past
again and again acted in accordance with it.

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 21

England's conduct toward Denmark in the Na-
poleonic wars, and the conduct of both England
and France toward us during those same wars,
admit only of this species of justification; and
with less excuse the same is true of our conduct
toward Spain in Florida nearly a century ago.
Nevertheless we had hoped by the action taken
at The Hague to mark an advance in international
moraHty in such matters. The action taken by
Germany toward Belgium, and the failure by
the United States in any way to protest against
such action, shows that there has been no advance.
I wish to point out just what was done, and to
emphasize Belgiimi's absolute innocence and the
horrible suffering and disaster that have over-
whelmed her in spite of such innocence. And I
wish to do this so that we as a nation may learn
aright the lessons taught by the dreadful Belgian
tragedy.

Germany's attack on Belgium was not due to
any sudden impulse. It had been carefully
planned for a score of years, on the assumption
that the treaty of neutrality was, as Herr von Beth-
mann-HoUweg observed, nothing but "paper,"
and that the question of breaking or keeping it
was to be considered solely from the standpoint
of Germany's interest. The German railways up
to the Belgian border are for the most part mili-
tary roads, which have been double-tracked with

22 THE WORLD WAR

a view to precisely the overwhelming attack that
has just been delivered into and through Belgium.
The great German military text-books, such as
that of Bemhardi, in discussing and studying
possible German campaigns against Russia and
France, have treated advances through Belgium
or Switzerland exactly as they have treated
possible advances through German territory, it
being assimied by the writers and by all for whom
they wrote that no efficient rulers or military
men would for a second consider a neutraHty
treaty or any other kind of treaty if it became
to the self-interest of a party to break it. It
must be remembered that the German system
in no way limits its disregard of conventions to
disregard of neutrality treaties. For example, in
General von Bemhardi's book, in speaking of
naval warfare, he lays down the following rule:
"Sometimes in peace even, if there is no other
means of defending one's self against a superior
force, it will be advisable to attack the enemy by
torpedo and submarine boats, and to inflict upon
him imexpected losses. . . . War upon the enemy's
trade must also be conducted as ruthlessly as
possible, since only then, in addition to the ma-
terial damage inflicted upon the enemy, the
necessary terror is spread among the merchant
marine, which is even more important than the
capture of actual prizes. A certain amount of

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 23

terrorism must be practised on the sea, making
peaceful tradesmen stay in safe harbors."

Belgium has felt the full effect of the practical
application of these principles, and Germany has
profited by them exactly as her statesmen and
soldiers believed she would profit. They have
believed that the material gain of trampling on
Belgium would more than offset any material op-
position which the act would arouse, and they
treat with the utter and contemptuous derision
which it deserves the mere pacificist clamor
against wrong which is unaccompanied by the
intention and effort to redress wrong by force.

The Belgians, when invaded, valiantly de-
fended themselves. They acted precisely as
Andreas Hofer and his Tyrolese, and Koemer
and the leaders of the North German Tugendbund
acted in their day; and their fate has been the
fate of Andreas Hofer, who was shot after his
capture, and of Koemer, who was shot in battle.
They fought valiantly, and they were overcome.
They were then stamped under foot. Probably
it is physically impossible for our people, living
softly and at ease, to visualize to themselves the
dreadful woe that has come upon the people of
Belgiimi, and especially upon the poor people.
Let each man think of his neighbors — of the car-
I)enter, the station agent, the day-laborer, the
farmer, the grocer — who are round about him,

24 THE WORLD WAR

and think of these men deprived of their all, their
homes destroyed, their sons dead or prisoners,
their wives and children half starved, overcome
with fatigue and horror, stumbling their way to
some city of refuge, and when they have reached
it, finding air-ships wrecking the houses with
bombs and destroying women and children. The
King shared the toil and danger of the fighting
men; the Queen and her children suffered as other
mothers and children suffered.

Unquestionably what has been done in Belgium
has been done in accordance with what the Ger-
mans sincerely believe to be the course of conduct
necessitated by Germany's struggle for life.
But Germany's need to struggle for her life does
not make it any easier for the Belgians to suffer
death. The Germans are in Belgium from no
fault of the Belgians but purely because the Ger-
mans deemed it to their vital interest to violate
Belgium's rights. Therefore the ultimate re-
sponsibility for what has occurred at Louvain
and what has occurred and is occurring in Brus-
sels rests upon Germany and in no way upon
Belgium. The invasion could have been averted
by no action of Belgium that was consistent with
her honor and self-respect. The Belgians would
have been less than men had they not defended
themselves and their country. For this, and for
this only, they are suffering, somewhat as my

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 25

own German ancestors suffered when Turenne
ravaged the Palatinate, somewhat as my Irish
ancestors suffered in the struggles that attended
the conquests and reconquests of Ireland in the
days of Cromwell and William. The suffering is
by no means as great, but it is very great, and it
is altogether too nearly akin to what occurred in
the seventeenth century for us of the twentieth
century to feel overmuch pleased with the amount
of advance that has been made. It is neither
necessary nor at the present time possible to sift
from the charges, coimtercharges, and denials the
exact facts as to the acts alleged to have been
committed in various places. The prime fact as
regards Belgiimi is that Belgium was an entirely
peaceful and genuinely neutral power which had
been guilty of no offence whatever. What has
befallen her is due to the further fact that a great,
highly civilized military power deemed that its
own vital interests rendered imperative the in-
fliction of this suffering on an inoffensive although
valiant and patriotic little nation.

I admire and respect the German people. I
am proud of the German blood in my veins. But
the sympathy and support of the American people
should go out unreservedly to Belgium, and we
should learn the lesson taught by Belgiimi's fall
What has occurred to Belgium is precisely wha
would occur under similar conditions to us, imlesi

P

J

26 THE WORLD WAR

[we were able to show that the action would be
dangerous.

The rights and wrongs of these cases where
nations violate the rules of morality in order to
meet their own supposed needs can be precisely
determined only when all the facts are known and
when men's blood is cool. Nevertheless, it is im-
perative, in the interest of civilization, to create
international conditions which shall neither re-
quire nor permit such action in the future. More-
over, we should imderstand clearly just what
these actions are and just what lessons we of
the United States should learn from them so far
as our own future is concerned.

There are several such lessons. One is how
complicated instead of how simple it is to decide
what course we ought to follow as regards any
given action supposed to be in the interest of
peace. Of coiu"se I am speaking of the thing
and not the name when I speak of peace. The
ultrapacificists are capable of taking any posi-
tion, yet I suppose that few among them now
hold that there was value in the "peace" which
was obtained by the concert of European powers
when they prevented interference with Turkey
while the Turks butchered some himdreds of
thousands of Armenian men, women, and chil-
dren. In the same way I do not suppose that
even the ultrapacificists really feel that "peace**

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 27

is triumphant in Belgium at the present moment.
President Wilson has been much applauded by
all the professional pacificists because he has an-
noimced that our desire for peace must make us
secure it for ourselves by a neutrality so strict
as to forbid our even whispering a protest against
wrong-doing, lest such whispers might cause dis-
turbance to our ease and well-being. We pay
the penalty of this action — or, rather, supine
inaction — on behalf of peace for ourselves, by for-
feiting our right to do anything on behalf of peace
for the Belgians in the present. We can maintain
otir neutrality only by refusal to do anything to
aid unoffending weak powers which are dragged
into the gulf of bloodshed and misery through no
fault of their own. It is a grim comment on the
professional pacificist theories as hitherto devel-
oped that, according to their view, otir duty to
preserve peace for ourselves necessarily means the
abandonment of all effective effort to secure peace
for other unoffending nations which through no
fault of their own are trampled down by war.

The next lesson we should learn is of far more
immediate consequence to us than speculations
about peace in the abstract. Our people should
wake up to the fact that it is a poor thing to live
in a fool's paradise. What has occurred in this
war ought to bring home to everybody what has
of coiurse long been known to all really well-

28 THE WORLD WAR

informed men who were willing to face the truth
and not try to dodge it. Until some method is
devised of putting effective force behind arbi--
|tration and neutrality treaties neither these
ftreaties nor the vague and elastic body of custom
which is misleadingly termed international law
will have any real effect in any serious crisis be-
tween us and any save perhaps one or two of the
great powers. The average great military power
looks at these matters purely from the standpoint
of its own interests. Several months ago, for
instance, Japan declared war on Germany. She
has paid scrupulous regard to our own rights
and feelings in the matter. The contention that
she is acting in a spirit of mere disinterested
altruism need not be considered. She believes
that she has wrongs to redress and strong national
interests to preserve. Nineteen years ago Ger-
many joined with Russia to check Japan's progress
after her victorious war with China, and has
since then itself built up a German colonial pos-
session on Chinese soil. Doubtless the Japanese
have never for one moment forgotten this act of
Germany. Doubtless they also regard the pres-
ence of a strong European military power in
China so near to Korea and Manchuria as a
menace to Japan's national life. With business-
like coolness the soldierly statesmen of Nippon
have taken the chance which offered itself of at

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 29

little cost retaliating for the injttry inflicted upon
them in the past and removing an obstacle to
their future dominance in eastern Asia. Korea
is absolutely Japan's. To be sure, by treaty it
was solemnly covenanted that Korea should re-
main independent. But Korea was itself help-
less to enforce the treaty, and it was out of the
question to suppose that any other nation with
no interest of its own at stake would attempt to
do for the Koreans what they were utterly un-
able to do for themselves. Moreover, the treaty
rested on the false assumption that Ko;:ea could
govern herself well. It had already been shown
that she could not in any real sense govern her-
self at all. Japan could not afford to see Korea
in the hands of a great foreign power. She re-
garded her duty to her children and her chil-
dren's children as overriding her treaty obliga-
tions. Therefore, when Japan thought the right
time had come, it calmly tore up the treaty and
took Korea, with the polite and businesslike
efficiency it had already shown in dealing with
Russia, and was afterward to show in dealing
with Germany. The treaty, when tested, proved
as utterly worthless as our own recent all-inclusive
arbitration treaties — and worthlessness can go no
further.

Hysteria does not tend toward edification; and
in this country hysteria is xmfortunately too often

30 THE WORLD WAR

the earmark of the ultrapacificist. Sttrely at
this time there is more reason than ever to re-
member Professor Loimsbnry's remark conciem-
ing the "infinite capacity of the human brain to
withstand the introduction of knowledge." The
comments of some doubtless well-meaning citi-
zens of our own coimtry upon the lessons taught
by this terrible cataclysm of war are really inex-
pHcable to any man who forgets the truth that
Professor Lounsbury thus set forth. A writer of
articles fpr a newspaper syndicate the other day
stated|)that Germany was being opposed by the
rest of the world because it had "inspired fear."
This thesis can, of course, be sustained. But
Belgium has inspired no fear. Yet it has suffered
infinitely more than Germany. Luxembourg in-
spired no fear. Yet it has been quietly taken
possession of by Germany. The writer in ques-
tion would find it puzzling to point out the par-
ticulars in which Belgiimi and Luxembourg — not
to speak of China and Korea — are at this moment
better off than Germany. Of course they are
worse off; and this because Germany has "inspired
fear," and they have not. Nevertheless, this
writer drew the conclusion that "fear" was the
only emotion which ought not to be inspired ; and
he advocated our abandonment of battle-ships and
other means of defense, so that we might never
iinspire "fear" in any one. He forgot that, while

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 31

it is a bad thing to inspire fear, it is a much worse /
thing to inspire contempt. Another newspaper
writer pointed out that on the frontier between
us and Canada there were no forts, and yet peace
obtained; and drew the conclusion that forts and
armed forces were inimical to national safety.
This worthy soul evidently did not know that
Luxembourg had no forts or armed forces, and
therefore succumbed without a protest of any
kind. If he does not admire the heroism of the
Belgians and prefer it to the tame submission of
the Luxembourgers, then this writer is himself
imfit to live as a free man in a free country. The
crown of ineptitude, however, was reached by an
editor who annoimced, in praising the recent all-
inclusive peace treaties, that "had their like been
in existence between some of the European na-
tions two weeks ago, the world might have been
spared the great war." It is rather hard to deal
seriously with such a supposition. At this very
moment the utter worthlessness, under great pres-
sure, of even the rational treaties drawn to protect
Belgium and Luxembourg has been shown. To
suppose that under such conditions a bundle of
bits of paper representing mere verbiage, with no
guarantee, would count for anything whatever in
a serious crisis is to show ourselves imfit to control
the destinies of a great, just, and self-respecting
people.

32 THE WORLD WAR

These writers wish us to abandon all means of
defending ourselves. Some of them advocate our
abandoning the building of an efficient fleet.
Yet at this moment Great Britain owes it that
she is not in worse plight than Belgium solely to
the fact that with far-sighted wisdom her states-
men have maintained her navy at the highest
point of efficiency. At this moment the Japanese
are at war with the Germans, and hostilities have
been taking place in what but twenty years ago
was Chinese territory, and what by treaty is
imquestionably Chinese territory to-day. China
has protested, against the Japanese violation of
Chinese neutrality in their operations against the
Germans, but^no heed has been paid to the pro-
test, for China Cannot back the protest by the use
of armed force. Moreover, as China is reported
to have pointed out to Germany, the latter power
had violated Chinese neutrality just as Japan had
done.

Very possibly the writers above alluded to were
sincere in their belief that they were advocating
what was patriotic and wise when they urged that
the United States make itself utterly defenseless
so as to avoid giving an excuse for aggression.
Yet these writers ought to have known that during
their own lifetime China has been utterly defense-
less and yet has suffered fromx aggression after
aggression. Large portions of its territory are now

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 33

in the possession of Russia, of Japan, of Germany,
of France, of England. The great war between
Russia and Japan was fought on what was nomi-
nally Chinese territory. At present, because a few
months ago Servian assassins murdered the heir to
the Austrian monarchy, Japan has fought Germany
on Chinese territory. Luxembourg has been ab-
solutely powerless and defenseless, has had no
soldiers and no forts. It is off the map at this
moment. Not only are none of the belligerents
thinking about its rights, but no neutral is think-
ing about its rights, and this simply because
Luxembourg could not defend itself. It is qui:]
duty to be patient with every kind of folly, but!
it is hard for a good American, for a man to whom |
his country is dear and who reveres the memories I
of Washington and Lincoln, to be entirely patient I
with the kind of folly that advocates reducing*
this country to the position of China and Luxem-
bourg.

One of the main lessons to learn from this war-
is embodied in the homely proverb: "Speak
softly and carry a big stick." Persistently only
half of this proverb has been quoted in deriding
the men who wish to safeguard our national in-
terest and honor. Persistently the effort has been
made to insist that those who advocate keeping
our country able to defend its rights are merely
adopting "the poHcy of the big stick." In reality,

34 THE WORLD WAR

we lay equal emphasis on the fact that it is neces-
sary to speak softly; in other words, that it is
necessary to be respectful toward all people and
scrupulously to refrain from wronging them, while
at the same time keeping ourselves in condition
to prevent wrong being done to us. If a nation
does not in this sense speak softly, then sooner
or later the poHcy of the big stick is certain to
result in war. But what befell Luxembourg five
months ago, what has befallen China again and
again during the past quarter of a century, shows
rthat no amount of speaking softly will save any
/people which does not carry a l^g sj^ick.

America should have a coherent policy of
action toward foreign powers, and this should
primarily be based on the determination never
to give offense when it can be avoided, always
to treat other nations justly and coiu-teously, and,
as long as present conditions exist, to be prepared
to defend our own rights ourselves. No other
nation will defend them for us. No paper guar-
antee or treaty will be worth the paper on which
I it is written if it becomes to the interest of some
other power to violate it, unless we have strength,
and courage and ability to use that strength,
back of the treaty. Every public man, every
writer who speaks with wanton offensiveness of a
foreign power or of a foreign people, whether he
attacks England or France or Germany, whether

/.

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 35

he assails the Russians or the Japanese, is doing
an injury to the whole American body politic.
We have plenty of shortcomings at home to cor-
rect before we start out to criticise the shortcom-
ings of others. Now and then it becomes impera-
tively necessary in the interests of htmianity, or
in our own vital interest, to act in a manner
which will cause offense to some other power.
This is a lamentable necessity; but when the
necessity arises we must meet it and act as we
are honorably bound to act, no matter what of-
fense is given. We must always weigh well our
duties in such a case, and consider the rights of
others as well as our own rights, in the interest
of the world at large. If after such consideration
it is evident that we are bound to act along a
certain line of policy, then it is mere weakness to
refrain from doing so because offense is thereby
given. But we must never act wantonly or
brutally, or without regard to the essentials of
genuine morality — a morality considering our in-
terests as well as the interests of others, and con-
sidering the interests of future generations as
well as of the present generation. We must so \
conduct ourselves that every big nation and every \^
little nation that behaves itself shall never have to \
think of us with fear, and shall have confidence
not only in our justice but in our courtesy. Sub- |
mission to wrong-doing on our part would be '

36 THE WORLD WAR

mere weakness and would invite and insure dis-
aster. We must not submit to wrong done to
our honor or to our vital national interests. But
i we must be scrupulously careful always to speak
! with courtesy and self-restraint to others, always
Ito act decently to others, and to give no nation
any justification for believing that it has anything
to fear from us as long as it behaves with decency
and uprightness.

Above all, let us avoid the policy of peace with
insult, the policy of impreparedness to defend our
rights, with inability to restrain our representa-
tives from doing wrong to or publicly speaking ill
of others. The worst policy for the United States
is to combine the tmbridled tongue with the un-
ready hand.

We in this country have of course come lamen-
tably short of our ideals. Nevertheless, in some
ways our ideals have been high, and at times we
have measurably realized them. From the be-
ginning we have recognized what is taught in
the words of Washington, and again in the great
crisis of our national life in the words of Lincoln,
that in the past free peoples have generally
split and stmk on that great rock of difficulty
caused by the fact that a government which rec-
ognizes the liberties of the people is not usually
strong enough to preserve the liberties of the
people against outside aggression. Washington

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 37

and Lincoln believed that ours was a strong peo-
ple and therefore fit for a strong government.
They believed that it was only weak peoples that
had to fear strong governments, and that to us
it was given to combine freedom and efficiency.
They belonged among that line of statesmen
and public servants whose existence has been
the negation of the theory that goodness is al-
ways associated with weakness, and that strength
always finds its expression in violent wrong-doing.
Edward the Confessor represented exactly the
type which treats weakness and virtue as inter-
changeable terms. His reign was the prime cause
of the conquest of England. Godoy, the Spanish
statesman, a century ago, by the treaties he
entered into and carried out, actually earned the
title of ** Prince of Peace" instead of merely lec-
turing about it; and the result of his peacefulness
was the loss by Spain of the vast regions which
she then held in our coimtry west of the Missis-
sippi, and finally the overthrow of the Spanish
national government, the setting up in Madrid
of a foreign king by a foreign conqueror, and a
long-drawn and incredibly destructive war. To
statesmen of this kind Washington and Lincoln
stand in as sharp contrast as they stand on the
other side to the great absolutist chiefs such as
Caesar, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, and Crom-
well. What was true of the personality of Wash-

38 THE WORLD WAR

ington and Lincoln was true of the policy they
sought to impress upon our nation. They were
just as hostile to the theory that virtue was to
be confounded with weakness as to the theory
that strength justified wrong-doing. No abun-

rdance of the milder virtues will save a nation that
has lost the virile qualities; and, on the other
hand, no admiration of strength must make us
deviate from the laws of righteousness. The

^nd of ** peace" advocated by the ultrapacificists
of 1776 would have meant that we never would
have had a country; the kind of ** peace" ad-
vocated by the ultrapacificists in the early '6o's
would have meant the absolute destruction of
the country. It would have been criminal weak-
ness for Washington not to have fought for the
independence of this country, and for Lincoln
not to have fought for the preservation of the
Union; just as in an infinitely smaller degree it
would have been criminal weakness for us if we
had permitted wrong-doing in Cuba to go on for-
ever vinchecked, or if we had failed to insist on
the building of the Panama Canal in exactly the
fashion that we did insist; and, above all, if we
had failed to biiild up our navy as dt;ring the last
twenty years it has been built up. No alliance,
no treaty, and no easy good-will of other nation^
will save us if we are not true to ourselves; and,
on the other hand, if we wantonly give offense to

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 39

others, if we excite hatred and fear, then some
day we will pay a heavy penalty. /

The most important lesson, therefore, for us
to learn from Belgium's fate is that, as things in
the world now are, we must in any great crisis
trust for our national safety to oiu: ability and
willingness to defend ourselves by our own
trained strength and courage. We must not
wrong others; and for our own safety we must
trust, not to worthless bits of paper unbacked
by power, and to treaties that are fimdamentally
foolish, but to oiu* own manliness and clear-sighted
willingness to face facts.

There is, however, another lesson which this
huge conflict may at least possibly teach. There
is at least a chance that from this calamity a
movement may come which will at once supple-
ment and in the future perhaps altogether sup-
plant the need of the kind of action so plainly in-
dicated by the demands of the present. It is at
least possible that the conflict will result in a
growth of democracy in Eiu-ope, in at least a
partial substitution of the rule of the people for
the rule of those who esteem it their God-given
right to govern the people. This, in its turn,
would render it probably a little more unlikely
that there would be a repetition of such disastrous
warfare. I do not think that at present it would
prevent the possibility of warfare. I think that

y

40 THE WORLD WAR

in the great countries engaged, the peoples as a
whole have been behind their sovereigns on both
sides of this contest. Certainly the action of the
Socialists in Germany, France, and Belgium, and,
so far as we know, of the popular leaders in Russia,
would tend to bear out the truth of this state-
ment. But the growth of the power of the peo-
/ple, while it would not prevent war, would at
least render it more possible than at present to
make appeals which might result in some cases in
coming to an accommodation based upon justice;
for justice is what popular rule must be per-
manently based upon and must permanently seek
to obtain or it will not itself be permanent.

Moreover, the horror that right-thinking citi-
zens feel over the awful tragedies of this war can
hardly fail to make sensible men take an interest
in genuine peace movements and try to shape
them so that they shall be more practical than at
present. I most earnestly believe in every rational
movement for peace. My objection is only to
movements that do not in very fact tell in favor
of peace or else that sacrifice righteousness to
peace. Of course this includes objection to all
treaties that make believe to do what, as a matter
of fact, they fail to do. Under existing con-
ditions imiversal and all-inclusive arbitration
treaties have been utterly worthless, because
where there is no power to compel nations to

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 41

arbitrate, and where it is perfectly certain that
some nations will pay no respect to such agree-
ments imless they can be forced to do so, it is
mere folly for others to trust to promises impossible
of performance; and it is an act of positive bad
faith to make these promises when it is certain
that the nation making them would violate them.
But this does not in the least mean that we must
abandon hope of taking action which will lessen
the chance of war and make it more possible to
circimiscribe the limits of war's devastation.

For this result we must largely trust to sheer
growth in morality and intelligence among the
nations themselves. For a himdred years peace
has obtained between us and Great Britain. No
frontier in Etirope is as long as the frontier be-
tween Canada and ourselves, and yet there is
not a fort, nor an armed force worthy of being
called such, upon it. This does not result from
any arbitration treaty or any other treaty. Such
treaties as those now existing are as a rule ob-
served only when they serve to make a record of
conditions that already exist and which they do
not create. The fact simply is that there has
been such growth of good feeling and intelli-
gence that war between us and the British Em-
pire is literally an impossibility, and there is no
more chance of military movements across the
Canadian border than there is of such movement

42 THE WORLD WAR

between New York and New Hampshire or Que-
bec and Ontario. Slowly but surely, I believe,
such feelings will grow, until war between the
Englishman and the German, or the Russian, or
the Frenchman, or between any of them and
the American, will be as imthinkable as now be-
tween the Englishman or Canadian and the Amer-
ican.

But something can be done to hasten this day
by wise action. It may not be possible at once to
have this action as drastic as would be ultimately
necessary; but we should keep our purpose in
view. The utter weakness of the Hague court,
and the worthlessness when strain is put upon
them of most treaties, spring from the fact that at
present there is no means of enforcing the carry-
ing out of the treaty or enforcing the decision of
the coiut. Under such circumstances recommen-
dations for imiversal disarmament stand on an
intellectual par with recommendations to establish
** peace" in New York City by doing away with
the police. Disarmament of the free and Hberty-
loving nations would merely mean insuring the
triimiph of some barbarism or despotism, and if
logically applied would mean the extinction of
liberty and of all that makes civilization worth
having throughout the world. But in view of
what has occurred in this war, siu-ely the time
ought to be ripe for the nations to consider a

THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY 43

great world agreement among all the civilized
military powers to hack righteousness by force.
Such an agreement wotdd establish an efficient
world league for the peace of righteousness.

CHAPTER III

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES A MENACE
TO RIGHTEOUSNESS

IN studying certain lessons which should be
taught the United States by this terrible worid
war, it is not necessary for us to try exactly
to assess or apportion the blame. There are plenty
of previous instances of violation of treaties to be
credited to almost all the nations engaged on one
side or the other. We need not try to puzzle out
why Italy and Japan seemingly construed similar
treaties of alliance in diametrically opposite ways;
nor need we decide which was justified or whether
both were justified. It is quite immaterial to us,
as regards certain of the lessons taught, whether
the treaties alleged to be violated affect Luxem-
botirg on the one hand or Bosnia on the other,
whether it is the neutrality of China or the neu-
trality of Belgium that is violated.

IYet again, we need always to keep in mind that,
although it is culpable to break a treaty, it may
be even worse recklessly to make a treaty which
cannot be kept.-v- Recklessness in making prom-
ises is the surest way in which to seciu"e the dis-

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES 45

credit attaching to the breaking of promises. A
treaty at present usually represents merely prom-
ise, not performance; and it is wicked to promise
what will not or cannot be performed. Genuine
good can even now be accomplished by narrowly
limited and defined arbitration treaties which are
not all-inclusive, if they deal with subjects on
which arbitration can be accepted. This nation
has repeatedly acted in obedience to such treaties;
and great good has come from arbitrations in such
cases as, for example, the Dogger Bank incident,
when the Russian fleet fired on British trawlers
during the Russo-Japanese 'war. But no good
whatever has come from treaties that represented
a sham; and imder existing conditions it is hypo-
critical for a nation to announce that it will arbi-
trate questions of honor or vital interest, and folly
to think that opponents will abide by such treaties.
Bad although it is to negotiate such a treaty, it
would be worse to abide by it.

Under these conditions it is mischievous to ai
degree for a nation to trust to any treaty of the
type now existing to protect it in great crises.!
Take the case of China as a living and present-
day example. China has shown herself utterly
impotent to defend her neutrality. Again and
again she made this evident in the past. Order
was not well kept at home and above all she was
powerless to defend herself from outside attack.

46 THE WORLD WAR

She has not prepared for war. She has kept
utterly unprepared for war. Yet she has suffered
more from war, in our own time, than any mil-
itary power in the world during the same period.
She has fulfilled exactly the conditions advocated
by these well-meaning persons who for the last
five months have been saying in speeches, edito-
rials, articles for syndicates, and the like that the
United States ought not to keep up battle-ships
and ought not to trust to fortifications nor in
any way to be ready or prepared to defend her-
self against hostile attack, but should endeavor
to secure peace by being so inoffensive and help-
less as not to arouse fear in others. The well-
fmeaning people who write these editorials and
Wake these speeches ought to understand that
though it is a bad thing for a nation to arouse fear
it is an infinitely worse thing to excite contempt;
and every editor or writer or public man who
tells us that we ought not to have battle-ships and
that we ought to trust entirely to well-intentioned
foolish all-inclusive arbitration treaties and aban-
don fortifications and not keep prepared, is merely
doing his best to bring contempt upon the United
States and to insure disaster in the future.

Nor is China the only case in point. Luxem-
bourg is a case in point. Korea is a case in point.
Korea was utterly inoffensive and helpless. It
neither took nor was capable of taking the smallest

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES 47

aggressive action against any one. It had no
forts, no war-ships, no army worthy of the name. ^
It excited no fear and no anger. But it did excite \
measiireless contempt, and therefore it invited
aggression.

The point I wish to make is, first, the extreme
unwisdom and impropriety of making promises
that cannot be kept, and, second, the utter futility
of expecting that in any save exceptional cases
a strong power will keep a promise which it finds
to its disadvantage, unless there is some way of
putting force back of the demand that the treaty
be observed.

America has no claim whatever to superior
virtue in this matter. We have shown an appall-
ing recklessness in making treaties, especially all-
inclusive arbitration treaties and the like, which
in time of stress would not and could not be ob-
served. When such a treaty is not observed the
blame really rests upon the unwise persons who
made the treaty. Unfortunately, however, this
apportionment of blame cannot be made by out-
siders. All they can say is that the coimtry con-
cerned— and I speak of the United States — does not
keep faith. The responsibility for breaking an im-
proper promise really rests with those who make
it ; but the penalty is paid by the whole country.

There are certain respects in which I think the
United States can fairly claim to stand ahead of

48 THE WORLD WAR

most nations in its regard for international mo-
rality. For example, last spring when we took
Vera Cniz, there were individuals within the city
who fired at our troops in exactly the same fash-
ion as that which is alleged to have taken place
in Louvain. But it never for one moment en-
tered the heads of our people to destroy Vera
Cruz. In the same way, when we promised free-
dom to Cuba, we kept our promise, and after
estabUshing an orderly government in Cuba with-
drew our army and left her as an independent
power; performing an act which, as far as I know,
is entirely without parallel in the dealings of
stronger with weaker nations.

In the same way our action in San Domingo,
when we took and administered her customs
houses, represented a substantial and efficient
achievement in the cause of international peace
which stands high in the very honorable but
scanty list of such actions by great nations in
dealing with their less fortimate sisters. In the
same way our handling of the Panama situation,
both in the acquisition of the canal, in its construc-
tion, and in the attitude we have taken toward
the dwellers on the Isthmus and all the nations of
mankind, has been such as to reflect signal honor
on our people. In the same way we returned the
Chinese indemnity, because we deemed it exces-
sive, just as previously we had returned a money

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES 49

indemnity to Japan. Similarly the disinterested-
ness with which we have administered the Philip-
pines for the good of the Philippine people is
something upon which we have a right to pride
ourselves and shows the harm that would have
been done had we not taken possession of the
Philippines.

But, unfortunately, in dealing with schemes of
universal peace and arbitration, we have often
shown an unwillingness to fulfil proper promises
which we had already made by treaty, coupled
with a reckless willingness to make new treaties
with all kinds of promises which were either im-
proper and ought not to be kept or which, even
if proper, could not and would not be kept. It
has again and again proved exceedingly diffictdt
to get Congress to appropriate money to pay
some obligation which under treaty or arbitra-
tion or the like has been declared to be owing by
us to the citizens of some foreign nation. Often
we have announced our intention to make sweep-
ing arbitration treaties or agreements at the very
time when by our conduct we were showing that
in actual fact we had not the slightest intention
of applying them with the sweeping universaHty
we promised. In these cases we were usually,
although not always, right in our refusal to apply
the treaties, or rather the principles set forth in
the treaties, to the concrete case at issue; but

so THE WORLD WAR

we were utterly wrong, we were, even although
perhaps unintentionally, both insincere and hypo-
critical, when at the same time we made believe
we intended that these principles would be univer-
sally appUed. This was particularly true in con-
nection with the imiversal arbitration treaties
which our government imsuccessfully endeavored
to negotiate some three years ago. Our govern-
ment announced at that time that we intended
to enter into universal arbitration treaties under
which we would arbitrate everything, even in-
cluding questions of honor and of vital national
interest. At the very time that this annotmcement
was made and the negotiation of the treaties be-
gun, the government in case after case where
specific performance of its pledges was demanded
responded with a flat refusal to do the very thing
it had annoimced its intention of doing.

Recently, there have been negotiated in Wash-
ington thirty or forty little all-inclusive arbitra-
tion or so-called ''peace" treaties, which repre-
sent as high a degree of fatuity as is often achieved
in these matters. There is no likelihood that
they will do us any great material harm because
it is absolutely certain that we would not pay the
smallest attention to them in the event of their
being invoked in any matter where our interests
were seriously involved; but it would do us moral
harm to break them, even although this were the

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES Si

least evil of two evil alternatives. It is a dis-
creditable thing that at this very moment, with
before our eyes such proof of the worthlessness of
the neutrality treaties affecting Belgium and
Luxembourg, our nation should be negotiating
treaties which convince every sensible and well-
informed observer abroad that we are either
utterly heedless in making promises which cannot
be kept or else willing to make promises which we
have no intention of keeping. What has just
happened shows that such treaties are worthless
except to the degree that force can and will be
used in backing them.

There are some well-meaning people, misled by
mere words, who doubtless think that treaties of
this kind do accomplish something. These good
and well-meaning people may feel that I am not
zealous in the cause of peace. This is the direct
reverse of the truth. I abhor war. In common
with all other thinking men I am inexpressibly
saddened by the dreadful contest now waging in
Europe. I put peace very high as an agent for
bringing about righteousness. But if I musti
choose between righteousness and peace I choosq
righteousness. Therefore, I hold myself in honor
boimd to do anything in my power to advance the
cause of the peace of righteousness throughout
the world. I believe we can make substantial
advances by international agreement in the line

52 THE WORLD WAR

of achieving this purpose and in this book I
state in outline just what I think can be done
toward this end. But I hold that we will do
nothing and less than nothing unless, pending
the accomplishment of this purpose, we keep our
own beloved coimtry in such shape that war shall
not strike her down ; and, furthermore, imless we
also seriously consider what the defects have
been in the existing peace, neutrality, and arbi-
tration treaties and in the attitude hitherto as-
sumed by the professional pacificists, which have
rendered these treaties such feeble aids to peace
and the ultrapacificist attitude a positive obstacle
to peace.

The truth is that the advocates of world-wide
peace, like all reformers, should bear in mind
Josh Billings's astute remark that **it is much
easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent.**
The worthy pacificists have completely forgotten
that the Biblical injtmction is two-sided and that
we are bidden not only to be harmless as doves
but also to be wise as serpents. The ultra-
pacificists have imdoubtedly been an exceedingly
harmless body so far as obtaining peace is con-
cerned. They have exerted practically no in-
fluence in restraining wrong, although they have
sometimes had a real and lamentable influence in
crippling the forces of right and preventing them
from dealing with wrong. An appreciable amount

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES S3

of good work has been done for peace by genuine
lovers of peace, but it has not been done by the
feeble folk of the peace movement, loquacious but
impotent, who are usually unforttmately prom-
inent in the movement and who excite the utter
derision of the great powers of evil.

Sincere lovers of peace who are wise have been
obliged to face the fact that it is often a very com-
plicated thing to secure peace without the sac-
rifice of righteousness. Furthermore, they have
been obliged" to face the fact that generally the
only way to accomplish anything was by not
trying to accomplish too much.

The complicated nature of the problem is shown
by the fact that whereas the real friends of right-
eousness believe that our duty to peace ought to be
fulfilled by protesting against — and doubtless if
necessary doing more than merely protest against
— the violation of the rights seciu*ed to Belgiimi by
treaty, the professional pacificists nervously point
out that such a course would expose us to accu-
sations of abandoning our * ' neutrality. * ' In theory
these pacificists admit it to be our duty to uphold
the Hague treaties of which we were among the
signatory powers; but they are against effective
action to uphold them, for they are pathetic be-
lievers in the all-sufficiency of signatures, placed
on bits of paper. They have pinned their faith
to the foolish belief that everything put in these

54 THE WORLD WAR

treaties was forthwith guaranteed to all mankind.
In dealing with the rights of neutrals Article lo of
Chapter i explicitly states that if the territory
of a neutral nation is invaded the repelling of
such invasion by force shall not be esteemed a
*' hostile'* act on the part of the neutral nation.
Unquestionably imder this clause Belgitmi has
committed no hostile act. Yet, this soimd dec-
laration of morality, in a treaty that the leading
world-powers have signed, amotmts to precisely
and exactly notliing so far as the rights of poor Bel-
gium are concerned, because there is no way pro-
vided of enforcing the treaty and because the
American government has decided that it can
keep at peace and remain neutral only by declin-
ing to do what, according to the intention of the
Hague treaty, it would be expected to do in secur-
ing peace for Belgium. In practice the Hague
treaties have proved and will always prove use-
less while there is no sanction of force behind
them. For the United States to proffer **good
offices*' to the various powers entering such a great
conflict as the present one accomplishes not one
particle of good; to refer them, when they mutually
complain of wrongs, to a Hague court which is
merely a phantom does less than no good. The
Hague treaties can accomplish nothing, and ought
not to have been entered into, imless in such a
case as this of Belgium there is willingness to take

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES SS

efficient action under them. There could be no
better illustration of how extremely complicated
and difficult a thing it is in practice instead of in
theory to make even a small advance in the cause
of peace.

I believe that international opinion can do
something to arrest wrong; but only if it is
aroused and finds some method of clear and force-
ful expression. For example, I hope that it has
been aroused to the point of preventing any repe-
tition at the expense of Brussels of the destruc-
tion which has befallen Louvain. The peaceful
people of Brussels now live in dread of what may
happen to them if the Germans should evacuate
the city. In such an event it is possible that half
a dozen fanatics, or half a dozen young roughs
of the "Apache** type, in spite of everything
that good citizens may do, will from some build-
ing fire on the retiring soldiers. In such case the
offenders ought to be and must be treated with
instant and tmsparing rigor, and those clearly
guilty of aiding or shielding them should also be
so treated. But if in such case Brussels is in whole
or in part destroyed as Louvain was destroyed,
those destroying it will be guilty of a capital
crime against civilization; and it is heartily to
be regretted that civilized nations have not de-
vised some method by which the collective power
of civilization can be used to prevent or pimish

S6 THE WORLD WAR

such crimes. In every great city there are plenty
of reckless or fanatical or downright evil men
eagerly ready to do some act which is abhorrent
to the vast majority of their fellows; and it is
wicked to ptmish with cruel severity immense
multitudes of innocent men, women, and children
for the misdeeds of a few rascals or fanatics. Of
course, it is eminently right to punish by death
these rascals or fanatics themselves.

Kindly people who know little of life and noth-
ing whatever of the great forces of international
rivalry have exposed the cause of peace to ridicule
by believing that serious wars could be avoided
through arbitration treaties, peace treaties, neu-
trality treaties, and the action of the Hague court,
without putting force behind such treaties and
such action. The simple fact is that none of these
existing treaties and no fimction of the Hague
court hitherto planned and exercised have ex-
erted or could exert the very smallest influence in
maintaining peace when great conflicting inter-
national passions are aroused and great conflict-
ing national interests are at stake. It happens
that wars have been more nimierous in the fifteen
years since the first Hague conference than in the
fifteen years prior to it. It was Russia that
called the first and second Hague conferences,
and in the interval she fought the war with Japan
and is now fighting a far greater war. We bore

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES 57

a prominent part at the Hague conferences; but
if the Hague court had been in existence in 1898
it could not have had the smallest effect upon our
war with Spain; and neither would any possible
arbitration treaty or peace treaty have had any
effect. At the present moment Great Britain owes
its immimity from invasion purely to its navy
and to the fact that that navy has been sedulously
exercised in time of peace so as to prepare it for
war. Great Britain has always been willing to
enter into any reasonable — and into some unrea-
sonable— peace and arbitration treaties; but her
fate now would have been the fate of Belgium
and would not have been hindered in the smallest
degree by these treaties, if she had not possessed a
first-class navy. The navy has done a thousand
times more for her peace than all the arbitration
treaties and peace treaties of the type now exist-
ing that the wit of man could invent. I believe
that national agreement in the future can do much
toward minimizing the chance for war; but it
must be by proceeding along different lines from
those hitherto followed and in an entirely different
spirit from the ultrapacificist or professional peace-
at-any-price spirit.

The Hague court has served a very limited,
but a useful, purpose. Some, although only a
small number, of the existing peace and arbitra-
tion treaties have served a useful purpose. But

S8 THE WORLD WAR

the ptirpose and the service have been strictly
limited. Issues often arise between nations
which are not of first-class importance, which do
not affect their vital honor and interest, but
which, if left imsettled, may eventually cause irri-
tation that will have the worst possible results.
The Hague court and the different treaties in
question provide instrumentalities for settling
such disputes, where the nations involved really
wish to settle them but might be imable to do so
if means were not supplied. This is a real service
and one well worth rendering. These treaties
and the, Hague court have rendered such service
again and again in time past. It has been a mis-
forttme that some worthy people have anticipated
too much and claimed too much in reference to
them, for the failure of the excessive claims has
blinded men to what they really have accom-
plished. To expect from them what they cannot
give is merely short-sighted. To assert that they
will give what they cannot give is mischievous.
To promise that they will give what they cannot
give is not only mischievous but hypocritical;
and it is for this reason that such treaties as
the thirty or forty all-inclusive arbitration or peace
treaties recently negotiated at Washington, al-
though imimportant, are slightly harmful.

The Hague court has proved worthless in the
present gigantic crisis. There is hardly a Hague

UNWISE PEACE TREATIES 59

treaty which in the present crisis has not in some
respect been violated. However, a step toward
the peaceful settlement of questions at issue be-
tween nations which are not vital and which do
not mark a serious crisis has been accomplished
on certain occasions in the past by the action of
the Hague court and by rational and limited
peace or arbitration treaties. Our business is to
try to make this court of more effect and to en-
large the class of cases where its actions will be
valuable. In order to do this, we must endeavor
to put an international police force behind this
international judiciary. At the same time we
must refuse to do or say anything insincere.
Above all, we must refuse to be misled into aban-
doning the policy of efficient self-defense, by any
unfotmded trust that the Hague court, as now
constituted, and peace or arbitration treaties of
the existing type, can in the smallest degree ac-
complish what they never have accomplished and
never can accomplish. Neither the existing Hague
cotut nor any peace treaties of the existing type
will exert even the slightest influence in saving
from disaster any nation that does not preserve
the virile virtues and the long-sightedness that
will enable it by its own might to guard its own
honor, interest, and national life.

CHAPTER IV

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR

FROM what we have so far considered, two
things are evident. First, it is quite clear
that in the world, as it is at this moment
situated, it is literally criminal, literally a crime
against the nation, not to be adequately and
thoroughly prepared in advance, so as to guard
ourselves and hold our own in war. We should
have a much better army than at present, in-
cluding especially a far larger reserve upon
which to draw in time of war. We shotild have
first-class fortifications, especially on the canal
and in Hawaii. Most important of all, we should
not only have a good navy but should have it
continually exercised in manoeuvring. For nearly
two years our navy has totally lacked the practice
in manoeuvring in fleet formation indispensable to
its efficiency.

Of all the lessons hitherto taught by the war,
the most essential for us to take to heart is that
taught by the catastrophe that has befallen Bel-
giimi. One side of this catastrophe, one lesson
taught by Belgiimi's case, is the immense gain in

60

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 6i

the self-respect of a people that has dared to fight
heroically in the face of certain disaster and pos-
sible defeat. Every Belgian throughout the
world carries his head higher now than he has
ever carried it before, because of the proof of
virile strength that his people have given. In
the world at large there is not the slightest interest
concerning Luxembourg's ultimate ^f ate; there is
nothing more than amusement as to the discus-
sion whether Japan or Germany is most to blame
in connection with the infringement of Chinese
neutrality. This is because neither China nor
Luxembourg has been able and willing effectively
to stand for her own rights. At this moment
Luxembotirg is enjoying ** peace" — the peace of
death. But Belgiimi has stood for her own rights.
She has shown heroism, courage, and self-sacrifice,
and, great though the penalty, the ultimate re-
ward will be greater still.

If ever this coimtry is attacked and drawn into
war as Belgium, through no fault of her own, was
drawn into war, I hope most earnestly that she
will emulate Belgiimi's courage; and this she can-
not do unless she is prepared in advance as Bel-
gium was prepared. In one point, as I have
already stated, I very earnestly hope that she will
go beyond Belgiimi. If any great city, such as
New York or San Francisco, Boston or Seattle, is
held for ransom by a foreign foe, I earnestly hope

62 THE WORLD WAR

that Americans, within the city and without, will
insist that not one dollar of ransom shall be paid,
and will gladly acquiesce in the absolute destruc-
tion of the city, by fire or in any other manner,
rather than see a dollar paid into the war chest
of our foes for the further prosecution of the war
against us. Napoleon the Great made many
regions pay for their own conquest and the con-
quest of the nations to which they belonged.
But Spain and Russia would not pay, and the
burning of Moscow and the defense of Saragossa
marked the two great stages in the turn of the
tide against him. The prime lesson of this war
'" Bs that no nation can preserve its own self-respect,
br the good-will of other nations, imless it keeps
itself ready to exact justice from others, precisely
ks it should keep itself eager and willing to do
pustice to others.

The second lesson is the utter inadequacy in
times of great crises of existing peace and neu-
I trality treaties, and of all treaties conceived in
/ the spirit of the all-inclusive arbitration treaties
\ recently adopted at Washington; and, in fact, of
all treaties which do not put potential force be-
hind the treaty, which do not create some kind of
international police power to stand behind inter-
/ national sense of right as expressed in some com-
petent tribimal.

It remains to consider whether there is not —

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 63

and I believe there is — some method which will
bring nearer the day when international war of
the kind hitherto waged and now waging between
nations shall be relegated to that past which con-
tains the kind of private war that was habitually-
waged between individuals up to the end of the
Middle Ages. By degrees the work of a national
police has been substituted for the exercise of the
right of private war. The growth of sentiment
in favor of peace within each nation accomplished
little imtil an effective police force was put back
of the sentiment. There are a few commimities
where such a police force is almost non-existent,
although always latent in the shape of a sheriff's
posse or something of the kind. In all big com-
mimities, however, in all big cities, law is observed,
innocent and law-abiding and peaceful people are
protected and the disorderly and violent classes
prevented from a riot of mischief and wrong-do-
ing only by the presence of an efficient police
force. Some analogous international pQlice^ force
must be created if war between nations is to Be
minimized as war between individuals has been
minimized.

It is, of course, essential that, if this end is to
be accomplished, we shall face facts with the
understanding of what they really signify. Not
the slightest good is done by hysterical outcries
for a peace which would consecrate wrong or

64 THE WORLD WAR

leave wrongs tinredressed. Little or nothing
would be gained by a peace which merely stopped
this war for the moment and left imtouched all
the causes that have brought it about. A peace
which left the wrongs of Belgiimi imredressed,
which did not leave her independent and secured
against fiu*ther wrong-doing, and which did not
provide measures hereafter to safeguard all peace-
ful nations against suffering the fate that Belgium
has suffered, would be mischievous rather than
beneficial in its ultimate effects. If the United
States had any part in bringing about such a
peace it would be deeply to our discredit as a
nation. Belgiimi has been terribly wronged, and
the civilized world owes it to itself to see that this
wrong is redressed and that steps are taken which
will guarantee that hereafter conditions shall not
be permitted to become such as either to require or
to permit such action as that of Germany against
Belgiimi. Surely all good and honest men who
are lovers of peace and who do not use the great
words "love of peace" to cloak their own folly
and timidity must agree that peace is to be made
the handmaiden of righteousness or else that it is
worthless.

England's attitude in going to war in defense
of Belgitim's rights, according to its guarantee,
was not only strictly proper but represents the
only kind of action that ever will make a neu-

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 65

trality treaty or peace treaty or arbitration treaty
worth the paper on which it is written. The pub-
lished despatches of the British government show
that Sir Edward Grey clearly, emphatically, and
scruptilously declined to commit his government
to war until it became imperative to do so if Great
Britain was to fulfil, as her honor and interest
alike demanded, her engagements on behalf of the
neutrality of Belgium. Of course, as far as Great
Britain is concerned, she would not be honorably
justified in making peace unless this object of her
going to war was achieved. Our hearty sympathy
should go out to her in this attitude.

The case of Belgium in this war stands by it-
self. As regards all the other powers, it is not
only possible to make out a real case in favor of
every nation on each side, but it is also quite pos-
sible to show that, under existing conditions, each
nation was driven by its vital interests to do what
it did. The real nature of the problem we have
ahead of us can only be grasped if this attitude of
the several powers is thoroughly understood. To
paint the Kaiser as a devil, merely bent on grat-
ifying a wicked thirst for bloodshed, is an absurd-
ity, and worse than an absurdity. I believe that
history will declare that the Kaiser acted in con-
formity with the feelings of the German people
and as he sincerely believed the interests of his
people demanded; and, as so often before in his

66 THE WORLD WAR

personal and family life, he and his family have
given honorable proof that they possess the qual-
ities that are charact:eristic of the German people.
Every one of his sons went to the war, not nom-
inally, but to face every danger and hardship.
Two of his sons hastily married the girls to whom
they were betrothed and immediately afterward
left for the front.

This was a fresh illustration of one of the most
striking features of the outbreak of the war in
Germany. In tens of thousands of cases the
officers and enlisted men, who were engaged, mar-
ried immediately before starting for the front.
In many of the churches there were long queues
of brides waiting for the ceremony, so as to enable
their lovers to marry them just before they re-
sponded to the order that meant that they might
have to sacrifice everything, including life, for
the nation. A nation that shows such a spirit is
assuredly a great nation. The efficiency of the
German organization, the results of the German
preparation in advance, were strikingly shown in
the powerful forward movement of the first six
weeks of the war and in the steady endurance
and resolute resourcefulness displayed in the fol-
lowing months.

Not only is the German organization, the Ger-
man preparedness, highly creditable to Germany,
but even more creditable is the spirit l3dng behind

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 67

the organization. The men and women of Ger-
many, from the highest to the lowest, have shown
a splendid patriotism and abnegation of self. In
reading of their attitude, it is impossible not to
feel a thrill of admiration for the stem courage
and lofty disinterestedness which this great crisis
laid bare in the souls of the people. I most ear-
nestly hope that we Americans, if ever the need
may arise, will show similar qualities.

It is idle to say that this is not a people's war.
The intensity of conviction in the righteousness
of their several causes shown by the several peo-
ples is a prime factor for consideration, if we are
to take efficient means to try to prevent a repeti-
tion of this incredible world tragedy. History
may decide in any war that one or the other party
was wrong, and yet also decide that the highest
qualities and powers of the himian soul were
shown by that party. We here in the United
States have now grown practically to accept this
view as regards our own Civil War, and we feel
an equal pride in the high devotion to the right,
as it was given each man to see the right, shown
alike by the men who wore the blue and the men
who wore the gray.

The English feel that in this war they fight not
only for themselves but for principle, for justice,
for civilization, for a real and lasting world peace.
Great Britain is backed by the great free democ-

68 THE WORLD WAR

racies that under her flag have grown up in Can-
ada, in Australia, in South Africa. She feels that
she stands for the Hberties and rights of weak
nations everywhere. One of the most striking
features of the war is the way in which the varied
peoples of India have sprung to arms to defend
the British Empire.

The Russians regard the welfare of their whole
people as at stake. The Russian Liberals believe
that success for Russia means an end of militarism
in Etirope. They believe that the Pole, the Jew,
the Finn, the man of the Caucasus will each and
all be enfranchised, that the advance of justice
and right in Russia will be immeasurably furthered
by the tritimph of the Russian people in this con-
test, and that the conflict was essential, not only
to Russian national life but to the growth of free-
dom and justice within her boimdaries.

The Deople of Germany believe that they are
engd,5ca primarily in a fight for life of the Teuton
against the Slav, of civilization against what they
regard as a vast menacing flood of barbarism.
They went to war because they believed the war
was an absolute necessity, not merely to German
well-being but to German national existence.
They sincerely feel that the nations of western
Europe are traitors to the cause of Occidental civ-
ilization, and that they themselves are fighting,
each man for his own hearthstone, for his own wife

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 69

and children, and all for the future existence of
the generations yet to come.

The French feel with passionate conviction that
this is the last stand of France, and that if she does
not now succeed and is again trampled tinder foot,
her people will lose for all time their place in the
forefront of that great modem civilization of
which the debt to France is literally incalculable.
It would be impossible too highly to admire the
way in which the men and women of France
have borne themselves in this nerve-shattering
time of awful struggle and awful suspense. They
have risen level to the hour's need, whereas in
1870 they failed so to rise. The high valor of the
French soldiers has been matched by the poise,
the self-restraint, the dignity and the resolution
with which the French people and the French
government have behaved.

Of Austria and Hungary, of Servia and Monte-
negro, exactly the same is true, and the people of
each of these countries have shown the sternest
and most heroic courage and the loftiest and most
patriotic willingness for self-sacrifice. /

To each of these peoples the war seems a cru-*^
sade against threatening wrong, and each man |
fervently believes in the justice of his cause. 1
Moreover, each combatant fights with that terri- I
ble determination to destroy the opponent which
springs from fear. It is not the fear which any

70 THE WORLD WAR

one of these powers has inspired that offers the
difficult problem. It is the fear which each of
them genuinely feels. Russia beHeves that a
quarter of the Slav people will be trodden imder
the heel of the Germans, imless she succeeds.
France and England beheve that their very exis-
tence depends on the destruction of the German
menace. Germany believes that unless she can so
cripple, and, if possible, destroy her western foes,
as to make them harmless in the futiure, she will
be unable hereafter to protect herself against the
mighty Slav people on her eastern boundary and
will be reduced to a condition of international im-
potence. Some of her leaders are doubtless in-
fluenced by worse motives; but the motives above
given are, I believe, those that influence the great
mass of Germans, and these are in their essence
merely the motives of patriotism, of devotion to
one's people and one's native land.

We nations who are outside ought to recognize
both the reality of this fear felt by each nation for
others, together with the real justification for its
existence. Yet we cannot sympathize with that
fear-bom anger which would vent itself in the
annihilation of the conquered. The right attitude
Is to limit militarism, to destroy the menace of
militarism, but to preserve the national integrity
lof each nation. The contestants are the great
civilized peoples of Europe and Asia.

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 7^

Japan's part in the war has been slight. She has
borne herself with scrupulous regard not only to
the rights but to the feelings of the people of the
United States. Japan's progress should be wel-
comed by every enlightened friend of humanity
because of the promise it contains for the regen-
eration of Asia. All that is necessary in order to
remove every particle of apprehension caused by
this progress is to do what ought to be done in
reference to her no less than in reference to Euro-
pean and American powers, namely, to develop
a world poHcy which shall guarantee each nation
against any menace that might otherwise be held
for it in the growth and progress of another nation.

The destruction of Russia is not thinkable, but
if it were, it would be a most frightful calamity.
The Slavs are a young people, of Hmitless possi-
bilities, who from various causes have not been
able to develop as rapidly as the peoples of central
and western Europe. They have grown in civili-
zation until their further advance has become
something greatly to be desired, because it will be
a factor of immense importance in the welfare of
the world. All that is necessary is for Russia to
throw aside the spirit of absolutism developed in
her during the centuries of Mongol dominion.
She will then be foimd doing what no other race
can do and what it is of peculiar advantage to the
English-speaking peoples that she should do.

72 THE WORLD WAR

As for crushing Germany or crippling her and
reducing her to political impotence, such an action
would be a disaster to mankind. The Germans
are not merely brothers; they are largely our-
selves. The debt we owe to German blood is
great; the debt we owe to German thought and to
German example, not only in governmental ad-
ministration but in all the practical work of life,
is even greater. Every generous heart and every
far-seeing mind throughout the world should re-
joice in the existence of a stable, imited, and pow-
erful Germany, too strong to fear aggression and
too just to be a source of fear to its neighbors.

As for France, she has occupied, in the modem
world, a position as unique as Greece in the world
of antiquity. To have her broken or cowed
would mean a loss to-day as great as the loss that
was suffered by the world when the creative
genius of the Greek passed away with his loss
of poHtical power and material greatness. The
world cannot spare France.

Now, the danger to each of these great and splen-
did civilizations arises far more from the fear that
each feels than from the fear that each inspires.
Belgiimi's case stands apart. She inspired no
fear. No peace should be m^ade imtil her wrongs
have been redressed, and the likelihood of the
repetition of such wrongs provided against. She
has suffered incredibly because the fear among the

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 73

plain German people, among the Socialists, for in-
stance, of the combined strength of France and
Russia made them acquiesce in and support the
policy of the military party, which was to disre-
gard the laws of international morality and the
plain and simple rights of the Belgian people.

It is idle merely to make speeches and write
essays against this fear, because at present the
fear has a real basis. At present each nation has
cause for the fear it feels. Each nation has cause
to believe that its national life is in peril unless
it is able to take the national life of one or more
of its foes or at least hopelessly to cripple that foe.
The causes of the fear must be removed or, no
matter what peace may be patched up to-day or
what new treaties may be negotiated to-morrow,
these causes will at some future day bring about
the same results, bring about a repetition of this
same awful tragedy.

CHAPTER V
HOW TO STRIVE FOR WORLD PEACE

IN the preceding chapters I have endeavored
to set forth, in a spirit of absolute fairness
and cahnness, the lessons as I see them that
this war teaches all the world and especially the
United States. I believe I have shown that,
while, at least as against Belgium, there has been ,
actual wrong-doing, yet on the whole and looking
back at the real and ultimate causes rather than
at the temporary occasions of the war, what has
occurred is due primarily to the intense fear felt
by each nation for other nations and to the anger n
bom of that fear. Doubtless in certain elements,
notably certain militaristic elements, of the popu-
lation other motives have been at work; but I
believe that the people of each country, in backing
the government of that country, in the present war
have been influenced mainly by a genuine patri-
otism and a genuine fear of what might happen
to their beloved land in the event of aggression
by other nations.

Under such conditions, as I have shown, our
duty is twofold. In the first place, events have

74

WORLD PEACE 75

/ clearly demonstrated that in any serious crisis
treaties unbacked by force are not worth the
paper upon which they are written. Events have
clearly shown that it is the idlest of folly to assert
and little short of treason against the nation for
statesmen who should know better to pretend,
that the salvation of any nation imder existing
world conditions can be trusted to treaties, to
little bits of paper with names signed on them but
without any efficient force behind them. The
United States will be guilty of criminal miscon-
duct, we of this generation will show oiu-selves
traitors to our children and oiur children's chil-
den if, as conditions are now, we do not keep our-
selves ready to defend our hearths, trusting in
. great crises not to treaties, not to the ineffective
good-will of outsiders, but to our own stout hearts
and strong hands.

So much for the first and most vital lesson. \
But we are not to be excused if we stop here. We
must endeavor earnestly but with sanity to try
to bring around better world conditions. We must
try to shape our policy in conjimction with other
nations so as to bring nearer the day when the
peace of righteousness, the peace of justice and
fair dealing, will be established among the nations
of the earth. With this object in view, it is our
duty carefully to weigh the influences which are
at work or may be put to work in order to bring

76 THE WORLD WAR

about this result and in every effective way to do
our best to further the growth of these influences.
When this has been done no American adminis-
tration will be able to assert that it is reduced
to humiliating impotence even to protest against
such wrong as that committed on Belgium, be-
cause, forsooth, our "neutrality" can only be pre-
served by failure to help right what is wrong —
and we shall then as a people have too much self-
respect to enter into absurd, all-inclusive arbitra-
tion treaties, unbacked by force, at the very mo-
ment when we fail to do what is clearly demanded
by our duty imder the Hague treaties.

Doubtless in the long nm most is to be hoped
from the slow growth of a better feeling, a more
real feeling of brotherhood among the nations,
among the peoples. The experience of the United
States shows that there is no real foundation in
race for the bitter antagonism felt among Slavs
and Germans, French and English. There are in
this country hundreds of thousands, millions, of
men who by birth and parentage are of German
descent, of French descent or Slavonic descent,
or descended from each of the peoples within the
British Islands. These different races not only
get along well together here, but become knit
into one people, and after a few generations tlieir
blood is mingled. In my own veins runs not only
the blood of ancestors from the various peoples

WORLD PEACE 77

of the British Islands, English, Scotch, Welsh,
and Irish, but also the blood of Frenchman and
of German — not to speak of my forefathers from
Holland. It is idle to tell us that the French-
man and the German, the Slav and the English-
man are irreconcilably hostile one to the other
because of difference of race. From our own
daily experiences we know the contrary. We
know that good men and bad men are to be found
in each race. We know that the differences be-
tween the races above named and many others
are infinitesimal compared with the vital points
of likeness.

But this growth is too slow by itself adequately
to meet present needs. At present we are con-
fronted with the fact that each nation must keep
armed and must be ready to go to war because
there is a real and desperate need to do so and
because the penalty for failure may be to suffer
a fate like that of China. At present in every
great crisis treaties have shown themselves not
worth the paper they are written on, and the
multitude of peace congresses that have been held
have failed to secure even the slightest tangible
result, as regards any contest in which the pas-
sions of great nations were fully aroused and their
vital interests really concerned. In other words,
each nation at present in any crisis of fimdamentalj
importance has to rely purely on its own power.

//

78 THE WORLD WAR

fits own strength, its own individual force. The
'futility of international agreements in great cri-
ses has come from the fact that force was not
back of them.

What is needed in international matters is to
create a judge and then to put police power back
of the judge.

So far the time has not been ripe to attempt
this. Surely now, in view of the awftd cataclysm
of the present war, such a plan could at least be
considered; and it may be that the combatants
at the end will be willing to try it in order to se-
cure at least a chance for the only kind of peace
that is worth having, the peace that is compat-
ible with self-respect. Merely to bring about a
peace at the present moment, without providing
for the elimination of the causes of war, would
accomplish nothing of any permanent value, and
the attempt to make it would probably represent
nothing else than the adroit use of some more or
less foolish or more or less self-interested out-
sider by some astute power which wished to see
if it could not put its opponents in the wrong.

If the powers were justified in going into this
war by their vital interests, then they are re-
quired to continue the war until these vital in-
terests are no longer in jeopardy. A peace which
left without redress wrongs like those which Bel-
gium has suffered or which in effect consecrated

WORLD PEACE 79

the partial or entire destruction of one or more
nations and the survival in aggravated form of
militarism and autocracy, and of international
hatred in its most intense and virulent form,
would really be only a worthless truce and would
not represent the slightest advance in the cause
of righteousness and of international morality.

The essential thing to do is to free each nation
from the besetting fear of its neighbor. This
can only be done by removing the causes of such
fear. The neighbor must no longer be a danger.

Mere disarmament will not accomplish this
result, and the disarmament of the free and en-
lightened peoples, so long as a single despotism
or barbarism were left armed, would be a hideous
calamity. If armaments were reduced while
causes of trouble were in no way removed, wars
would probably become somewhat more frequent
just because they would be less expensive and less
decisive. It is greatly to be desired that the
growth of armaments should be arrested, but they
cannot be arrested while present conditions con-
tinue. Mere treaties, mere bits of papers, with
names signed to them and with no force back of
them, have proved utterly worthless for the pro-
tection of nations, and where they are the only
alternatives it is not only right but necessary
that each nation should arm itself so as to be
able to cope with any possible foe.

8o THE WORLD WAR

The one permanent move for obtaining peace,
which has yet been suggested, with any reason-
; ible chance of attaining its object, is by an agree-
nent among the great powers, in which each
jjhotdd pledge itself not only to abide by the~3e^
(dsions of a common tribimal but to back with
ttorce the decisions of that common tribimal.
The great civilized nations of the world which do
possess force, actual or immediately potential,
should combine by solemn agreement in a great
World League for the Peace of Righteousness.
In a later chapter I shall briefly outline what
such an agreement should attempt to perform.
At present it is enough to say that such a world-
agreement offers the only alternative to each na- ^
tion*s relying purely on its own armed strength;
for a treaty unbacked by force is in no proper
sense of the word an alternative.

Of course, if there were not reasonable good
faith among the nations making such an agree-
ment, it would fail. But it would not fail merely
because one nation did not observe good faith.
It would be impossible to say that such an agree-
ment would at once and permanently bring uni-
versal peace. But it would certainly mark an
immense advance. It would certainly mean that
the chances of war were minimized and the pros-
pects of limiting and confining and regulating war
immensely increased. At present force, as repre-

WORLD PEACE 8i

sented by the armed strength of the nations, is
wholly divorced from such instrumentalities for
securing peace as international agreements and
treaties. In consequence, the latter are practi-
cally impotent in great crises. There is no con-
nection between force, on the one hand, and any
scheme for securing international peace or justice
on the other. Under these conditions every wise
and upright nation must continue to rely for its
own peace and well-being on its own force, its
own strength. As all students of the law know, a
right without a remedy is in no real sense of the
word a right at all. In international matters the
declaration of a right, or the announcement of a
worthy purpose, is not only aimless, but is a just
cause for derision and may even be mischievous,
if force is not put behind the right or the purpose.
Our business is to make force the agent of justice,
the instrtiment of right in international matters
as it has been made in municipal matters, in
matters within each nation.

One good purpose which would be served by the
kind of international action I advocate is that of
authoritatively deciding when treaties terminate
or lapse. At present every treaty ought to con-
tain provision for its abrogation; and at present
the wrong done in disregarding a treaty may be
one primarily of time and manner. Unquestion-
ably it may become an imperative duty to abro-

82 THE WORLD WAR

gate a treaty. The Supreme Court of the United
States set forth this right and duty in convincing
manner when discussing our treaty with France
during the administration of John Adams, and
again a century later when discussing the Chinese
treaty. The difficulty at present is that each
case must be treated on its own merits; for in
some cases it may be right and necessary for a
nation to abrogate or denoimce (not to violate)
a treaty; and yet in other cases such abrogation
may represent wrong-doing which should be sup-
pressed by the armed strength of civilization.
At present in cases where only two nations are
concerned there is no substitute for such abroga-
tion or violation of the treaty by one of them;
for each of the two has to be judge in its own case.
But the tribunal of a world league would ofiEer
the proper place to which to apply for the abroga-
tion of treaties; and, with international force
back of such a tribunal, the infraction of a treaty
could be punished in whatever way the necessi-
ties of the case demanded.

Such a scheme as the one hereinafter briefly out-
lined will not bring perfect justice any more than
imder mtmicipal law we obtain perfect justice; but
it will mark an immeasurable advance on anything
now existing; for it will mean that at last a long
stride has been taken in the effort to put the col-
lective strength of civilized mankind behind the

WORLD PEACE 83

collective purpose of mankind to sectire the peace
of righteousness, the peace of justice among the
nations of the earth.

It may be, though I sincerely hope to the con-
trary, that such a scheme is for the immediate
future Utopian — ^it certainly will not be Utopian
for the remote future. If it is impossible in the
immediate futtire to devise some working scheme
by which force shall be put behind righteousness
in disinterested and effective fashion, where inter-
national wrongs are concerned, then the only
alternative will be for each free people to keep it-
self in shape with its own strength to defend its
own rights and interests, and meanwhile to do all
that can be done to help forward the slow growth
of sentiment which is assuredly, although very
gradually, telling against international wrong-
doing and violence.

Man, in recognizedly human shape, has been
for ages on this planet, and the extraordinary dis-
coveries in Egypt and Mesopotamia now enable
us to see in dim fashion the beginning of historic
times six or seven thousand years ago. In the
earlier ages of which history speaks there was prac-
tically no such thing as an international con-
science. The armies of Babylon and Assyria,
Egypt and Persia felt no sense of obligation to
outsiders and conquered merely because they
wished to conquer. In Greece a very imperfect

84 THE WORLD WAR

recognition of international right grew up so far
as Greek communities were concerned, but it
never extended to barbarians. In the Roman
Empire this feeling grew slightly, if only for the
reason that so many nations were included within
its boimds and were forced to live peaceably to-
gether. In the Middle Ages the common Chris-
tianity of Eiu-ope created a real bond. There
was at least a great deal of talk about the duties
of Christian nations to one another; and although
the action along the lines of the talk was lamen-
tably insufficient, still the talk itself represented
the dawning recognition of the fact that each na-
tion might owe something to other nations and
that it was not right to base action purely on self-
interest.

There has undoubtedly been a wide expansion
of this feeling during the last few centuries, and
partictdarly during the last century. It now ex-
tends so as to include not only Christian nations
but also those non-Christian nations which them-
selves treat with justice and fairness the men of
different creed. We are still a lamentably long
distance away from the goal toward which we are
striving; but we have taken a few steps toward
that goal. A himdred years ago the English-
speaking peoples of Britain and America regarded
one another as inveterate and predestined enemies,
just as three centuries previously had been the

WORLD PEACE 8$

case in Great Britain itself between those who
dwelt in the northern half and those who dwelt
in the southern half of the island. Now war is
unthinkable between us. Moreover, there is a
real advance in good-will, respect, and under-
standing between the United States and all the
other nations of the earth. The advance is not
steady and it is interrupted at times by acts of
unwisdom, which are quite as apt to be committed
by ourselves as by other peoples; but the advance
has gone on. There is far greater sentiment than
ever before against unwarranted aggressions by
stronger powers against weak powers; there is
far greater feeling against misconduct, whether in
small or big powers; and far greater feeling against
brutality in war.

This does not mean that the wrong-doing as
regards any one of these matters has as yet been
even approximately stopped or that the indigna-
tion against such wrong-doing is as yet anything
like as effective as it should be. But we must
not let our horror at the wrong that is still done
blind us to the fact that there has been improve-
ment. As late as the eighteenth century there
were continual instances where small nations or
provinces were overrun, just as Belgium has been
cvemm, without any feeling worth taking into
accoimt being thereby excited in the rest of man-
kind. In the seventeenth century affairs were

86 THE WORLD WAR

worse. What has been done in Belgian cities
has been very dreadful and the Belgian cotintry-
side has suffered in a way to wring our hearts;
but our sympathy and indignation must not blind
us to the fact that even in this case there has
been a real advance during the last three hundred
years and that such things as were done to Mag-
deburg and Wexford and Drogheda and the en-
tire Palatinate in the seventeenth century are no
longer possible.

There is every reason to feel dissatisfied with
the slow progress that has been made in putting
a stop to wrong-doing; it is our botmden duty
now to act so as to secure redress for wrong-
doing; but nevertheless we must also recognize
the fact that some progress has been made, and
that there is now a good deal of real sentiment,
and some efficient sentiment, against international
wrong-doing. There has been a real growth toward
international peace, justice, and fair dealing. We
have still a long way to go before reaching the
goal, but at least we have gone forward a little
way toward the goal. This growth will continue.
We must do everything that we can to make it
continue. But we must not blind ourselves to
the fact that as yet this growth is not such as in
any shape or way to warrant us in relying for
our ultimate safety in great national crises upon
anything except the strong fibre of our national

WORLD PEACE 87

character, and upon such preparation in advance
as will give that character adequate instruments
wherewith to make proof of its strength.

CHAPTER VI

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

"Come, Peace I not like a mourner bowed

For honor lost and dear ones wasted,
But proud, to meet a people proud.

With eyes that tell o' triumph tasted I
Come, with han' gripping on the hilt.

An' step that proves ye Victory's daughter I
Longin' for you, our sperits wilt

Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water.

"Come, while our country feels the lift

Of a great instinct shouting 'Forwards I*
An* knows that freedom ain't a gift ' »

Thet tarries long in han's of cowards !
Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when

They kissed their cross with lips that quivered,
An' bring fair wages for brave men,

A nation saved, a race delivered I"

THESE are the noble lines of a noble poet,
written in the sternest days of the great
Civil War, when the writer, Lowell, was
one among the millions of men who mourned the
death in battle of kinsfolk dear to him. No man
ever lived who hated an tmjust war more than
Lowell or who loved with more passionate fervor
the peace of righteousness. Yet, like the other
great poets of his day and coimtry, like Holmes,

88

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 89

who sent his own son to the war, like gentle Long-
fellow and the Quaker Whittier, he abhorred un-
righteousness and ignoble peace more than war.
These men had lofty souls. They possessed the
fighting edge, without which no man is really
great ; for in the really great man there must be
both the heart of gold and the temper of steel.

In 1864 there were in the North some himdreds
of thousands of men who praised peace as the
supreme end, as a good more important than all
other goods, and who denoimced war as the worst
of all evils. These men one and all assailed and
denounced Abraham Lincoln, and all voted
against him for President. Moreover, at that
time there were many individuals in England and
France who said it was the duty of those two na-
tions to mediate between the North and the South,
so as to stop the terrible loss of life and destruc-
tion of property which attended our Civil War;
and they asserted that any Americans who in
such event refused to accept their mediation and
to stop the war would thereby show themselves
the enemies of peace. Nevertheless, Abraham
Lincoln and the men back of him by their attitude
prevented all such effort at mediation, declaring
that they would regard it as an unfriendly act
to the United States. Looking back from a dis-
tance of fifty years, we can now see clearly that
Abraham Lincoln and his supporters were right.

90 THE WORLD WAR

Such mediation would have been a hostile act, not
only to the United States but to humanity. The
men who clamored for unrighteous peace fifty
years ago this fall were the enemies of mankind.

These facts should be pondered by the well-
meaning men who always clamor for peace with-
out regard to whether peace brings justice or in-
justice. Very many of the men and women who
are at times misled into demanding peace, as if it
were itself an end instead of being a means of
righteousness, are men of good intelligence and
soimd heart who only need seriously to consider
the facts, and who can then be trusted to think
aright and act aright. There is, however, an ele-
ment of a certain nimierical importance among
our people, including the members of the ultra-
pacificist group, who by their teachings do some
real, although limited, mischief. They are a
feeble folk, these ultrapacificists, morally and
physically; but in a country where voice and
vote are alike free, they may, if their teachings
are not disregarded, create a condition of things
where the crop they have sowed in folly and weak-
ness will be reaped with blood and bitter tears by
the brave men and high-hearted women of the
nation.

The folly preached by some of these individuals
is somewhat startling, and if it were translated
from words into deeds it would constitute a crime

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 91

against the nation. One professed teacher of
morahty made the plea in so many words that
we ought to follow the example of China and de-
prive otirselves of all power to repel foreign attack.
Surely this writer must have possessed the ex-
ceedingly small amount of information necessary
in order to know that nearly half of China was
under foreign dominion and that while he was
writing the Germans and Japanese were battling
on Chinese territory and domineering as con-
querors over the Chinese in that territory. Think
of the abject soul of a man capable of holding up
to the admiration of free-bom American citizens
such a condition of serfage imder alien rule !

Nor is the folly confined only to the male sex.
A number of women teachers in Chicago are
credited with having proposed, in view of the war,
hereafter to prohibit in the teaching of history any
reference to war and battles. Intellectually, of
course, such persons show themselves unfit to
be retained as teachers a single day, and indeed
unfit to be pupils in any school more advanced
than a kindergarten. But it is not their intellec-
tual, it is also their moral shortcomings which are
striking. The suppression of the truth is, of
coiu*se, as grave an offense against morals as is
the suggestion of the false or even the lie direct;
and these teachers actually propose to teach tm-
truths to their pupils.

92 THE WORLD WAR

True teachers of history must tell the facts of
history; and if they do not tell the facts both
about the wars that were righteous and the wars
that were unrighteous, and about the causes that
led to these wars and to success or defeat in them,
they show themselves morally imfit to train the
minds of boys and giris. If in addition to telling
the facts they draw the lessons that should be
drawn from the facts, they will give their pupils
a horror of all wars that are entered into wantonly
or with levity or in a spirit of mere brutal aggres-
sion or save imder dire necessity. But they will
also teach that among the noblest deeds of man-
kind are those that have been done in great wars
for liberty, in wars of self-defense, in wars for the
relief of oppressed peoples, in wars for putting an
end to wrong-doing in the dark places of the globe.

Any teachers, in school or college, who occupied
the position that these foolish, foolish teachers
have sought to take, would be forever estopped
from so much as mentioning Washington and
Lincoln; because their lives are forever asso-
ciated with great wars for righteousness. These
teachers would be forever estopped from so much
as mentioning the shining names of Marathon and
Salamis. They would seek to blind their pupils*
eyes to the glory held in the deeds and deaths
of Joan of Arc, of Andreas Hofer, of Alfred the
Great, of Arnold von Winkelried, of Kosciusko

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 93

and Rakoczy. They wotdd be obliged to warn
their pupils against ever reading Schiller's "Wil-
liam Tell" or the poetry of Koemer. Such men
are deaf to the lament nmning:

" Oh, why, Patrick Sarsfield, did we let your ships sail,
Across the dark waters from green Innisfail?"

To them Holmes's ballad of Bunker Hill and
Whittier's "Laus Deo," MacMaster's Ode to the
Old Continentals" and O'Hara's ''Bivouac of
the Dead" are meaningless. Their cold and
timid hearts are not stirred by the surge of the
tremendous "Battle Hymn of the RepubHc." On
them lessons of careers Hke those of Timoleon and
John Hampden are lost; in their eyes the lofty
self-abnegation of Robert Lee and Stonewall Jack-
son was folly; their dull senses do not thrill to the
deathless deaths of the men who died at Ther-
mopylae and at the Alamo — the fight of those
grim Texans of which it was truthfully said that
Thermopylae had its messengers of death but the
Alamo had none.

It has actually been proposed by some of these
shivering apostles of the gospel of national abject-
ness that, in view of the destruction that has fallen
on certain peaceful powers of Europe, we should
abandon all efforts at self-defense, should stop
building battle-ships, and cease to take any mea-
sures to defend ourselves if attacked. It is diffi-

94 THE WORLD WAR

cult seriously to consider such a proposition." It
is precisely and exactly as if the inhabitants of a
village in whose neighborhood highway robberies
had occurred should propose to meet the crisis by
depriving the local policeman of his revolver and
club.

There are, however, many high-minded people
who do not agree with these extremists, but who
nevertheless need to be enlightened as to the
actual facts. These good people, who are busy
people and not able to devote much time to
thoughts about international affairs, are often con-
fused by nien whose business it is to know bet-
ter. For example, a few weeks ago these good
people were stirred to a moment's beHef that
something had been accomplished by the enact-
ment at Washington of a score or two of all-in-
clusive arbitration treaties; being not imnattirally
misled by the fact that those responsible for the
passage of the treaties indulged in some not wholly
harmless bleating as to the good effects they would
produce. As a matter of fact, they probably will
not produce the smallest effect of any kind or sort.
Yet it is possible they may have a mischievous
effect, inasmuch as under certain circtimstances to
fulfil them would cause frightful disaster to the
United States, while to break them, even although
under compulsion and because it was absolutely
necessary, would be fruitful of keen humiliation

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 95

to every right-thinking man who is jealous of our
international good name.

If for example, whatever the outcome of the
present war, a great tritimphant military despot-
ism declared that it wotdd not recognize the Mon-
roe Doctrine or seized Magdalena Bay, or one of
the Dutch West Indies, or the Island of St.
Thomas, and fortified it; or if — as would be quite
possible — it announced that we had no right to
fortify the Isthmus of Panama, and itself landed
on adjacent territory to erect similar fortifica-
tions; then, under these absurd treaties, we
would be obliged, if we happened to have made
one of them with one of the countries involved,
to go into an interminable discussion of the sub-
ject before a joint commission, while the hostile
nation proceeded to make its position impreg-
nable. It seems incredible that the United- States
government could have made such treaties; but
it has just done so, with the warm approval of
the professional pacificists.

These treaties were entered into when the
administration had before its eyes at that very
moment the examples of Belgitim and Luxem-
bourg, which showed beyond possibility of doubt,
especially when taken in connection with other
similar incidents that have occurred during the
last couple of decades, that there are various great
military empires in the Old World who will pay

96 THE WORLD WAR

not one moment's heed to the most solemn and
binding treaty, if it is to their interest to break
it. If any one of these empires, as the result of
the present contest, obtains something approach-
ing to a position of complete predominance in the
Old World, it is absolutely certain that it would
pay no heed whatever to these treaties, if it de-
sired to better its position in the New World by
taking possession of the Dutch or Danish West In-
dies or of the territory of some weak American
state on the mainland of the continent. In such
event we would be obliged either instantly oiu*-
selves to repudiate the scandalous treaties by
which the government at Washington has just
sought to tie our hands — and thereby expose our-
selves in our turn to the charge of bad faith — or
else we shotdd have to abdicate our position as
a great power and submit to abject humiliation.

Since these articles of mine were written and
published, I am glad to see that James Bryce, a
lifelong advocate of peace and the stanchest pos-
sible friend of the United States, has taken pre-
cisely the position herein taken. He dwells, as
I have dwelt, upon the absolute need of pro-
tecting small states that behave themselves from
absorption in great military empires. He insists,
[as I have insisted, upon the need of the reduction
[of armaments, the quenching of the baleful spirit
)f militarism, and the admission of the peoples

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 97

everywhere to a fuller share in the control of for-
eign policy — all to be accomplished by some kind
of international league of peace. He adds, how-
ever, as the culminating and most important por-
tion of his article :

"But no scheme for preventing future wars will
have any chance of success tmless it rests upon the
assurance that the states which enter it will loyally
and steadfastly abide by it and that each and all
of them will join in coercing by their overwhelming
imited strength any state which may disregard
the obligations it has imdertaken.'*

This is almost exactly what I have said. In-
deed, it is almost word for word what I have said
— an agreement which is all the more striking
because when he wrote it Lord Bryce could not
have known what I had written. We must insist
on righteousness first and foremost. We must
strive for peace always; but we must never hesi-
tate to put righteousness above peace. In order
to do this, we must put force back of righteousness,
for, as the world now is, national righteousness
without force back of it speedily becomes a matter
of derision. To the doctrine that might makes \
right, it is utterly useless to oppose the doctrine*
of right unbacked by might.

It is not even true that what the pacificists de-
sire is right. The leaders of the pacificists of this
coimtry who for five months now have been cry-

98 THE WORLD WAR

ing, 'Teace, peace," have been too timid even to
say that they want the peace to be a righteous one.
We needlessly dignify such outcries when we
speak of them as well-meaning. The weaklings
who raise their shrill piping for a peace that shall
consecrate successful wrong occupy a position
quite as immoral as and infinitely more contempt-
ible than the position of the wrong-doers them-
selves. The ruthless strength of the great abso-
lutist leaders — Elizabeth of England, Catherine
of Russia, Peter the Great, Frederick the Great,
Napoleon, Bismarck — ^is certainly infinitely better
for their own nations and is probably better for
mankind at large than the loquacious impotence,
ultimately trouble-breeding, which has recently
\ marked our own international policy. A policy of
blood and iron is sometimes very wicked; but it
rarely does as much harm, and never excites as
much derision, as a policy of milk and water —
and it comes dangerously near flattery to call the
foreign policy of the United States under Presi-
dent Wilson and Mr. Bryan merely one of milk
and water. Strength at least commands respect;
whereas the prattling feebleness that dares not
rebuke any concrete wrong, and whose proposals
for right are marked by sheer fatuity, is fit only
to excite weeping among angels and among men
the bitter laughter of scorn.
At this moment any peace which leaves imre-

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 99

dressed the wrongs of Belgium, and which does
not effectively guarantee Belgium and all other
small nations that behave themselves, against the
repetition of such wrongs would be a well-nigh
immixed evil. As far as we personally are con-
cerned, such a peace would inevitably mean that
we should at once and in haste have to begin to
arm ourselves or be exposed in otu* turn to the
most frightful risk of disaster. Let our people
take thought for the future. What Germany did
to Belgium because her need was great and be-
cause she possessed the ruthless force with which
to meet her need she would, of course, do to us if
her need demanded it; and in such event what
her representatives now say as to her intentions
toward America would trouble her as little as her
signature to the neutrality treaties troubled her
when she subjugated Belgium. Nor does she
stand alone in her views of international mo-
rality. More than one of the great powers en-
gaged in this war has shown by her conduct in
the past that if it profited her she would with-
out the smallest scruple treat any land in the two
Americas as Belgium has been treated. What
has recently happened in the Old World should be
pondered deeply by the nations of the New World;
by Chile, Argentina, and Brazil no less than by
the United States. The world war has proved
beyond peradventure that the principle underly-

lOO THE WORLD WAR

ing the Monroe Doctrine is of vast moment to
the welfare of all America, and that neither this
nor any other principle can be made effective
save as power is put behind it.

Belgium was absolutely innocent of offense.
Her cities have been laid waste or held to ransom
for gigantic stmis of money; her fruitftd fields
have been trampled into mire; her sons have
died on the field of battle; her daughters are
broken-hearted fugitives; a million of her people
have fled to foreign lands. Entirely disregarding
all accusations as to outrages on individuals, it
yet remains true that disaster terrible beyond be-
lief has befallen this peaceful nation of six million
people who themselves had been guilty of not
even the smallest wrong-doing. Louvain and Di-
nant are smoke-grimed and blood-stained ruins.
Brussels has been held to enormous ransom,
although it did not even strive to defend itself.
Antwerp did strive to defend itself. Because
soldiers in the forts attempted to repulse the
enemy, hundreds of houses in the undefended city
were wrecked with bombs from air-ships, and
throngs of peaceful men, women, and children
were driven from their homes by the sharp terror
of death. Be it remembered always that not one
man in Brussels, not one man in Antwerp, had
even the smallest responsibility for the disaster
inflicted upon them. Innocence has proved not

THE PEACE OF RIGriTEDUSNESS loi

even the smallest safeguard against such woe and
suffering as we in this land can at present hardly
imagine.

What befell Antwerp and Brussels will surely
some day befall New York or San Francisco, and
may happen to many an inland city also, if we do
not shake off our supine folly, if we trust for safety
to peace treaties unbacked by force. At the be-
ginning of last month, by the appointment of the
President, peace services were held in the chvu-ches
of this land. As far as these services consisted of
sermons and prayers of good and wise people who
wished peace only if it represented righteousness,
who did not desire that peace should come unless
it came to consecrate justice and not wrong-doing,
good and not evil, the movement represented good.
In so far, however, as the movement was under-
stood to be one for immediate peace without any
regard to righteousness or justice, without any
regard for righting the wrongs of those who have
been crushed by unmerited disaster, then the
movement represented mischief, precisely as fifty
years ago, in 1864, in our own coimtry a similar
movement for peace, to be obtained by acknowl-
edgment of disunion and by the perpetuation of
slavery, would have represented mischief. In the
present case, however, the mischief was confined
purely to those taking part in the movement in
an unworthy spirit; for (like the peace parades

'I02 . THE WORLD WAR

and newspaper peace petitions) it was a merely
subjective phenomenon; it had not the slightest
effect of any kind, sort, or description upon any
of the combatants abroad and could not possibly
have any effect upon them. It is well for our own
sakes that we should pray sincerely and himibly
for the peace of righteousness; but we must
guard ourselves from any illusion as to the news
of our having thus prayed producing the least
effect upon those engaged in the war.

There is just one way in which to meet the up-
holders of the doctrine that might makes right.
To do so we must prove that right will make might,
by backing right with might.

In his second inaugural address Andrew Jackson
laid down the rule by which every national Amer-
ican administration ought to guide itself, saying:
**The foreign policy adopted by our government
is to do justice to all, and to submit to wrong by
none."

The statement of the daimtless old fighter of
New Orleans is as true now as when he wrote it.
We must stand absolutely for righteousness. But
to do so is utterly without avail imless we possess
the strength and the loftiness of spirit which will
back righteousness with deeds and not mere words.
We must clear the rubbish from off our souls and
admit that everything that has been done in pass-
ing peace treaties, arbitration treaties, neutrality

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 103

treaties, Hague treaties, and the like, with no
sanction of force behind them, amounts to lit-
erally and absolutely zero, to literally and abso-
lutely nothing, in any time of serious crisis. We
must recognize that to enter into foolish treaties
which cannot be kept is as wicked as to break
treaties which can and ought to be kept. We
must labor for an international agreement among
the great civilized nations which shall put the full
force of all of them back of any one of them, and
of any well-behaved weak nation, which is wronged
by any other power. Until we have completed
this purpose, we must keep ourselves ready, high
of heart and undaunted of soul, to back our rights
with our strength.

CHAPTER VII

AN INTERNATIONAL POSSE COMITATUS

MOST Western Americans who are past
middle age remember yoimg, rapidly-
growing, and turbulent communities in
which there was at first complete anarchy. Dur-
ing the time when there was no central police
power to which to appeal every man worth his
salt, in other words every man fit for existence
in such a commimity, had to be prepared to
defend himself; and usually, although not al-
ways, the fact that he was prepared saved him
from all trouble, whereas impreparedness was ab-
solutely certain to invite disaster.

In such communities before there was a regular
and fully organized police force there came an
interval during which the preservation of the
peace depended upon the action of a single ofiicial,
a sheriff or marshal, who if the law was defied in
arrogant fashion summoned a posse comitatus
composed of as many armed, thoroughly efficient,
law-abiding citizens as were necessary in order to
put a stop to the wrong-doing. Under these con-

104

POSSE GOMITATUS 105

ditions each man had to keep himself armed and
both able and willing to respond to the call of
the peace-officer; and furthermore, if he had a
shred of wisdom he kept himself ready in an
emergency to act on his own behalf if the peace-
officer did not or could not do his duty.

In such towns I have myself more than once
seen well-meaning but foolish citizens endeavor
to meet the exigencies of the case by simply
passing resolutions of disarmament without any
power back of them. That is, they passed self-
denying ordinances, saying that nobody was to
carry arms; but they failed to provide methods
for carrying such ordinances into effect. In every
case the result was the same. Good citizens for
the moment abandoned their weapons. The bad
men continued to carry them. Things grew worse
instead of better; and then the good men came
to their senses and clothed some representative of
the police with power to employ force, potential
or existing, against the wrong-doers.

Affairs in the intoiiational world are at this]
time in analogous condition. There is no central
police power, and not the least likelihood of its
being created. Well-meaning enthusiasts have
tried their hands to an almost unlimited extent
in the way of devising all-inclusive arbitration
treaties, neutrality treaties, disarmament propo-
sals, and the like, with no force back of them,

io6 THE WORLD WAR

and the result has been stupendous and discredit-
able failure. Preparedness for war on the part
of individual nations has sometimes but not al-
ways averted war. Unpreparedness for war, as
in the case of China, Korea, and Luxembourg,
has invariably invited smashing disaster, and
sometimes complete conquest. Surely these con-
ditions should teach a lesson that any man who
nms may read imless his eyes have been blinded
by folly or his heart weakened by cowardice.

The immediately vital lesson for each individual
nation is that as things are now it must in time
of crisis rely on its own stout hearts and ready
hands for self-defense. Existing treaties are utterly
worthless so far as concerns protecting any free,
well-behaved people from one of the great aggres-
sive military monarchies of the world. The all-
inclusive arbitration treaties such as those recently
negotiated by Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, when
taken in connection with our refusal to act imder
existing treaties, represent about the highest point
of slightly mischievous fatuity which can be at-
tained in international matters. Inasmuch as we
oiurselves are the power that initiated their negoti-
ation, we can do our plain duty to ourselves and
oiu" neighbors only by ourselves proceeding from
the outset on the theory, and by warning our neigh-
bors, that these treaties in any time of crisis will
certainly not be respected by any serious adver-

POSSE GOMITATUS 107

sary, and probably will of necessity be violated by
ourselves. They do not in even the very smallest
degree reUeve us of the necessity of preparedness
for war. To this point of our duty to be prepared
I will return later.

But we ought not to and must not rest^ content ^
merely with working for our own defense. The
utterly appalling calamity that has befallen the
civilized world during the last five months, and,
above all, the horrible catastrophe that has over-
whelmed Belgiimi without Belgiimi's having the
smallest responsibility in the matter, must make
the least thoughtful realize how imsatisfactory is
the present basis of international relations among
civilized powers. In order to make things better
several things are necessary. We must clearly V
grasp the fact that mere selfish avoidance of duty '
to others, even although covered by such fine
words as "peace" and "neutrality," is a wretched
thing and an obstacle to securing the peace of
righteousness throughout the world. We must rec-
ognize clearly the old common-law doctrine that a
right without a remedy is void. We must firmly "
grasp the fact that measures should be taken to
put force back of good faith in the observance
of treaties. The worth of treaties depends purely
upon the good faith with which they are exe-
cuted; and it is mischievous folly to enter into
treaties without providing for their execution and

io8 THE WORLD WAR

wicked folly to enter into them if they ought not
to be executed.

It is necessary to devise means for putting the
collective and efficient strength of all the great
powers of civiHzation back of any well-behaved
power which is wronged by another power. In
other words, we must devise means for executing
treaties in good faith, by the establishment of
some great international tribimal, and by securing
the enforcement of the decrees of this tribunal
through the action of a posse comitatus of power-
ful and civilized nations, all of them being bound
by solemn agreement to coerce any power that
offends against the decrees of the tribimal. That
there will be grave difficulties in successfully
working out this plan I would be the first to con-
cede, and I would be the first to insist that to
work it out successfully would be impossible
unless the nations acted in good faith. But the
plan is feasible, and it is the only one which at the
moment offers any chance of success. Ever since
the days of Henry IV of France there has been a
growth, slow and halting to be sure but yet evi-
dently a growth, in recognition by the public con-
science of civilized nations that there should be a
method of making the rules of international
morality obligatory and binding among the powers.
But merely to trust to public opinion without
organized force back of it is silly. Force must be

POSSE GOMITATUS 109

put back of justice, and nations must not shrink
from the duty of proceeding by any means that
are necessary against wrong-doers. It is the fail-
ure to recognize these vital truths that has ren-
dered the actions of our government during the
last few years impotent to preserve world peace
and fruitful only in earning for us the half -veiled
derision of other nations.

The attitude of the present administration diu*-
ing the last five months shows how worthless the
present treaties, unbacked by force, are, and how
utterly ineffective mere passive neutrality is to^
secure even the smallest advance in world morale
ity. I have been very reluctant in any way to
criticise the action of the present administration
in foreign affairs; I have faithfully, and in some
cases against my own deep-rooted personal con-
victions, sought to justify what it has done in
Mexico and as regards the present war; but the
time has come when loyalty to the administra-
tion's action in foreign affairs means disloyalty
to our national self-interest and to our obligations
toward humanity at large. As regards Belgium
the administration has clearly taken the ground
that our own selfish ease forbids us to fulfil our
explicit obligations to small neutral states when
they are deeply wronged. It will never be pos-
sible in any war to commit a clearer breach of in-
ternational morality than that committed by

no THE WORLD WAR

Germany in the invasion and subjugation of
Belgium. Every one of the nations involved in
this war, and the United States as well, have
committed such outrages in the past. But the
very purpose of the Hague conventions and of
all similar international agreements was to put a
stop to such misconduct in the future.

At the outset I ask our people to remember
that what I say is based on the assumption that
we are boimd in good faith to fulfil our treaty
obligations; that we will neither favor nor con-
demn any other nation except on the groimd of its
behavior; that we feel as much good-will to the
people of Germany or Austria as to the people of
England, of France, or of Russia; that we speak
for Belgium only as we could speak for Holland
or Switzerland or one of the Scandinavian or
Balkan nations; and that if the circimistances as
regards Belgitmi had been reversed we would have
protested as emphatically against wrong action
by England or France as we now protest against
wrong action by Germany.

The United States and the great powers now
at war were parties to the international code
created in the regulations annexed to the Hague
conventions of 1899 and 1907. As President,
acting on behalf of this government, and in ac-
cordance with the imanimous wish of otir people,
I ordered the signature of the United States to

POSSE GOMITATUS m

these conventions. Most emphatically I wotild
not have permitted such a farce to have gone
through if it had entered my head that this gov-
ernment would not consider itself bound to do
all it could to see that the regulations to which it
made itself a party were actually observed when
the necessity for theii: observance arose. I can-
not imagine any sensible nation thinking it worth
while to sign future Hague conventions if even
such a powerful neutral as the United States
does not care enough about them to protest
against their open breach. Of the present neutral
powers the United States of America is the most
disinterested and the strongest, and should there-
fore bear the main burden of responsibility in this
matter.

It is quite possible to make an argument to the
effect that we never should have entered into the
Hague conventions, because our sole duty is to
ourselves and not to others, and our sole concern
should be to keep ourselves at peace, at any
cost, and not to help other powers that are op-
pressed, and not to protest against wrong-doing.
I do not myself accept this view; but in practice
it is the view taken by the present administra-
tion, apparently with at the moment the approval
of the mass of our people. Such a policy, while
certainly not exalted, and in my judgment neither
far-sighted nor worthy of a high-spirited and lofty-

112 THE WORLD WAR

souled nation, is yet in a sense understandable,
and in a sense defensible. ^

But it is quite indefensible to make agreements
and not live up to them. The climax of absurdity-
is for any administration to do what the present
administration during the last five months has
done. Mr. Wilson's administration has shirked
doing the duty plainly imposed on it by the
obligations of the conventions already entered
into; and at the same time it has sought to
obtain cheap credit by entering into a couple
of score new treaties infinitely more drastic than
the old ones, and quite impossible of honest ful-
filment. When the Belgian people complained
of violations of the Hague tribunal, it was a
mockery, it was a timid and imworthy abandon-
ment of duty on om* part, for President Wilson
to refer them back to the Hague court, when he
knew that the Hague court was less than a
shadow unless the United States by dping its
clear duty gave the Hague cotirt some substance.
If the Hague conventions represented nothing
but the expression of feeble aspirations toward
decency, uttered only in time of profound peace,
and not to be even expressed above a whisper
when with awful bloodshed and suffering the
conventions were broken, then it was idle folly
to enter into them. If, on the other hand, they
meant anything, if the United States had a seri-

POSSE GOMITATUS 113

ous purpose, a serious sense of its obligations to
world righteousness, when it entered into them,
then its plain duty as the trustee of civilization
is to investigate the charges solemnly made as to
the violation of the Hague conventions. If such
investigation is made, and if the charges prove
well founded, then it is the duty of the United
States to take whatever action may be necessary
to vindicate the principles of international law
set forth in these conventions.

I am not concerned with the charges of individ-
ual atrocity. The prime fact is that Belgium
committed no offense whatever, and yet that
her territory has been invaded and her people
subjugated. This prime fact cannot be left out
of consideration in dealing with any matter that
has occiured in connection with it. Her neutral-
ity has certainly been violated, and this is in
clear violation of the fimdamental principles of
the Hague conventions. It appears clear that
undefended towns have been bombarded, and
that towns which were defended have been at-
tacked with bombs at a time when no attack
was made upon the defenses. This is certainly
in contravention of the Hague agreement for-
bidding the bombardment of undefended towns.
Illegal and excessive contributions are expressly
condemned under Articles 49 and 52 of the con-
ventions. If these articles do not forbid the

114 THE WORLD WAR

levying of such sums as $40,000,000 from Brussels
and $90,000,000 from the province of Brabant,
then the articles are absolutely meaningless.
Articles 43 and 50 explicitly forbid the infliction
of a collective penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, on
a population on account of acts of individuals for
which it cannot be regarded as collectively re-
sponsible. Either this prohibition is meaningless
or it prohibits just such acts as the punitive
destruction of Vise, Louvain, Aerschot, and
Dinant. Furthermore, a great deal of the ap-
palling devastation of central and eastern Belgiimi
has been apparently terrorizing and not punitive
in its purpose, and this is explicitly forbidden by
the Hague conventions.

Now, it may be that there is an explanation
and justification for a portion of what has been
done. But if the Hague conventions mean any-
thing, and if bad faith in the observation of
treaties is not to be treated with cynical indif-
ference, then the United States government should
inform itself as to the facts, and should take what-
ever action is necessary in reference thereto. The
extent to which the action should go may properly
be a subject for discussion. But that there should
be some action is beyond discussion ; unless, indeed,
we ourselves are content to take the view that
treaties, conventions, and international engage-
ments and agreements of all kinds are to be

POSSE GOMITATUS iij

treated by us and by everybody else as what
they have been authoritatively declared to be,
"scraps of paper," the writing on which is in-
tended for no better purpose than temporarily to
amuse the feeble-minded.

If the above statements seem in the eyes of my
German friends hostile to Germany, let me em-
phasize the fact that they are predicated upon a
course of action which if extended and applied as
it should be extended and applied would range
the United States on the side of Germany if any
such assault were made upon Germany as has
been made upon Belgium, or if either Belgium or
any of the other allies committed similar wrong-
doing. Many Germans assert and believe that
if Germany had not acted as she did France and
England would have invaded Belgium and have
committed similar wrongs. In such case it would
have been our clear duty to behave toward them
exactly as we ought now to behave toward Ger-
many. But the fact that other powers might
under other conditions do wrong, affords no justi-
fication for failure to act on the wrong that has
actually been committed. It must always be
kept in mind, however, that we cannot expect the
nation against whose actions we protest to accept
our position as warranted, unless we make it clear
that we have both the will and the power to in-
terfere on behalf of that nation if in its turn it is

Ii6 THE WORLD WAR

oppressed. In other words, we must show that
we believe in right and therefore in living up to
our promises in good faith; and, furthermore, that
we are both able and ready to put might behind
right.

As I have before said, I think that the party
in Germany which believes in a policy of aggres-
sion represents but a minority of the nation. It
is powerful only because the great majority of
the German people are rightfully in fear of ag-
gression at the expense of Germany, and sanction
striking only because they fear lest they them-
selves be struck. The greatest service that could
be rendered to peace would be to convince Ger-
many, as well as other powers, that in such event
we would do all we could on behalf of the power
that was wronged. Extremists in England,
France, and Russia talk as if the proper outcome
of the present war would be the utter dismember-
ment of Germany and her reduction to impotence
such as that which followed for her upon the
Thirty Years* War. I have actually received let-
ters from Frenchmen and Englishmen upbraid-
ing me for what they regard as a pro-German
leaning in these articles I have written. To these
well-meaning persons I can only say that Amer-
icans who remember the extreme bitterness felt
by Northerners for Southerners, and Southerners
for Northerners, at the end of the Civil War, are

POSSE COMITATUS 117

saddened but in no wise astonished that other
peoples should show a like bitterness. I can only
repeat that to dismember and hopelessly shatter
Germany would be a frightful calamity for man-
kind, precisely as the dismemberment and shat-
tering of the British Empire or of the French
Republic would be. It is right that the United
States should regard primarily its own interests.
But I believe that I speak for a considerable num-
ber of my countrymen when I say that we ought
not solely to consider our own interests. Above
all, we should not do as the present administra-
tion does; for it refuses to take any concrete action
in favor of any nation which is wronged; and yet
it also refuses to act so that we may ourselves be
sufficient for our own protection.

We ought not to trust in words unbacked byry
deeds. We should be able to defend ourselves. *
We should also be ready and able to join in pre-
venting the infliction of disaster of the kind of
which I speak upon any civilized power, great or
small, whether it be at the present time Belgium,
or at some future day Germany or England, .
Holland, Sweden or Himgary, Russia or Japan, j

So much for questions of international right,
and of oiu: duty to others in international affairs.
Now for our duty to ourselves.

A sincere desire to acFwell toward other nations
must not bHnd us to the fact that as yet the

V

Il8 THE WORLD WAR

standard of international morality is both low
and irregular. The behavior of the great mili-
tary empires of the Old World, in reference to
their treaty obligations and their moral obliga-
tions toward coimtries such as Belgitim, Finland,
and Korea, shows that it would be utter folly for
us in any grave crisis to trust to anything save our /\
own preparedness and resolution for our safety.
The other day there appeared in the newspapers
extracts from a translation of a report made by an
officer of the Prussian army staff outlining the
plan of operations, by Germany in the event of
war with America. Great surprise was ex-
pressed by innocent Americans that such plans
should be in existence, and certain gentlemen who
speak for Germany denied that the report (which
was printed and openly sold in Germany in
pamphlet form) was "official." Neither the re-
sentment expressed nor yet the denials were
necessary. One feattu*e of the admirable pre-
paredness in which Germany and Japan stand
so far above all other nations, and especially
above our own, is their careful consideration of
hostilities with all possible antagonists. Bem-
hardi's famous books treat of possible war with
Austria, and possible attack by Austria upon Ger-
many, although the prime lessons that they teach
are those contained in the possibility of war as it
has actually occiured, with Germany and Austria

#

POSSE GOMITATUS 119

in alliance. This does not indicate German hos-
tility to Austria; it merely indicates German
willingness to look squarely in the face all possible
facts. Of course, and quite properly, the German
General Staff has carefully considered the question
of hostilities with America, and, of course, plans
were drawn up with minute care and prevision
at the time when there was friction between the
two countries over Samoa, at the time when
Admiral Dietrich clashed with Dewey in Manila
Bay, and on the later occasion when there was
friction in connection with Venezuela. This did
not represent any special German ill will toward
America. It represented the common-sense —
albeit somewhat cold-blooded — consideration of
possibilities by Germany's rulers; and the failure
to give this consideration would have reflected
severely upon these rulers — although I do not re-
gard some of the actions proposed as proper from
the standpoint of warfare as the United States has
practised it. To become angry because such plans
exist would be childish. To fail to profit by our
knowledge that they certainly do exist would,
however, be not merely childish but imbecile. I
have myself become personally cognizant of the
existence of such plaps for operations against us,
and of the larger features of their details, in two
cases, affecting two different nations.
The essential feature of these plans was (and

I20 THE WORLD WAR

doubtless is) the seizure of some of our great coast
cities and the terrorization of these cities so as to
make them give enormous ransoms; ransoms of
such size that oiu* own coimtry would be crippled,
whereas our foes would be enabled to run the war
against us with a handsome profit to themselves.
These plans are based, of course, upon the belief
that we have not sufficient foresight and intelli-
gence to keep our navy in first-class condition,
and upon not merely the belief but the knowledge
that otu" regular army is so small and our utter
unpreparedness otherwise so great that on land
we woiild be entirely helpless against a moderate-
sized expeditionary force belonging to any first-
class military power. Foreign military and naval
observers know well that otir navy has been used
dining the last eighteen months in connection with
the Mexican situation in such manner as to accom-
plish the minimum of results as regards Mexico,
while at the same time to do the maximum of
damage in interrupting the manoeuvring and the
gun practice of our fleets. They regard Messrs.
Wilson and Bryan as representative of the Amer-
ican people in their entire inability to under-
stand the real nature of the forces that underlie
international relations and the importance of pre-
paredness. They are entirely cold-blooded in their
views of us. Foreign rulers may despise us for
otu" supine impreparedness, and for oui readiness

POSSE GOMITATUS 121

to make treaties, taken together with our refusal
to fulfil these treaties by seeking to avert wrong
done to others. But »their contempt will not
prevent their using this nation as arbiter in order
to bring about peace if to do so suits their pur-
poses; and if, on the contrary, one or the other'^x
of the several great military empires becomes the
world mistress as the result of this war, that
power will infringe our rights whenever and to
the extent that it deems it advantageous to do
so, and will make war upon us whenever it be-
lieves that such war will be to its own advantage.
In the event of such a war against us it is well
to remember that the spiritless and selfish type
of neutrality which we have observed in the
present war will be remembered by all other
nations on whichever side they have been en-
gaged in this contest, and will give each of them
more or less satisfaction in the event of disaster
befalling us. These nations, if they come to a
deadlock as the result of this war, will not be
withheld by any sentiment of indignation against
or contempt for us from utilizing the services of
the President as a medium for bringing about
peace, if this seems the most convenient method
of getting peace. But, whether they do this or
not, they will retain a smotddering ill will toward
us, one and all of them; and if we were assailed
it would be utterly quixotic, utterly foolish of

122 THE WORLD WAR

any one of them to come to oiir aid no matter
what wrongs were inflicted upon us. It would be
quite impossible for any power to treat us worse
than Belgiimi has been treated by Germany or
to attack us with less warrant than was shown
when Belgium was attacked. Bombs have been
continually dropped by the Germans in the city
of Paris and in other cities, wrecking private
houses and killing men, women, and children at
a time when there was no pretense that any
military attacks were being made upon the cities,
or that any other object was served than that
of terrorizing the civilian population. Cities have
been destroyed and others held to huge ransom.
All these practices are forbidden by the Hague
conventions. Inasmuch as we have not made a
single protest against them when other powers
have suffered, it would be both ridiculous and
humiliating for us to make even the slightest
appeal for assistance or to expect any assistance
from any other powers if ever we in our turn
suffer in like fashion. It would be purely our
affair. We would have no right to expect that
other powers would take the kind of action
which we oiu-selves have refused to take. It
would be our time to take our medicine, and it
would be folly and cowardice to make wry faces
over it or to expect sympathy, still less aid, from
outsiders. As I have already stated, my own

POSSE GOMITATUS 123

view is most strongly that, if we are assailed in
accordance with the plans of foreign powers
above mentioned, it would be our business posi-
tively to refuse to allow any city to ransom itself,
and sternly to accept the destruction of New
York, or San Francisco, or any other city as the
alternative of such ransom. Our duty would be
to accept these disasters as the payment right-
fully due from us to fate for our folly in having
listened to the clamor of the feeble folk among
the ultrapacificists, and in having indorsed the
unspeakable silliness of the policy contained in
the proposed all-inclusive arbitration treaties of
Mr. Taft and in the accomplished all-inclusive
arbitration treaties of Messrs. Wilson and Bryan.
I very earnestly hope that this nation will
ultimately adopt a dignified and self-respecting
poHcy in international affairs. I earnestly hope
that ultimately we shall live up to every inter-
national obligation we have imdertaken — exactly
as we did live up to them during the seven and
a half years while I was President. I earnestly
hope that we shall ourselves become one of the
joint guarantors of world peace imder such a
plan as that I in this book outline, and that we
shall hold ourselves ready and willing to act as a
member of the international posse comitatus to
enforce the peace of righteousness as against any
offender big or small. This would mean a great

124 THE WORLD WAR

practical stride toward relief from the burden of
excessive military preparation. It would mean
that a long step had been taken toward at least
minimizing and restricting the area and extent of
possible warfare. It would mean that all liberty-
loving and enlightened peoples, great and small,
would be freed from the hatmting nightmare of
terror which now besets them when they think
of the possible conquest of their land.

Until this can be done we owe it to ourselves as
a nation effectively to safeguard ourselves against
all likelihood of disaster at the hands of a foreign
foe. We should bring our navy up to the highest
point of preparedness, we should handle it purely
from miHtary considerations, and should see that
the training was never intermitted. We should
make our little regular army larger and more
effective than at present. We should provide for
it an adequate reserve. In addition, I most heart-
ily believe that we should rettmi to the ideal held
by oiir people in the days of Washington although
never lived up to by them. We should follow
the example of such typical democracies as Swit-
l zerland and AustraHa and provide and require-inili-
J tary. training ia]L£L\Lo\3^~yo\xn^ men. Switzerland's
efficient army has imquestionably been the chief
reason why in this war there has been no violation
of her neutrality. Australia's system of military
training has enabled her at once to ship large

POSSE GOMITATUS 125

bodies of first-rate fighting men to England's aid.
Our northern neighbors have done even better
than AustraHa; perhaps special mention should
be made of St. John, Newfoundland, which has
sent to the front one in five of her adult male
population, a larger percentage than any other
city of the empire; a feat probably due to the
fact that in practically all her schools there is
good military training, while her yoimg men have
much practice in shooting tournaments. England
at the moment is saved from the fate of Belgium
only because of her navy; and the small size of her
army, her lack of arms, her lack of previous prepa-
rations doubtless afford the chief reason why this
war has occurred at all at this time. There would
probably have been no war if England had fol-
lowed the advice so often urged on her by the
lamented Lord Roberts, for in that case she would
have been able immediately to put in the field
an army as large and effective as, for instance,
that of France.

Training of our yoimg men in field manoeuvres
and in marksmanship, as is done in Switzerland,
and to a slightly less extent in Australia, would
be of immense advantage to the physique and
morale of oiu: whole population. It would not
represent any withdrawal of our population from
civil pursuits, such as occurs among the great
military states of the European Continent. In

126 THE WORLD WAR

Switzerland, for instance, the ground training is
given in the schools, and the young man after
graduating serves only some four months with the
branch of the army to which he is attached, and
after that only about eight days a year, not count-
ing his rifle practice. All serve alike, rich and poor,
without any exceptions; and all whom I have
ever met, the poor even more than the rich, are
enthusiastic over the beneficial effects of the
service and the increase in self-reliance, self-re-
spect, and efficiency which it has brought. The
utter worthlessness of make-believe soldiers who
have not been trained, and who are improvised on
the Wilson-Bryan theory, will be evident to any
one who cares to read such works as Pi-ofessor
Johnson*s recent volimie on Bull Run. Our people
should make a thorough study of the Swiss and
Australian systems, and then adapt them to our
own use. To do so would not be a stride toward
war, as the feeble folk among the ultrapacificists
would doubtless maintain. It would be the most
effectual possible guarantee that peace would
dwell within our borders; and it would also make
it possible for us not only to insure peace for our-
selves, but to have oiu* words carry weight if we
spoke against the commission of wrong and in-
justice at the expense of others.

But we must always remember that no institu-
tions will avail imless the private citizen has the

POSSE GOMITATUS 127

right spirit. When a leading congressman, him-
self with war experience, shows conclusively in
open speech in the House that we are utteriy un-
prepared to do our duty to ourselves if assailed,
President Wilson answers him with a cheap
sneer, with tmworthy levity; and the repeated
warnings of General Wood are treated with the
same indifference. Nevertheless, I do not believe
that this attitude on the part of our public ser-
vants really represents the real convictions of the
average American. The ideal citizen of a free
state must have in him the stuff which in time
of need will enable him to show himself a first-
class fighting man who scorns either to endure or
to inflict wrong. American society is sound at
core and this means that at bottom we, as a
people, accept as the basis of soimd morality not
slothful ease and soft selfishness and the loud
timidity that fears every species of risk and
hardship, but the virile strength of manliness
which clings to the ideal of stem, imflinching
performance of duty, and which follows whither-
soever that ideal may lead.

CHAPTER VIII
SELF-DEFENSE WITHOUT MILITARISM

THE other day one of the typical idtra-
pacificists or peace-at-any-price men put
the ultrapacificist case quite clearly, both
in a statement of his own and by a quotation of
what he called the "golden words" of Mr. Bryan
at Mohonk. In arguing that we should under no
conditions fight for our rights, and that we should
make no preparation whatever to secure our-
selves against wrong, this writer pointed out
China as the proper model for America. He did
this on the ground that China, which did not
fight, was yet "older" than Rome, Greece, and
Germany, which had fought, and that its example
was therefore to be preferred.

This, of course, is a position which saves the
need of argtmient. If the average American wants
to be a Chinaman, if China represents his ideal,
then he should by all means follow the advice of
pacificists like the writer in question and be a
supporter of Mr. Bryan. If any man seriously
believes that China has played a nobler and more

128

SELF-DEFENSE 129

useful part in the world than Athens and Rome
and Germany, then he is quite right to try to
Chinafy the United States. In such event he
must of course believe that all the culture, all the
literattue, all the art, all the political and cultural
liberty and social well-being, which modem Eu-
rope and the two Americas have inherited from
Rome and Greece, and that all that has been done
by Germany from the days of Charlemagne to
the present time, represent mere error and con-
fusion. He must believe that the average German
or Frenchman or Englishman or inhabitant of
North or South America occupies a lower moral,
intellectual, and physical status tl;an the average
coolie who with his fellows composes the over-
whelming majority of the Chinese population.
To my mind such a proposition is unfit for debate
outside of certain types of asylum. But those
who sincerely take the view that this gentleman
takes are imquestionably right in copying China
in every detail, and nothing that I can say will
appeal to them.

The "golden words" of Mr. Bryan were as
follows :

I believe that this nation could stand before the world
to-day and tell the world that it did not believe in war,
that it did not believe that it was the right way to settle
disputes, that it had no disputes which it was not willing
to submit to the judgment of the world. If this nation

130 THE WORLD WAR

did that, it not only would not be attacked by any other
nation on the earth, but it would become the supreme
power in the world.

Of course, it is to be assumed that Mr. Bryan
means what he says. If he does, then he is will-
ing to submit to arbitration the question whether
the Japanese have or have not the right to send
imlimited numbers of immigrants to this shore.
If Mr. Bryan does not mean this, among other
specific things, then the *' golden words" in ques-
tion represent merely the emotionalism of the pro-
fessional orator. Of course if Mr. Bryan means
what he says, he also believes that we should not
have interfered in Cuba and that Cuba ought now
to be the property of Spain. He also believes
that we ought to have permitted Colombia to
reconquer and deprive of their independence the
people of Panama, and that we should not have
built the Panama Canal. He also believes that
California and Texas ought now to be parts of
Mexico, enjoying whatever blessings complete
abstinence from foreign war has sectired that
country during the last three years. He also be-
lieves that the Declaration of Independence was
an arbitrable matter and that the United States
ought now to be a dependency of Great Britain.
Unless Mr. Bryan does believe all of these things
then his *' golden words" represent only a rhetor-

SELF-DEFENSE 131

ical flourish. He is Secretary of State and the
right-hand man of President Wilson, and President
Wilson is completely responsible for whatever he
says and for the things he does — or rather which
he leaves imdone.

Now, it is quite useless for me to write with
any view to convincing gentlemen like Mr. Bryan
and the writer in question. If they really do
represent our fellow countrymen, then they are
right in holding up China as our ideal; not the
modem China, not the China that is changing
and moving forward, but old China. In such
event Americans ought frankly to class themselves
with the Chinese. That is where, on this theory,
they belong. If this is so, then let us fervently
pray that the Japanese or Germans or some other
virile people that does not deify moral, mental,
and physical impotence, may speedily come to rule
over us.

I am, however, writing on the assimiption that
Americans are still on the whole like their fore-
fathers who followed Washington, and like their
fathers who fought in the armies of Grant and
Lee. I am writing on the assumption that, even
though temporarily misled, they will not perma-
nently and tamely submit to oppression, and that
they will ultimately think intelligently as to what
they should do to safeguard themselves against
aggression. I abhor unjust war, and I deplore

132 THE WORLD WAR

that the need even for just war should ever occur.
I believe we should set our faces like flint against
any policy of aggression by this country on the
rights of any other country. But I believe that
we should look facts in the face. I believe that
it is unworthy weakness to fear to face the truth.
Moreover, I believe that we should have in us
that fibre of manhood which will make us follow
duty whithersoever it may lead. Unquestionably,
we should render all the service it is in our power
to render to righteousness. To do this we must
be able to back righteousness with force, to put
might back of right. It may well be that by fol-
lowing out this theory we can in the end do our
part in conjunction with other nations of the
world to bring about, if not — as I hope — a world
peace, yet at least an important minimizing of the
chances for war and of the areas of possible war.
But meanwhile it is absolutely our duty to pre-
pare for otir own defense.
r This country needs something like the Swiss
I system of war training for its young men. Switzer-
/ land is one of the most democratic governments
/ in the world, and it has given its yoting men such
an efficient training as to insure entire prepar-
edness for war, without suffering from the least
touch of militarism. Switzerland is at peace now
primarily because all the great military nations
that surround it know that its people have no

SELF-DEFENSE 133

intention of making aggression on anybody and
yet that they are thoroughly prepared to hold
their own and are resolute to fight to the last
against any invader who attempts either to sub-
jugate their territory or by violating its neutrality
to make it a battle-ground.

A bishop of the Episcopal Church recently
wrote me as follows:

How lamentable that we should stand idle, making no
preparations to enforce peace, and crying "peace" when
there is none! I have scant sympathy for the short-
sightedness of those who decry preparation for war as a
means of preventing it.

The manager of a land company in Alabama
writes me urging that some one speak for reason-
able preparedness on the part of the nation. He
states that it is always possible that we shall be
engaged in hostilities with some first-class power,
that he hopes and beheves that war will never
come, but adds:

I may not believe that my home will bum down or
that I am going to die within the period of my expec-
tancy, but nevertheless I carry fire and life insurance to
the full insurable value on my property and on my life
to the extent of my ability. The only insurance of our
liberties as a people is full preparation for a defense ade-
quate against any attack and made in time to fully meet
any attack. We do not know the attack is coming; but

134 THE WORLD WAR

to wait until it does come will be too late. Our present
weakness lies in the wide-spreacLopinion among our people
that this coimtry is invincible because of its large popu-
lation and vast resources. This I believe is true if, and
only if, we use these resources or a small part of them to
protect the major part, and if we train at least a part of
our people how to defend the nation. Under existing
conditions we can hardly hope to have an effective army
in the field in less time than eight or ten months. To-day
not one per cent of our people know anything about
rifle shooting.

I quote these two out of many letters, because
they sum up the general feeling of men of vision.
Both of my correspondents are most sincerely
for peace. No man can possibly be more anxious
for peace than I am. I ask those individuals who
think of me as a firebrand to remember that dur-
ing the seven and a half years I was President not
a shot was fired at any soldier of a hostile nation
by any American soldier or sailor, and there was
not so much as a threat of war. Even when the
state of Panama threw off the alien yoke of Co-
lombia and when this nation, acting as was its
manifest duty, by recognizing Panama as an in-
dependent state stood for the right of the governed
to govern themselves on the Isthmus, as well as
for justice and himianity, there was not a shot
fired by any of our people at any Colombian. The
blood recently shed at Vera Cruz, like the un-
punished wrongs recently committed on our people

SELF-DEFENSE I3S

in Mexico, had no parallel during my administra-
tion. When I left the presidency there was not
a cloud on the horizon — and one of the reasons
why there was not a cloud on the horizon was that
the American battle fleet had just returned from
its sixteen months' trip aroimd the world, a trip
such as no other battle fleet of any power had
ever taken, which it had not been supposed could
be taken, and which exercised a greater influence
for peace than all the peace congresses of the last
fifty years. With Lowell I most emphatically be-
lieve that peace is not a gift that tarries long in
the hands of cowards; and the fool and the weak-
ling are no improvement on the coward.

Nineteen centuries ago in the greatest of all
books we were warned that whoso loses his life
for righteousness shall save it and that he who
seeks to save it shall lose it. The ignoble and
abject gospel of those who would teach us that
it is preferable to endure disgrace and discredit
than to run any risk to life or limb would defeat
its own purpose; for that kind of submission to
wrong-doing merely invites further wrong-doing,
as has been shown a thousand times in history
and as is shown by the case of China in our own
days. Moreover, our people, however ill-prepared,
would never consent to such abject submission;
and indeed as a matter of fact our publicists and
public men and our newspapers, instead of being

136 THE WORLD WAR

too humble and submissive, are only too apt to
indulge in very offensive talk about foreign na-
tions. Of all the nations of the world we are the
one that combines the greatest amoimt of wealth
with the smallest ability to defend that wealth.
Stirely one does not have to read history very
much or ponder over philosophy a great deal in
order to realize the truth that the one certain way
to invite disaster is to be opulent, offensive, and
unarmed. There is utter inconsistency between
the ideal of making this nation the foremost com-
mercial power in the world and of disarmament
in the face of an armed world. There is utter in-
consistency between the ideal of making this
nation a power for international righteousness
and at the same time refusing to make us a power
efficient in anything save empty treaties and
emptier promises.

i I do not believe in a large standing army.
Most emphatically I do not believe in militarism.
Most emphatically I do not believe in any policy
of aggression by us. But I do believe that no
liian is really fit to be the free citizen of a free
republic unless he is able to bear arms and at
need to serve with efficiency in the efficient army
of the republic. This is no new thing with me.
For years I have believed that the yotmg men of
the country should know how to use a rifle and
shovdd have a short period of military training

SELF-DEFENSE I37

which, while not taking them for any length of
time from civil pursuits, would make them
quickly capable of helping defend the country in
case of need. When I was governor of New York,
acting in conjunction with the administration at
Washington under President McKinley, I secured
the sending abroad of one of the best officers in
the New York National Guard, Colonel William
Gary Sanger, to study the Swiss system. As Pres-
ident I had to devote my attention chiefly to
getting the navy built up. But surely the sight
of what has happened abroad ought to awaken
our people to the need of action, not only as re-
gards oiu* navy but as regards our land forces also.
Australia has done well in this respect. But
Switzerland has worked out a comprehensive
scheme with practical intelligence. She has not
only solved the question of having men ready to
fight, but she has solved the question of having
arms to give these men. At present England is in
more difficulty about arms than about men, and
some of her people when sent to the front were
armed with hunting rifles. Our own shortcom-
ings are far greater. Indeed, they are so lamen-
table that it is hard to believe that our citizens
as a whole know them. To equip half the number
of men whom even the British now have in the
field would tax our factories to the limit. In
Switzerland, during the last two or three years

138 THE WORLD WAR

of what corresponds to our high-school work the
boy is thoroughly grounded in the rudiments of
military training, discipline, and marksmanship.
When he graduates he is put for some f otir to six
months in the army to receive exactly the training
he would get in time of war. After that he serves
eight days a year and in addition often joins
with his fellows in practising at a mark. He
keeps his rifle and accoutrements in his home and
is responsible for their condition. Efficiency is
the watchword of Switzerland, and not least in
its army. At the outbreak of this terrible war
Switzerland was able to mobilize her forces in
the comer of her territory between France and
Germany as quickly as either of the great com-
batants could theirs; and no one trespassed upon
her soil.

The Swiss training does not to any appreciable
extent take the man away from his work. But it
does make him markedly more efficient for his
work. The training he gets and his short service
with the colors render him appreciably better
able to do whatever his job in life is, and, in ad-
dition, benefit his health and spirits. The service
is a holiday, and a holiday of the best because of
the most useful type.

There is no reason whatever why Americans
should be unwilling or unable to do what Switzer-
land has done. We are a far wealthier coimtry

SELF-DEFENSE 139

than Switzerland and could afford without the
slightest strain the very trifling expense and the
trifling consumption of time rendered necessary
by such a system. It has really nothing in com-
mon with the imiversal service in the great con-
script armies of the military powers. No man
would be really taken out of industry. On the
contrary, the average man would probably be
actually benefited so far as doing his life-work
is concerned. The system would be thoroughly
democratic in its workings. No man would be
exempted from the work and all would have to
perform the work alike. It would be entirely
possible to arrange that there should be a certain
latitude as to the exact year when the four or six
months' service was given.

Officers, of course, would need a longer training
than the men. This could readily be furnished
either by allowing ntmibers of extra students to
take partial or short-term courses at West Point
or by specifying optional courses in the high
schools, the graduates of these special courses
being tested carefully in their field-work and be-
ing required to give extra periods of service and
being imder the rigid supervision of the regular
army. There could also be opportimities for pro-
motion from the ranks for any one who chose to
take the time and the trouble to fit himself;

The four or six months* service with the colors

140 THE WORLD WAR

would be for the most part in the open field.
The drill hall and the parade-ground do not teach
more than five per cent of what a soldier must
actually know. Any man who has had any ex-
perience with ordinary organizations of the Na-
tional Guard when taken into camp knows that
at first only a very limited number of the men
have any idea of taking care of themselves and
that the great majority suffer much from dys-
pepsia, just because they do not know how to
take care of themselves. The soldier needs to
spend some months in actual campaign practice
under canvas with competent instructors before
he gets to know his duty. If, however, he has
had previous training in the schools of such a type
as that given in Switzerland and then has this
actual practice, he remains for some years efficient
with no more training than eight or ten days a
year.

The training must be given in large bodies. It
is essential that men shall get accustomed to the
policing and sanitary care of camps in which there
are masses of soldiers. Moreover, officers and
especially the higher officers are wholly useless in
war time imless they are accustomed to handle
masses of men in co-operation with one another.

There are small sections of our population out
of which it is possible to improvise soldiers in a
short time. Men who are accustomed to ride

SELF-DEFENSE 141

and to shoot and to live in the open and who are
hardy and enduring and by nature possess the
fighting edge already know most of what it is
necessary that an infantryman or cavalryman
should know, and they can be taught the remain-
der in a very short time by good officers. Mor-
gan's Virginia Riflemen, Andrew Jackson's Tennes-
seans, Forrest's Southwestern Cavalry were all men
of this kind; but even such men are of real use
only after considerable training or else if their
leaders are bom fighters and masters of men.
Such leaders are rare. The ordinary dweller in civ-
ilization has to be taught to shoot, to walk (or ride
if he is in the cavalry), to cook for himself, to
make himself comfortable in the open, and to take
care of his feet and his health generally. Artil-
lerymen and engineers need long special training.
It may well be that the Swiss on an average
can be made into good troops quicker than our
own men; but most assuredly there would be
numbers of Americans who would not be behind
the Swiss in such a matter. A body of volimteers
of the kind I am describing would of course not
be as good as a body of regulars of the same size,
but they would be immeasurably better than
the average soldiers produced by any system we
now have or ever have had in connection with
our militia. Our regular army would be strength-
ened by them at the very beginning and would be

142 THE WORLD WAR

set free in its entirety for immediate aggressive
action; and in addition a levy in mass of the
yoimg men of the right age would mean that two
or three million troops were put into the field,
who, although not as good as regulars, would at
once be available in numbers sufficient to over-
whelm any expeditionary force which it would be
possible for any military power to send to our
shores. The existence of such a force would ren-
der the immediate taking of cities like San Fran-
cisco, New York, or Boston an impossibility and
would free us from all danger from sudden raids
and make it impossible even for an army-corps to
land with any prospect of success.

Our people are so entirely unused to things
military that it is probably difficult for the aver-
age man to get any clear idea of our shortcomings.
Unlike what is true in the military nations of the
Old World, here the ordinary citizen takes no
interest in the working of our War Department
in time of peace. No President gains the slightest
credit for himself by paying attention to it.
Then when a crisis comes and the War Depart-
ment breaks down, instead of the people accept-
ing what has happened with humility as due to
their own fatdt during the previous two or three
decades, there is a roar of wrath against the im-
fortunate man who happens to be in office at the
time. There was such a roar of wrath against

SELF-DEFENSE 143

Secretary Alger in the Spanish War. Now, as a
matter of fact, ninety per cent of our short-
comings when the war broke out with Spain
cotdd not have been remedied by any action on
the part of the Secretary of War. They were due
to what had been done ever since the close of the
Civil War.

We were utterly unprepared. There had been
no real manoeuvring of so much as a brigade
and very rarely had any of our generals com-
manded even a good-sized regiment in the field.
The enlisted men and the jimior officers of the
regular army were good. Most of the officers
above the rank of captain were nearly worthless.
There were striking exceptions of coiurse, but,
taking the average, I really believe that it would
have been on the whole to the advantage of our
army in 1898 if all the regular officers above
the rank of captain had been retired and if all
the captains who were imfit to be placed in the
higher positions had also been retired. The
lieutenants were good. The lack of administra-
tive skill was even more marked than the lack of
military skill. No one who saw the congestion of
trains, supplies, animals, and men at Tampa will
ever forget the impression of helpless confusion
that it gave him. The volunteer forces included
some organizations and multitudes of individuals
offering first-class material. But, as a whole, the

144 THE WORLD WAR

volunteer army would have been utterly helpless
against any efficient regular force at the outset of
the 1898 war, probably almost as inefficient as
were the two armies which fought one another
at Bull Run in 1861. Even the efficiency of the
regular army itself was such merely by comparison
with the volimteers. I do not believe that any
army in the world offered finer material than was
offered by the jtmior officers and enlisted men of
the regular army which disembarked on Cuban
soil in Jime, 1898; and by the end of the next
two weeks probably the average individual in-
fantry or cavalry organization therein was at least
as good as the average organization of the same
size in an Old- World army. But taking the army
as a whole and considering its management from
the time it began to assemble at Tampa imtil
the surrender of Santiago, I seriously doubt if it
was as efficient as a really good European or Jap-
anese army of half the size. Since then we have
made considerable progress. Oiu* little army of
occupation that went to Cuba at the time of the
revolution in Cuba ten years ago was thoroughly
well handled and did at least as well as any foreign
force of the same size could have done. But it
did not include ten thousand men, that is, it did
not include as many men as the smallest military
power in Europe would assemble any day for
manoeuvres.

SELF-DEFENSE HS

This is no new thing in our history. If only
we were willing to learn from our defeats and
failures instead of paying heed purely to our suc-
cesses, we would realize that what I have above
described is one of the common phases of our his-
tory. In the War of 1812, at the outset of the
struggle, American forces were repeatedly beaten,
as at Niagara and Bladensburg, by an enemy one
half or one quarter the strength of the American
army engaged. Yet two years later these same
American troops on the northern frontier, when
trained and commanded by Brown, Scott, and
Ripley, proved able to do what the finest troops
of Napoleon were unable to do, that is, meet the
British regulars on equal terms in the open; and
the Tennessee backwoodsmen and Lomsiana
volimteers, when mastered and controlled by the
iron will and warlike genius of Andrew Jackson,
performed at New Orleans a really great feat.
During the year 18 12 the American soldiers on
shore suffered shameful and discreditable defeats,
and yet their own brothers at sea won equally
striking victories, and this because the men on
shore were utterly unprepared and because the
men at sea had been thoroughly trained and
drilled long in advance.

Exactly the same lessons are taught by the
histories of other nations. When, during the
Napoleonic wars, a small force of veteran French

146 THE WORLD WAR

soldiers landed in Ireland they defeated without
an effort five times their number of British and
Irish troops at Castlebar. Yet the men whom
they thus drove in wild flight were the own brothers
of and often the very same men who a few years
later, imder Wellington, proved an overmatch for
the flower of the French forces. The nation that
waits imtil the crisis is upon it before taking
measures for its own safety pays heavy toll in
the blood of its best and its bravest and in bitter
shame and humiliation. Small is the comfort it
can then take from the memory of the times
when the noisy and feeble folk in its own ranks
cried ** Peace, peace," without taking one practi-
cal step to secure peace.

We can never follow out a, worthy national
policy, we can never be of benefit to others or to
ourselves, unless we keep steadily in view as our
ideal that of the just man armed, the man who is
fearless, self-reliant, ready, because he has pre-
pared himself for possible contingencies; the man
who is scornful alike of those who would advise
him to do wrong and of those who would advise
him tamely to suffer wrong. The great war now
being waged in Europe and the fact that no neu-
tral nation has ventured to make even the small-
est effort to alleviate^ or even to protest against

> The much advertised sending of food and supplies to Belgium has
been of most benefit to the German conquerors of Belgium. They

SELF-DEFENSE 147

the wrongs that have been done show with lamen-
table clearness that all the peace congresses of the
past fifteen years have accomplished precisely
and exactly nothing so far as any great crisis is
concerned. Fimdamentally this is because they
have confined themselves to mere words, seem-
ingly without realizing that mere words are
utterly useless tmless translated into deeds and
that an oimce of promise which is accompanied by
provision for a similar oimce of effective perform-
ance is worth at least a ton of promise as to which
no effective method of performance is provided.
Furthermore, a very serious blimder has been
to treat peace as the end instead of righteousness
as the end. The greatest soldier-patriots of his-
tory, Timoleon, John Hamden, Andreas Hofer,
Koemer, the great patriot-statesman-soldiers like
Washington, the great patriot-statesmen like Lin-
coln whose achievements for good depended upon
the use of soldiers, have all achieved their im-
mortal claim to the gratitude of mankind by what

have taken the money and food of the Belgians and permitted the
Belgians to be supported by outsiders. Of course, it was far better
to send them food, even under such conditions, than to let them
starve; but the professional paciiBcists would do well to ponder the
fact that if the neutral nations had been willing to prevent the in-
vasion of Belgium, which could only be done by willingness and
ability to use force, they would by this act of "war" have prevented
more misery and suffering to innocent men, women, and children
than the organized charity of all the "peaceful" nations of the world
can now remove.

148 THE WORLD WAR

they did in just war. To condemn war in terms
which include the wars these men waged or took
part in precisely as they include the most wicked
and imjust wars of history is to serve the devil
and not God.

Again, these peace people have persistently and
resolutely blinked facts. One of the peace con-
gresses sat in New York at the very time that
the feeling in California about the Japanese ques-
tion gravely threatened the good relations be-
tween ourselves and the great empire of Japan.
The only thing which at the moment could prac-
tically be done for the cause of peace was to
secure some proper solution of the question ' at
issue between ourselves and Japan. But this rep-
resented real effort, real thought. The peace
congress paid not the slightest serious attention
to the matter and instead devoted itself to Hsten-
ing to speeches which favored the abolition of the
United States navy and even in one case the
prohibiting the use of tin soldiers in nurseries be-
cause of the militaristic effect on the minds of the
little boys and girls who played with them !

Ex-President Taft has recently said that it is
hysterical to endeavor to prepare against war;
and he at the same time explained that the only
real possibility of war was to be found '*in the
wanton, reckless, wicked willingness on the part
of a narrow section of the country to gratify racial

SELF-DEFENSE 149

prejudice and class hatred by flagrant breach of
treaty right in the form of state law." This
characterization is, of course, aimed at the State
of California for its action toward the Japanese.
If — which may Heaven forfend — any trouble
comes because of the action of California toward
the Japanese, a prime factor in producing it will
be the treaty negotiated four years ago with
Japan; and no clearer illustration can be given of
the mischief that comes to our people from the
habit our public men have contracted of getting
cheap applause for themselves by making treaties
which they know to be shams, which they know
cannot be observed. The result of such action is
that there is one set of real facts, those that
actually exist and must be reckoned with, and
another set of make-believe facts which do not
exist except on pieces of paper or in after-dinner
speeches, which are known to be false but which
serve to deceive well-meaning pacificists. Four
years ago there was in existence a long-standing
treaty with Japan under which we reserved the
right to keep out Japanese laborers. Every man
of any knowledge whatever of conditions on the
Pacific Slope, and, indeed, generally throughout
this country, knew, and knows now, that any im-
migration in mass to this country of the Japanese,
whether the immigrants be industrial laborers or
men whose labor takes the form of agricultural

ISO THE WORLD WAR

work or even the form of small shopkeeping, was
and is absolutely certain to produce trouble of
the most dangerous kind. The then administra-
tion entered on a course of conduct as regards
Manchuria which not only deeply offended the
Japanese but actually achieved the result of unit-
ing the Russians and Japanese against us. To
make amends for this serious bltmder the adminis-
tration committed the, far worse blunder of en-
deavoring to placate Japanese opinion by the
negotiation of a new treaty in which our right to
exclude Japanese laborers, that is, to prevent
Japanese immigration in mass, was abandoned.
The extraordinary and lamentable fact in the
matter was that the California senators acq tiiesced
in the treaty. Apparently they took the view,
which so many of our pubHc men do take and
which they are encouraged to take by the un-
wisdom of those who demand impossible treaties,
that they were perfectly willing to please some
people by passing the treaty because, if necessary,
the opponents of the treaty could at any time be
placated by its violation. One item in securing
their support was the statement by the then ad-
ministration that the Japanese authorities had
said that they would promise imder a ''gentle-
men's agreement" to keep the immigrants out if
only they were by treaty given the right to let
them in. Under the preceding treaty, during

SELF-DEFENSE 151

my administration, the Japanese government had
made and had in good faith kept such an agree-
ment, the agreement being that as long as the
Japanese government itself kept out Japanese
immigrants and thereby relieved us of the neces-
sity of passing any law to exclude them, no such
law would be passed. Apparently the next ad-
ministration did not perceive the fathomless dif-
ference between retaining the power to enact a
law which was not enacted as long as no necessity
for enacting it arose, and abandoning the power,
surrendering the right, and trusting that the neces-
sity to exercise it would not arise.

I immensely admire and respect the Japanese
people. I prize their good-will. I am proud of
my personal relations with some of their leading
men. Fifty years ago there was no possible com-
munity between the Japanese and ourselves.
The events of the last fifty years have been so
extraordinary that now Japanese statesmen, gen-
erals, artists, writers, scientific men, business
men, can meet our corresponding men on terms
of entire equality. I am fortunate enough to
have a ntimber of Japanese friends. I value their
friendship. They and I meet on a footing of
absolute equality, socially, politically, and in
every other way. I respect and regard them pre-
cisely as in the case of my German and Russian,
French and English friends. But there is no use

1 52 THE WORLD WAR

blinking the truth because it is unpleasant. As yet
the differences between the Japanese who work
with their hands and the Americans who work
with their hands are such that it is absolutely
impossible for them, when brought into contact
with one another in great nimibers, to get on.
Japan would not permit any immigration in mass
of our people into her territory, and it is wholly
inadvisable that there should be such immigra-
gration of her people into our territory. This
is not because either side is inferior to the other
but because they are different. As a matter of
fact, these differences are sometimes in favor of
the Japanese and sometimes in favor of the
Americans. But they are so marked that at this
time, whatever may be the case in the future,
friction and trouble are certain to come if there
is any immigration in mass of Japanese into this
coimtry, exactly as friction and trouble have
actually come in British Columbia from this
cause, and have been prevented from coming in
Australia only by the most rigid exclusion laws.
Under these conditions the way to avoid trouble
is not by making believe that things which are
not so are so but by courteously and firmly
facing the situation. The two nations should be
given absolutely reciprocal treatment. Students,
statesmen, publicists, scientific men, all travellers,
whether for business or pleasure, and all men

SELF-DEFENSE IS3

engaged in international business, whether Japa-
nese or American, should have absolute right of
entry into one another's countries and should be
treated with the highest consideration while
therein, but no settlement in mass should be per-
mitted of the people of either cotmtry in the other
coimtry. All travelling and sojourning by the
people of either coimtry in the other country
should be encouraged, but there should be no
immigration of workers to, no settlement in, either
coimtry by the people of the other. I advocate
this solution, which for years I have advocated,
because I am not merely a friend but an intense
admirer of Japan, because I am most anxious
that America should learn from Japan the great
amount that Japan can teach us and because I
wish to work for the best possible feeling between
the two countries. Each country has interests
in the Pacific which can best be served by their
cordial co-operation on a footing of frank and
friendly equality; and in eastern Asiatic waters
the interest and therefore the proper dominance
of Japan are and will be greater than those of any
other nation. If such a plan as that above ad-
vocated were once adopted by both our nations
all sources of friction between the two countries
would vanish at once. Ultimately I have no ques-
tion that all restrictions of movement from one
country to the other could be dispensed with.

154 THE WORLD WAR

But to attempt to dispense with them in our day
and our generation will fail; and even worse fail-
ure will attend the attempt to make beUeve to
dispense with them while not doing so.

It is eminently necessary that the United States
should in good faith observe its treaties, and it is
therefore eminently necessary not to pass treaties
which it is absolutely certain will not be obeyed,
and which themselves provoke disobedience to
them. The height of folly, of coiu*se, is to pass
treaties which will not be obeyed and the disre-
gard of which may cause the gravest possible
trouble, even war, and at the same time to refuse
to prepare for war and to pass other foolish treaties
calculated to lure our people into the beHef that
there will never be war.

I advocate that our preparedness take such
shape as to fit us to resist aggression, not to en-
courage us in aggression. I advocate prepared-
ness that will enable us to defend our own shores
and to defend the Panama Canal and Hawaii
and Alaska, and prevent the seizure of territory
at the expense of any commonwealth of the
western hemisphere by any military power of
the Old World. I advocate this being done in the
most democratic manner possible. We Americans
do not realize how fundamentally democratic our
army really is. When I served in Cuba it was
imder General Sam Yoimg and alongside of Gen-

SELF-DEFENSE ISS

eral Adna Chaffee. Both had entered the Amer-
ican army as enlisted men in the Civil War.
Later, as President, I made both of them in suc-
cession lieutenant-generals and commanders of
the army. On the occasion when General Chaffee
was to appear at the White House for the first
time as lieutenant-general, General Yoimg sent
him his own starred shoulder-straps with a little
note saying that they were from "Private Yoimg,
'6 1, to Private Chaffee, '6i.** Both of the fine
old fellows represented the best type of citizen-
soldier. Each was simply and sincerely devoted
to peace and justice. Each was incapable of
advocating our doing wrong to others. Neither
could have understood willingness on the part of
any American to see the United States submit
tamely to instilt or injury. Both typified the
attitude that we Americans should take in our
dealings with foreign coimtries.

CHAPTER IX
OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY

THE coiirse of the present administration in
foreign affairs has now and then combined
officiously offensive action toward foreign
powers with tame submission to wrong-doing by
foreign powers. As a nation we have refused to
do our duty to others and yet we have at times
tamely submitted to wrong at the hands of others.

(This has been notably true of our conduct in
Mexica; and we have come perilously near such
conduct in the case of Japan. It is also true of
our activities as regards the European war. We
/ failed to act in accordance with our obligations
I as a signatory power to the Hague treaties. In
* addition to the capital crime committed against
Belgiimi we have seen outrage after outrage per-
petrated in violation of the Hague conventions,
and yet the administration has never ventured
so much as a protest. It has even at times, and
with wavering and vacillation, adopted policies
unjust to one or the other of the two sets of com-
batants. But it has immediately abandoned
these policies when the combatants in violent and

is6

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY IS7

improper fashion overrode them; and it has sub-
mitted with such tame servility to whatever the
warring nations have dictated that in effect we
see, as Theodore Woolsey, the expert on interna-
tional law, has pointed out, the American govern-
ment protecting belligerent interests abroad at
the expense of neutral interests both at home and
abroad. Not since the Napoleonic wars have
belligerents acted with such high-handed disre-
gard of the rights of neutrals. Germany was the
first and greatest offender; and when we failed
to protest in her case the administration perhaps
felt ashamed to protest, felt that it was estopped
from protesting, in other cases. England in its
turn has violated our neutrality rights, and while
exercising both force and ingenuity in making
this violation effective has protested as if she
herself were the injured party. As a matter of
fact, England and France should note that in
view of their command of the seas our war trade
is of such value to them that certain congressmen,
whose interest in Germany surpasses their in-
terest in the United States, have sought by law
totally to prohibit it. This proposed — and thor-
oughly improper — action is a sufficient answer to
the charges of the Allies, and should remind them
how ill they requite the service rendered by our
merchants when they seek to block all our inter-
course with other nations. They, however, are

J

158 THE WORLD WAR

only to be blamed for short-sightedness; there
is no reason why they should pay heed to American
interests. But the administration should represent
American interests; it should see that while we
perform our duties as neutrals we should be pro-
tected in our rights as neutrals ; and one of these
,rights is the trade in contraband. To prohibit
Sthis is to take part in the war for the benefit of
bne belligerent at the expense of another and to
ipur own cost.

Of course it would be an ignoble action on
our part after having conspicuously failed to pro-
I test against the violation of Belgian neutraHty to
I show ourselves overeager to protest against com-
paratively insignificant violations of our own
neutral rights. But we should never have put
oturselves in such a position as to make insistence
on our own rights seem disregard for the rights of
others. The proper course for us to pursue was,
on the one hand, scrupulously to see that we did
not so act as to injure any contending nation,
unless required to do so in the name of morality
and of our solenm treaty obligations, and also
fearlessly to act on behalf of other nations which
were wronged, as required by these treaty obli-
gations; and, on the other hand, with courteous
firmness to warn any nation which, for instance,
seized or searched our ships against the accepted
rules of international conduct that this we could

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY IS9

not permit and that such a cotirse should not be!
persevered in by any nation which desired our
good-will. I believe I speak for at least a con-;
siderable portion of our people when I say that wej
wish to make it evident that we feel sincere good-j
will toward all nations; that any action we takej
against any nation is taken with the greatest re-|
luctance and only because the wrong-doing of
that nation imposes a distinct, although painfull
duty upon us ; and yet that we do not intend our|
selves to submit to wrong-doing from any nation)
Until an efficient world league for peace is in
more than mere process of formation the Uniteq
States must depend upon itself for protection
where its vital interests are concerned. All the
youth of the nation should be trained in warlike
exercises and in the use of arms — as well as in the
indispensable virtues of courage, self-restraint, ana
endurance — so as to be fit for national defense!.
But the right arm of the nation must be its navy.
Our navy is our most efficient peacemaker. In
order to use the navy effectively we should clearly
define to ourselves the poHcy we intend to follow
and the limits over which we expect our power to
extend. 0\ir own coasts, Alaska, Hawaii, and the
Panama Canal and its approaches should repre-
sent the sphere in which we should expect to be
able, single-handed, to meet and master any op-
ponent from overseas.

i6o THE WORLD WAR

I exclude the Philippines. This is because I
ifeel that the present administration has definitely
committed us to a course of action which will
make the early and complete severance of the
Philippines from us not merely desirable but
necessary. I have never felt that the Philip-
Ones were of any special use to us. But I have
jfelt that we had a great task to perform there
/and that a great nation is benefited by doing a
Wreat task. It was our bounden duty to work
primarily for the interests of the Filipinos; but
it was also our boimden duty, inasmuch as the
entire responsibility lay upon us, to consult our
own judgment and not theirs in finally deciding
what was to be done. It was our duty to govern
the islands or to get out of the islands. It was
most certainly not otu* duty to take the respon-
sibility of staying in the islands without governing
them. Still less was it — or is it — our duty to
enter into joint arrangements with other powers
about the islands; arrangements of confused re-
sponsibiHty and divided power of the kind sure
to cause mischief. I had hoped that we would
/continue to govern the islands imtil we were
certain that they were able to govern themselves
in such fashion as to do justice to other natioif^
and to repel injustice committed on them by
other nations. To substitute for such govern-
ment by ourselves either a government by the

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY i6i

Filipinos with us guaranteeing them against out-
siders, or a joint guarantee between us and out-
siders, would be folly. It is eminently desirable
to guarantee the neutrality of small civilized
nations which have a high social and cultural
status and which are so advanced that they do
not fall into disorder or commit wrong-doing on
others. But it is eminently undesirable to guar
antee the neutrality or sovereignty of an inherently
weak nation which is impotent to preserve order
at home, to repel assaults from abroad, or to re-
frain from doing wrong to outsiders. It is even
more undesirable to give such a guarantee with
no intention of making it really effective. That
this is precisely what the present administration
would be deHghted to do has been shown by its
refusal to live up to its Hague promises at the
very time that it was making similar new inter-
national promises by the batch. To enter into a
joint guarantee of neutrality which in emergencies
can only be rendered effective by force of arms
is to incur a serious responsibility which ought to
be undertaken in a serious spirit. To enter into
it with no intention of using force, or of preparing
force, in order at need to make it effective, repre-
sents the kind of silliness which is worse than
wickedness.

Above all, we should keep our promises. The
present administration was elected on the out-

1 62 THE WORLD WAR

right pledge of giving the Filipinos independence.
Apparently its cotirse in the Philippines has pro-
ceeded upon the theory that the Filipinos are now
fit to govern themselves. Whatever may be our
personal and individual beliefs in this matter, we
ought not as a nation to break faith or even to
seem to break faith. I hope therefore that the
Filipinos will be given their independence at an
early date and without any guarantee from us
which might in any way hamper our future action
or commit us to staying on the Asiatic coast. I
Jdo not believe we should keep any foothold what-
\J 'ever in the Philippines.'' Any kind of position by
us in the Philippines merely results in making
them otu* heel of Achilles if we are attacked by a
foreign power. They can be of no compensating
benefit to us. If we were to retain complete con-
trol over them and to continue the course of ac-
tion which in the past sixteen years has resulted
in such inmieasurable benefit for them, then I
should feel that it was our duty to stay and work
for them in spite of the expense inctirred by us
and the risk we thereby ran. But inasmuch as
we have now promised to leave them and as we
are now abandoning our power to work efficiently
for and in them, I do not feel that we are war-
ranted in staying in the islands in an equivocal
position, thereby incurring great risk to ourselves
without conferring any real compensating advan-

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY 163

tage, of a kind which we are bound to take into
accoiint, on the Filipinos themselves. If the
Filipinos are entitled to independence then we are
entitled to be freed from all the responsibility and
risk which our presence in the islands entails
upon us. '

The great nations of southernmost South Amer-
ica, Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile are now so
far advanced in stability and power that there is
no longer any need of applying the Monroe Doc-
trine as far as they are concerned; and this also
relieves us as regards Uruguay and Paraguay
the former of which is well advanced and neither
of which has any interests with which we need
particularly concern ourselves. As regards all
these powers, therefore, we now have no duty save
that doubtless if they got into difficulties and de-
sired our aid we would gladly extend it, just as,
for instance, we would to Australia and Canada.
But we can now proceed on the assimiption that
they are able to help themselves and that any
help we should be required to give would be given
by us as an auxiliary rather than as a principal.

Our naval problem, therefore, is primarily to
provide for the protection of our own coasts and
for the protection and policing of Hawaii, Alaska,
and the Panama Canal and its approaches. This
offers a definite problem which should be solved
by our naval men. It is for them, having in view

i64 THE WORLD WAR

the lessons taught by this war, to say what is the
exact type of fleet we require, the number and
kind of submarines, of destroyers, of mines, and of
air-ships to be used against hostile fleets, in ad-
dition to the cruisers and great fighting craft
which must remain the backbone of the navy.
Civilians may be competent to pass on the merits
of the plans suggested by the naval men, but it
is the naval men themselves who must make and
submit the plans in detail. Lay opinion, how-
ever, should keep certain elementary facts steadily
in mind.

The navy must primarily be used for offensive
purposes. Forts, not the navy, are to be used
for defense. The only permanently efficient type
of defensive is the offensive. A portion, and a
very important portion, of our naval strength
must be used with our own coast ordinarily as a
base, its striking radius being only a few score
miles, or a couple of hundred at the outside.
The events of this war have shown that sub-
marines can play a tremendous part. We should
develop oiu* force of submarines and train the
officers and crews who have charge of them to
the highest pitch of efficiency — for they will be
useless in time of war unless those aboard them
have been trained in time of peace. These sub-
marines, when used in connection with destroy-
ers and with air-ships, can undoubtedly serve to

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY 165

minimize the danger of successftd attack on our
own shores. But the prime lesson of the war, as
regards the navy, is that the nation with a power-
ful seagoing navy, although it may suffer much
annoyance and loss, yet is able on the whole to
take the offensive and do great damage to a nation
with a less powerful navy. Great Britain's naval
superiority over Germany has enabled her com-
pletely to paralyze all Germany's sea commerce
and to prevent goods from entering her ports.
What is far more important, it has enabled the
British to land two or three himdred thousand
men to aid the French, and has enabled Canada and
Australia to send a hundred thousand men from
the opposite ends of the earth to Great Britain.
If Germany had had the more powerful navy
England would now have suffered the fate of
Belgiimi.

The capital work done by the German cruis-
ers in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian
Oceans shows how much can be accomplished in
the way of hurting and damaging an enemy by
even the weaker power if it possesses fine ships,
well handled, able to operate thousands of miles
from their own base. We must not fail to recog-
nize this. Neither must we fail heartily and fully
to recognize the capital importance of submarines
as well as air-ships, torpedo-boat destroyers, and
mines, as proved by the events of the last three

i66 THE WORLD WAR

\ months. But nothing that has yet occurred war-
rants us in feeHng that we can afford to ease up
in our programme of building battle-ships and
cruisers, especially the former. The German sub-
marines have done wonderfully in this war; their
cruisers have done gallantly. But so far as Great
Britain is concerned the vital and essential fea-
ture has been the fact that her great battle fleet
has kept the German fleet immured in its own home
ports, has protected Britain from invasion, and
has enabled her land strength to be used to its
utmost capacity beside the armies of France and
Belgitim. If the men who for years have clam-
ored against Britain's being prepared had had
their way, if Britain during the last quarter of a
century had failed to continue the upbuilding of
her navy, if the English statesmen corresponding
to President Wilson and Mr. Bryan had seen their
ideas tritimph, England would now be off the map
as a great power and the British Empire would
have dissolved, while London, Liverpool, and
Birmingham would be in the condition of Antwerp
and Brussels.

The efficiency of the German personnel at sea
has been no less remarkable than the efficiency
of the German personnel on land. This is due
partly to the spirit of the nation and partly to
what is itself a consequence of that spirit, the
careful training of the navy during peace under

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY 167

the conditions of actual service. When, early in
1909, our battle fleet returned from its sixteen
months' voyage aroimd the world there was no
navy in the world which, size for size, ship for
ship, and squadron for squadron, stood at a higher
pitch of efficiency. We blind ourselves to the
truth if we believe that the same is true now.
During the last twenty months, ever since Sec-
retary Meyer left the Navy Department, there
has been in our navy a great falling off relatively
to other nations. It was quite impossible to
avoid this while our national affairs were handled
as they have recently been handled. The Presi-
dent who intrusts the Departments of State anc
the Navy to gentlemen like Messrs. Bryan \ anc
Daniels deliberately invites disaster, in the eveni
of serious complicatious with a formidable f oreigi
opponent. On the whole, there is no class of our
citizens, big or small, who so emphatically de-
serve well of the country as the officers and the
enlisted men of the army and navy. No navy in
the world has such fine stuff out of which to make
man-of-war's men. But they must be heartily
backed up, heartily supported, and sedulously
trained. They must be treated well, and, above
all, they must be treated so as to encourage the
best among them by sharply discriminating
against the worst. The utmost possible efficiency
should be demanded of them. They are emphat-

i68 THE WORLD WAR

ically and in every sense of the word men; and
real men resent with impatient contempt a poHcy
under which less than their best is demanded.
The finest material is utterly worthless without
the best personnel. In such a highly specialized
service as the navy constant training of a ptu-ely
mihtary type is an absolute necessity. At pres-
ent our navy is lamentably short in many differ-
ent material directions. There is actually but one
torpedo for each torpedo tube. It seems incredible
that such can be the case; yet it is the case. We
are many thousands of men short in our en-
listments. We are lamentably short in certain
types of vessel. There is grave doubt as to the
eflSciency of many of our submarines and destroy-
ers. But the shortcomings in our training are
even more lamentable. To keep the navy cruis-
ing near Vera Cruz and in Mexican waters,
without manoeuvring, invites rapid deteriora-
tion. For nearly two years there has been no
fleet manoeuvring; and this fact by itself prob-
ably means a twenty-five per cent loss of efficiency.
During the same periods most of the ships have
not even had division gun practice. Not only
should our navy be as large as our position and
interest demand but it should be kept continu-
ally at the highest point of efficiency and should
never be used save for its own appropriate mili-
tary purposes. Of this elementary fact the pres-

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY 169

ent administration seems to be completely igno-
rant.

President Wilson and Secretary Daniels assert
that our navy is in efficient shape. Admiral
Fiske's testimony is conclusive to the contrary,
although it was very cautiously given, as is
but natural when a naval officer, if he tells the
whole truth, must state what is impleasant for
his superiors to hear. Other naval officers have
pointed out our deficiencies, and the newspapers
state that some of them have been reprimanded
for so doing. But there is no need for their testi-
mony. There is one admitted fact which is ab-
solutely conclusive in the matter. There has been
no fleet manoeuvring during the past twenty-two
months. In spite of fleet manoeuvring the navy
may be imprepared. But it is an absolute cer-
tainty that without fleet manoeuvring it cannot
possibly be prepared. In the imimportant do-
main of sport there is not a man who goes to see
the annual football game between Harvard and
Yale who would not promptly cancel his ticket if
either university should propose to put into the
field a team which, no matter how good the players
were individually, had not been practised as a
team during the preceding sixty days. If in such
event the president of either university or the
coach of the team should annoimce that in spite
of never having had any team practice the team

I70 THE WORLD WAR

was nevertheless in first-class condition, there is
literally no intelligent follower of the game who
would regard the utterance as serious. Why
should President Wilson and Secretary Daniels
expect the American public to show less intelli-
gence as regards the vital matter of oiu* navy
than they do as regards a mere sport, a mere
play? For twenty-two months there has been
no fleet manoeuvring. Since in the daily press,
early in November, I, with emphasis, called atten-
tion to this fact Mr. Daniels has annotmced that
shortly manoeuvring will take place; and of course
the failure to manoeuvre for nearly two years
has been due less to Mr. Daniels than to Presi-
dent Wilson's futile and mischievous Mexican
policy and his entire ignorance of the needs of
the navy. I am glad that the administration
has tardily waked up to the necessity of taking
some steps to make the navy efficient, and if the
President and the Secretary of the Navy bring
forth fndts meet for repentance, I will most
heartily acknowledge the fact — just as it has given
me the utmost pleasure to praise and support
President Wilson's Secretary of War, Mr. Gar-
rison. But misstatements as to actual conditions
make but a poor preparation for the work of
remedying these conditions, and President Wilson
and Secretary Daniels try to conceal from the
people our ominous naval shortcomings. The

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY 171

shortcomings are far-reaching, alike in material,
organization, and practical training. The navy
is absolutely unprepared; its efficiency has been
terribly reduced imder and because of the action
of President Wilson and Secretary Daniels. Let
them realize this fact and do all they can to
remedy the wrong they have committed. Let
Congress realize its own shortcomings. Far-
reaching and thoroughgoing treatment, continued
for a period of at least two and in all probabil-
ity three years, is needed if the navy is to be
placed on an equality, unit for unit, no less
than in the mass, with the navies of England,
Germany, and Japan. In the present war the
deeds of the Emden, of the German submarines,
of Von Spec's squadron, have shown not merely
efficiency but heroism; and the navies of Great
Britain and Japan have been handled in masterly
manner. Have the countrymen of Farragut, of
Gushing, Buchanan, Winslow, and Semmes, of
Decatur, Hull, Perry, and MacDonough, lost their
address and courage, and are they willing to sink
below the standard set by their forefathers ?

It has been said that the United States never
learns by experience but only by disaster. Such
method of education may at times prove costly.
The slothful or short-sighted citizens who are
now misled by the cries of the ultrapacificists
would do well to remember events connected with

172 THE WORLD WAR

the outbreak of the war with Spain. I was then
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. At one bound
otu* people passed from a condition of smug con-
fidence that war never could occur (a smug con-
fidence just as great as any we feel at present)
to a condition of utterly imreasoning panic over
what might be done to us by a very weak an-
tagonist. One governor of a seaboard State an-
nounced that none of the National Guard regi-
ments would be allowed to respond to the call of
the President because they would be needed to
prevent a Spanish invasion of that State — the
Spaniards being about as likely to make such
an invasion as we were to invade Timbuctoo or
Turkestan. One congressman besought me to
send a battle-ship to protect Jekyll Island, off the
coast of Georgia. Another congressman asked
me to send a battle-ship to protect a simimer
colony which centred aroimd a large Atlantic-
coast hotel in Connecticut. In my own neigh-
borhood on Long Island clauses were gravely in-
serted into the leases of property to the effect
that if the Spaniards destroyed the property the
leases should terminate. Chambers of commerce,
boards of trade, municipal authorities, leading
business men, from one end of the country to the
other, hysterically demanded, each of them, that
a ship should be stationed to defend some par*-
ticular locality; the theory being that our navy

OUR PEACEMAKER, THE NAVY I73

should be strung along both seacoasts, each ship
by itself, in a purely defensive attitude — thereby
making certain that even the Spanish navy could
pick them all up in detail. One railway president
came to protest to me against the choice of Tampa
as a point of embarkation for our troops, on the
grotind that his railway was entitled to its share
of the profit of transporting troops and mimitions
of war and that his railway went to New Orleans.
The very senators and congressmen who had done
everything in their power to prevent the building
up and the efficient training of the navy screamed
and shrieked loudest to have the navy diverted
from its proper purpose and used to protect un-
important seaports. Surely our congressmen and,
above all, our people need to learn that in time of
crisis peace treaties are worthless, and the ultra-
pacificists of both sexes merely a biurden on and a
detriment to the coimtry as a whole ; that the only
permanently useful defensive is the offensive, and
that the navy is properly the offensive weapon of
the nation.

The navy of the United States is the right
arm of the United States and is emphatically the
peacemaker. Woe to our country if we permit
that right arm to become palsied or even to be-
come flabby and inefficient !

CHAPTER X
PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

MILITARY preparedness meets two needs.
In the first place, it is a partial insur-
ance against war. In the next place, it is
a partial guarantee that if war comes the country
will certainly escape dishonor and will probably
escape material loss.

The question of preparedness cannot be con-
sidered at all imtil we get certain things clearly in
our minds. Right thinking, wholesome thinking,
is essential as a preliminary to soimd national
action. Until our people imderstand the folly of
certain of the arguments advanced against the
action this nation needs, it is, of course, impossible
to expect them to take such action.

The first thing to imderstand is the fact that
ireparedness for war does not always insure
leace but that it very greatly increases the chances
if securing peace. Foolish people point out na-
tions which, in spite of preparedness for war,
have seen war come upon them, and then exclaim
that preparedness against war is of no use. Such
an argument is precisely like saying that the ex-

174

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 17S

istence of destructive fires in great cities shows
that there is no use in having a fire depart-
ment. A fire department, which means prepared-
ness against fire, does not prevent occasional
destructive fires, but it does greatly diminish and
may completely minimize the chances for whole-
sale destruction by fire. Nations that are pre-
pared for war occasionally suffer from it; but if
they are unprepared for it they suffer far more
often and far more radically.

Fifty years ago China, Korea, and Japan were
in substantially the same stage of culture and
civilization. Japan, whose statesmen had vision
and whose people had the fighting edge, began a
course of military preparedness, and the other two
nations (one of them in natural resources immea-
surably superior to Japan) remained unprepared.
In consequence, Japan has immensely increased
her power and standing and is wholly free from
all danger of military invasion. Korea on the
contrary, having first been dominated by Russia
has now been conquered by Japan. China has
been partially dismembered; one half of her terri-
tories are now subject to the dominion of foreign
nations, which have time and again waged war
between themselves on these territories, and her
remaining territory is kept by her purely because
these foreign nations are jealous of one another.

In 1870 France was overthrown and siiffered

176 THE WORLD WAR

by fax the most damaging and disastrous defeat
she had suffered since the days of Joan of Arc — ■
because she was not prepared. In the present
war she has suffered terribly, but she is beyond
all comparison better off than she was in 1870,
because she has been prepared. Poor Belgium, in
spite of being prepared, was almost destroyed,
because great neutral nations — the United States
being the chief offender — have not yet reached the
standard of international moraHty and of willing-
ness to fight for righteousness which must be
attained before they can guarantee small, well-
behaved, civilized nations against cruel disaster.
England, because she was prepared as far as her
navy is concerned, has been able to avoid Belgium's
fate; and, on the other hand, if she had been as
prepared with her army as France, she would
probably have been able to avert the war and, if
this could not have been done, would at any rate
have been able to save both France and Belgium
from invasion.

In recent years Rumania, Bulgaria, and Servia
have at times suffered terribly, and in some
cases have suffered disaster, in spite of being
prepared for war; but Bosnia and Herzegovina
are imder alien rule at this moment because
they could no more protect themselves against
Austria than they could against Turkey. While
Greece was imprepared she was able to accomplish

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR I77

nothing, and she encountered disaster. As soon
as she was prepared, she benefited immensely.

Switzerland, at the time of the Napoleonic wars,
was wholly unprepared for war. In spite of her
mountains, her neighbors overran her at will.
Great battles were fought on her soil, including one
great battle between the French and the Russians ;
but the Swiss took no part in these battles. Their
territory was practically annexed to the French
Republic, and they were domineered over first by
the Emperor Napoleon and then by his enemies.
It was a bitter lesson, but the Swiss learned it.
Since then they have gradually prepared for war
as no other small state of Eiu*ope has done, and
it is in consequence of this preparedness that none
of the combatants has violated Swiss territory in
the present struggle.

The briefest examination of the facts shows that
unpreparedness for war tends to lead to immea-
siirable disaster, and that preparedness, while it
does not certainly avert war any more than the
fire department of a city certainly averts fire, yet
tends very strongly to guarantee the nation against
war and to secure success in war if it shotild im-
happily arise.

Another argument advanced against prepared-
ness for war is that such preparedness incites war.
This, again, is not in accordance with the facts.
Unquestionably certain nations have at times pre-

178 THE WORLD WAR

pared for war with a view to foreign conquest.
But the rule has been that unpreparedness for war
does not have any real effect in securing peace,
although it is always apt to make war disastrous,
and that preparedness for war generally goes hand
in hand with an increased caution in going to war.

Striking examples of these truths are furnished
by the history of the Spanish-American states.
For nearly three quarters of a century after these
states won their independence their history was
little else than a succession of bloody revolutions
and of wars among themselves as well as with out-
siders, while during the same period there was little
or nothing done in the way of effective military pre-
paredness by one of them. During the last twenty
or thirty years, however, certain of them, notably
Argentina and Chile, have prospered and become
stable. Their stability has been partly caused by,
and partly accompanied by, a great increase in
military preparedness. During this period Argen-
tina and Chile have known peace as they never
knew it before, and as the other Spanish- American
countries have not known it either before or since,
and at the same time their military efficiency has
enormously increased.

Proportionately, Argentina and Chile are in
military strength beyond all comparison more
efficient than the United States; and if our
navy is permitted to deteriorate as it has been de-

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR I79

teriorating for nearly two years, the same state-
ment can soon be made, although with more
qualification, of their naval strength. Prepared-
ness for war has made them far less liable to have
war. It has made them less and not more ag-
gressive. It has also made them for the first time
efficient potential factors in maintaining the Mon-
roe Doctrine as coguarantors, on a footing of
complete equality with the United States. The
Monroe Doctrine, conceived not merely as a mea-
sure of foreign policy vital to the welfare of the
United States, but even more as the proper joint
foreign policy of all American nations, is by far
the most efficient guarantee against war that can
be offered the western hemisphere. By whatever
name it is called, it is absolutely indispensable
in order to keep this hemisphere mistress of its
own destinies, able to prevent any part of it
from falling imder the dominion of any Old World
power, and able absolutely to control in its own
interest all colonization on and immigration to
our shores from either Europe or Asia.

The bloodiest and most destructive war in
Spanish-American history, that waged by Brazil,
Argentina, and Uruguay against Paraguay, was
waged when all the nations were entirely impre-
pared for war, especially the three victorious
nations. During the last two or three decades
Mexico, the Central American states, Colombia,

i8o THE WORLD WAR

and Venezuela have been entirely unprepared for
war, as compared with Chile and Argentina. Yet,
whereas Chile and Argentina have been at peace,
the other states mentioned have been engaged in
war after war of the most bloody and destructive
character. Entire lack of preparedness for war
has gone hand in hand with war of the worst type
and with all the worst sufferings that war can
bring.

The lessons taught by Spanish-America are
paralleled elsewhere. When Greece was entirely
unprepared for war she nevertheless went to
war with Turkey, exactly as she did when she
was prepared; the only difference was that in
the one case she suffered disaster and in the other
she did not. The war between Italy and Turkey
was due wholly to the fact that Turkey was not
prepared — that she had no navy. The fact that
in 1848 Prussia was entirely imprepared, and
moreover had just been engaged in a revolution
heartily approved by all the ultrapacificists and
professional humanitarians, did not prevent her
from entering on a war with Denmark. It merely
prevented the war from being successful.

Utter and complete lack of preparation on our
part did not prevent our entering into war with
Great Britain in 181 2 and with Mexico in 1848.
It merely exposed us to humiliation and disaster
in the former war; in the latter, Mexico was even

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR i8i

worse off as regards preparation than we were.
As for civil war, of course military unpreparedness
has not only never prevented it but, on the con-
trary, seems usually to have been one of the
inciting causes.

The fact that impreparedness does not mean
peace ought to be patent to every American who
will think of what has occurred in this cotmtry
during the last seventeen years. In 1898 we
were entirely unprepared for war. No big nation,
save and except our opponent, Spain, was more
utterly unprepared than we were at that time, nor
more utterly imfit for military operations. This
did not, however, mean that peace was secured for
a single additional hour. Our army and navy had
been neglected for thirty-three years. This was
due largely to the attitude of the spiritual forebears
of those eminent clergymen, earnest social workers,
and professionally humanitarian and peace-loving
editors, pubHcists, writers for syndicates, speakers
for peace congresses, pacificist college presidents,
and the like who have recently come forward to
protest against any inquiry into the military con-
dition of this nation, on the ground that to supply
our ships and forts with sufficient ammunition
and to fill up the depleted ranks of the army and
navy, and in other ways to prepare against war,
will tend to interfere with peace. In 1898 the
gentlemen of this sort had had their way for

1 82 THE WORLD WAR

thirty-three years. Our army and navy had been
grossly neglected. But the unpreparedness due
to this neglect had not the slightest effect of
any kind in preventing the war. The only ef-
fect it had was to cause the unnecessary and
useless loss of thousands of lives in the war.
Hundreds of young men perished in the Philip-
pine trenches because, while the soldiers of Agui-
naldo had modem rifles with smokeless powder,
oiu* troops had only the old black-powder Spring-
field. Himdreds more, nay thousands, died or
had their health impaired for life in fever camps
here in our own coimtry and in the Philippines
and Cuba, and suffered on transports, because we
were entirely unprepared for war, and therefore
no one knew how to take care of our men. The
lives of these brave young volimteers were the
price that this coimtry paid for the past action
of men like the clergymen, college presidents,
editors, and humanitarians in question — none of
whom, by the way, risked their own lives. They
were also the price that this coimtry paid for hav-
ing had in previous cabinets just such incompe-
tents as in time of peace Presidents so often, for
political reasons, put into American cabinets — just
such incompetents as President Wilson has put
into the Departments of State and of the Navy.
Now and then the ultrapacificists point out the
fact that war is bad because the best men go to the

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 183

front and the worst stay at home. There is a cer-
tain truth in this. I do not beHeve that we ought
to permit pacificists to stay at home and escape all
risk, while their braver and more patriotic fellow
countrymen fight for the national well-being. It
is for this reason that I wish that we would pro-
vide for imiversal miHtary training for our yoimg
men, and in the event of serious war make all
men do their part instead of letting the whole
burden fall upon the gallant souls who volimteer.
But as there is small likelihood of any such course
being followed in the immediate future, I at
least hope that we will so prepare ourselves in
time of peace as to make our navy and army
thoroughly efficient ; and also to enable us in time
of war to handle our volimteers in such shape
that the loss among them shall be due to the
enemy's bullets instead of, as is now the case,
predominantly to preventable sickness which we
do not prevent. I call the attention of the ultra-
pacificists to the fact that in the last half cen-
tury all the losses among our men caused by "mili-
tarism," as they call it, that is, by the arms of an
enemy in consequence of our going to war, have
been far less than the loss caused among these
same soldiers by applied pacificism, that is, by our
government having yielded to the wishes of the
pacificists and declined in advance to make any
preparations for war. The professional peace

l84 THE WORLD WAR

people have benefited the foes and ill-wishers of
their country; but it is probably the literal fact
to say that in the actual deed, by the obstacles
they have thrown in the way of making adequate
preparation in advance, they have caused more
loss of Hfe among American soldiers, fighting for
the honor of the American flag, during the fifty
years since the close of the Civil War than has
been caused by the foes whom we have fought
during that period.^

But the most striking instance of the utter
failure of impreparedness to stop war has been
shown by President Wilson himself. President
Wilson has made himself the great official cham-
pion of impreparedness in military and naval
matters. His words and his actions about foreign
war have their nearest parallel in the words and
the actions of President Buchanan about civil war;
and in each case there has been the same use of
verbal adroitness to cover mental hesitancy. By

» Some of the leading pacificists are men who have made great
fortunes in industry. Of course industry inevitably takes toll of
life. Far more lives have been lost in this country by men engaged
in bridge building, tunnel digging, mining, steel manufacturing, the
erection of sky-scrapers, the operations of the fishing fleet, and the
like, than in all our battles in all our foreign wars put together. Such
loss of life no more justifies us in opposing righteous wars than in
opposing necessary industry. There was certainly far greater loss of
life, and probably greater needless and preventable and uncompen-
sated loss of life, in the industries out of which Mr. Carnegie made
his gigantic fortune than has occurred among our troops in war dur-
ing the time covered by Mr. Carnegie's activities on behalf of peace.

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 185

his words and his actions President Wilson has
done everything possible to prevent this nation
from making its army and navy effective and to
increase the inefficiency which he already found
existing. We were unprepared when he took
office, and every month since we have grown still
less prepared. Yet this fact did not prevent
President Wilson, the great apostle of unpre-
paredness, the great apostle of pacificism and
anti-militarism, from going to war with Mexico
last spring. It merely prevented him, or, to
speak more accurately, the same mental peculi-
arities which made him the apostle of imprepared-
ness also prevented him, from making the war
efficient. His conduct rendered the United States
an object of international derision because of
the way in which its affairs were managed. Presi-
dent Wilson made no declaration of war. He did
not in any way satisfy the requirements of common
international law before acting. He invaded a
neighboring state, with which he himself insisted
we were entirely at peace, and occupied the most
considerable seaport of the country after mili-
tary operations which resulted in the loss of the
lives of perhaps twenty of our men and five or
ten times that number of Mexicans; and then he
sat supine, and refused to allow either the United
States or Mexico to reap any benefit from what had
been done.

l86 THE WORLD WAR

It is idle to say that such an amazing action
was not war. It was an utterly futile war and
achieved nothing; but it was war. We had
ample justification for interfering in Mexico and
even for going to war with Mexico, if after care-
ftd consideration this course was deemed neces-
sary. But the President did not even take notice
of any of the atrocious wrongs Americans had suf-
fered, or deal with any of the grave provocations
we had received. His statement of justification
was merely that *'we are in Mexico to serve man-
kind, if we can find a way." Evidently he did
not have in his mind any particular idea of how he
was to "serve mankind," for, after staying eight
months in Mexico, he decided that he could not
**find a way" and brought his army home. He
had not accompHshed one single thing. At one
time it was said that we went to Vera Cruz to
stop the shipment of arms into Mexico. But
after we got there we allowed the shipments
to continue. At another time it was said that
we went there in order to exact an apology for
an insult to the flag. But we never did exact the
apology, and we left Vera Cruz without taking
any steps to get an apology. In all our history
there has been no more extraordinary example
of queer infirmity of purpose in an important
crisis than was shown by President Wilson in this
matter. His business was either not to interfere

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 187

at all or to interfere hard and effectively. This
was the sole policy which should have been al-
lowed by regard for the dignity and honor of the
government of the United States and the welfare
of our people. In the actual event President
Wilson interfered, not enough to quell civil war,
not enough to put a stop to or punish the out-
rages on American citizens, but enough to incur
fearful respbnsibilities. Then, having without
authority of any kind, either under the Consti-
tution or in international law or in any other way,
thus interfered, and having interfered to worse
than no purpose, and having made himself and
the nation partly responsible for the atrocious
wrongs committed on Americans and on foreigners
generally in Mexico by the bandit chiefs whom
he was more or less furtively supporting. Presi-
dent Wilson abandoned his whole policy and drew
out of Mexico to resume his "watchful waiting."
When the President, who has made himself the
chief official exponent of the doctrine of unpre-
paredness, thus shows that even in his hands
impreparedness has not the smallest effect in
preventing war, there ought to be little need of
discussing the matter further.

Preparedness for war occasionally has a slight
effect in creating or increasing an aggressive and
militaristic spirit. Far more often it distinctly
diminishes it. In Switzerland, for instance, which

1 88 THE WORLD WAR

we can well afford to take as a model for
ourselves, effectiveness in preparation, and the
retention and development of all the personal
qualities which give the individual man the fight-
ing edge, have in no shape or way increased the
militarist or aggressive spirit. On the contrary,
they have doubtless been among the factors that
have made the Swiss so much more law-abiding
and less homicidal than we are.

The tdtrapacificists have been fond of prophesy-
ing the immediate approach of a imiversally peace-
ful condition throughout the world, which will
render it imnecessary to prepare against war be-
cause there will be no more war. This represents
in some cases well-meaning and pathetic folly. In
other cases it represents mischievous and inexcus-
able folly. But it always represents folly. At
best, it represents the inability of some well-
meaning men of weak mind, and of some men of
strong but twisted mind, either to face or to
imderstand facts.

These prophets of the inane are not peculiar
to our own day. A little over a century and a
quarter ago a noted ItaHan pacificist and phi-
losopher, Aurelio Bertela, summed up the futiu-e
of civilized mankind as follows: "The political
system of Eiurope has arrived at perfection. An
equilibrium has been attained which henceforth
will preserve peoples from subjugation. Few re-

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 189

forms are now needed and these will be accom-
plished peaceably. Europe has no need to fear
revolution."

These sapient statements (which have been
paralleled by himdreds of utterances in the many
peace congresses of the last couple of decades)
were delivered in 1787, the year in which the
French Assembly of Notables ushered in the
greatest era of revolution, domestic turmoil, and
international war in all history — an era which
still continues and which shows not the smallest
sign of coming to an end. Never before have
there been wars on so great a scale as during this
century and a quarter; and the greatest of all
these wars is now being waged. Never before,
except for the ephemeral conquests of certain
Asiatic barbarians, have there been subjugations
of civilized peoples on so great a scale.

During this period here and there something
has been done for peace, much has been done for
liberty, and very much has been done for reform
and advancement. But the professional pacifi-
cists, taken as a class throughout the entire period,
have done nothing for permanent peace and
less than nothing for liberty and for the forward
movement of mankind. Hideous things have
been done in the name of liberty, in the name
of order, in the name of religion; and the vic-
tories that have been gained against these iniqui-

190 THE WORLD WAR

ties have been gained by strong men, armed, who
put their strength at the service of righteousness
and who were hampered and not helped by the
futility of the men who inveighed against all
use of armed strength.

The effective workers for the peace of righteous-
ness were men like Stein, Cavour, and Lincoln;
that is, men who dreamed great dreams, but who
were also pre-eminently men of action, who stood
for the right, and who knew that the right would
fail unless might was put behind it. The prophets
of pacificism have had nothing whatever in com-
mon with these great men; and whenever they
have preached mere pacificism, whenever they
have failed to put righteousness first and to ad-
vocate peace as the handmaiden of righteous-
ness, they have done evil and not good.

After the exhaustion of the Napoleonic struggles
there came thirty-five years during which there
was no great war, while what was called "the long
peace" was broken only by minor international
wars or short-lived revolutionary contests. Good,
but not far-sighted, men in various coimtries,
but especially in England, Germany, and our
own coimtry, forthwith began to dream dreams —
not of a tmiversal peace that should be founded
on justice and righteousness backed by strength,
but of a universal peace to be obtained by the
prattle of weaklings and the outpourings of amia-

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 191

ble enthusiasts who lacked the fighting edge.
About 1850, for instance, the first large peace
congress was held. There were numbers of kindly
people who felt that this congress, and the con-
temporary international exposition, also the first
of its kind, heralded the beginning of a regime of
universal peace. As a matter of fact, there fol-
lowed twenty years during which a number of
great and bloody wars took place — wars far sur-
passing in extent, in duration, in loss of life and
property, and in importance anything that had
been seen since the close of the Napoleonic con-
test.

Then there came another period of nearly thirty
years during which there were relatively only a
few wars, and these not of the highest importance.
Again upright and intelligent but iminformed men
began to be misled by foolish men into the belief
that world peace was about to be secured, on a
basis of amiable fatuity all aroimd and imder the
lead of the preachers of the diluted mush of make-
believe moraHty. A number of peace congresses,
none of which accomplished anything, were held,
and also certain Hague conferences, which did ac-
complish a certain small amount of real good but
of a strictly limited kind. It was well worth go-
ing into these Hague conferences, but only on con-
dition of clearly understanding how strictly limited
was the good that they accomplished. The hys-

192 THE WORLD WAR

terical people who treated them as furnishing a
patent peace panacea did nothing but harm, and
partially offset the real but Hmited good the con-
ferences actually accomplished. Indeed, the con-
ferences imdoubtedly did a certain amoimt of
damage because of the preposterous expectations
they excited among well-meaning but ill-informed
and imthinking persons. These persons really be-
lieved that it was possible to achieve the millen-
nium by means that would not have been very
eflEective in preserving peace among the active boys
of a large Sunday-school — let alone grown-up men
in the world as it actually is. A pathetic com-
mentary on their attitude is furnished by the fact
that the fifteen years that have elapsed since the
first Hague conference have seen an immense in-
crease of war, culminating in the present war,
waged by armies, and with bloodshed, on a scale
far vaster than ever before in the history of man-
kind.

All these facts furnish no excuse whatever for
our failing to work zealously for peace, but they
absolutely require us to imderstand that it is
noxious to work for a peace not based on right-
eousness, and useless to work for a peace based on
righteousness imless we put force back of right-
eousness. At present this means that adequate
preparedness against war offers to our nation its
sole guarantee against wrong and aggression.

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 193

Emerson has said that in the long nin the most
imcomf ortable truth is a safer traveUing compan-
ion than the most agreeable falsehood. The advo-
cates of peace will accomplish nothing except mis-
chief until they are willing to look facts squarely
in the face. One of these facts is that universal
military service, wherever tried, has on the whole
been a benefit and not a harm to the people of the
nation, so long as the demand upon the average
man's life has not been for too long a time. The
Swiss people have beyond all question benefited
by their system of limited but universal prepara-
tion for military service. The same thing is true
of Australia, Chile, and Argentina. In every one
of these coimtries the short military training given
has been f oimd to increase in marked fashion the
social and industrial efficiency, the ability to do
good industrial work, of the man thus trained.
It would be well for the United States from every
standpoint immediately to provide such strictly
limited imiversal military training.

But it is well also for the United States to un-
derstand that a system of military training which
from our standpoint would be excessive and im-
necessary in order to meet our needs, may yet
work admirably for some other nation. The two
nations that during the last fifty years have made
by far the greatest progress are Germany and
Japan; and they are the two nations in which

194 THE WORLD WAR

preparedness for war in time of peace has been
carried to the highest point of scientific develop-
ment. The feat of Japan has been something
absolutely without precedent in recorded history.
Great civilizations, military, industrial, and ar-
tistic, have arisen and flourished in Asia again and
again in the past. But never before has an Asiatic
power succeeded in adopting civilization of the
European or most advanced type and in develop-
ing it to a point of miHtary and industrial efficiency
equalled only by one power of Eiu*opean blood.

As for Germany, we believers in democracy
who also understand, as every sound-thinking
democrat must, that democracy cannot succeed
tmless it shows the same efficiency that is shown
by autocracy (as Switzerland on a small scale
has shown it) need above all other men carefully
to study what Germany has accomplished during
the last half century. Her military efficiency has
not been more astoimding than her industrial
and social efficiency; and the essential thing in
her career of greatness has been the fact that
this industrial and social efficiency is in part di-
rectly based upon the military efficiency and in
part indirectly based upon it, because based upon
the mental, physical, and moral quaHties de-
veloped by the military efficiency. The solidarity
and power of collective action, the trained ability
to work hard for an end which is afar off in the

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 19S

futtire, the combination of intelligent forethought
with efficient and strenuous action — all these to-
gether have given her her extraordinary industrial
pre-eminence; and all of these have been based
upon her military efficiency.

The Germans have developed patriotism of
the most intense kind, and although this patriot-
ism expresses itself in thtmderous songs, in speeches
and in books, it does not confine itself to these
methods of expression, but treats them merely
as incitements to direct and efficient action.
After five months of war, Germany has on the
whole been successful against opponents which
in population outnumber her over two to one,
and in natural resources are largely superior.
Russian and French armies have from time to
time obtained lodgement on German soil ; but on
the whole the fighting has been waged by Ger-
man armies on Russian, French, and Belgian
territory. On her western frontier, it is true,
she was checked and thrown back after her first
drive on Paris, and again checked and thrown
slightly back when, after the fall of Antwerp, she
attempted to advance along the Belgian coast.
But in the west she has on the whole successfully
pursued the offensive, and her battle lines are in
the enemies' territory, although she has had to
face the entire strength of France, England, and
Belgium.

196 THE WORLD WAR

Moreover, she did this with only a part of her
forces. At the same time she was also obHged
to use immense armies, singly or in conjunction
with the Austrians, against the Russians on her
Eastern frontier. No one can foretell the issue
of the war. But what Germany has already done
must extort the heartiest admiration for her grim
efficiency. It coiild have been done only by a
masterful people guided by keen intelligence and
inspired by an intensely patriotic spirit.

France has likewise shown to fine advantage
in this war (in spite of certain marked short-
comings, such as the absurd uniforms of her
soldiers) because of her system of imiversal mili-
tary training. England has suffered lamentably
because there has been no such system. Great
masses of Englishmen, including all her men
at the front, have behaved so as to command our
heartiest admiration. But qualification must be
made when the nation as a whole is considered.
Her professional soldiers, her navy, and her upper
classes have done admirably; but the English
papers describe certain sections of her people as
making a poor showing in their refusal to volun-
teer. The description of the professional football
matches, attended by tens of thousands of spec-
tators, none of whom will enlist, makes a decent
man ardently wish that imder a rigid conscription
law the entire body of players, promoters, and

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR I97

spectators could be sent to the front. Scotland
and Canada have apparently made an extraordi-
nary showing; the same thing is true of sections,
high and low, of society in England proper; but
it is also true that certain sections of the British
democracy imder a system of free volimteering
have shown to disadvantage compared to Ger-
many, where military service is imiversal. The
lack of foresight in preparation was also shown
by the inabiHty of the authorities to f tuiiish arms
and equipment for the troops that were being
raised. These shortcomings are not alluded to
by me in a censorious spirit, and least of all with
any idea of reflecting on England, but purely that
our own people may profit by the lessons taught.
America should pay heed to these facts and profit
by them; and we can only so profit if we realize
that under like conditions we should at the
moment make a much poorer showing than En-
gland has made.

It is indispensable to remember that in the
cases of both Germany and Japan their extraor-
dinary success has been due directly to that kind
of efficiency in war which springs only from the
highest efficiency in preparedness for war. Until
educated people who sincerely desire peace face
this fact with all of its implications, unpleasant
and pleasant, they will not be able to better
present international conditions. In order to se-

198 THE WORLD WAR

cure this betterment, conditions must be created
which will enable civilized nations to achieve such
efficiency without being thereby rendered danger-
ous to their neighbors and to ci-\^lization as a
whole. Americans, particularly, and, to a de-
gree only slightly less. Englishmen and Frenchmen
need to remember this fact, for while the ultra-
pacificists, the peace-at-any-price men, have ap-
peared sporadically everywhere, they have of
recent years been most ntunerous and noxious in
the United States, in Great Britain, and in France.

Inasmuch as in otir coimtry, where. Heaven
knows, we have evils enough with which to grap-
ple, none of these evils is in even the smallest de-
gree due to militarism — inasmuch as to inveigh
against miHtarism in the United States is about
as useful as to inveigh against eating horse-flesh in
honor of Odin — this seems curious. But it is true.
Probably it is merely another illustration of the
old, old truth that persons who shrink from grap-
pling with grave and real evils often strive to
atone to their consciences for such failure by empty
denunciation of evils which to them offer no dan-
ger and no temptation; which, as far as they are
concerned, do not exist. Such dentmciation is
easy. It is also worthless.

American college presidents, clergymen, pro-
fessors, and publicists with much pretension —
some of it fotmded on fact — to intelligence have

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 199

praised works like that of Mr. Bloch, who
"proved" that war was impossible, and like those
of Mr. Norman Angell, who "proved" that it
was an illusion to believe that it was profitable.
The greatest and most terrible wars in history
have taken place since Mr. Bloch wrote. When
Mr. Angell wrote no imprejudiced man of wis-
dom could have failed to imderstand that the two
most successful nations of recent times, Germany
and Japan, owed their great national success to
successful war. The United States owes not only
its greatness but its very existence to the fact
that in the Civil War the men who controlled its
destinies were the fighting men. The coimsels of
the ultrapacificists, the peace-at-any-price men of
that day, if adopted, would have meant not" only
the death of the nation but an incalculable disaster
to humanity. A righteous war may at any moment
be essential to national welfare; and it is a lamen-
table fact that nations have sometimes profited
greatly by war that was not righteous. Such evil
profit will never be done away with imtil armed
force is put behind righteousness.

We must also remember, however, that the
mischievous folly of the men whose counsels tend
to inefiiciency and impotence is not worse than
the baseness of the men who in a spirit of mean
and cringing admiration of brute force gloss over,
or justify, or even deify, the exhibition of unscrupu-

2CX) THE WORLD WAR

lous strength. Writings like those of Homer Lea,
or of Nietzsche, or even of Professor Treitschke
— ^not to speak of Carlyle — are as objectionable
as those of Messrs. Bloch and Angell. Our
people need to pay homage to the great effi-
ciency and the intense patriotism of Germany.
But they need no less fully to realize that this
patriotism has at times beeii accompanied by
callous indifference to the rights of weaker na-
tions, and that this efficiency has at times been
exercised in a way that represents a genuine set-
back to himianity and civilization. Germany's
conduct toward Belgiimi can be justified only in
accordance with a theory which will also justify
Napoleon's conduct toward Spain and his treat-
ment of Prussia and of all Germany diuing the
six years succeeding Jena. I do not see how any
man can fail to sympathize with Stein and Schom-
horst; with Andreas Hofer, with the Maid of
Saragossa, with Koemer and the Tugendbtind;
and if he does so sympathize, he must extend the
same sympathy and admiration to King Albert
and the Belgians.

Moreover, it is well for Americans always to re-
member that what has been done to Belgium
would, of course, be done to us just as imhesitat-
ingly if the conditions required it.

Of course, the lowest depth is reached by the
professional pacificists who continue to scream for

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 201

peace without daring to protest against any con-
crete wrong committed against peace. These in-
clude all of our fellow coimtrymen who at the
present time clamor for peace without explicitly
and clearly declaring that the first condition of
peace should be the righting of the wrongs of
Belgium, reparation to her, and guarantee against
the possible repetition of such wrongs at the ex-
pense of any well-behaved small civilized power
in the future. It may be that peace will come
without such reparation and guarantee but if so
it will be as emphatically the peace of imright-
eousness as was the peace made at Tilsit a hundred
and seven years ago.

When the President appoints a day of prayer
for peace, without emphatically making it evident
that the prayer should be for the redress of the
wrongs without which peace would be harmful,
he cannot be considered as serving righteousness.
When Mr. Bryan concludes absurd all-inclusive
arbitration treaties and is loquacious to peace
societies about the abolition of war, without dar-
ing to protest against the hideous wrongs done
Belgium, he feebly serves unrighteousness. More
comic manifestations, of course entirely useless
but probably too fatuous to be really mischievous,
are those which find expression in the circulation
of peace postage-stamps with doves on them, or
in taking part in peace parades — they might as

202 THE WORLD WAR

well be antivaccination parades — or in the circu-
lation of peace petitions to be signed by school-
children, which for all their possible effect might
just as well relate to the planet Mars.

International peace will only come when the
nations of the world form some kind of league
which provides for an international tribunal to
decide on international matters, which decrees
that treaties and international agreements are
never to be entered into recklessly and foolishly,
and when once entered into are to be observed
with entire good faith, and which puts the collec-
tive force of civiHzation behind such treaties and
agreements and comt decisions and against any
wrong-doing or recalcitrant nation. The all-
inclusive arbitration treaties negotiated by the
present administration amoimt to almost nothing.
They are utterly worthless for good. They are
however slightly mischievous because:

1. There is no provision for their enforcement,
and,

2. They would be in some cases not only im-
possible but improper to enforce.

A treaty is a promise. It is like a promise to
pay in the commercial world. Its value lies in
the means provided for redeeming the promise.
To make it, and not redeem it, is vicious. A
United States gold certificate is valuable because
gold is back of it. If there were nothing back of

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 203

it the certificate would sink to the position of
fiat money, which is irredeemable, and therefore
valueless; as in the case of our Revolutionary
currency. The Wilson-Bryan all-inclusive arbi-
tration treaties represent nothing whatever but
international fiat money. To make them is no
more honest than it is to issue fiat money. Mr.
Bryan would not make a good Secretary of the
Treasury, but he would do better in that posi-
tion than as Secretary of State. For his type of
fiat obligations is a little worse in inteixiational
than in internal affairs. The all-inclusive arbi-
tration treaties, in whose free and imlimited ne-
gotiation Mr. Bryan takes such pleasure, are of
less value than the thirty-cent dollars, whose free
and imlimited coinage he formerly advocated.

An efficient world league for peace is as yet in
the future; and it may be, although I sincerely
hope not, in the far future. The indispensable
thing for every free people to do in the present
day is with efiiciency to prepare against war
by making itself able physically to defend its
rights and by cultivating that stem and manly
spirit without which no material preparation will
avail.

The last point is all essential. It is not of much

^ use to provide an armed force if that force is

composed of poltroons and ultrapacificists. Such

men should be sent to the front, of course, for they

204 THE WORLD WAR

should not be allowed to shirk the danger which
their braver fellow countrymen willingly face, and
under proper discipline some use can be made of
them ; but the fewer there are of them in a nation .
the better the army of that nation will be.

A Yale professor — ^he might just as well have
been a Harvard professor — ^is credited in the press
with saying the other day that he wishes the
United States would take the position that if at-
tacked it would not defend itself, and would sub-
mit unresistingly to any spoliation. The profes-
sor said that this would afford such a beautiful
example to mankind that war would imdoubtedly
be abolished. Magazine writers, and writers of
syndicate articles published in reputable papers,
have recently advocated similar plans. Men who
talk this way are thoroughly bad citizens. Few
members of the criminal class are greater enemies
of the republic.

American citizens must tmderstand that they
cannot advocate or acquiesce in an evil course
of action and then escape responsibility for the
results. If disaster comes to our navy in the near
future it will be directly due to the way the navy
has been handled during the past twenty-two
months, and a part of the responsibility will be
shared by every man who has failed effectively
to protest against, or in any way has made him-
self responsible for, the attitude of the present

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 205

administration in foreign affairs and as regards
the navy.

The first and most important thing for us as a
people to do, in order to prepare ourselves for
self-defense, is to get clearly in our minds just
what our policy is to be, and to insist that our
public servants shall make their words and their
deeds correspond. As has already been pointed
out, the present administration was elected on the
explicit promise that the Philippines should be
given their independence, and it has taken action
in the Philippines which can only be justified on
the theory that this independence is to come in
the immediate future. I believe that we have
rendered incalculable service to the Philippines,
and that what we have there done has shown in
the most striking manner the extreme mischief
that would have followed if , in 1898 and the sub-
sequent years, we had failed to do our duty in con-
sequence of following the advice of Mr. Bryan
and the pacificists or anti-imperialists of that day.
But we must keep our promises; and we ought
now to leave the islands completely at as early a
date as possible.

There remains to defend — the United States
proper, the Panama Canal and its approaches,
Alaska, and Hawaii. To defend all these is vital
to our honor and interest. For such defense pre-
paredness is essential.

2o6 THE WORLD WAR

The first and most essential form of prepared-
ness should be making the navy efficient. Abso-
lutely and relatively, our navy has never been
at such a pitch of efficiency as in February, 1909,
when the battle fleet returned from its voyage
around the world. Unit for imit, there was no
other navy in the world which was at that time
its equal. During the next four years we had
an admirable Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Meyer
— ^we were fortimate in having then and since
good Secretaries of War in Mr. Stimson and Mr.
Garrison. Owing to causes for which Mr. Meyer
was in no way responsible, there was a slight rel-
ative falling off in the efficiency of the navy, and
probably a slight absolute falling off during the
following four years. But it remained very ef-
ficient.

Since Mr. Daniels came in, and because of
the action taken by Mr. Daniels tmder the direc-
tion of President Wilson, there has been a most
lamentable reduction in efficiency. If at this
moment we went to war with a first-class navy
of equal strength to our own, there would be a
chance not only of defeat but of disgrace. It is
probably impossible to put the navy in really
first-class condition with Mr. Daniels at its head,
precisely as it is impossible to conduct our foreign
affairs with dignity and efficiency while Mr.
Bryan is at the head of the State Department.

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 207

But the great falling-off in naval efficiency has
been due primarily to the policy pursued by
President Wilson himself. He has kept the navy
in Mexican waters. The small craft at Tampico
and elsewhere could have rendered real service,
but the President refused to allow them to render
such service, and left English and German sea
officers to protect our people. The great war craft
were of no use at all; yet at this moment he has
brought back from Mexico the army which could
be of some use and has kept there the war-ships
which cannot be of any use, and which suffer
terribly in efficiency from being so kept. The
fleet has had no manoeuvring for twenty-two
months. It has had almost no gun practice by
division during that time. There is not enough
powder; there are not enough torpedoes; the
bottoms of the ships are foul; there are grave
defects in the submarines; there is a deficiency in
aircraft; the under-enlistments indicate a defi-
ciency of from ten thousand to twenty thousand
men; the whole service is being handled in such
manner as to impair its fitness and morale.

Congress should summon before its committees
the best naval experts and provide the battle-
ships, cruisers, submarines, floating mines, and
aircraft that these experts declare to be necessary
for the full protection of the United States. It
should bear in mind that while many of these

2o8 THE WORLD WAR

machines of war are essentially to be used in strik-
ing from the coasts themselves, yet that others
must be designed to keep the enemy afar from
these coasts. Mere defensive by itself cannot per-
manently avail. The only permanently efficient
defensive arm is one which can act offensively.
Our navy must be fitted for attack, for delivering
smashing blows, in order effectively to defend our
own shores. Above all, we should remember that
a highly trained personnel is absolutely indispen-
sable, for without it no material preparation is of
the least avail.

But the navy alone will not suffice in time of
great crisis. If England had adopted the policy
urged by Lord Roberts, there would probably
have been no war and certainly the war would
now have been at an end, as she would have been
able to protect Belgiimi, as well as herself, and to
save France from invasion. Relatively to the
Continent, England was utterly tmprepared; but
she was a miracle of preparedness compared to us.
There are many ugly features connected with the
slowness of certain sections of the English people
to volimteer and with their deficiency in rifles,
horses, and equipment; and there have been cer-
tain military and naval shortcomings; but imtil
we have radically altered our habits of thought
and action we can only say with abashed htimility
that if England has not shown to advantage com-

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 209

pared to Germany, she has certainly done far bet-
ter than we would have done, and than, as a mat-
ter of fact, we actually have done during the past
twenty-two months, both as regards Mexico and
as regards the fulfilment of our duty in the situa-
tion created by the world war.

Congress should at once act favorably along
the lines recommended in the recent excellent
report of the Secretary of War and in accordance
with the admirable plan outlined in the last
report of the Chief of Staff of the army. General
Wotherspoon — a report with which his prede-
cessor as Chief of Staff, General Wood, appears
to be in complete sympathy. Our army should
be doubled in size. An effective reserve should be
created. Every year there should be field ma-
noeuvres on a large scale, a hundred thousand
being engaged for several weeks. The artillery
should be given the most scientific training. The
equipment should be made perfect at every point.
Rigid economy should be demanded.

Every officer and man should be kept to the
highest standard of physical and moral fitness.
The imfit should be ruthlessly weeded out. At
least one third of the officers in each grade should
be promoted on merit without regard to seniority,
and the least fit for promotion should be retired.
Every imit of the regular army and reserve should
be trained to the highest efficiency imder war con-
ditions.

2IO THE WORLD WAR

But this is not enough. There should be at
least ten times the number of rifles and the quan-
tity of ammimition in the coimtry that there are
now. In our high schools and colleges a system
of military training like that which obtains in
Switzerland and Australia should be given. Fur-
thermore, aU our yoimg men should be trained in
actual field-service tmder war conditions; prefera-
bly on the Swiss, but if not on the Swiss then on
the Argentinian or Chilean model.

The Swiss model would probably be better
for our people. It would necessitate only four
to six months' service shortly after graduation
from high school or college, and thereafter only
about eight days a year. No man could buy a
substitute; no man wotild be excepted because of
his wealth; all would serve in the ranks on pre-
cisely the same terms side by side.

Under this system the yoimg men would be
trained to shoot, to march, to take care of them-
selves in the open, and to learn those habits of
self-reliance and law-abiding obedience which are
not only essential to the efficiency of a citizen
soldiery, but are no less essential to the efficient
performance of civic duties in a free democracy.
My own firm belief is that this system would help
us in civil quite as much as in military matters.
It would increase our social and industrial effi-
ciency. It would help us to habits of order and
respect for law.

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 211

This proposal does not represent anything
more than carrying out the purpose of the second
amendment to the Federal Constitution, which
declares that a well-regulated mihtia is necessary
to the security of a free nation. The Swiss army
is a well-regulated militia; and, therefore it is
utterly different from any militia we have ever
had. The system of compulsory training and uni-
versal service has worked admirably in Switzer-
land. It has saved the Swiss from war. It has
developed their efficiency in peace.

In theory. President Wilson advocates unpre-
paredness, and in the actual fact he practises, on
our behalf, tame submission to wrong-doing and
refusal to stand for our own rights or for the rights
of any weak power that is wronged. We who
take the opposite view advocate merely acting as
Washington urged us to act, when in his first
annual address he said: "To be prepared for war
is one of the most effectual means for preserving
peace. A free people ought not only to be armed
but disciplined ; to which end a imif orm and well-
digested plan is requisite.'* Jefferson was not a
fighting man, but even Jefferson, writing to Mon-
roe in 1785, urged the absolute need of building
up our navy if we wished to escape oppression to
our commerce and "the present disrespect of the
nations of Europe," and added the pregnant
sentence: "A coward is much more exposed to

212 THE WORLD WAR

quarrels than a man of spirit." As President, he
urged our people to train themselves to arms, so
as to constitute a citizen soldiery, in terms that
showed that his object was to accomplish exactly
what the Swiss have accomplished, and what is
advocated in this book. In one annual message
he advocated *'the organization of 300,000 able-
bodied men between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-five for offense or defense at any time or
in any place where they may be wanted." In a
letter to Monroe he advocated compulsory mili-
tary service, saying: *'We must train and classify
the whole of our male citizenry and make mili-
tary instruction a part of collegiate education. We
can never be safe imtil this is done. " The methods
taken by Jefferson and the Americans of Jeffer-
son's day to accomplish this object were fatally
defective. But their purpose was the same that
those who think as we do now put forward.
The difference is purely that we present efficient
methods for accomplishing this purpose. Wash-
ington was a practical man of high ideals who
always strove to reduce his ideals to practice.
His address to Congress in December, 1793, ought
to have been read by President Wilson before
the latter sent in his message of 19 14 with its
confused advocacy of unpreparedness and its
tone of furtive apology for submission to insult.
Washington said: "There is much due to the

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 213

United States among nations which will be with-
held, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of
weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must
be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace
... it must be known that we are at all times
ready for war," and he emphasized the fact that
the peace thus secured by preparedness for war
is the most potent method of obtaining material
prosperity.

The need of such a system as that which I ad-
vocate is well brought out in a letter I recently re-
ceived from a college president. It runs in part
as follows :

What the average young fellow of eighteen to thirty
doesn't know about shooting and riding makes an ap-
palling total. I remember very well visiting the First
Connecticut Regiment a day or two before it left for
service in the Spanish War. A good many of my boys
were with them and I went to see them off. One fellow
in particular, of whom I was and am very fond, took me
to his tent and proudly exhibited his rifle, calling atten-
tion to the beautiful condition to which he had brought
it. It certainly was extremely shiny, and I commended
him for his careful cleansing of his death-dealing weapon.
Then I discovered that the firing-pin (it was an old
Springfield) was rusted immovably into its place, and
that my boy didn't know that there was any firing-pin.
He had learned to expect that if you put a cartridge into
the breech, pulled down the block, and pulled the trigger,
it would probably go off if he had previously cocked it;
but he had never done any of these things.

214 THE WORLD WAR

It was my fortune to grow up amid surroundings and
in a time when every boy had and used a gim. Any boy
fourteen years old who was not the proprietor of some
kind of shooting-iron and fairly proficient in its use was
in disgrace. Such a situation was imthinkable. So we
were all fairly dependable shots with a fowling-piece or
rifle. As a result of this and subsequent experience, I
really believe that so long as my aging body would endure
hardship, and provided further that I could be prevented
from running away, I should be a more efficient soldier
than most of the young fellows on our campus to-day.

I have watched with much dissatisfaction the gradual
disappearance of the military schools here in the East.
There are some prominent and useful ones in the West,
but they are far too few, and I do not believe there is any
preliminary military training of any sort in our public
schools. I fear that the military training required by law
in certain agricultural and other schools receiving federal
aid is more or less of a fake; the object seeming to be to
get the appropriation and make the least possible return.

If in any way you can bring it about that our boys
shall be taught to shoot, I believe with you that they can
learn the essentials of drill very quickly when need arises.
And even so, however, our rulers must learn the neces-
sity of having rifles enough and ammunition enough to
meet any emergency at all likely to occur.

It is idle for this nation to trust to arbitration
and neutrality treaties unbacked by force. It is
idle to trust to the tepid good-will of other na-
tions. It is idle to trust to alliances. Alliances
change. Russia and Japan are now fighting side
by side, although nine years ago they were fight-

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 215

ing against one another. Twenty years ago
Russia and Germany stood side by side. Fifteen
years ago England was more hostile to Russia,
and even to France, than she was to Germany.
It is perfectly possible that after the close of this
war the present allies will fall out, or that Germany
and Japan will turn up in close alliance.

It is our duty to try to work for a great world
league for righteous peace enforced by power;
but no such league is yet in sight. At present
the prime duty of the American people is to
abandon the inane and mischievous principle of
watchful waiting — ^that is, of slothful and timid
refusal either to face facts or to perform duty.
Let us act justly toward others; and let us also
be prepared with stout heart and strong hand to
defend our rights against injustice from others.

In his recent report the Secretary of War, Mr.
Garrison, has put the case for preparedness in
the interest of honorable peace so admirably that
what he says should be studied by all our people.
It runs in part as follows:

"This, then, leaves for consideration the imminent
questions of military policy; the considerations which,
in my view, should be taken into account in determining
the same; and the suggestions which occur to me to be
pertinent in the circumstances.

It would be premature to attempt now to draw the
ultimate lessons from the war in Europe. It is an impera-

Vs

2i6 THE WORLD WAR

tive duty, however, to heed so much of what it brings
home to us as is incontrovertible and not to be changed
by any event, leaving for later and more detailed and
comprehensive consideration what its later developments
and final conclusions may indicate.

For orderly treatment certain preliminary considera-
tions may be usefully adverted to. It is, of course, not
necessary to dwell on the blessings of peace and the
horrors of war. Every one desires peace, just as every
one desires health, contentment, affection, suificient
means for comfortable existence, and other similarly
beneficent things. But peace and the other states of
being just mentioned are not always or even often solely
within one's own control. Those who are thoughtful and
have courage face the facts of Ufe, take lessons from ex-
perience, and strive by wise conduct to attain the desir-
able things, and by prevision and precaution to protect
and defend them when obtained. It may truthfully be said
that eternal vigilance is the price which must be paid in'
order to obtain the desirable things of life and to defend
them.

In collective affairs the interests of the group are con-
fided to the government, and it thereupon is charged with
the duty to preserve and defend these things. The gov-
ernment must exercise for the nation the precautionary,
defensive, and preservative measures necessary to that
end. All governments must therefore have force —
physical force — i. e.j military force, for these purposes.
The question for each nation when this matter is under
consideration is. How much force should it have and of
what should that force consist?

In the early history of our nation there was a natural,
almost inevitable, abhorrence of military force, because
it connoted military despotism. Most, if not all, of the

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 217

early settlers in this country came from nations where a
few powerful persons tyrannically imposed their will
upon the people by means of military power. The con-
sequence was that the oppressed who fled to this country
necessarily connected military force with despotism and
had a dread thereof. Of course, all this has long since
passed into history. No reasonable person in this coun-
try to-day has the slightest shadow of fear of military
despotism, nor of any interference whatever by military
force in the conduct of civil affairs. The military and the
civil are just as completely and permanently separated
in this country as the church and the state are; the sub-
jection of the military to the civil is settled and unchange-
able. The only reason for adverting to the obsolete con-
dition is to anticipate the action of those who will cite
from the works of the founders of the republic excerpts
showing a dread of military ascendancy in our govern-
ment. Undoubtedly, at the time such sentiments were
expressed there was a very real dread. At the present
time such expressions are entirely inapplicable and do
not furnish even a presentable pretext for opposing proper
military preparation.

It also seems proper, in passing, to refer to the frame
of mind of those who use the word "militarism" as the
embodiment of the doctrine of brute force and loosely
apply it to any organized preparation of military force,
and therefore deprecate any adequate military prepara-
tion because it is a step in the direction of the contemned
"militarism." It is perfectly apparent to any one who
approaches the matter with an unprejudiced mind that
what constitutes undesirable militarism, as distinguished
from a necessary, proper, and adequate preparation of
the military resources of the nation, depends upon the
position in which each nation finds itself, and varies with

2i8 THE WORLD WAR

every nation and with different conditions in each nation
at different times. Every nation must have adequate
force to protect itself from domestic insurrections, to
enforce its laws, and to repel invasions; that is, every
nation that has similar characteristics to those of a self-
respecting man. (The Constitution obliges the United
States to protect each State against invasion.) If it
prepares and maintains more military force than is neces-
sary for the purposes just named, then it is subject to
the conviction, in the public opinion of the world, of
having embraced "militarism," unless it intends aggres-
sion for a cause which the public opinion of the world
conceives to be a righteous one. To the extent, however,
that it confines its military preparedness to the purposes
first mentioned, there is neither warrant nor justifica-
tion in characterizing such action as "militarism." Those
who would thus characterize it do so because they have
reached the conclusion that a nation to-day can properly
dispense with a prepared military force, and therefore
they apply the word to any preparation or organization
of the military resources of the nation. Not being able
to conceive how a reasonable, prudent, patriotic man can
reach such a conclusion, I cannot conceive any arguments
or statements that would alter such a state of mind.
It disregards all known facts, flies in the face of all ex-
perience, and must rest upon faith in that which has
not yet been made manifest.

Whatever the future may hold in the way of agreements
between nations, followed by actual disarmament thereof,
of international courts of arbitration, and other greatly-
to-be-desired measures to lessen or prevent conflict be-
tween nation and nation, we all know that at present these
conditions are not existing. We can and will eagerly
adapt ourselves to each beneficent development along

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR 219

these lines; but to merely enfeeble ourselves in the
meantime would, in my view, be unthinkable folly. By
neglecting and refusing to provide ourselves with the
necessary means of self-protection and self-defense we
could not hasten or in any way favorably influence the
ultimate results we desire in these respects."

CHAPTER XI
UTOPIA OR HELL ?

SHERMAN'S celebrated declaration about
war has certainly been borne out by what
has happened in Europe, and above all in
Belgium, during the last four months. That war
is hell I will concede as heartily as any ultrapacif-
icist. But the only alternative to war, that is to
hell, is the adoption of some plan substantially
like that which I herein advocate and wliich has
itself been called Utopian. It is possible that it is
Utopian for the time being; that is, that nations
are not ready as yet to accept it. But it is also
possible that after this war has come to an end
the European contestants will be sufficiently so-
bered to be willing to consider some such pro-
posal, and that the United States will abandon
the folly of the pacificists and be wiUing to co-
operate in some practical effort for the only kind
of peace worth having, the peace of justice and
righteousness.

The proposal is not in the least Utopian, if by
Utopian we understand something that is theoreti-
cally desirable but impossible. What I propose is

220

UTOPIA OR HELL? 221

a working and realizable Utopia. My proposal isx \
that the efficient civilized nations — those that are ) p j.3'
efficient in war as well as in peace — shall join in a /
world league for the peace of righteousness. This
means that they shall by solemn covenant agree |
as to their respective rights which shall not be\
questioned; that they shall agree that all other
questions arising between them shall be sub-
mitted to a court of arbitration; and that they
shall also agree — and here comes the vital and ^
essential point of the whole system — to act with
the combined military strength of all of them
against any recalcitrant nation, against any na- ,
tion which transgresses at the expense of any ;
other nation the rights which it is agreed shall
not be questioned, or which on arbitrable mat-
ters refuses to submit to the decree of the arbitral
court.

In its essence this plan means that there shali\
be a great international treaty for the peace of
righteousness; that this treaty shall explicitly
secure to each nation and except from the opera-
tions of any international tribunal such matters
as its territorial integrity, honor, and vital interest,
and shall guarantee it in the possession of these
rights ; that this treaty shall therefore by its own
terms explicitly provide against making foolish
promises which cannot and ought not to be kept;
that this treaty shall be observed with absolute

222 THE WORLD WAR

good faith — for it is worse than useless to enter
into treaties until their observance in good faith
is efficiently secured. Finally, and most impor-
tant, this treaty shall put force back of right-
eousness, shall provide a method of securing by the
exercise of force the observance of solemn inter-
national obligations. This is to be accomplished
by all the powers covenanting to put their whole
strength back of the fulfilment of the treaty ob-
ligations, including the decrees of the court es-
tablished imder and in accordance with the treaty.
This proposal, therefore, meets the well-found
objections against the foolish and mischievous all-
inclusive arbitration treaties recently negotiated
by Mr. Bryan under the direction of President
Wilson. These treaties, like the all-inclusive
arbitration treaties which President Taft started
to negotiate, explicitly include as arbitrable, or as
proper subjects for action by joint commissions,
questions of honor and of vital national interest.
No such provision should be made. No such pro-
vision is made as among private individuals in any
civilized community. No man is required to "ar-
bitrate" a slap in the face or an insult to his wife;
no man is expected to "arbitrate" with a burglar
or a highwayman. If in private life one indi-
vidual takes action which immediately jeopard-
izes the life or limb or even the bodily well-being
and the comfort of another, the wronged party

UTOPIA OR HELL? 223

does not have to go into any arbitration with the
wrong-doer. On the contrary, the poHceman or
constable or sheriff immediately and summarily
arrests the wrong-doer. The subsequent trial is
not in the nature of arbitration at all. It is in
the nature of a criminal proceeding. The wronged
man is merely a witness and not necessarily an
essential witness. For example, if, in the streets
of New York, one man assaults another or steals
his watch, and a policeman is not near by, the
wronged man is not only justified in knocking
down the assailant or thief, but fails in his duty if
he does not so act. If a policeman is near by, the
policeman promptly arrests the wrong-doer. The
magistrate does not arbitrate the question of prop-
erty rights in the watch nor anything about the
assatdt. He satisfies himself as to the facts and
delivers judgment against the offender.

A covenant between the United States and any^x
other power to arbitrate all questions, including ]
those involving national honor and interest,!
neither could nor ought to be kept. Such a cov- '
enant will be harmless only if no such questions
ever arise. Now, all the worth of promises made
in the abstract lies in the way in which they are
fulfilled in the concrete. The Wilson-Bryan ar-
bitration treaties are to be tested in this manner.
The theory is, of course, that these treaties are to
be made with all nations, and this is correct, be-

J

224 THE WORLD WAR

cause it would be a far graver thing to refuse to
make them with some nations than to refuse to
enter into them with any nation at all. The pro-
posal is, in effect, and disregarding verbiage, that
all questions shall be arbitrated or settled by the
action of a joint commission — questions really
vital to us would, as a matter of fact, be settled
adversely to us pending such action. There are
many such questions which in the concrete we
would certainly not arbitrate. I mention one,
only as an example. Do Messrs. Wilson and
Bryan, or do they not, mean to arbitrate, if
Japan should so desire, the question whether
Japanese laborers are to be allowed to come in
imlimited ntunbers to these shores? If they do
mean this, let them explicitly state that fact —
merely as an illustration — to the Senate com-
mittee, so that the Senate committee shall imder-
stand what it-is doing when it ratifies these treaties.
If they do not mean this, then let them promptly
withdraw all the treaties so as not to expose us to
the charge of hypocrisy, of making believe to do
what we have no intention of doing, and of mak-
ing promises which we have no intention of keep-
ing. I have mentioned one issue only; but there
are scores of other issues which I could mention
which this government would tmder no circtun-
stances agree to arbitrate.

In the same way, we must explicitly recognize

UTOPIA OR HELL? 225

/that all the peace congresses and the like that
h^ve been held of recent years have done no good
whatever to the cause of world peace. All their
addresses and resolutions about arbitration and
disarmament and such matters have been on the
whole slightly worse than useless. Disregarding
the Hague conventions, it is the literal fact that
none of the peace congresses that have been held
for the last fifteen or twenty years — to speak only
of those of which I myself know the workings —
have accomplished the smallest particle of good.
In so far as they have influenced free, liberty-
loving, and self-respecting nations not to take
measures for their own defense they have been
positively mischievous. In no respect have they
achieved anything worth achieving; and the pres-
ent world war proves this beyond the possibility
of serious question.

The Hague conventions stand by themselves\
They have accomplished a certain amount — al-V
though only a small amount — of actual good.
This was in so far as they furnished means by/
which nations which did not wish to quarrel were
able to settle international disputes not involving
their deepest interests. Questions between na-
tions continually arise which are not of first-class
importance; which, for instance, refer to some
illegal act by or against a fishing schooner, to
some difiiculty concerning contracts, to some

226 THE WORLD WAR

question of the interpretation of a minor clause
in a treaty, or to the sporadic action of some hot-
headed or panic-struck official. In these cases,
where neither nation wishes to go to war, the
Hague court has furnished an easy method for
the settlement of the dispute without war. This
does not mark a very great advance; but it is an
advance, and was worth making.

The fact that it is the only advance that the
Hague court has accomplished makes the hys-
terical outbursts formerly indulged in by the
ultrapacificists concerning it seem in retrospect
exceedingly foolish. While I had never shared
the hopes of these ultrapacificists, I had hoped
for more substantial good than has actually
come from the Hague conventions. This was
because I accept promises as meaning some-
thing. The ultrapacificists, whether from ti-
midity, from weakness, or from sheer folly, seem
wholly imable to understand that the fulfil-
ment of a promise has anything to do with mak-
ing the promise. The most striking example
that could possibly be furnished has been fur-
ished by Belgiimi. Under my direction as Presi-
dent, the United States signed the Hague con-
ventions. All the nations engaged in the present
war signed these conventions, although one or
two of the nations qualified their acceptance,
or withheld their signatures to certain articles.

UTOPIA OR HELL? 227

This, however, did not in the least relieve the
signatory powers from the duty to guarantee
one another in the enjoyment of the rights sup-
posed to be secured by the conventions. To
make this guarantee worth anything, it was, of
course, necessary actively to enforce it against
any power breaking the convention or acting
against its clear purpose. To make it really
effective it should be enforced as quickly against
non-signatory as against signatory powers; for
to give a power free permission to do wrong if
it did not sign would put a premium on non-
signing, so far as big, aggressive powers are con-
cerned.

I authorized the signature of the United States
to these conventions. They forbid the vio-
lation of neutral territory, and, of course, the
subjugation of unoffending neutral nations, as
Belgium has been subjugated. They forbid such
destruction as that inflicted on Louvain, Dinant,
and other towns in Belgium, the burning of their
priceless public libraries and wonderful halls and
chiu-ches, and the destruction of cathedrals such
as that at Rheims. They forbid the infliction of
heavy pectmiary penalties and the taking of
severe pimitive measures at the expense of ci-
viHan populations. They forbid the bombard-
ment— of course including the dropping of bombs
from aeroplanes — of unfortified cities and of cities

228 THE WORLD WAR

whose defenses were not at the moment attacked.
They forbid such actions as have been committed
against various cities, Belgian, French, and En-
glish, not for military reason but for the purpose
of terrorizing the civilian population by killing
and woimding men, women, and children who
were non-combatants. All of these offenses have
been committed by Germany. I took the action
I did in directing these conventions to be signed
on the theory and with the beHef that the United
States intended to live up to its obligations,
and that our people understood that Hving up
to solemn obligations, like any other serious
performance of duty, means willingness to make
effort and to inciu* risk. If I had for one mo-
ment supposed that signing these Hague con-
ventions meant literally nothing whatever be-
yond the expression of a pious wish which any
power was at liberty to disregard with impimity,
in accordance with the dictation of self-interest,
I wotild certainly not have permitted the United
States to be a party to such a mischievous farce.
President Wilson and Secretary Bryan, how-
ever, take the view that when the. United States
assumes obligations in order to secure small and
unoffending neutral nations or non-combatants
generally against hideous wrong, its action is not
predicated on any intention to make the guar-
antee effective. They take the view that when

UTOPIA OR HELL? 229

we are asked to redeem in the concrete, promises
we made in the abstract, our duty is to disre-
gard our obligations and to preserve ignoble peace
for ourselves by regarding with cold-blooded and
timid indifference the most frightful ravages of
war committed at the expense of a peace-
ful and unoffending country. This is the cult
of cowardice. That Messrs. Wilson and Bryan

-profess it and put it. in action would be of small
consequence if only they themselves were con-
cerned. The importance of their action is that it
commits the United States.

Elabomte technical argimients have been made
to justify this timid and selfish abandonment of
duty, this timid and selfish failure to work for the
world peace of righteousness, by President Wilson
and Secretary Bryan. No sincere believer in dis-
interested and self-sacrificing work for peace can

'fustif y it ; and work for peace will never be worth
much imless accompanied by courage, effort, and
self-sacrifice. Yet those very apostles of pacifi-
cism who, when they can do so with safety, scream
loudest for peace, have made themselves objects
of contemptuous derision by keeping silence in
this crisis, or even by praising Mr. Wilson and
Mr. Bryan for having thus abandoned the cause
of peace. They are supported by the men who
insist that all that we are concerned with is es-
caping even the smallest risk that might follow

230 THE WORLD WAR

upon the performance of duty to any one except
ourselves. This last is not a very exalted plea.
It is, however, defensible. But if, as a nation, we
intend to act in accordance with it, we must never
promise to do anything for any one else.

The technical argimients as to the Hague con-
ventions not requiring us to act will at once be
brushed aside by any man who honestly and in
good faith faces the situation. Either the Hague
conventions meant something or else they meant
nothing. If, in the event of their violation, none
of the signatory powers were even to protest, then
of course they meant nothing; and it was an act of
imspeakable silliness to enter into them. If, on
the other hand, they meant anything whatsoever,
it was the duty of the United States, as the most
powerful, or at least the richest and most populous,
neutral nation, to take action for upholding them
when their violation brought such appalling dis-
aster to Belgium. There is no escape from this
alternative.

The first essential to working out successfully
any scheme whatever for world peace is to imder-
stand that nothing can be accompHshed tmless
the powers entering into the agreement act in
precisely the reverse way from that in which
President Wilson and Secretary Bryan have acted
as regards the Hague conventions and the all-
inclusive arbitration treaties during the past six

UTOPIA OR HELL? 231

months. The prime fact to consider in securing
any peace agreement worth entering into, or that
will have any except a mischievous effect, is that
the nations entering into the agreement shall^
make no promises that ought not to be made,
that they shall in good faith live up to the prom-
ises that are made, and that they shall put their
whole strength unitedly back of these promises
against any nation which refuses to carry out the
agreement, or which, if it has not made the agree-
ment, nevertheless violates the principles which
the agreement enforces. In other words, interna-
tional agreements intended to produce peace must
proceed much along the lines of the Hague con-
ventions; but a power signing them, as the United
States signed the Hague conventions, must do so
with the intention in good faith to see that they
are carried out, and to use force to accomplish
this, if necessary.

To violate these conventions, to violate neu-
trality treaties, as Germany has done in the case
of Belgitim, is a dreadful wrong. It repre-
sents the gravest kind of international wrong-
doing. But it is really not quite so contempt-
ible, it does not show such short-sighted and
timid inefficiency, andy above ally such selfish in-
difference to the cause of permanent and righteous
peace as has been shown by us of the United States
(thanks to President Wilson and Secretary Bryan)

232 THE WORLD WAR

in refusing to ftilfil our solemn obligations by
taking whatever action was necessary in order
to clear our skirts from the guilt of tame acquies-
cence in a wrong which we had solemnly imder-
taken to oppose.
r- It has been a matter of very real regret to me
I to have to speak in the way I have felt obliged
/ to speak as to German wrong-doing in Belgiimi,
because so many of my friends, not only Ger-
mans, but Americans of German birth and even
Americans of German descent, have felt aggrieved
at my position. As regards my friends, the
Americans of German birth or descent, I can
only say that they are in honor bound to regard
all international matters solely from the stand-
point of the interest of the United States, and
of the demands of a lofty international morality.
I recognize no divided allegiance in American
citizenship. As regards Germany, my stand
is for the real interest of the mass of the Ger-
man people. If the German people as a whole
would only look at it rightly, they would see
that my position is predicated upon the asstunp-
tion that we ought to act as imhesitatingly in
favor of Germany if Germany were wronged as
in favor of Belgium when Belgium is wronged.

There are in Germany a certain number of
Germans who adopt the Treitschke and Bemhardi
view of Germany's destiny and of international

UTOPIA OR HELL? 233

morality generally. These men are fundamen-
tally exactly as hostile to America as to all other
foreign powers. They look down with con-
tempt upon Americans as well as upon all other
foreigners. They regard it as their right to sub-
due these inferior beings. They acknowledge
toward them no duty, in the sense that duty is
tmderstood between equals. I call the attention
of my fellow Americans of German origin who
wish this cotmtry to act toward Belgitim, not in
accordance with American traditions, interests,
and ideals, but in accordance with the pro-
German sympathies of certain citizens of Ger-
man descent, to the statement of Treitschke that
"to civilization at large the [Americanizing] of the
German-Americans means a heavy loss. Among
Germans there can no longer be any question
that the civilization of mankind suffers every
time a German is transformed into a Yankee."

I do not for one moment believe that the men
who follow Treitschke in his hatred of and con-
tempt for all non-Germans, and Bemhardi in his
contempt for international morality, are a ma-
jority of the German people or even a very large
minority. I think that the great majority of the
Germans, who have approved Germany's action
toward Belgium, have been influenced by the feel-
ing that it was a vital necessity in order to save
Germany from destruction and subjugation by

^

234 THE WORLD WAR

France and Russia, perhaps assisted by England.
Fear of national destruction will prompt men to
do almost anything, and the proper remedy for
outsiders to work for is the removal of the fear.
If Germany were absolutely freed from danger of
aggression on her eastern and western frontiers, I
believe that German public sentiment wotild refuse
to sanction such acts as those against Belgiimi.
The only effective way to free it from this fear is
to have outside nations like the United States in
good faith undertake the obligation to defend
Germany's honor and territorial integrity, if at-
tacked, exactly as they would defend the honor
and territorial integrity of Belgiimi, or of France,
Russia, Japan, or England, or any other well-
behaved, civilized power, if attacked.

This can only be achieved by some such world
league of peace as that which I advocate. Most
important of all, it can only be achieved by the
willingness and ability of great, free powers to
put might back of right, to make their protest
against wrong-doing effective by, if necessary,
piinishing the wrong-doer. It is this fact which
makes the clamor of the pacificists for "peace,
peace," without any regard to righteousness, so
abhorrent to all right-thinking people. There are
midtitudes of professional pacificists in the United
States, and of well-meaning but ill-informed per-
sons who sympathize with them from ignorance.

UTOPIA OR HELL? 235

There are not a few astute persons, bankers of
foreign birth, and others, who wish to take sinister
advantage of the folly of these persons, in the in-
terest of Germany. All of these men clamor for
immediate peace. They wish the United States
to take action for immediate peace or for a truce,
under conditions designed to leave Belgium with
her wrongs unredressed and in the possession of
Germany. They strive to bring about a peace
which would contain within itself the elements of
frightful future disaster, by making no effective
provision to prevent the repetition of such wrong-
doing as has been inflicted upon Belgium. All of
the men advocating such action, including the
professional pacificists, the big business men
largely of foreign birth, and the well-meaning but
feeble-minded creatures among their allies, and
including especially all those who from sheer
timidity or weakness shrink from duty, occupy
a thoroughly base and improper position. The
peace advocates of this stamp stand on an exact
par with men who, if there was an epidemic of
lawlessness in New York, should come together
to demand the immediate cessation of all activity
by the police, and should propose to substitute
for it a request that the highwaymen, white
slavers, black-handers, and burglars cease their
activities for the moment on condition of retaining
imdisturbed possession of the ill-gotten spoils they

236 THE WORLD WAR

had already acquired. The only effective friend
of peace in a big city is the man who makes the
police force thoroughly efficient, who tries to re-
move the causes of crime, but who xmhesitatingly
insists upon the punishment of criminals. Pacific-
ists who believe that all use of force in inter-
national matters can be abolished will do well to
remember that the only efficient police forces are
those whose members are scrupulously careful not
to commit acts of violence when it is possible to
avoid them, but who are willing and able, when the
occasion arises, to subdue the worst kind of wrong-
doers by means of the only argument that wrong-
doers respect, namely, successful force. What is
thus true in private life is similarly true in inter-
national affairs.

No man can venture to state the exact details
that should be followed in securing such a world
league for the peace of righteousness. But, not
to leave the matter nebulous, I submit the fol-
lowing plan. It would prove entirely workable,
if nations entered into it with good faith, and if
they treated their obligations under it in the spirit
in which the United States treated its obligations
as regarded the independence of Cuba, giving
good government to the Pliilippines, and build-
ing the Panama Canal; the same spirit in which
England acted when the neutrality of Belgium
was violated.

UTOPIA OR HELL? 237

All the civilized powers which are able and\
willing to ftirnish and to use force, when force is
required to back up righteousness — and only the
civilized powers who possess virile manliness of
character and the wilhngness to accept risk and
labor when necessary to the performance of duty
are entitled to be considered in this matter —
should join to create an international tribtmal
and to provide rules in accordance with which
that tribunal should act. These rules woiild have
to accept the status quo at some given period; for
the endeavor to redress all historical wrongs
would throw us back into chaos. They would
lay down the rule that the territorial integrity of
each nation was inviolate; that it was to be guar-
anteed absolutely its sovereign rights in certain
particulars, including, for instance, the right to
decide the terms on which immigrants should be
admitted to its borders for purposes of residence,
citizenship, or business; in short, all its rights in
matters affecting its honor and vital interest.
Each nation should be guaranteed against hav-
ing any of these specified rights infringed upon.
They would not be made arbitrable, any more
than an individual's right to life and limb is
made arbitrable; they would be mutually guar-
anteed. All other matters that could arise be-
tween these nations should be settled by the in-
ternational court. The judges should act not as

238 THE WORLD WAR

national representatives, but purely as judges,
and in any given case it would probably be well
to choose them by lot, excluding, of course, the
representatives of the powers whose interests
were concerned. Then, and most important, the
nations should severally guarantee to use their
entire military force, if necessary, against any
nation which defied the decrees of the tribimal
or. which violated any of the rights which in the
rules it was expressly stipulated should be re-
served to the several nations, the rights to their
territorial integrity and the like. Under such
conditions — to make matters concrete — Belgiimi
would be safe from any attack such as that made
by Germany, and Germany would be relieved
from the haunting fear its people now have lest
the Russians and the French, backed by other
nations, smash the empire and its people.

In addition to the contracting powers, a cer-
tain number of outside nations should be named
as entitled to the benefits of the court. These
nations should be chosen from those which are
as civiHzed and well-behaved as the great con-
tracting nations, but which, for some reason or
other, are unwilling or imable to guarantee to help
execute the decrees of the court by force. They
would have no right to take part in the nomina-
tion of judges, for no people are entitled to do
anything toward establishing a court unless they

UTOPIA OR HELL? 239

are able and willing to face the risk, labor, and self-
sacrifice necessary in order to put police power
behind the court. But they would be treated
with exact justice; and in the event of any one of
the great contracting powers having trouble with
one of them, they would be entitled to go into
court, have a decision rendered, and see the de-
cision supported, precisely as in the case of a dis-
pute between any two of the great contracting
powers themselves.

No power should be admitted into the first
circle, that of the contracting powers, unless it is
civilized, well-behaved, and able to do its part in
enforcing the decrees of the court. China, for
instance, could not be admitted, nor could Tur-
key, although for different reasons, whereas such
nations as Germany, France, England, Italy,
Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, the
Argentine, Chile, Uruguay, Switzerland, Holland,
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Belgitmi would
all be entitled to go in. If China continues to
behave as well as it has during the last few
years it might soon go into the second line of
powers which would be entitled to the benefits of
the court, although not entitled to send judges to
it. Mexico would, of course, not be entitled to
admission at present into either circle. At pres-
ent every European power with the exception of
Turkey would be so entitled; but sixty years

240 THE WORLD WAR

ago the kingdom of Naples, for instance, would
not have been entitled to come in, and there are
various South American communities which at
the present time would not be entitled to come in ;
and, of course, this would at present be true of
most independent Asiatic states and of all inde-
pendent African states. The council should have
power to exclude any nation which completely fell
from civilization, as Mexico, partly with the able
assistance of President Wilson's administration,
has fallen during the past few years. There are
various South and Central American states which
have never been entitled to the consideration as civ-
ilized, orderly, self-respecting powers which would
entitle them to be treated on terms of equality in
the fashion indicated. As regards these dis-
orderly and weak outsiders, it might well be that
after a while some method would be devised to
deal with them by common agreement of the civi-
lized powers; but imtil this was devised and put
into execution they would have to be left as at
present.

Of course, grave difficulties would be encoim-
tered in devising such a plan and in administer-
ing it afterward, and no human being can guar-
antee that it would absolutely succeed. But I
believe that it could be made to work and that it
would mark a very great im.provement over what
obtains now. At this moment there is hell in

UTOPIA OR HELL? 241

Belgium and hell in Mexico; and the ultrapacif-
icists in this country have their full share of the
responsibihty for this hell. They are not primary
factors in producing it. They lack the virile
power to be primary factors in producing anything,
good or evil, that needs daring and endurance.
But they are secondary factors; for the man who
tamely acquiesces in wrong-doing is a secondary
factor in producing that wrong-doing. Most cer-
tainly the proposed plan would be dependent upon
reasonable good faith for its successful working,
but this is only to say what is also true of every
human institution. Under the proposed plan there
would be a strong likelihood of bettering world
conditions. If it is a Utopia, it is a Utopia of a
very practical kind.

Such a plan is as yet in the realm of mere specu-
lation. At present the essential thing for each
self-respecting, liberty-loving nation to do is to
put itself in position to defend its own rights. Re-
cently President Wilson, in his message to Con-
gress, has announced that we are in no danger and
will not be in any danger; and ex- President Taft
has stated that the awakening of interest in our
defenses indicates "mild hysteria." Suth utter-
ances show fatuous indifference to the teachings
of history. They represent precisely the attitude
which a century ago led to the burning of Wash-
ington by a small expeditionary hostile force, and
to such paralyzing disaster in war as almost ta

242 THE WORLD WAR

bring about the break-up of the Union. In his
message President Wilson justifies a refusal to
build up our navy by asking — as if we were discuss-
ing a question of pure metaphysics — ''When will
the experts tell us just what kind of ships we should
construct — and when will they be right for ten
years together? Who shall tell us now what
sort of navy to build?" and actually adds, after
posing and leaving unanswered these questions:
"I turn away from the subject. It is not new.
There is no need to discuss it." Lovers of Dickens
who turn to the second paragraph of chapter XI
of ''Our Mutual Friend" will find this attitude of
President Wilson toward preparedness interest-
ingly paralleled by the attitude Mr. Podsnap took
in "getting rid of disagreeables" by the use of the
phrases, "I don't want to know about them! I
refuse to discuss them! I don't admit them!" thus
"clearing the world of its most difficult problems
by sweeping them behind him. For they affronted
him." If during the last ten years England's at-
titude toward preparedness for war and the up-
building of her navy had been determined by
statesmanship such as is set forth in these ut-
terances of President Wilson, the island would
now be trampled into bloody mire, as Belgium
has been trampled. If Germany had followed
such advice — or rather no advice — during the last
ten years, she would now have been wholly un-
able so much as to assert her rights anywhere.

UTOPIA OR HELL? 243

Let us immediately make our navy thoroughly
efficient; and this can only be done by reversing
the policy that President Wilson has followed for
twenty-two months. Recently Secretary Daniels
has said, as quoted by the press, that he intends
to provide for the safety of both the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts by dividing our war fleet between
the two oceans. Such division of the fleet, having
in view the disaster which exactly similar action
brought on Russia ten years ago, would be
literally a crime against the nation. Neither our
foreign affairs nor our naval affairs can be satis-
factorily managed when the President is willing
to put in their respective departments gentlemen
like Messrs. Bryan and Daniels. President Wil-
son would not have ventured to make either of
these men head of the Treasury Department,
because he would thereby have offended the con-
crete interests of American business men. But as
Secretary of State and Secretary of the Navy the
harm they do is to the country as a whole. No
concrete interest is immediately affected; and, as
it is only our own common welfare in the future,
only the welfare of our children, only the honor
and interest of the United States through the
generations that are concerned, it is deemed safe
to disregard this welfare and to take chances with
our national honor and interest.

CHAPTER XII
SUMMING UP

BLESSED are the peacemakers," not merely
the peace lovers ; for action is what makes
thought operative and valuable. Above
all, the peace prattlers are in no way blessed.
On the contrary, only mischief has sprung from
the activities of the professional peace prattlers,
the ultrapaciiicists, who, with the shrill clamor of
eunuchs, preach the gospel of the milk and water
of virtue and scream that belief in the efficacy of
diluted moral mush is essential to salvation.

It seems necessary every time I state my posi-
tion to guard against the counterwords of wilful
folly by reiterating that my disagreement with
the peace-at-any-price men, the ultrapacificists, is
not in the least because they favor peace. I ob-
ject to them, first, because they have proved
themselves futile and impotent in working for
peace, and, second, because they commit what is
not merely the capital error but the crime against
morality of failing to uphold righteousness as the

244 '

^

SUMMING UP 24s

all-important end toward which we should strive.
In actual practice they advocate the peace of un-
righteousness just as fervently as they advocate
the peace of righteousness. I have as little sym-
pathy as they have for the men who deify mere
brutal force, who insist that power justifies wrong-
doing, and who declare that there is no such
thing as international morality. But the ultra-
pacificists really play into the hands of these /^
men. To condemn equally might which backs
right and might which overthrows right is to
render positive service to wrong-doers. It is as
if in private life we condemned alike both the
policeman and the dynamiter or black-hand kid-
napper or white slaver whom he has arrested.
To denounce the nation that wages war in self-
defense, or from a generous desire to relieve the
oppressed, in the same terms in which we de-
nounce war waged in a spirit of greed or wanton
folly stands on an exact par with denouncing
equally a murderer and the policeman who, at
peril of his life and by force of arms, arrests the
murderer. In each case the denunciation denotes
not loftiness of soul but weakness both of mind
and of morals.

In a capital book, by a German, Mr. Edmund
von Mach, entitled "What Germany Wants,"
there is the following noble passage at the out-
set:

246 . THE WORLD WAR

During the preparation of this book the writer received
from his uncle, a veteran army officer living in Dresden,
a brief note containing the following laconic record:

"1793, your great-grandfather at Kostheim.

"1815, your grandfather at Liegnitz.

" 1870, myself — all severely wounded by French bullets.

" 1914, my son, captain in the 6th Regiment of Dra-
goons.

"Four generations obliged to fight the French !"

When the writer turns to his American friends of
French descent, he finds there similar records, and often
even greater sorrow, for death has come to many of them.
In Europe their families and his have looked upon each
other as enemies for generations, while a few years in
the clarifjdng atmosphere of America have made friends
of former Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, and English-
men.

Jointly they pray that the present war may not be
carried to such a pass that an early and honorable peace
becomes impossible for any one of these great nations.
Is it asking too much that America may be vouchsafed
in not too distant a future to do for their respective
native lands what the American institutions have done
for them individually, help them to regard each other
at their true worth, unblinded by traditional hatred or
fiery passion?

It is in the spirit of this statement that we
Americans should act. We are a people different
from, but akin, to all the nations of Europe. We
should feel a real friendship for each of the con-
testing powers and a real desire to work so as to
secure justice for each. This cannot be done by

SUMMING UP 247

preserving a tame and spiritless neutrality which
treats good and evil on precisely the same basis.
Such a neutrality never has enabled and never
will enable any nation to do a great work for
righteousness. Our true course should be to judge
each nation on its conduct, unhesitatingly to an-
tagonize every nation that does ill as regards the
point on which it does ill, and equally without
hesitation to act, as cool-headed and yet generous
wisdom may dictate, so as disinterestedly to fur-
ther the welfare of all.

One of the greatest of international duties
ought to be the protection of small, highly civi-
lized, well-behaved, and self-respecting states from
oppression and conquest by their powerful mili-
tary neighbors. Such nations as Belgium, Hol-
land, Switzerland, Uruguay, Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden play a great and honorable part in
the development of civilization. The subjugation
of any one of them is a crime against, the destruc-
tion of any one of them is a loss to, mankind.

I feel in the strongest way that we should
have interfered, at least to the extent of the
most emphatic diplomatic protest and at the
very outset — and then by whatever further action
was necessary — in regard to the violation of the
neutrality of Belgium; for this act was the earliest
and the most important and, in its consequences,
the most ruinous of all the violations and offenses

248 THE WORLD WAR

against treaties committed by any combatant
during the war. But it was not the only one.
The Japanese and English forces not long after
violated Chinese neutrality in attacking Kiao-
Chau. It has been alleged and not denied that
the British ship Highflyer simk the Kaiser Wilhelm
der Grosse in neutral Spanish waters, this being
also a violation of the Hague conventions; and
on October loth the German government issued
an official protest about alleged violations of the
Geneva convention by the French. Furthermore,
the methods employed in strewing portions of
the seas with floating mines have been such as to
warrant the most careful investigation by any
neutral nations which treat neutrality pacts and
Hague conventions as other than merely dead
letters. Not a few offenses have been committed
against our own people.

If, instead of observing a timid and spiritless
neutrality, we had lived up to our obligations by
taking action in all of these cases without regard
to which power it was that was alleged to have
done wrong, we would have followed the only
course that would both have told for world right-
eousness and have served our own self-respect.
The course actually, followed by Messrs. Wilson,
Bryan, and Daniels^as been\to permit our own
power for self-defense steadily to diminish while
at the same time refusing to do what we were

SUMMING UP 249

solemnly bound to do in order to protest against
wrong and to render some kind of aid to weak
nations that had been wronged. Inasmuch as, in
the first and greatest and the most niinous case
of violation of neutral rights and of international
morality, this nation, imder the guidance of Messrs.
Wilson and Bryan, kept timid silence and dared
not protest, it would be — and is — an act of de-
liberate bad faith to protest only as regards subse-
quent and less important violations. Of course, if,
as a people, we frankly take the ground that our
actions are based upon nothing whatever but our
own selfish and short-sighted interest, it is pos-
sible to protest only against violations of neu-
trality that at the moment unfavorably affect our
own interests. Inaction is often itself the most
offensive form of action; the administration has
persistently refused to Hve up to the solemn na-
tional obligations to strive to protect other un-
offending nations from wrong; and this conduct
adds a peculiar touch of hypocrisy to the action
taken at the same time in signing a couple of score
of all-inclusive arbitration treaties pretentiously
heralded as serving world righteousness. If we
had acted as we ought to have acted regarding
Belgium we could then with a clear conscience
have made effective protest regarding every other
case of violation of the rights of neutrals or of
offenses committed by the belligerents against one

2SO THE WORLD WAR

another or against us in violation of the Hague
conventions. Moreover, the attitude of the ad-
ministration has not even placated the powers
it was desired to please. Thanks to its action,
the United States during the last five months has
gained neither the good-will nor the respect of
any of the combatants. On the contrary, it has
steadily grown rather more disliked and rather
less respected by all of them.

In facing a difficult and critical situation, any
administration is entitled to a free hand imtil it
has had time to develop the action which it con-
siders appropriate, for often there is more than
one way in which it is possible to take efficient
action. But when so much time has passed,
either without action or with only mischievous
action, as gravely to compromise both the honor
and the interest of the country, then it becomes
a duty for self-respecting citizens to whom their
coimtry is dear to speak out. From the very
outset I felt that the administration was following
a wrong course. But no action of mine could
make it take the right course, and there was a
possibility that there was some object aside from
political advantage in the course followed. I kept
silence as long as silence was compatible with
regard for the national honor and welfare. I
spoke only when it became imperative to speak
imder penalty of tame acquiescence in tame fail-

SUMMING UP 251

ure to perform national duty. It has become
evident that the administration has had no plan
whatever save the dexterous avoidance of all re-
sponsibility and therefore of all duty, and the
effort to persuade oui people as a whole that this
inaction was for their interest — combined with
other less openly expressed and less worthy efforts
of purely political type.

There is therefore no longer any reason for
failure to point out that if the President and Sec-
retary of State had been thoroughly acquainted
in advance, as of course they ought to have been
acquainted, with the European situation, and if
they had possessed an intelligent and resolute
purpose squarely to meet their heavy responsi-
bilities and thereby to serve the honor of this
country and the interest of mankind, they would
have taken action on July 29th, 30th, or 31st, cer-
tainly not later than August ist. On such oc-
casions there is a peculiar applicability in the old
proverb: Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being
wise in time. If those responsible for the manage-
ment of our foreign affairs had been content to
dwell in a world of fact instead of a world of third-
rate fiction, they would have understood that at
such a time of world crisis it was an unworthy
avoidance of duty to fuss with silly little all-
inclusive arbitration treaties when the need of
the day demanded that they devote all their

252 THE WORLD WAR

energies to the terrible problems of the day.
They would have known that a German invasion
of Switzerland was possible but improbable and
a German invasion of Belgium overwhelmingly
probable. They would have known that vigor-
ous action by the United States government,
taken with such entire good faith as to make it
evident that it was in the interest of Belgium and
not in the interest of France and England, and
that if there was occasion it would be taken
against France and England as quickly as against
Germany, might very possibly have resulted in
either putting a stop to the war or in localizing
and narrowly circumscribing its area. It is, of
course, possible that the action would have failed
of its immediate purpose. But even in that case
it cannot be doubted that it wotdd have been
efficient as a check upon the subsequent wrongs
committed.

Nor was the opportunity for action limited in
time. Even if the administration had failed thus
to act at the outset of the war, the protests
officially made both by the German Emperor and
by the Belgian government to the President as
to alleged misconduct in the prosecution of the
war not only gave him warrant for action but re-
quired him to act. Meanwhile, from the moment
when the war was declared, it became inexcus-
able of th^ administration not to take immediate

SUMMING UP 253

steps to put the navy into efficient shape, and at
least to make our military forces on land more re-
spectable. It is possible not to justify but to ex-
plain the action of the administration in using the
navy for the sixteen months prior to this war in
such a way as greatly to impair its efficiency; for
of course when the President selected Mr. Daniels
as Secretary of the Navy he showed, on the sup-
position that he was not indifferent to its welfare,
an entire ignorance of what that welfare demanded ;
and therefore the failure to keep the navy efficient
may have been due at first to mere inability 'to
exercise foresight. But with war impending, such
failure to exercise foresight became inexcusable.
None of the effective fighting craft are of any
real use so far as Mexico is concerned. The navy
should at once have been assembled in northern
waters, either in the Atlantic or the Pacific, and
immediate steps taken to bring it to the highest
point of efficiency.

It is because I believe our attitude should be
one of sincere good-will toward all nations that I
so strongly feel that we should endeavor to work
for a league of peace among all nations rather
than trust to alliances with any particular group.
Moreover, alliances are very shifty and imcer-
tain. Within twenty years England has regarded
France as her immediately dangerous opponent;
within ten years she has felt that Russia was the

ly

254 THE WORLD WAR

one power against which she must at all costs
guard herself; and during the same period there
have been times when Belgium has hated England
with a peculiar fervor. Alliances must be based
on self-interest and must continually shift. But
in such a world league as that of which we speak
and dream, the test wotdd be conduct and not
merely selfish interest, and so there would be no
shifting of policy.

It is not yet opportime to discuss in detail the
exact method by which the nations of the world
shall put the collective strength of civilization
behind the purpose of civilization to do right,
using as an instnmientality for peace such a
world league. I have in the last chapter given
the bare outline of such a plan. Probably at the
outset it would be an absolute impossibility to
devise a non-national or purely international
poHce force which would be effective in a great
crisis. The prime necessity is that all the great
nations should agree in good faith to use their
combined warlike strength to coerce any nation,
whichever one it may be, that declines to abide
the decision of some competent international tri-
bunal.

Our business is to create the beginnings of in-
ternational order out of the world of nations as
these nations actually exist. We do not have to
deal with a world of pacificists and therefore we

SUMMING UP 2SS

must proceed on the assumption that treaties will
never acquire sanctity until nations are ready to
seal them with their blood. We are not striving
for peace in heaven. That is not our affair. What
we were bidden to strive for is "peace on earth
and good- will toward men." To fulfil this in-
junction it is necessary to treat the earth as it is
and men as they are, as an indispensable pre-
requisite to making the earth a better place in
which to live and men better fit to live in it. It
is inexcusable moral culpability on our part to
pretend to carry out this injimction in such fashion
as to nullify it ; and this we do if we make believe
that the earth is what it is not and if our profes-
sions of bringing good-will toward men are in
actual practice shown to be empty shams. Peace
congresses, peace parades, the appointment and
celebration of days of prayer for peace, and the
like, which result merely in giving the participants
the feeling that they have accomplished some-
thing and are therefore to be excused from hard,
practical work for righteousness, are empty
shams. Treaties such as the recent all-inclusive
arbitration treaties are worse than empty shams
and convict us as a nation of moral cvdpability
when our representatives sign them at the same
time that they refuse to risk anything to make
good the signatures we have already alBfixed to
the Hague conventions.

2S6 THE WORLD WAR

Moderate and sensible treaties which mean
something and which can and will be enforced
mark a real advance for the human race. As
has been well said: ''It is oiir business to make
no treaties which we are not ready to maintain
with all our resources, for every such 'scrap of
paper' is like a forged check — an assault on our
credit in the world." Promises that are idly
given and idly broken represent profound detri-
ment to the morality of nations. Until no promise
is idly entered into and imtil promises that have
once been made are kept, at no matter what cost
of risk and effort and positive loss, just so long
will distrust and suspicion and wrong-doing rack
the world. No honest lawyer will hesitate to
advise his client against signing a contract either
detrimental to his interests or impossible of ful-
filment; and the individual who signs such a con-
tract at once makes himself either an object of
suspicion to sound-headed men or else an object
of derision to all men. One of the stock jokes in
the comic columns of the newspapers refers to
the man who swears off or takes the pledge, or
makes an indefinite number of good resolutions
on New Year's Day, and fails to keep his pledge
or promise or resolution; this was one of Mark
Twain's favorite subjects for derision. The man
who continually makes new promises without
living up to those he has already made, and who

SUMMING UP 257

takes pledges which he breaks, is rightly treated
as an object for contemptuous fun. The nation
which behaves in like manner deserves no higher
consideration. '

The conduct of President Wilson and Secretary
Bryan in signing these all-inclusive treaties at the
same time that they have kept silent about the
breaking of the Hague conventions has repre-
sented the kind of wrong-doing to this nation
that would be represented in private life by the
conduct of the individuals who sign such con-
tracts as those mentioned. The administration
has looked on without a protest while the Hague
conventions have been torn up and thrown to
the wind. It has watched the paper structure
of good-will collapse without taking one step to
prevent it; and yet foolish pacificists, the very
men who in the past have been most vociferous
about international morality, have praised it for
this position. The assertion that our neutrality
carries with it the obligation to be silent when
our own Hague conventions are destroyed repre-
sents an active step against the peace of righteous-
ness. The only way to show that our faith in
public law was real was to protest against the as-
sault on international morality impHed in the
invasion of Belgium.

Unless some one at some time is ready td take
some chance for the sake of internationalism, that

2S8 THE WORLD WAR

is of international morality, it will remain what it
is to-day, an object of derision to aggressive na-
tions. Even if nothing more than an emphatic
protest had been made against what was done
in Belgiimi — ^it is not at this time necessary for
me to state exactly what, in my judgment, ought
to have been done — the foimdations wotild have
been laid for an effective world opinion against
international cynicism. Pacificists claim that
we have acted so as to preserve the good-will
of Europe and to exercise a guiding influence in
the settlement of the war. This is an idea which
appeals to the thoughtless, for it gratifies our de-
sire to keep out of trouble and also our vanity by
the hope that we shall do great things with small
difficulty. It may or may not be that the settle-
ment will finally be made by a peace congress in
which the President of the United States will hold
titular position of headship. But under conditions
as they are now the real importance of the Presi-
dent in such a peace congress will be comparable
to the real importance of the drum-major when he
walks at the head of a regiment. Small boys re-
gard the drum-major as much more important
than the regimental commander; and the pacificist
grown-ups who applaud peace congresses some-
times show as regards the drum-majors of these
congresses the same touching lack of insight which
small boys show toward real dnmi-majors. As a

SUMMING UP 259

matter of fact, if the United States enters such a
congress with nothing but a record of comfortable
neutraHty or tame acquiescence in violated Hague
conventions, plus an array of vague treaties with
no relation to actual facts, it will be allowed to
fill the position of international drtim-major and
of nothing more; and even this position it will be
allowed to fill only so long as it suits the con-
venience of the men who have done the actual
fighting. The warring nations will settle the
issues in accordance with their own strength and
position. Under such conditions we shall be
treated as we deserve to be treated, as a nation
of people who mean well feebly, whose words are
not backed by deeds, who like to prattle about
both their own strength and their own righteous-
ness, but who are imwilling to nm the risks with-
out which righteousness cannot be effectively
served, and who are also unwilling to undergo
the toil of intelligent and hard-working prepara-
tion without which strength when tested proves
weakness.

In this world it is as true of nations as of in-
dividuals that the things best worth having are
rarely to be obtained in cheap fashion. There
is nothing easier than to meet in congresses and
conventions and pass resolutions in favor of
virtue. There is also nothing more futile imless
those passing the resolutions are willing to make

26o THE WORLD WAR

them good by labor and endurance and active
courage and self-denial. Readers of John Hay's
poems will remember the scorn therein expressed
for those who "resoloot till the cows come home,'*
but do not put effort back of their words. Those
who would teach our people that service can be
rendered or greatness attained in easy, comfort-
able fashion, without facing risk, hardship, and
difficulty, are teaching what is false and mis-
chievous. Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and
intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.
As a rule, the slothful ease of life is in inverse
proportion to its true success. This is true of the
private lives of farmers, business men, and me-
chanics. It is no less true of the life of the nation
which is made up of these farmers, business men,
and mechanics.

As yet, as events have most painfully shown,
there is nothing to be expected by any nation in a
great crisis from anything except its own strength.
Under these circumstances it is criminal in the
United States not to prepare. Critics have
stated that in advocating universal military
service on the Swiss plan in this country, I am
advocating militarism. I am not concerned with
mere questions of terminology. The plan I ad-
vocate would be a corrective of every evil which
we associate with the name of militarism. It
would tend for order and' self-respect among our

SUMMING UP 261

people. Not the smallest evil among the many
evils that exist in America is due to militarism.
Save in the crisis of the Civil War there has been
no militarism in the United States and the only
militarist President we have ever had was Abraham
Lincoln. Universal service of the Swiss type
would be educational in the highest and best
sense of the word. In Switzerland, as compared
with the United States, there are, relatively to
the population, only one tenth the ntmiber of
murders and of crimes of violence. Doubtless
other causes have contributed to this, but doubt-
less also the intelligent collective training of the
Swiss people in habits of obedience, of self-reliance,
self-restraint and endurance, of applied patriot-
ism and collective action, has been a very potent
factor in producing this good result.

As I have already said, I know of my own
knowledge that two nations which on certain occa-
sions were obliged, perhaps as much by our fault
as by theirs, to take into account the question
of possible war with the United States, planned
in such event to seize the Panama Canal and
to take and ransom or destroy certain of our
great coast cities. They planned this partly in
the belief that otu* navy would intermittently be
allowed to become extremely inefficient, just as
during the last twenty months it has become in-
efficient, and partly in the belief that our people

262 THE WORLD WAR

are so wholly unmilitary, and so ridden to death
on the one hand by foolish pacificists and on the
other by brutal materialists whose only God is
money, that we would not show ourselves either
resolutely patriotic or efficient even in what be-
lated action our utter lack of preparation per-
mitted us to take. I believe that these nations
were and are wrong in their estimate of the under-
lying strength of the American character. I be-
lieve that if war did really come both the ultra-
pacificists, the peace-at-any-price men, and the
merely brutal materialists, who coimt all else as
nothing compared to the gratification of their
greed for gain or their taste for ease, for pleasure,
and for vacuous excitement, would be driven
before the gale of popular feeling as leaves are
driven through the fall woods. But such aroused
public feeling in the actual event would be
wholly inadequate to make good our failure to
prepare.

We shotdd in all htimility imitate not a little of
the spirit so much in evidence among the Germans
and the Japanese, the two nations which in
modem times have shown the most practical type
of patriotism, the greatest devotion to the com-
mon weal, the greatest success in developing their
economic resources and abilities from within,
and the greatest far-sightedness in safeguarding
the coimtry against possible disaster from with-

SUMMING UP 263

out. In the Journal of the Military Service In-
stitution for the months of November and De-
cember of the present year will be found a
quotation from a Japanese military paper, The
Comrades' Magazine, which displays an amoimt of
practical good sense together with patriotism and
devotion to the welfare of the average man which
could well be copied by our people and which is
worthy of study by every intelligent American.
Germany's success in industrialism has been as
extraordinary and noteworthy as her success in
securing military efficiency, and fimdamentally
has been due to the development of the same
qualities in the nation.

At present the United States does not begin to
get adequate rettim in the way of efficient prepa-
ration for defense from the amotmt of money ap-
propriated every year. Both the executive and
Congress are responsible for this — and of course
this means that the permanent and ultimate re-
sponsibility rests on the people. It is really less a
question of spending more money than of knowing
how to get the best results for the money that we
do spend. Most emphatically there should be a
comprehensive plan both for defense and for ex-
penditure. The best military and naval author-
ities— not merely the senior officers but the best
officers — should be required to produce compre-
hensive plans for battle-ships, for submarines, for

264 THE WORLD WAR

air-ships, for proper artillery, for a more efficient
regular army, and for a great popular reserve
behind the army. Every useless military post
should be forthwith abandoned; and this cannot
be done save by getting Congress to accept or
reject plans for defense and expenditure in their
entirety. If each congressman or senator can put
in his special plea for the erection or retention
of a military post for non-military reasons, and
for the promotion or favoring of some given officer
or group of officers also for non-military reasons,
we can rest assured that good results can never be
obtained. Here, again, what is needed is not plans
by outsiders but the insistence by outsiders upon
the army and navy officers being required to pro-
duce the right plans, being backed up when they
do produce the right plans, and being held to a
strict accountability for any failiu-e, active or
passive, in their duty.

Moreover, these plans must be treated as part
\of the coherent policy of the nation in interna-
tional affairs. With a gentleman like Mr. Bryan
in the State Department it may be accepted as
absolutely certain that we never will have the
highest grade of efficiency in the Departments of
War and of the Navy. With a gentleman like
Mr. Daniels at the head of the navy, it may be
accepted as certain that the navy will not be
brought to the level of its possible powers. This

SUMMING UP 26s

means that the people as a whole must demand of
their leaders that they treat seriously the navy
and army and our foreign policy.

The waste in our navy and army is very great.
This is inevitable as long as we do not discriminate
against the inefficient and as long as we fail to
put a premium upon efficiency. When I was
President I found out that a very large propor-
tion of the old officers of the army and even of
the navy were physically incompetent to perform
many of their duties. The public was wholly
indifferent on the subject. Congress would not
act. As a preliminary, and merely as a prelimi-
nary, I established a regulation that before pro-
motion officers should be required to walk fifty
miles or ride one hundred miles in three days.
This was in no way a sufficient test of an officer's
fitness. It merely served to rid the service of
men whose unfitness was absolutely ludicrous.
Yet in Congress and in the newspapers an ex-
traordinary din was raised against this test on
the groimd that it was \mjust to faithftd elderly
officers ! The pacificists promptly assailed it on
the ground that to make the army efficient was a
"warlike" act. All kinds of philanthropists, in-
cluding clergymen and college presidents, wrote
me that my action showed not only callousness of
heart but also a regrettable spirit of militarism.
Any officer who because of failure to come up to

266 , THE WORLD WAR

the test or for other reasons was put out of the
service was certain to receive ardent congressional
championship; and every kind of pressure was
brought to bear on behalf of the unfit, while hardly
the slightest effective championship was given
the move from any outside source. This was be-
cause public opinion was absolutely imeducated
on the subject. In our cotmtry the men who in
time of peace speak loudest about war are usually
the tdtrapacificists whose activities have been
shown to be absolutely futile for peace, but who
do a little mischief by persuading a number of
well-meaning persons that preparedness for war
is unnecessary.

It is not desirable that civilians, acting inde-
pendently of and without the help of military and
naval advisers, shall prepare minute or detailed
plans as to what ought to be done for our national
defense. But civilians are competent to advocate
plans in outline exactly as I have here advocated
them. Moreover, and most important, they are
competent to try to make public opinion effective
in these matters. A democracy must have proper
leaders. But these leaders must be able to appeal
to a proper sentiment in the democracy. It is the
prime duty of every right-thinking citizen at this
time to aid his fellow countrymen to imderstand
the need of working wisely for peace, the folly
of acting unwisely for peace, and, above all, the

SUMMING UP 267

need of real and thorough national preparedness
against war.

Former Secretary of the Navy Bonaparte, in
one of his admirable articles, in which he dis-
cusses armaments and treaties, has spoken as
follows:

Indeed, it is so obviously impolitic, on the part of the
administration and its party friends, to avow a purpose to
keep the people in the dark as to our preparedness (or
rather as to our virtually admitted unpreparedness) to
protect the national interests, safety, and honor, that a
practical avowal of such purpose on their part would seem
altogether incredible, but for certain rather notorious
facts developed by our experience during the last year
and three quarters.

It has gradually become evident, or, at least, probable
that the mind (wherever that mind may be located) which
determines, or has, as yet, determined, our foreign policy
under President Wilson, really relies upon a timid neu-
trality and innumerable treaties of general arbitration as
sufficient to protect us from foreign aggression; and ad-
visedly wishes to keep us virtually unarmed and helpless
to defend ourselves, so that a sense of our weakness may
render us sufficiently pusillanimous to pocket all insults,
to submit to any form of outrage, to resent no provocation,
and to abdicate completely and forever the dignity and
the duties of a great nation.

In the absence of actual experience, a strong effort of
the imagination would be required, at least on the part of
the writer, to conceive of anybody's not finding such an
outlook for his country utterly intolerable; but incredu-
lity must yield to decisive proof. Even the votaries of

268 THE WORLD WAR

this novel cult of cowardice, however, are evidently com-
pelled to recognize that, as yet, they constitute a very
small minority among Americans, and, for this reason,
they would keep their fellow countrymen, as far as may
be practicable, in the dark as to our national weakness
and our national dangers; they delight in gagging soldiers
and sailors and, to the extent of their power, everybody
else who may speak with any authority, and, if they could,
would shut out every ray of light which might aid public
opinion to see things as they are.

There is no room for difference as to the utter ab-
surdity of reliance on treaties, no matter how solemn or
with whomsoever made, as 'substitutes for proper arma-
ments to assure the national safety; Belgium's fate stares
in the face any one who should even dream of this. Her
neutrality was established and guaranteed, not by one
treaty but by several treaties, not by one power but by
all the powers; yet she has been completely ruined because
she relied upon these treaties, refused to violate them her-
self and tried, in good faith, to fulfil the obligations they
imposed on her.

For any public man, with this really terrible object-les-
son before his eyes, to seriously ask us to believe that arbi-
tration treaties or Hague tribunals or anything else within
that order of ideas can be trusted to take the place of
preparation impeaches either his sincerity or his sanity,
and impeaches no less obviously the common sense of his
readers or hearers.

A nation unable to protect itself may have to pay a
frightful price nowadays as a penalty for the misfortune
of weakness; the Belgians may be, in a measure, consoled
for their misfortune by the world's respect and sympathy;
in the like case, we should be further and justly punished

SUMMING UP 269

by the world's unbounded and merited contempt, for our
weakness would be the fruit of our own ignominious
cowardice and incredible folly.

Secretary Garrison in his capital report says
that if our outlying possessions are even insuffi-
ciently manned our mobile home army will con-
sist of less than twenty-five thousand men, only
about twice the size of the police force of New
York City. Yet, in the face of this, certain news-
paper editors, college presidents, pacificist bankers
and, I regret to say, certain clergymen and phi-
lanthropists enthusiastically champion the atti-
tude of President Wilson and Mr. Bryan in refus-
ing to prepare for war. As one of them put it
the other day: *'The way to prevent war is not
to fight." Luxembourg did not fight! Does this
gentleman regard the position of Luxembourg
at this moment as enviable ? China has not re-
cently fought. Does the gentleman think that
China's position is in consequence a happy one?
If advisers of this type, if these college presidents
and clergymen and editors of organs of cultiire
and the philanthropists who give this advice spoke
only for themselves, if the humiliation and dis-
grace were to come only on them, no one would
have a right to object. They have servile souls;
and if they chose serfdom of the body for them-
selves only, it would be of small consequence to
others. But, unforttmately, their words have a

270 THE WORLD WAR

certain effect upon this country; and that effect
is intolerably evil. Doubtless it is the influence
of these men which is largely responsible for the
attitude of the President. The President attacks
preparedness in the name of antimilitarism. The
preparedness we advocate is that of Switzerland,
the least militaristic of countries. Autocracy may
use preparedness for the creation of an aggressive
and provocative militarism that invites and pro-
duces war; but in a democracy preparedness means
security against aggression and the best guarantee
of peace. The President in his message has in
effect declared that his theory of neutrality, which
is carried to the point of a complete abandon-
ment of the rights of innocent small nations, and
his theory of non-preparedness, which is carried
to the point of gross national inefficiency, are both
means for securing to the United States a leading
position in bringing about peace. The position
he would thus secure would be merely that of
drum-major at the peace conference ; and he would
do well to remember that if the peace that is
brought about should result in leaving Belgium's
wrongs imredressed and turning Belgiimi over to
Germany, in enthroning militarism as the chief
factor in the modem world, and in consecrating
the violation of treaties, then the United States,
by taking part in such a conference, would have
rendered an evil service to mankind.

SUMMING UP 271

At present our navy is in wretched shape. Our
army is infinitesimal. This large, rich republic is
far less efficient from a military standpoint than
Switzerland, Holland, or Denmark. In spite of
the fact that the officers and enlisted men of our
navy and army offer material on the whole bet-
ter than the officers and men of any other navy or
army, these two services have for so many years
been neglected by Congress, and during the last
two years have been so mishandled by the adminis-
tration, that at the present time an energetic and
powerful adversary could probably with ease drive
us not only from the Philippines but from Hawaii,
and take possession of the Canal and Alaska.
If invaded by a serious army belonging to some
formidable Old World empire, we would be for
many months about as helpless as China; and,
as nowadays large armies can cross the ocean,
we might be crushed beyond hope of recuperation
inside of a decade. Yet those now at the head
of public affairs refuse themselves to face facts
and seek to mislead the people as to the facts.

President Wilson is, of course, fully and com-
pletely responsible for Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan
appreciates this and loyally endeavors to serve
the President and to come to his defense at all
times. As soon as President Wilson had an-
nounced that there was no need of preparations
to defend ourselves, because we loved everybody

272 THE WORLD WAR

and everybody loved us and because our mission
was to spread the gospel of peace, Mr. Bryan came
to his support with hearty enthusiasm and said:
'*The President knows that if this coimtry needed
a million men, and needed them in a day, the call
would go out at sunrise and the sun would go
down on a million men in arms.** One of the
President's stanchest newspaper adherents lost
its patience over this utterance and remarked:
*'More foolish words than these of the Secretary
of State were never spoken by mortal man in
reply to a serious argument." However, Mr.
Bryan had a good precedent, although he probably
did not know it. Pompey, when threatened by
Caesar, and told that his side was tmprepared,
responded that he had only to "stamp his foot"
and legions would spring from the ground. In
the actual event, the "stamping" proved as ef-
fectual against Caesar as Mr. Bryan's "call"
would imder like circumstances. I once heard
a Bryanite senator put Mr. Bryan's position
a little more strongly than it occurred to Mr.
Bryan himself to put it. The senator in question
annotmced that we needed no regular army, be-
cause in the event of war "ten million freemen
would spring to arms, the equals of any regular
soldiers in the world." I do not question the
emotional or oratorical sincerity either of Mr.
Bryan or of the senator. Mr, Bryan is accus-

SUMMING UP 273

tomed to performing in vacuo; and both he and
President Wilson, as regards foreign affairs, appar-
ently believe they are living in a world of two
dimensions, and not in the actual workaday world,
which has three dimensions. This was equally
true of the senator in question. If the senator's
ten million men sprang to arms at this moment,
they would have at the outside some four hundred
thousand modem rifles to which to spring. Per-
haps six hundred thousand more could spring to
squirrel pieces and fairly good shotgims. The re-
maining nine million men would have to ''spring"
to axes, scythes, hand-saws, gimlets, and similar
arms. As for Mr. Bryan's million men who would
at simset respond under arms to a call made at
sunrise, the suggestion is such a mere rhetorical
flotuish that it is not worthy even of humorous
treatment; a high-school boy making such a
statement in a theme would be marked zero by
any competent master. But it is an exceedingly
serious thing, it is not in the least a htimorous
thing, that the man making such a statement
should be the chief adviser of the President in in-
ternational matters, and should hold the highest
office in the President's gift.

Nor is Mr. Bryan in any way out of sympathy
with President Wilson in this matter.. The Presi-
dent, unlike Mr. Bryan, uses good English and does
not say things that are on their face ridiculous.

274 THE WORLD WAR

Unfortunately, his cleverness of style and his en-
tire refusal to face facts apparently make him be-
lieve that he really has dismissed and done away
with ugly realities whenever he has uttered some
pretty phrase about them. This year we are in
the presence of a crisis in the history of the world.
In the terrible whirlwind of war all the great
nations of the world, save the United States and
Italy, are facing the supreme test of their history.
All of the pleasant and alluring but futile theories
of the pacificists, all the theories enunciated in
the peace congresses of the past twenty years,
have vanished at the first soimd of the dnmiming
guns. The work of all the Hague conventions,
and all the arbitration treaties, neutrality trea-
ties, and peace treaties of the last twenty years
has been swept before the gusts of war like with-
ered leaves before a November storm. In this
great crisis the stem and actual facts have shown
that the fate of each nation depends not in the
least upon any elevated international aspirations
to which it has given expression in speech or
treaty, but on practical preparation, on intensity
of patriotism, on grim endurance, and on the pos-
session of the fighting edge. Yet, in the face of all
this, the President of the United States sends in a
message dealing with national defense, which is
filled with prettily phrased platitudes of the kind
applauded at the less important type of peace

SUMMING UP 27s

congress, and with sentences cleverly turned to
conceal from the average man the fact that the
President has no real advice to give, no real policy
to propose. There is just one point as to which he
does show real purpose for a tangible end. He
dwells eagerly upon the hope that we may obtain
"the opportunity to coimsel and obtain peace in
the world" among the warring nations, and ad-
jures us not to jeopardize this chance (for the
President to take part in the peace negotiations)
by at this time making any preparations for self-
defense. In effect, we are asked not to put our
own shores in defensible condition lest the Presi-
dent may lose the chance to be at the head of the
congress which may compose the differences of
Europe. In effect, he asks us not to build up the
navy, not to provide for an efficient citizen army,
not to get ammtmition for our guns and torpedoes
for our torpedo-tubes, lest somehow or other this
may make the President of the United States an
unacceptable mediator between Germany and
Great Britain! It is an honorable ambition for
the President to desire to be of use in bringing
about peace in Europe; but only on condition
that the peace thus brought is the peace of right-
eousness, and only on condition that he does not
sacrifice this country^s vital interests for a clatter
of that kind of hollow applause through which
runs an undertone of sinister jeering. He must

276 THE WORLD WAR

not sacrifice to this ambition the supreme inter-
est of the American people. Nor must he be-
lieve that the possibility of his being imipire will
have any serious effect on the terrible war game
that is now being played; the outcome of the game
will depend upon the prowess of the players. No
gain will come to our nation, or to any other na-
tion, if President Wilson permits himself to be
deluded concerning the part the United States may
take in the promotion of European peace.

Peace in Europe will be made by the warring
nations. They and they alone will in fact deter-
mine the terms of settlement. The United States
may be used as a convenient means of getting
together; but that is all. If the nations of Europe
desire peace and our assistance in seciiring it, it
will be because they have fought as long as they
will or can. It will not be because they regard us
as having set a spiritual example to them by
sitting idle, uttering cheap platitudes, and picking
up their trade, while they have poured out their
blood like water in support of the ideals in which,
with all their hearts and souls, they believe. For
us to assume superior virtue in the face of the
war-worn nations of the Old World will not make
us more acceptable as mediators among them.
Such self -consciousness on our part will not im-
press the nations who have sacrificed and are
sacrificing all that is dearest to them in the world,

r

i

SUMMING UP 277

for the things that they believe to be the noblest
in the world. The storm JJiat, is raging in Europe
at this moment is terrible and evil; but it is also
grand and noble. Untried men who live at ease
will do well to remember that there is a certain
sublimity even in Milton's defeated archangel, but
none whatever in the spirits who kept neutral,
who remained at peace, and dared side neither
with hell nor with heaven. They will also do
well to remember that when heroes have battled
together, and have wrought good and evil, and
when the time has come out of the contest to get
all the good possible and to prevent as far as pos-
sible the evil from being made permanent, they
will not be influenced much by the theory that
soft and short-sighted outsiders have put them-
selves in better condition to stop war abroad by
making themselves defenseless at home.

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