Chapter II (4)

Again, let us define what is meant by abolishing secret diplomacy. If it means that the Administration is to renounce the system of secret and furtive diplomacy which it now perseveres in concerning what has happened in Mexico, Haiti, and San Domingo, I heartily agree; but I do not see why it needs an international mandate before it tells our people the truth in these matters. Moreover, before it undertakes a fresh agreement, let it explain why for two years it kept secret from our people the full knowledge it had of Germany’s conduct and attitude toward us, including all the matters set forth in Ambassador Gerard’s books. The American Nation has never seen such secret diplomacy practiced by its Government as it has seen during the last five years.

It is evident, before these fourteen points are accepted as the basis for peace discussion, they should be stated in such straightforward language that we may understand what they mean. The prime necessities at present are simplicity of language and the squaring of deeds with words. The thing we do not need is adroit and supple rhetoric which can be interpreted to mean anything or nothing.

PERMANENT PREPAREDNESS AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

OCTOBER 15, 1918

The vital military need of this country as regards its future international relations is the immediate adoption of the policy of permanent preparedness based on universal training. This is its prime duty from the standpoint of American nationalism and patriotism. Then, as an addition or supplement to, but under no conditions as substitute for, the policy of permanent preparedness, we can afford cautiously to enter into and try out the policy of a league of nations. There is no difficulty whatever in prattling cheerfully about such a league or in winning applause by rhetoric concerning it prior to the effort to make it work in practice; but there will be much difficulty in making it work at all when any serious strain comes, and it will prove entirely unworkable if the effort is made to unload upon it, in the name of internationalism, duties which in the present state of the world will be efficiently performed by the free nations only if they perform them as national duties.

In a recent adverse, but courteous and friendly article on my attitude in this matter which appeared in a great daily paper, the following language was used: “The colonel is letting himself be bothered, irritated, and sidetracked by fools. There is no way of preventing a fool from saying that he is in favor of the league of nations. The American people will be making up their minds about the league of nations and about permanent preparedness. They will be told by certain sorts of pacifists that if they accept the league they can safely reject preparedness. They will be told that the two ideas are opposites.”

The “certain sort of pacifist” who has made this statement to the people of the United States is the President of the United States in the now famous “fourteen points” which he enunciated last January. He advocated as one part of his plan the league or association of nations, as he has elsewhere advocated it, and he advocated as another part of his plan “the guarantees that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.” Unless this language was used with intent to deceive, domestic safety must mean merely freedom from riot, and the President’s proposal is that America’s national preparedness be limited to a police force to prevent domestic disorder. Therefore, the President has told the American people that if they accept the league they can safely reject preparedness.

The President may change his mind, and I sincerely hope he will do so. Until he does so it is the duty of every sincere American patriot to lay far more emphasis on the onerous and indispensable duty of national preparedness than on the wholly untested scheme of a league of nations, which the President has presented as an alternative. I heartily favor true internationalism as an addition to, but never as substitute for, a fervid and intensely patriotic nationalism. I will gladly back any wise and honest effort to create a league of nations, but only on condition that it is treated as an addition to, and not as a substitute for, the full preparedness of our own strength for our own defense.

HIGH-SOUNDING PHRASES OF MUDDY MEANING

OCTOBER 17, 1918

A keen observer of what is now happening in the world writes me that there is very grave danger that this country will be cheated out of the right kind of peace if our people remain fatuously content to accept high-sounding phrases of muddy meaning, instead of clear-cut and truthful statements of just what we demand and just what we intend to do.

The recent action of President Wilson in connection with Germany has shown the imperative need of our people informing themselves of his announced purpose and keeping track of what he does toward the achievement of this purpose. Therefore, we should insist upon the purpose being stated in understandable fashion and being adhered to after it has been stated. This isn’t the President’s war. It is the people’s war. The peace will not be a satisfactory peace unless it is the people’s peace. As a people we have no right to permit the President to commit us to that of which we do not approve or to that which, after honest effort, we are unable to understand.

President Wilson’s first communication to the German Government, if words mean anything, meant an effort to treat on the basis of his so-called “fourteen points.” The German Government answered that it accepted these fourteen points and approved of them. This made them public property, and it behooves the Americans to examine them. I believe that such an examination will show the American people that their meaning is so muddy that we should insist upon their being clearly defined before we in any way accept them as ours. When the peace terms come to be reduced to action, we cannot afford to accept empty competitive rhetoric for straightforward plain dealing.

As regards some of the points, either the meaning is so muddy as to be wholly incomprehensible or else the proposals are very treacherous. The fourth article, for example, proposes guarantees for the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. If this article means anything, it means that this Nation, for instance, is only to keep whatever armed forces are necessary to police the country in the event of domestic disturbance. Now, let our people face what this really implies. It is a proposal that we give up our navy, which, of course, cannot be used for such police purposes, and that we give up all of our army that could be used against a foreign foe. And according to point fourteen of his address to Congress of January 8 last, and according to point three in his speech of September 27 last, this lack of armament on our part is to be supplied by mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity within the league of nations covering the world.

Now, such guarantees are precisely and exactly the scraps of paper to which the German Chancellor likened them when his Government tore up those affecting Belgium. The proposal of President Wilson is that this country shall put itself in the position of Belgium; shall trust to guarantees precisely such as those to which Belgium trusted four and one quarter years ago, and he also proposes, as far as his meaning can be made out at all, that the very powers that treated these guarantees as scraps of paper in the case of Belgium shall be among the powers to whose guarantee we are to trust to the exclusion of all preparation for our own self-defense. All nations are to be asked to render themselves helpless with fatuous indifference to the obvious fact that every weak-minded nation which accepted and acted in the proposal would be at the mercy of every ruthless and efficient nation that chose to treat the proposal as a scrap of paper.

I gravely doubt whether a more silly or more mischievous plan was ever seriously proposed by the ruler of a great nation. Yet, this is exactly the plan to which President Wilson, by his correspondence with Germany, has sought definitely to commit the United States. If his words do not mean exactly what is above set forth, then their meaning is so muddy that no two disinterested outsiders would be warranted in interpreting them the same way.

There is small cause for wonder that Germany eagerly accepted and made her own President Wilson’s fourteen points to which he, without any warrant whatever, seemed to commit this Nation. Incidentally I may add that Mr. Wilson has at different times enunciated at least as many other points, some of them contradictory to the fourteen which he enumerated in January last. The outburst of popular indignation led by such men as Senators Lodge, Poindexter, and Thomas, which forced him to repudiate the negotiations which he had begun with Germany, should be supplemented by a resolute insistence upon the duty of the American public to inform itself as to what it wishes in the peace before the President, without authority, commits it to any peace proposal, and above all to peace proposals which may mean anything or nothing.

Secretary McAdoo, with fine family loyalty, announced that the acceptance by Germany of the fourteen points would have meant Germany’s unconditional surrender. He might as well have said that the acceptance of disunion and the perpetuation of slavery in 1864 would have meant a surrender by the Confederate states. Not only Germany, but every pacifist and pro-German here at home, hailed the fourteen points as representing what they desired. I recently spoke to a body of loyal Americans of German descent on behalf of the Liberty Loan. A member of their organization who was not a straight American, but a hyphenated American, and who did not venture to do more than sign himself as “German-American,” wrote me that in view of my repudiation of President Wilson’s so-called fourteen points he could not, as a loyal German-American, do otherwise than condemn me. The individual himself is doubtless as unimportant as the anonymous letter writer usually is, but there is a real significance in his endorsement of President Wilson’s fourteen points in view of his calling himself so emphatically not a straight-out American, but a German-American. Evidently his loyalty is to Germanism and not to Americanism, and this German loyalty of his made him back the President’s fourteen points, which Germany had so gladly accepted.

The American people should insist that these fourteen points and any other points are stated in clear-cut language, and that there be a full understanding of just what is meant by them and a full knowledge of how far the American people approve of them before any foreign power is permitted to think that they represent America’s position at the peace council.

AN AMERICAN PEACE _VERSUS_ A RUBBER-STAMP PEACE

OCTOBER 22, 1918

In Wallace’s Farmer, a journal devoted to the interests of the farmer, and also to the interests of every good American citizen, but which has no concern with partisan politics, there is a strong editorial against our acceptance of a peace on the terms of the famous fourteen points laid down by President Wilson in his message of January last. It reads in part as follows:

Of course, Germany would like to make peace on the terms laid down by President Wilson in his speech of January 8, for it would allow Germany to escape the just penalty of her crimes and restore her to her condition before the war.

On the other hand, the leading Socialist paper of New York enthusiastically champions the fourteen points, especially those demanding a league of nations, freedom of the seas according to the German party, and the removal of all economic barriers. This championship is natural, for the Socialists, like the I.W.W. of this country, who have been bitterly pro-German and anti-American, and like the worst Russian Bolsheviks, have steadily worked in Germany’s interests; and like all its professional internationalists they hate the liberty-loving nations so bitterly that they are eagerly working for peace satisfactory to the German autocracy. All such persons, so far as they are not merely silly, seek their own profit in the destruction of civilization, and they would hail an inconclusive peace, which would mean the triumph of militarism, rather than see the free nations triumphant over both militarism and anarchy.

But in his last note to Austria, President Wilson himself flatly repudiates one of his fourteen points--that relating to autonomy for the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs under the Austro-Hungarian yoke. He announces that he has changed his position because facts have changed, but in reality the facts have not changed in even the smallest degree between January and October so far as these two nationalities are concerned. Many persons, including myself, had then been demanding for over a year this complete independence. Nothing whatever has changed in the situation except Mr. Wilson’s mind, and obviously this has changed merely because the American people have gradually waked up and have forced him in this matter to take a course diametrically opposed to the one he had been advocating, precisely as a week ago an aroused and indignant public opinion forced him to absolutely reverse the course of negotiation on which he entered with Germany. The popular feeling would have been inarticulate and helpless if it had not received expression from various patriotic public servants and private citizens and from those fearless newspapers, which, at the risk of grave financial disaster, have ventured when the crisis was serious to defy the sinister efforts of the Administration to do away with the freedom of the press. Senators Lodge, Poindexter, and Thomas and Congressman Fess are examples of the public servants, and Professor Hobbs, of the University of Michigan, and Professor Thayer, of Harvard, are examples of private citizens who have well served the people of the United States in this crisis.

Of course, the entire cuckoo or rubber-stamp tribe of politicians tumbled over themselves in the effort to assure the President that no matter what somersault he turned they would flop with equal quickness, and that their responsibility was solely to him and not to the people of the United States or to the cause of right and of fearlessness and of honorable dealing. Senator Lewis, of Illinois, introduced a resolution stating that “the United States Senate approves whatever course may be taken by the President in dealing with the German Imperial Government and the Austrian Imperial Government and endorses and approves whatever methods he may employ.” Senator Lewis is, in private life, an amiable and kindly gentleman, but the above resolution is a somewhat abject announcement that in public life he aspires only to be a rubber stamp. If such position is proper, then there is no need of Senators or Congressmen, and our people should merely send written proxies to Washington and should otherwise copy the example of those big private corporations which are controlled by one man according to his own will and for his own benefit.

I do not believe that the American people will accept a view which is both so abject and so profoundly unpatriotic. This is the war of the American people and the peace which concludes it should be the peace imposed by the American people. Therefore, they should send to Washington public servants who will be self-respecting Americans and not rubber stamps.

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

OCTOBER 26, 1918

When the American people speak for unconditional surrender, it means that Germany must accept whatever terms the United States and its allies think necessary in order to right the dreadful wrongs that have been committed and to safeguard the world for at least a generation to come from another attempt by Germany to secure world dominion. Unconditional surrender is the reverse of a negotiated peace. The interchange of notes, which has been going on between our Government and the Governments of Germany and Austria during the last three weeks, means, of course, if persisted in, a negotiated peace. It is the abandonment of force and the substitution of negotiation. This fact should be clearly and truthfully stated by our leaders, so that the American people may decide with their eyes open which course they will follow.

Those of us who believe in unconditional surrender regard Germany’s behavior during the last five years as having made her the outlaw among nations. In private life sensible men and women do not negotiate with an outlaw or grow sentimental about him, or ask for a peace with him on terms of equality if he will give up his booty. Still less do they propose to make a league with him for the future, and on the strength of this league to abolish the sheriff and take the constable. On the contrary, they expect the law officers to take him by force and to have him tried and punished. They do not punish him out of revenge, but because all intelligent persons know punishment to be necessary in order to stop certain kinds of criminals from wrongdoing and to save the community from such wrongdoing.

We ought to treat Germany in precisely this manner. It is a sad and dreadful thing to have to face some months or a year or so of additional bloodshed, but it is a much worse thing to quit now and have the children now growing up obliged to do the job all over again, with ten times as much bloodshed and suffering, when their turn comes. The surest way to secure a peace as lasting as that which followed the downfall of Napoleon is to overthrow the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns as Napoleon was overthrown. If we enter into a league of peace with Germany and her vassal allies, we must expect them to treat the arrangement as a scrap of paper whenever it becomes to their interest to do so.

WHAT ARE THE FOURTEEN POINTS?

OCTOBER 30, 1918

The European nations have been told that the fourteen points enumerated in President Wilson’s message of January last are to be the basis of peace. It is, therefore, possible that Americans may like to know what they are. It is even possible that they may like to guess what they mean, although I am not certain that such guessing is permitted by the Postmaster-General and the Attorney-General under the new theory of making democracy safe for all kinds of peoples abroad who have never heard of it by interpreting democracy at home as meaning that it is unlawful for the people to express any except favorable opinions of the way in which the public servants of the people transact the public business.

The first point forbids “all private international understandings of any kind,” and says there must be “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,” and announces that “diplomacy shall always proceed frankly in the public view.” The President has recently waged war on Haiti and San Domingo and rendered democracy within these two small former republics not merely unsafe, but non-existent. He has kept all that he has done in the matter absolutely secret. If he means what he says, he will at once announce what open covenant of peace he has openly arrived at with these two little republics, which he has deprived of their right of self-determination. He will also announce what public international understanding, if any, he now has with these two republics, whose soil he is at present occupying with the armed forces of the United States and hundreds of whose citizens have been killed by these armed forces. If he has no such public understanding, he will tell us why, and whether he has any private international understanding, or whether he invaded and conquered them and deprived them of the right of self-determination without any attempt to reach any understanding, either private or public.

Moreover, he has just sent abroad on a diplomatic mission Mr. House, of Texas. Mr. House is not in the public service of the Nation, but he is in the private service of Mr. Wilson. He is usually called Colonel House. In his official or semi-official biography, published in an ardently admiring New York paper, it is explained that he was once appointed colonel on a governor’s staff, but carried his dislike of military ostentation to the point of giving his uniform to a negro servant to wear on social occasions. This attitude of respect for the uniform makes the President feel that he is peculiarly fit to negotiate on behalf of our fighting men abroad for whom the uniform is sacred. Associated with him is an editor of the New York World, which paper has recently been busy in denouncing as foolish the demand made by so many Americans for unconditional surrender by Germany.

I do not doubt that these two gentlemen possess charming social attributes and much private worth, but as they are sent over on a diplomatic mission, presumably vitally affecting the whole country, and as their instructions and purposes are shrouded in profound mystery, it seems permissible to ask President Wilson why in this particular instance diplomacy does not “proceed frankly in the public view”?

This first one of the fourteen points offers such an illuminating opportunity to test promise as to the future by performance in the present that I have considered it at some length. The other thirteen points and the subsequent points laid down as further requirements for peace I shall briefly take up in another article.

FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF THE FOURTEEN POINTS

OCTOBER 30, 1918

The second in the fourteen points deals with freedom of the seas. It makes no distinction between freeing the seas from murder like that continually practiced by Germany and freeing them from blockade of contraband merchandise, which is the practice of a right universally enjoyed by belligerents, and at this moment practiced by the United States. Either this proposal is meaningless or it is a mischievous concession to Germany.

The third point promises free trade among all the nations, unless the words are designedly used to conceal President Wilson’s true meaning. This would deny to our country the right to make a tariff to protect its citizens, and especially its working-men, against Germany or China or any other country. Apparently this is desired on the ground that the incidental domestic disaster to this country will prevent other countries from feeling hostile to us. The supposition is foolish. England practiced free trade and yet Germany hated England particularly, and Turkey practiced free trade without deserving or obtaining friendship from any one except those who desired to exploit her.

The fourth point provides that this Nation, like every other, is to reduce its armaments to the lowest limit consistent with domestic safety. Either this is language deliberately used to deceive or else it means that we are to scrap our army and navy and prevent riot by means of a national constabulary, like the state constabulary of New York or Pennsylvania.

Point five proposes that colonial claims shall all be treated on the same basis. Unless the language is deliberately used to deceive, this means that we are to restore to our brutal enemy the colonies taken by our allies while they were defending us from this enemy. The proposition is probably meaningless. If it is not, it is monstrous.

Point six deals with Russia. It probably means nothing, but if it means anything, it provides that America shall share on equal terms with other nations, including Germany, Austria, and Turkey, in giving Russia assistance. The whole proposition would not be particularly out of place in a college sophomore’s exercise in rhetoric.

Point seven deals with Belgium and is entirely proper and commonplace.

Point eight deals with Alsace-Lorraine and is couched in language which betrays Mr. Wilson’s besetting sin--his inability to speak in a straightforward manner. He may mean that Alsace and Lorraine must be restored to France, in which case he is right. He may mean that a plebiscite must be held, in which case he is playing Germany’s evil game.

Point nine deals with Italy, and is right.

Point ten deals with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is so foolish that even President Wilson has since abandoned it.

Point eleven proposes that we, together with other nations, including apparently Germany, Austria, and Hungary, shall guarantee justice in the Balkan Peninsula. As this would also guarantee our being from time to time engaged in war over matters in which we had no interest whatever, it is worth while inquiring whether President Wilson proposes that we wage these wars with the national constabulary to which he desired to reduce our armed forces.

Point twelve proposes to perpetuate the infamy of Turkish rule in Europe, and as a sop to the conscience of humanity proposes to give the subject races autonomy, a slippery word which in a case like this is useful only for rhetorical purposes.

Point thirteen proposes an independent Poland, which is right; and then proposes that we guarantee its integrity in the event of future war, which is preposterous unless we intend to become a military nation more fit for overseas warfare than Germany is at present.

Point fourteen proposes a general association of nations to guarantee to great and small states alike political independence and territorial integrity. It is dishonorable to make this proposition so long as President Wilson continues to act as he is now acting in Haiti and San Domingo. In its essence Mr. Wilson’s proposition for a league of nations seems to be akin to the holy alliance of the nations of Europe a century ago, which worked such mischief that the Monroe Doctrine was called into being especially to combat it. If it is designed to do away with nationalism, it will work nothing but mischief. If it is devised in sane fashion as an addition to nationalism and as an addition to preparing our own strength for our own defense, it may do a small amount of good; but it will certainly accomplish nothing if more than a moderate amount is attempted and probably the best first step would be to make the existing league of the Allies a going concern.

As to the supplementary points or proposals, the four advanced or laid down in February were sound moral aphorisms of no value save as they may be defined in each particular case.

But the supplementary five proposals set forth by President Wilson last September were, on the whole, mischievous and were capable of a construction that would make them ruinous in their essence. They set forth the doctrine that there must be no discrimination between our friends and our enemies and no special economic or political alliances among friendly nations, but uniform treatment of all the league of nations; the said league, therefore, to include Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia upon a footing of equality of our allies. Either the words used mean nothing or they mean that we are to enter a league in which we make-believe that our deadly enemies, stained with every kind of brutality and treachery, are as worthy of friendship as the Allies who have fought our battles for four years. No wonder that the proposal is enthusiastically applauded by Germany, Austria, and Turkey and by all our own pro-Germans and pacifists and Germanized Socialists and anti-American internationalists. It is the kind of proposition made by cold-blooded men who at least care nothing for the sufferings of others. It is eagerly championed by foolish and hysterical sentimentalists. It is accepted and used for sinister purposes by powerful and cynical wrongdoers. When the President was making this proposition and during the subsequent month Germany was committing inhuman murders of the people on the Ticonderoga and Leinster at sea, and on shore was committing every species of murder, rape, enslavement, plunder, and outrage as her armies withdrew from France and Belgium.

President Wilson’s announcement was a notice to the malefactors that they would not be punished for the murders. Let us treat the league of nations only as an addition to, and not as a substitute for, thorough preparedness and intense nationalism on our part. Let none of the present international criminals be admitted until a sufficient number of years has passed to make us sure it has repented. Make conduct the test of admission to the league. In every crisis judge each nation by its conduct. Therefore, at the present time let us stand by our friends and against our enemies.

FOURTEEN SCRAPS OF PAPER

OCTOBER 31, 1918

In my article yesterday I discussed Mr. Wilson’s fourteen peace points which had been accepted by Germany. After the article was sent in, Mr. Wilson explained one of the points by stating that it meant exactly the opposite of what it said. A New York paper has asked for the election of a Congress that shall see eye to eye with Mr. Wilson. But only a Congress of whirling dervishes could see eye to eye with Mr. Wilson for more than twenty-four hours at a time.

When Germany broke her treaty with Belgium, the German Chancellor called it a scrap of paper. Any individual who proposes a treaty which plainly means one thing, and then, as soon as he finds it disagreeable to adhere to that obvious meaning, instantly interprets it as meaning exactly the opposite, is treating it as a scrap of paper. Mr. Wilson’s recent interpretation of what he meant in the point about economic barriers makes all the fourteen points scraps of paper unworthy of serious discussion by anybody, because no human being is supposed to say what any one of them means or to do more than guess whether to-morrow Mr. Wilson will not interpret each and all of them in a sense exactly the opposite to their meaning.

Mr. Wilson’s language in the point in question was that he intended the removal “of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations.” By no honest construction of language can this be held to mean anything except that this Nation, for example, could have no tariff of its own, but must live under exactly the same tariff, or no tariff, conditions with all other nations. But Mr. Wilson now notifies a Democratic Senator that he did not mean any “restriction upon the free determination by any nation of its own economic policy.” If he meant this, why did he not say it? Why did he say the exact opposite? His first statement is wholly incompatible with the interpretation he now puts on it. If anybody in private life entered into a contract in such manner and then sought to repudiate it by interpreting it in such manner, there is not a court in Christendom that would not adjudge him guilty of having used language with deliberate intent to deceive.

Nor is this all. In his new interpretation of what he did not originally mean, the President now says that he proposes to prevent any nation, including the United States, from using its tariff to discriminate in favor of friendly nations and against hostile nations. This is what he now says and what he now means, but, of course, to-morrow he may say that in this new interpretation he again meant exactly the opposite of what he says. However this may be for the future, President Wilson at this moment says, for instance, we ought to abandon reciprocity treaties; that we ought to refuse to make such treaties with our friends, such as Cuba and Brazil, and ought to punish these friends by treating them on an exact equality with our embittered and malevolent enemy, Germany. I hold this to be thoroughly mischievous doctrine.

The great scientist, Huxley, who loved truth and abhorred falsehood, said that “the primary condition of honest literature is to leave the reader in no doubt as to the author’s meaning.” Evidently this primary condition is not fulfilled by Mr. Wilson’s fourteen points. They should now be treated as scraps of paper and put where they belong, in the scrap-basket.

THE TURKS SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY

NOVEMBER 3, 1918

The British have beaten Turkey to her knees and she has surrendered unconditionally. America has no share in the honor of what has been done. President Wilson, although we were at war with Germany, has refused to aid our allies against Turkey and has preserved the same cold neutrality between the Armenians and their Turkish butchers that he formerly did between the Belgians and their German oppressors.

Turkey had inflicted inhuman wrongs on the subject peoples and had infringed our own treaty rights, but President Wilson refused to go to war with her. Yet with our navy at the very outbreak of hostilities and then with a considerable and constantly growing army, if we had been willing we could have materially aided the British and French. In such event Constantinople would doubtless have been taken long ago. As it is, thanks to President Wilson, we Americans can only look on and rejoice that others did better than our rulers let us do. We have had no hand in the freeing of Palestine, Syria, and Armenia. Under the great law of service and sacrifice it is the British and French alone who have the moral right to determine the fate of Turkey. They, and especially the British, have poured out their blood freely, and now, after the victory has been gained, expenditure of ink on our part is of mighty small consequence in comparison. I earnestly hope that permanent justice will be done by expelling the Turk from Europe and making all Armenia independent. But we have lost the right to insist on these points.

The beginning of the end came when, two or three weeks ago, Bulgaria was forced to surrender unconditionally. Here again, thanks to President Wilson, America had no part in the honor and credit of the vital triumph. Our Government was still neutral about Bulgaria, still too proud to fight either Turkey or Bulgaria, still hoping for peace without victory over them.

Now Turkey has surrendered and Austria has broken up. In the case of Austria, after ten months’ unpardonable delay, we did finally go to war, and we have a very small share in the great glory won by Italy and the other Allies.

The greatest contest was on the western front, and here the hundreds of thousands of American troops engaged under Foch and Pershing have shown such extraordinary gallantry and efficiency that we are all forever their debtors. Nearly a month ago President Wilson entered into negotiations with Germany which, if continued along the line he started, might have caused disaster. Fortunately there was such an outburst of protest in the country that our allies took part and President Wilson himself took warning. President Wilson may still serve as a channel of communication. But General Foch will be the real master of the situation. The men with guns and not the men with fountain pens will dictate the terms.

PEACE

NOVEMBER 12, 1918

Four years and a quarter have passed since Germany, by the invasion of Belgium, began the World War and made it at the same time a war of cynical treachery and of bestiality and of inhuman wrongdoing. Almost from the beginning our governmental authorities were well informed of the organized brutality with which it was waged and of the fact that the Kaiser and the leading soldiers, politicians, and commercial magnates of Germany had deliberately plunged the world into war because they expected to profit by conquest, while the Socialist Party aided and abetted them in the hope of sharing some of the profit.

The rest of us ordinary Americans were successfully hoodwinked because the facts were concealed from us. But gradually the truth leaked through to us. First we learned that the stories of the atrocities were true. Then, although not until much later, we found out that there was ample proof that Germany had brought on the war to gratify her greed for gold and her arrogant and conscienceless lust for world domination. Finally we were permitted to learn that Germany intended to strike us down as soon as she had made the free nations her victims. Now our troops have played a manful part, a part not only heroic and efficient, but also of decisive consequence in the final terrible struggle.

It is not pleasant to think that the two first crushing blows in bringing about the end, the overthrow of Bulgaria and the overthrow of Turkey, were due in no way to us, but solely to our allies, England and France. We never made war on either offending nation; we remained neutral, and this exhibition of feeble diplomacy on our part made us onlookers instead of partakers of the triumph. But with Austria, after much hesitation and wabbling, we did finally go to war, and, although our part was very small, we have a modest right to share the general satisfaction over the victory. In the case of Germany, however, we played a really great part, and although until the very end we were unable to put on the fighting line any tanks or field guns or battle planes, and relatively only a small number of machine guns and bombing and observation planes, our soldiers themselves were probably on the average the finest troops who fought in Europe.

And now the German imperial military and capitalistic authority has been beaten to its knees and forced to accept all the terms the Allies have imposed upon it. The able and wicked men who thought to wade through a sea of blood to world domination must now bow their heads before the outside peoples whom they have so cruelly wronged and face the sullen distrust and hostility of their own people, whom they misled by promising them a share in the profits of successful guilt. Their doom has come upon them.

A little over a month ago the Administration embarked upon a career of note-writing with Germany, which, if unchecked, might have meant a peace of practical profit to Germany. But the feeling of the American people, especially in the West, showed itself in such direct and straightforward fashion that this effort was soon abandoned. Moreover, at the recent election, the American people, with the issue squarely before them, declared that they were the masters of their public servants and not rubber stamps, and that this was the people’s war and not the war of any one man or any one party, and that loyalty to ourselves and our allies stood ahead of adherence to any man. Germany has been beaten down abroad and at home. The pro-Germans and the pacifists and the defeatists and the Germanized Socialists, and all the crew who stand for any form of either Bolshevism or Kaiserism, have been warned that they shall not betray this Nation.

SACRIFICE ON COLD ALTARS

NOVEMBER 13, 1918

A friend, a California woman, writes me that there is staying with her a widow whose only son has been in the navy and has just died of influenza, and that the mother said:

I gave my boy proudly to my country. I never held him back, even in my heart. But if only he had died with a gun in his hand--a little glory for him and a thought for me that my sacrifice had not been useless.

My correspondent continues:

There must be so many mothers who feel that they have laid their sacrifice on cold altars. You have written much that will comfort the mothers whose sons have paid with their bodies in battle. Isn’t there something you can say to help these other mothers?

I felt a real pang when I received this letter, because the thought suggested had been in my mind, and yet I had failed to express it. It had happened that my own sons and nephews and young cousins and their close friends were where death or wounds came to them on the field of action. For example, on the day I received this letter we also got news that the closest school and college and army friend of my son, Quentin, who was killed, had himself just been killed. He was a man who had been promoted for a series of hazardous and successful battles with German airmen. He was as gentle and clean and lovable as a girl, yet terrible in his battle, and no more high and fearless soul ever fronted death joyously in the high heavens. My mind had, because of facts like this, turned toward the deaths of the men on the firing line; and I regret that I did not make it evident as I meant to make it, and but for this oversight would have made it, that all who have given their lives or the lives dearest to them in this war stand on an exact level of service and sacrifice and honor and glory.

The men who have died of pneumonia or fever in the hospitals, the men who have been killed in accidents on the airplane training fields are as much heroes as those who were killed at the front, and their shining souls shall hereafter light up all to a clearer and greater view of the duties of life. The war is over now. The time of frightful losses among the men at the front and of heartbreaking anxiety for their mothers and wives, their sisters and sweethearts at home has passed. No great triumph is ever won save by the payment of the necessary cost. All of us who have stayed at home and all the others who have returned safe will, as long as life shall last, think of the men who died as having purchased for us and for our children’s children, as long as this country shall last, a heritage so precious that even their precious blood was not too great a price to pay. Whether they fell in battle or how they died matters not at all, and it matters not what they were doing as long as, high of soul, they were doing their duty with all the strength and fervor of their natures.

The mother or the wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid “on a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when justice and mercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations of the world.

THE RED FLAG AND THE HUN PEACE DRIVE

NOVEMBER 14, 1918

The war is won. A twofold duty is now incumbent on us. We must strive to make the peace one of justice and righteousness and to throw out such safeguards around it as will give us the greatest possible chance of permanency. Then we must turn to setting aright the affairs of our own household. But before we set ourselves to the performance of these two tasks we should thoroughly enlighten our enemies at home and abroad on one or two points.

Let all anti-Americans stand aside. Let them understand that we are not merely against some enemies of the country--we are against all enemies of the country. This week in New York there was a red flag of Anarchy or Socialistic meeting which was the cause of a riot. It was perfectly natural that it should be the cause of a riot. The red flag is as much an enemy as the flag of the Hohenzollerns. The internationalist of the red flag or black flag type is an enemy to this Nation just exactly as much as Hindenburg or Ludendorff was an enemy only a week ago. He is an even more treacherous enemy and equally brutal. Congress should pass a law without waiting a day prohibiting the use of the red flag or the black flag or any other flag of the kind here in America. We have universal suffrage in America. The majority of our people can have what they wish in the way of industrial and political change, if they seriously desire it. There isn’t any excuse in this country for any paltering with revolutionary movements. A riot is riot, without reference to what the people rioting claim to be for. When a mob gets started, it always acts the same way, no matter what the theoretical cause of the outbreak may have been. A Bolshevist mob in New York in all essentials resembles the anti-draft mob of 1863, although the arguments of the parlor Bolsheviki of to-day would be totally different from those of the constitutional copperheads of fifty-five years ago.

When the Romanoffs were overthrown the Russian people lacked self-control and they permitted the dominion of a Bolshevist gang, which has brought wholesale robbery, murder, and starvation in its trail. The overthrow of the Hohenzollerns in Germany has been accompanied by Bolshevist uprising in that country also. There is some excuse for excesses in a revolution against a despotism, but in this country there is no more excuse for Bolshevism in any form than there is for despotism itself. Any foreign-born man who parades with or backs up a red flag or black flag organization ought to be instantly deported to the country from which he came. Appropriate punishment should be devised for the even more guilty native-born.

Our National Government should take the most vigorous action and have it understood that America is a bulwark of order no less than of liberty. We must make it evident that we will stamp out Bolshevism within our borders just as quickly as Kaiserism.

Moreover, let us realize the nonsense of the pretense that the German people have not been behind the German Government. They were behind their Government with hearty enthusiasm until the Government was smashed by the military powers of General Foch. The effort now being made by the German Government to bring dissensions between the Allies by appealing to the United States against the Allies proper should be spurned by our Government. The French, English, Italians, and Belgians have been fighting side by side with our men under Foch. They have acted as comrades under Foch, and we could not have done anything if we had not acted as comrades like the rest. Now let’s play the game when the effort is made to divide us by the German peace drive.

Senator Poindexter was entirely right in his proposed bill. The United States must make absolutely common cause with the Allies. We regret that the German and Russian people should suffer; the fault lies solely with the past or present governments. To the very minute of the closing of the war the hideous German brutalities continued unabated, and apparently the Turks are still slaughtering Armenians. We will do our best to help even our enemies now that they have been stricken down, but we will not do so at the cost of doing injustice to our friends. We will not permit Hun hypocrisy to succeed where Hun violence has failed. And we are equally uncompromising foes of Bolshevism and Kaiserism at home and abroad.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

NOVEMBER 17, 1918

There are so many prior things to do and so much uncertainty as to the form of agreement for permanently increasing the chances of peace that it is difficult to do more than make a general statement as to what is desirable and possibly feasible in the league of nations plan. It would certainly be folly to discuss it overmuch until some of the existing obstacles to peace are overcome. That such discussion may be not futile, but mischievous, has been vividly shown in the last six weeks. During the first week of October President Wilson and Germany agreed on the famous fourteen points of Mr. Wilson’s as a basis for peace. But this agreement amounted to nothing whatever except for a moment it gave Germany the hope that she could escape disaster by a negotiated peace. The emphatic protest of our own people caused this hope to vanish, and just five weeks later peace came, not on Mr. Wilson’s fourteen points, but on General Foch’s twenty-odd points, which had all the directness, the straightforwardness, and the unequivocal clearness which the fourteen points strikingly lacked.

Nevertheless, it is well to begin considering now the things which we think can be done and the things that we think cannot be done in making a league of nations. In the first place, we ought to realize that the population of the world clearly understands that in this war they have been involved to a degree never hitherto known. In consequence the horror of the war is very real, and people are at least thinking of the need of coöperation with much greater fixity of purpose and of understanding than ever before. Of course, fundamentally war and peace are matters of the heart rather than of organization, and any declaration or peace league which represents the high-flown sentimentality of pacifists and doctrinaires will be worse than useless; but if, without in the smallest degree sacrificing our belief in a sound and intense national aim, we all join with the people of England, France, and Italy and with the people in smaller states who in practice show themselves able to steer equally clear of Bolshevism and of Kaiserism, we may be able to make a real and much-needed advance in the international organization. The United States cannot again completely withdraw into its shell. We need not mix in all European quarrels nor assume all spheres of interest everywhere to be ours, but we ought to join with the other civilized nations of the world in some scheme that in a time of great stress would offer a likelihood of obtaining just settlements that will avert war.

Therefore, in my judgment, the United States at the peace conference ought to be able to coöperate effectively with the British and French and Italian Governments to support a practical and effective plan which won’t attempt the impossible, but which will represent a real step forward.

Probably the first essential would be to limit the league at the outset to the Allies, to the peoples with whom we have been operating and with whom we are certain we can coöperate in the future. Neither Turkey nor Austria need now be considered as regards such a league, and we should clearly understand that Bolshevist Russia is, and that Bolshevist Germany would be, as undesirable in such a league as the Germany and Russia of the Hohenzollerns and Romanoffs. Bolshevism is just as much an international menace as Kaiserism. Until Germany and Russia have proved by a course of conduct extending over years that they are capable of entering such a league in good faith, so that we can count upon their fulfilling their duties in it, it would be merely foolish to take them in.

The league, therefore, would have to be based on the combination among the Allies of the present war--together with any peoples like the Czecho-Slovaks, who have shown that they are fully entitled to enter into such a league if they desire to do so. Each nation should absolutely reserve to itself its right to establish its own tariff and general economic policy, and absolutely ought to control such vital questions as immigration and citizenship and the form of government it prefers. Then it would probably be best for certain spheres of interest to be reserved to each nation or a group of nations.

The northernmost portion of South America and Mexico and Central America, all of them fronting on the Panama Canal, have a special interest to the United States, more interest than they can have for any European or Asiatic power. The general conduct of Eastern Asiatic policy bears a most close relationship to Japan. The same thing is true as regards other nations and certain of the peculiarly African and European questions. Everything outside of what is thus reserved, which affects any two members of the league or affects one member of the league and outsiders, should be decided by some species of court, and all the people of the league should guarantee to use their whole strength in enforcing the decision.