V.
President Wilson, by his note to Berlin of April 20th, 1916, concerning submarine warfare, which had the character of an ultimatum, committed the United States to a first act of intervention in the European war. The fact that a consideration of their interests has compelled the Germans, at least for the moment, to bow to the mandate of the United States, seems to some people to have already closed the American intervention. Those who hold this opinion may support it by reference to the speech which President Wilson delivered to the Press Club at Washington, on May 18th, 1916: “There are two reasons,” said the President, “why the chief desire of the Americans is for peace. One is that they love peace, and have nothing to do with the present quarrel; the other is that they believe that the parties to the quarrel have been forced to go to such lengths that they can no longer keep within the limits of responsibility. Why not let the storm go by, and then, when all is over, make up the account?” (quoted by Le Temps, May 22nd, 1916).
The need for reserve, which his official position lays on President Wilson, has evidently hindered him from disclosing his thoughts fully; for, as we shall see immediately, it would be particularly dangerous for the United States to imagine that they have nothing to do with the present quarrel, and to wait for the end of it in order to make up the account.
In reality, the true question for the United States goes far beyond that of German piracy in submarine warfare. That question really involves two quite distinct American interests; one of a moral, the other of a material or political nature.
From the moral point of view the United States must consider the barbarity with which Germany wages war, not only on the sea, but everywhere. Not only does she constantly violate the laws of war between belligerents, but also and above all the German authorities subject to a frightful reign of terror all the civil anti-Germanic populations in the territories now occupied by Pangermany from the North Sea to Bagdad. The sufferings inflicted by the Germans on the Belgians, the Slavs of Austria-Hungary, the Serbians, and the Armenians (whom they have caused to be massacred wholesale) amount to millions of indescribable pangs, of odious crimes, of atrocious martyrdoms. The Americans have intervened in the submarine warfare in the name of humanity. Can they remain neutral in face of this “ocean of crimes” committed by the Germans, without the smallest excuse, over enormous stretches of territory?
From the point of view of defending their own material interests, it is not certain that enough Americans even yet understand the magnitude of the formidable problem which the European war compels them to face and solve. It is quite natural that it should be so. In many circles of France and England it is only quite lately that people have come clearly to apprehend, as a whole, the real, the gigantic objects pursued by Germany in the war. Hence it is not surprising that the enormity of the German plot has not yet been grasped by the Americans of the United States, whose ideas about Europe at the beginning of the conflict were necessarily just as vague as the ideas of Europeans about the United States.
DISTRIBUTION OF GERMAN-BORN GERMANS IN THE UNITED STATES.
The accompanying map will enable the reader readily to appreciate the basis of the real problem which the war presents to the United States. As I have explained (p. 194), the Germans set themselves after 1895 to make a regular register of all the Germans scattered over the whole world. Our map is drawn up in accordance with the data of map 5 in the Pangerman Atlas of Paul Langhans, which gives the results of the register. The map shows what proportion the Germans, who had been born in Germany and had emigrated to the United States, bore to the American population about the year 1890. We can see that the proportion was considerable, since at some points (see the map) it amounted to 35%. Further, the general view presented by the map enables us to observe that in the United States the Germans have planted themselves by preference in the industrial and commercial regions of the East and of the Great Lakes. We can therefore understand what followed. Ever since 1900 the Alldeutscher Verband or Pangerman Union, in obedience to secret instructions from the official authorities in Berlin, has laid itself out to select from this mass of Germans in the United States all such as might best serve the cause of Prussian militarism at any given moment, in the most diverse domains, as soon as the European conflagrations should have broken out. Hence for the last twenty years most of the ten to fifteen million Americans of German origin have been organized. Little by little, in the midst of the great American Republic, there has grown up a State within a State, a State endowed with the most powerful means of influence. In point of fact, among the German-Americans there are manufacturers, merchants, and bankers of colossal fortunes, who control the lives of hundreds of thousands of workmen or employees living in dependence upon them. The German-Americans also own many newspapers and associations. They have therefore been able to exert a considerable influence on the policy of the United States, and even to secure the election to Congress of members devoted to their interests. The Delbrück law (see p. 195) has completed the German organization in the United States, by enabling an influential party of German-Americans to preserve the appearance of American citizens, while all the time they remain pledged heart and soul to forward the Kaiser’s scheme of universal slavery.
As the total population of the United States is 100 millions, it is easy to see what may be the power of 10 to 15 million German-Americans systematically organized for a definite purpose, when these are opposed to 90 million Americans who, never suspecting the Pangerman peril, have taken no kind of special precaution against their fellow citizens of German origin.
This very peculiar state of affairs explains the strange position occupied by the United States since the outbreak of the European War. From that time the German-Americans, in virtue of the immense means of influence and of action which they had prepared beforehand, have carried on a multifarious campaign, with extraordinary audacity in furtherance of the German game. Thus the German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, and his military attachés von Papen, Boy-Ed, etc., have aided and abetted in the task of subverting the United States by a multitude of German-American spies and agents.
During the first months of the war the German propaganda, carried on with extraordinary activity, was easily able to deceive a considerable part of American opinion as to the true origin of, and the responsibility for, the carnage going on in Europe. Afterwards, when the war dragged on, and the Allies placed considerable orders in the United States, the understrappers of the professional German spies engaged in an extraordinary series of outrages in order to terrorize the American workmen employed in executing the orders of the Allies. The object of these acts of violence, combined with the frivolous and interminable discussions which Count Bernstorff carried on with the Government of Washington, was first to induce the United States to issue an order prohibiting the Allies from arming their merchant ships for the purpose of self-defence against the German submarines; second, to persuade the Americans that the blockade of Germany by England was maintained in a manner contrary to the rules of international law; third, to slacken or stop the production of munitions of war destined for the Allies; and lastly, supposing that the principal acquisitions contemplated by Pangermany had been effected in Europe, to induce President Wilson to intervene in favour of peace under colour of putting an end to the European butchery—an intervention which, if it took place, would have the practical result of opening the negotiations for peace under conditions eminently favourable to the German plans of annexation.
But at last the crimes of violence committed by the Germans in the United States opened the eyes of the American people and roused them to anger. We must understand that it was only gradually, and in spite of great difficulties, that the real citizens of the United States, hemmed in by the German organization as by a ring fence, were able to acquire true notions as to the European war. This progress of American opinion was further retarded by the circumstance that before the war, for various reasons, the Allied countries unquestionably occupied a much lower place in the esteem of the United States than Germany, which had gained for herself very great prestige by her extraordinary activity in commerce, industry, and science.
As to Russia, the Americans knew scarcely anything about it except the hardships of which the Jews in that country complained. As many of these people have emigrated to the United States, and there exercise a great influence on the press, they have naturally fostered anything but a sympathy for the Empire of the Tsars. The Irish-Americans devoted themselves to the similar task of blackening England, from which the United States had in days gone by to extort her independence. As to France, the Americans, on the faith of superficial observations, considered her to be in a state of hopeless decadence. The flagrant atrocity of the prodigious German crimes committed in the United States; on the high seas against neutral passengers; in Belgium against the Belgians; in Serbia against the Serbians; in Armenia against the Armenians; and, on the other hand, the magnificent resistance of the Allies, these things have at last produced a revulsion of feeling. The prejudices of the Americans against Russia and England have been to a great extent mitigated, and the grand, the noble attitude of the people of France, the tenacity and the heroism of her soldiers, have proved that France is far indeed from decadent. To-day we may say, for it is the truth, that France has won the deep and enthusiastic admiration of all the really independent American citizens of the United States. This progressive change of opinion has ranged the Americans more and more on the side of the Allies.
But American opinion has still one stage to travel. It is this. The American people must understand with the utmost clearness that the victory of Germany would unquestionably mean the end of the independence of the United States. Indeed, some Americans, more clearsighted than the rest, have already travelled this last stage on the road to truth. In March, 1916, Dr. Elliot, formerly President of Harvard University, and an intimate friend, we are told, of President Wilson, declared in the New York Times: “The quickest, the best, the surest means for Americans to defend themselves against a German invasion is to conclude with France and England a permanent alliance, offensive and defensive, having for its aim the maintenance of the freedom of the seas for the Allies, and resistance to any maritime attack. It is time for all Americans to take sides openly with the European peoples who for so many long months have been standing up against the military despotism of Prussia.” (Quoted by Le Temps, 15th March, 1916.)
Dr. Elliot has thus stated in terms as exact as they are complete the real problem which the Americans have to solve. Clearly it reached far beyond the controversies about the submarine warfare. It is not enough, indeed, for the Americans to constitute themselves the champions of right and justice against Teutonic barbarity; they must understand that the maintenance of the independence of the United States absolutely depends on the complete victory of the Allies in Europe. Already many Americans come near to accepting this view. Thus at Carnegie Hall, New York, at the end of May, 1916, Major Putnam, addressing 3000 members of the “Committee of American Rights,” excited great enthusiasm by demanding that America should at once take part in the war on the side of the Allies. His chief argument was: “If Germany wins in this war, her next aggression will be against our Republic.” (Quoted by Le Temps, May 22nd, 1916.)
But these clear ideas, involving immediate and decisive action, are as yet shared only by a minority of Americans, better informed than the rest.
The progress of American opinion in general will be complete when from a general view of the facts of the war, as these have occurred in America as well as in Europe, the people shall logically infer the formidable consequences which a German victory would entail on the United States.
That general view, which the great American Republic will probably take in time, is as follows. It will necessarily be based on an exact knowledge of the German plan for dealing with the United States, a plan, by the way, which is of long standing.
In 1898, before Manilla, the German Rear-Admiral von Goetzen, a friend of the Kaiser, said to the American Admiral Dewey: “In about fifteen years my country will begin a great war.... Some months after we have done our business in Europe we shall take New York and probably Washington, and we shall keep them for a time. We do not intend to take any territory from you, but only to put your country in its proper place with reference to Germany. We shall extract one or two billions of dollars from New York and other towns.” (See Naval and Military Record, quoted by L’Echo de Paris, September 24th, 1915.) These words at the time were regarded as mere gasconade. But now it is indisputable that even before 1898 the Germans of Berlin had, by means of the processes described above (p. 200), been systematically laying the foundations of a State within the United States, a State that has long been silently sapping the ground on which stands the American Republic.
A multitude of recent and striking facts—pressure brought to bear on politicians, monster strikes, plots and outrages against public order executed by order of the official agents of the Kaiser, such as von Papen, Boy-Ed, von Igel, &c—have abundantly demonstrated that the German organization in America threatens the independence of the United States, and is of a definitely criminal and treasonable character. A phrase in a letter of Baron de Meysenburg, German consul at New Orleans, written on December 4th, 1915, to von Papen, German military attaché at Washington, who organized the principal outrages in the United States, proves that in the minds of Germans behind the scenes the turn of the United States was to come in due course. The latter was lately seized by the English: “May the day of the settling of accounts come here also, and when that day comes may our Government have found again that will of iron without which no impression can be made on this country.” (Quoted by Le Temps, January 17th, 1916.)
On the other hand the Americans cannot shut their eyes to the extreme gravity of the recent Pangerman manœuvres in the States of South America, particularly in Argentina and Brazil, which are regarded as destined ultimately to become German protectorates; also in Nicaragua, where the Kaiser’s agents have tried to get a concession of territory for the construction of a canal to compete with the Panama canal. Lastly, there is the undeniable fact, which brings the danger still nearer home, that a few months ago Germany plotted the military invasion of Canada, with the complicity of her subjects disguised as American citizens. Common sense, therefore, tells us that, assuming that the Allies were beaten in Europe, Germany would be the mistress of Canada, and would practically dominate the United States. The extraordinary series of formidable outrages which the German-Americans have already concocted and executed on the soil of the great American Republic, is proof patent that the existence of Pangermany would be incompatible with the independence of the United States.
All that is more or less clearly understood in the United States; but what American opinion still needs to be enlightened on is the immense danger which the United States would incur through the formidable Berlin trap called “the Drawn Game,” the most dangerous trick which the Germans still keep up their sleeve. Seeing that many of the Allies do not yet understand the enormous peril of a Germany yielding temporarily on the East and on the West in order to make herself mistress once and for all of Central Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey, it is natural enough that the Americans should not yet have fully “realized” the vast bearings of the dodge called “the Drawn Game.”
The map on p. 101 enables the reader to see what would be the great danger from the American point of view. As I have explained in Chapter V, the pretended “Drawn Game” would enable Germany to carry out her scheme of domination “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf,” and would thereby secure for Berlin the means of laying hands successively on all the important strategical points which command the seas of the whole world. The consequence for the United States would be that with the keys of all the seas in her hand, Germany would be able to prosecute her intrigues on a much greater scale in South America, Canada, and therefore in the United States.
It is deeply to be regretted that the very distinguished American Admiral Mahan is no more. If I may judge by his powerful book, The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future, the tenor of which was admirably expounded by M. Jean Izoulet some time ago, I believe that I am not going too far when I affirm that were Admiral Mahan now alive he would, on a review of the whole situation, sketch as follows the line of conduct which the government of Washington ought to follow with reference to the European war. Admiral Mahan would doubtless tell his countrymen: “At no price, under no pretext, should the United States suffer Germany to execute her project from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf, and that because of the consequences which the achievement of that plan would entail on sea power all over the world. As the only sure guarantee against the accomplishment of that plan is to be found in Central Europe (see p. 129), the United States has a direct and first-hand interest in solving the question of Austria-Hungary on the basis of nationalities, that solution being over and above indispensable if the world is to see the end of the Pangerman peril and of the great armaments.”
Hence, taking everything into account, we conclude that, apart from any question of humanity and justice, the United States have an absolutely vital interest, not only in a partial victory of the Allies in Europe, but in their complete victory. It is desirable that this truth should be admitted as soon as possible, for then the measures, which the Government of Washington could not fail to take, would signally hasten the end of the European carnage.
Plain good sense suffices to forecast what these measures would be.
It is as clear as daylight that the expedition to Mexico is a German trap; hence the United States have every reason for awaiting the end of the European war before committing themselves further in that direction. On the other hand, now that the Allies have gripped Germany by the throat, the Government of Washington should avail itself of this exceptional opportunity for carrying out with the utmost speed the destruction of that criminal and parasitic organization which the Germans have contrived to plant in the soil of the United States. To arrest the ringleaders who have been guilty of inciting to treason and crimes against the common law, whatever their social position or wealth may be; to suppress the associations which are nothing but agencies of the Berlin government—these are tasks which the Americans have every motive for accomplishing without delay.
Obviously, too, when the United States shall have wakened up to the truth, they will acknowledge it to be at once their interest and their duty to give the Allies all material succour, since nothing but their complete victory over Germany can safeguard for the future the independence of the United States.
In the financial sphere the United States can offer the Allies immense facilities for raising loans, which would be particularly opportune.
Mr. Guthrie, Vice-President of the French-American Committee at New York, has explained as follows the method, at once delicate and ingenious, whereby the United States could and should, according to him, give their financial support to France. “The historian Perkins,” says Mr. Guthrie, “states that the expenses incurred by France in liberating America amounted to 772 million dollars. Of this enormous outlay, which ruined the Royal Treasury, not a stiver was ever repaid to France. She never claimed it, and to-day she would proudly refuse to be repaid, reminding us that, in the treaty of alliance of 6th February, 1778, she stipulated that she should receive no indemnity for her help and her sacrifices.... The generosity of that treaty was unprecedented in the history of the world.... Would it not be supremely just if the American people, a hundred and thirty-four years after the battle of Yorktown, recognized that service—I will not call it debt—by offering the French people commercial credit to the amount of the principal, that is to say 772 million dollars, to be repaid at France’s convenience? It would be only the equivalent of a contribution of seven and a half dollars from each citizen of the United States, much less than the tax that was voluntarily and cheerfully paid by the French people to help us in the eighteenth century. Would it not be noble and glorious, honourable alike to head and heart, if the great American bankers could have proclaimed to the world that they had fixed the figure at 772 million dollars in gratitude for the past?” (see Revue du XVIII. siècle, janvier-avril, 1916).
In the matter of munitions of war the United States might evidently increase her production. Lastly, as has been said already, the United States would be in a position to furnish the Allies with men, since this unprecedented war requires such vast numbers of soldiers. But, as we know, the United States have not got a large army, and it is not certain that they either would or could rapidly improvise one. A much simpler solution might enable the United States to furnish a very considerable body of men to the Allies. This could be effected if the Government of Washington were to grant leave to American citizens to enlist as volunteers in the Allied armies, on such terms as might be agreed upon. Not only would English-speaking Americans be glad to come and fight the Teutonic barbarians, but—and this is a fact not generally known—there are among American citizens millions of Slavs who emigrated formerly from Austria-Hungary and the Balkans. These American Slavs are ardent partisans of the Allies, and many a time in the last few months these men, working in the American munition factories, have frustrated the German attempts at outrages. Probably hundreds of thousands of these Slavs would gladly come as volunteers to fight in Europe for the liberation of Austria-Hungary and the Balkans, their native land, which they quitted as exiles long ago to escape the German-Magyar yoke. We see then that by such voluntary enlistments the United States could very soon contribute troops for the conflict in Europe without laying on its own shoulders the enormous burden of creating a great army.
Succours of these various sorts, furnished by America, would evidently hasten the course of events. We may reasonably treat them as possible, since it is certain that a German victory would put the independence of the United States in jeopardy.