Our Part in the Great War

by Arthur Gleason

I

TO THE READER

This book is only a sign post pointing to the place where better men than I have suffered and left a record. For those who wish to go further on this road I give sources of information for facts which I have sketched in outline.

The full authoritative account of the American Ambulance Field Service will be found in a book called "Friends of France," written by the young Americans who drove the cars at the front. It is one of the most heartening books that our country has produced in the last fifty years. Much of our recent writing has been the record of commercial success, of growth in numbers, and of clever mechanical devices. We have been celebrating the things that result in prosperity, as if the value of life lay in comfort and security. But the story of these young men is altogether a record of work done without pay, under conditions of danger that sometimes resulted in wounds and death. Their service was given because France was fighting for an idea. Risk and sacrifice and the dream of equality are more attractive to young men than safety, neutrality and commercial supremacy.

Those who wish to assure themselves that a healthy nationalism is the method by which a people serves humanity will find an exalted statement in Mazzini's "The Duties of Man." A correction of his overemphasis is contained in "Human Nature in Politics," by Graham Wallas. Valuable books on Nationality have been written by Ramsay Muir and Holland Rose. Lord Acton's essay on Nationality in his "The History of Freedom and Other Essays" should be consulted. He shows the defects of the nation-State.

On the American aspects of nationality, Emile Hovelaque and Alfred Zimmern are the two visitors who have shown clear recognition of the spiritual weakness of our country, and at the same time have pushed through to the cause, and so offered opportunity for amendment. Hovelaque's articles in the Revue de Paris of the spring of 1916 I have summarized in the chapter on the Middle West. From Zimmern I have jammed together in what follows isolated sentences of various essays. This is of course unfair to his thought, but will serve to stimulate the reader's interest in looking up the essays themselves.

"There is to-day no American nation. America consists at present of a congeries of nations who happen to be united under a common federal government. America is not a melting pot. It does not assimilate its aliens. It is the old old story of the conflict between human instincts and social institutions. The human soul can strike no roots in the America of to-day. I watched the workings of that ruthless economic process sometimes described as 'the miracle of assimilation.' I watched the steam-roller of American industrialism—so much more terrible to me in its consequences than Prussian or Magyar tyranny—grinding out the spiritual life of the immigrant proletariat, turning honest, primitive peasants into the helpless and degraded tools of the Trust magnate and the Tammany boss. Nowhere in the world as in the United States have false theories of liberty and education persuaded statesmen on so large a scale to make a Babel and call it a nation."

And the remedy?

"Those make the best citizens of a new country who, like the French in Canada and Louisiana, or the Dutch in South Africa, bear with them on their pilgrimage, and religiously treasure in their new homes, the best of the spiritual heritage bequeathed them by their fathers."

Alfred Zimmern is the author of "The Greek Commonwealth," contributor to the "Round Table," and one of the promoters of the Workers Educational Association. Those who wish to get his full thought on Nationality should consult the pamphlet "Education and the Working Class," the volume "International Relationships in the Light of Christianity," and the Sociological Review for July, 1912, and October, 1915.

The most penetrating recent articles on the American democracy as opposed to the cosmopolitanism of the melting pot were written by Horace M. Kallen in issues of the New York Nation of February, 1915. Dr. Kallen is a Jewish pupil of the late William James, of outstanding ability, the spiritual leader of the younger generation of Jews. He has touched off a group of thinkers on the American problem, of whom one is Randolph Bourne.

Those interested in the interweaving of French and early American history should read the book by Ambassador Jusserand, called "With Americans of Past and Present Days."

A careful investigation of the myth-making machinery used by nations in war-time is given by Fernand van Langenhove in "The Growth of a Legend"—a study based upon the German accounts of francs-tireurs and "wicked priests" in Belgium. It is made up of German documents.

A fuller study of the German letters and diaries is contained in the pamphlets of Professor Joseph Bedier, the books of Professor J. H. Morgan, and the volumes by Jacques de Dampierre "L'Allemagne et le Droit des Gens" and "Carnets de Route de Combattants Allemands." After an examination of these German documents, no student will speak of German atrocities as "alleged." The most careful collection of testimony by eye-witnesses is that contained in the report of the French Government Commission, "Rapports et Procès-Verbaux D'Enquête." I have personally examined several of the witnesses to this report. They are responsible witnesses. Their testimony is accurately rendered in the Government record. I trust that some American of high responsibility, such as Professor Stowell, of the Department of International Law at Columbia University, will make an exhaustive study of the German documents held by the French Ministry of War.

For the peasant incidents in the last section of my book, I refer to the book by Will Irwin, "The Latin at War," as independent corroboration.