VI
THE REMEDY
I have made out the best case I can for our people. These chapters have listed every excuse that can reasonably be given for our failure to declare ourselves on the moral issue of this war. They have said that a careless, busy folk, like those of the Middle West, need many facts to enable them to see where the truth lies. They have pointed out how short-sighted is the foreign policy of the Allies which gives few facts to the American public. They have shown how the best of our radicals have failed to think clearly because they have been befuddled by a vague pseudo-internationalism. I have stated what I believe to be the falsity in our present-day conception of Europe, the self-complacency in our monopoly of freedom and justice; and I have tried to reveal how that assumption of merit blinded our eyes to the struggles of other peoples for the same causes. I have blamed our failure on Germany and on England. But after every explanation has been made, it is still true that our people ought to have been sensitive. At a great moment of history we failed of greatness. There remains a shame to us that we held aloof. There was no organized campaign of facts needed to convince France that we were fighting for human rights in our Revolution. Three thousand miles of water did not drown the appeal of our extremity. But to-day our leaders are so bewildered by dreams of universal brotherhood that they overlook our blood-brother on the Marne. Our common people have their eyes to their work, and do not look up, as the workers of Lancashire looked up with cheer and sympathy when we rocked in the balance of 1863.
This war has shown to us that we are not at the level of earlier days. We have lost our national unity, our sense of direction. The war has revealed in us an unpreparedness in foreign and domestic policy. It is a curse to know one's weakness unless one cures it. So this war will not leave us blessed until we take a program of action. It is a waste of time to write a book on the war except to convince and move to action.
The steps are clear.
Our first step is to set our house in order. We need to recover our self-consciousness, to restate what we mean by America. A half million newcomers each year will not help us to find ourselves. We shall be the better friends of freedom if we digest our present welter. Let us fearlessly and at once advocate a stringent restriction of immigration. Our citizenship has become somewhat cheap. Our ideals have become somewhat mixed. Let us take time to locate the direction in which we wish to go, and decide on the goal at which we aim. "Thou, Oh! my country, must forever endure," said a famous patriot; but in a few years his country had been melted down into an autocracy. We cannot rely for all time on luck and happy drift. Size, numbers, the physical economic conquest of a continent—these are not a final good. They are at best only means toward worthy living. It is easier to rush in fresh masses of cheap labor than it is to deal with the workers already here as members of a free community, aid them in winning a high standard of living, and establish with them an industrial democracy. The cheapest way of digging our ditches and working our factories, and sewing our shirts, is of course to continue holding open our flood gates and letting the deluge come. It is the clever policy of our exploiters, and the sentimental policy of the rest of us who love to be let alone, if only we can cover our unconcern with a humanitarian varnish. But the result of it is the America of to-day with its oligarchy of industrial captains and bankers, with its aristocracy of labor, made up of powerful trades unions and restricted "Brotherhoods," and with its unskilled alien masses of mine and factory labor, unorganized, exploited. Let us begin to build the better America by sacrificing the easy immediate benefits of unrestricted immigration.
Our second step is to teach our tradition to the hundred million already here. It is a large enough classroom. We can advertise for new pupils when our present group matriculates. When it has matriculated, there will be no popularity for phrases like "He kept us out of war," nor for songs of "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." The teaching of that tradition will reveal the interweaving of the American and the French Revolutions as products of a single impulse toward world liberation. If we had known our history, we should have answered the need of France, as Hall, Chapman, Thaw, Seeger, and many more answered it who have laid down their lives for their friend, France. The teaching of the American tradition will reveal to our awakened astonished minds that our policy has not been that of neutrality toward oppressed peoples like the Belgians. It will reveal that the British fleet has served us well from the time of Canning down to Manila Bay. It will stir in us loyalties that have long been asleep. It will show what a phrase like "Government for the people" has meant in terms of social legislation. It will point to the long road we must tread before we reach that ideal goal. We cannot leave the teaching of our tradition to the public schools alone. Courses of evening lectures for the people, the newspapers and periodicals, clergymen and economists and social workers, all must help.
Our third step is a deep understanding sympathy with the forces in the world making for righteousness. We should have been sensitive enough to see the right and the wrong of the present war. But that chance has gone by. Let us now make ready to contribute to the future. The fundamental question is this: Are the democracies of the world to stand together, or is the world-fight for freedom to be made, with our nation on the side-lines? The whole emphasis of the world's emotion has shifted from war to peace. When thought follows this emotion and rationalizes it, we can begin constructive work. The test of our desire for peace will be found in this: Do we mean business? Pacifism is valueless, because it is a vague emotion. Peace is a thing won by thought and effort. It is not alone a "state of mind." If we are willing to give guarantees by army and navy, and to back up protest by force, we can serve the cause of peace. But if we continue our "internationalism" of recent years, we shall not be admitted to any such effective league of peace as France and England will form. We must take our place by the side of the nations who mean to make freedom and justice prevail throughout the world.
Our fourth step will be that measure of preparedness which will render us effective in playing our part in world history. We cannot go on forever asking the English fleet to supply the missing members in our Monroe Doctrine. We cannot go on forever developing a rich ripeness, trusting that no hand will pluck us. In a competitive world, which builds Krupp guns, we cannot place our sole reliance in a good-nature which will be touched to friendliness because we are a special people. That preparedness will not stop with enriching munition makers, and playing into the hands of Eastern bankers. It will be a preparedness which enlists labor, by safeguarding wages and hours. It is the preparedness of an ever-encroaching equality: a democracy of free citizens, prosperous not in spots but in a wide commonalty, disciplined not only by national service of arms, but by the fundamental discipline of an active effective citizenship. It is a preparedness which will call on the women to share the burden of citizenship. It is a preparedness which mobilizes all the inner forces of a nation by clearing the ground for equality. It will be a preparedness not against an evil day, but for the furtherance of the great hopes of the race.