Fighting for peace

by Henry Van Dyke

III

THE TERMS OF PEACE

This is a long subject; and for that reason I mean to make it a short chapter.

1. A discussion of peace terms with our enemy, the Imperial German Government, is neither desirable nor safe under the present conditions.

Until that Government is disabused of the delusion that it has won, is winning, or will win a substantial victory in this war, it is not likely to say anything sane or reasonable about peace. A pax Germanica is what it is willing to discuss.

But that is just what we do not want. To enter such a discussion now would be both futile and perilous.

It would probably postpone the coming of that real pax humana for which the Allies have already made such great sacrifices, and for which we have pledged ourselves to fight at their side.

But meantime it is wise and right and useful to let the German people know, by such means as we can find, that we have not entered this war in the spirit of revenge or conquest, and that their annihilation or enslavement is not among the ends which we contemplate.

An admirable opportunity to give this humane and prudent assurance was offered by the Pope's proposal of a Peace Conference (August, 1917). President Wilson, with characteristic acuteness and candor, made good use of this opportunity. While declining the proposal clearly and firmly, as impossible under the present conditions, he added the following statement of the peace purposes of the United States—a statement which approaches a definition by the process of exclusion:

"Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient, and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace, that must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind." (President Wilson's Note to His Holiness the Pope, August 27, 1917.)

Thus far (and in my judgment no farther) we may go in an indirect, third-personal discussion of the terms of peace with our enemy.

2. On the other hand, a full discussion of the terms of peace with our friends, the allied nations, will be most profitable—indeed, it is absolutely necessary.

The sooner it comes—the more frank, thorough, and confidential it is—the better!

The Allies, as President Wilson said in the address already quoted (January 22, 1917), have stated their terms of peace "with sufficient definiteness to imply details."

These terms have been summed up again and again in three general words:

RESTITUTION, REPARATION, GUARANTEES FOR THE FUTURE.

It is for us to discuss the details which are implied in these terms, not with our enemy, but with our friends who have borne the brunt of this German war against peace.

Nothing which would make their sacrifice vain could ever satisfy the heart and conscience of the United States.

We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave Belgium, Luxembourg, Servia, Montenegro, Roumania crushed and helpless in the hands of their captors.

We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave our sister-republic France hopelessly exposed to the same kind of an assault which Germany made upon her in 1870 and in 1914.

We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave Great Britain crippled and powerless to work with us in the maintenance of the freedom of the sea.

We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave the Italian demand for unity unsatisfied, and the new Russian Republic helpless before its foes. Such, it seems to me, are the principles which must guide and govern us in the coming conference with our friends about the terms of peace.

In regard to the right of the peoples of the world, small or great, to determine their own form of government and their own action, we are fully committed. This principle is fundamental to our existence as a nation. President Wilson has reaffirmed it again and again, never more clearly or significantly than in his address to the Senate on January 22, 1917.

"And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of rights among organized nations. No peace can last which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.

"I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own."

This "example" must be interpreted in its full bearing upon all the questions which are likely to come up in the conference in regard to the terms of peace.

There is one more fixed point in the terms of a peace which the United States and the Allies can accept with honor. That is the formation, after this war is ended, of a compact, an alliance, a league, a union—call it what you will—of free democratic nations, pledged to use their combined forces, diplomatic, economic, and military, against the beginning of war by any nation which has not previously submitted its cause to international inquiry, conciliation, arbitration, or judicial hearing.

Here, again, experience enables me to throw a little new light upon the situation. In November, 1914, on my way home to America for surgical treatment, I had the privilege of conveying a personal, unofficial message to Washington from the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward (now Viscount) Grey. Remember, at this time America was neutral, and the "League to Enforce Peace" had not been formed.

This was the substance of the message: "The presence and influence of America in the council of peace after the war will be most welcome to us provided we can be assured of two things: First, that America stands for the restoration of all that Germany has seized in Belgium and France. Second, that America will enter and support, by force if necessary, a league of nations pledged to resist and punish any war begun without previous submission of the cause to international investigation and judgment."

This was the message that I took to Washington in 1914. Since that time the "League to Enforce Peace" has been organized in America (June 17, 1915). In my opinion it would be better named the "League to Defend Peace." But the name makes little difference. It is the principle, the idea, that counts.

This idea has been publicly approved by the leading spokesmen of all the allied nations, and notably by President Wilson in his speech at the League banquet, May 27, 1916, and in his address to the Senate, January 22, 1917, in which he said:

"Mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged in any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind."

Consider for a moment what such an organization would mean.

It would mean, first of all, the strongest possible condemnation of the attitude and action of Germany and her assistants in plotting, choosing, beginning, and forcing the present war upon the world.

It is precisely because she disdained and refused to submit the Austro-Servian quarrel, and her own secret plans and purposes to investigation, conference, judicial inquiry, that her blood-guiltiness is most flagrant, and her criminal assault upon the world's peace cries to Heaven for punishment.

Moreover, such an organization of free democratic states would mean a practical step toward a new era of international relations. It would amount, in effect, to what Premier Ribot, in his recent address at the anniversary of the battle of the Marne, called "a league of common defense." It would be a new kind of treaty of alliance—open, not secret—made by peoples, not by monarchs—an alliance against wars of aggression and conquest—an alliance against all wars whose beginners are unwilling to submit their cause to the common judgment of mankind. Such an open treaty of defense would practically condemn and cancel all secret treaties for offensive war as treasonable conspiracies against the commonwealth of the world.

But would the organization of such a league of nations to defend peace make war henceforward impossible?

No sane man, who knows the ignorance, the imperfection, the passionate frailty of human nature entertains such a wild dream or makes such an extravagant claim.

All that the league can hope to do is to make an aggressive war, such as Germany thrust upon the world in 1914, more difficult and more dangerous. All that it purposes is to set up a new safeguard of peace, based upon justice, and supported by the common faith, the collective force, and the mutual trust of democratic peoples.

That is one of the things—yes, I think it is the most important thing—for which we are now fighting with the Allies against Germany and her assistants:

PEACE WITH POWER.

These pages have been written as a voluntary contribution to the cause of our country in this righteous war against war. I should have been happier if my active service at the front could have been accepted. But since my age made that impossible I have tried, and shall go on trying, to do what I can in other ways to help our fight for real peace.

I close this bit of work with the noble lines of Tennyson:

"I would that wars should cease,
I would the globe from end to end
Might sow and reap in peace,
And some new Spirit o'erbear the old,
Or Trade refrain the Powers
From war with kindly links of gold,
Or Love with wreaths of flowers.
Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all
My friends and brother souls,
With all the peoples, great and small,
That wheel between the poles.
But since our mortal shadow, Ill,
To waste this earth began—
Perchance from some abuse of Will
In worlds before the man
Involving ours—he needs must fight
To make true peace his own,
He needs must combat might with might,
Or Might would rule alone."