Important Utterances on War Themes
President Wilson delivered two public addresses in May, 1918, the first in New York City, May 17, to inaugurate the second Red Cross campaign, the second before a joint session of the United States Congress, May 27, on the subject of a Federal revenue bill. The speeches are given herewith.
Red Cross Speech in New York
[Delivered in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, May 17, 1918]
There are two duties with which we are face to face. The first duty is to win the war. And the second duty that goes hand in hand with it is to win it greatly and worthily, showing the real quality of our power not only, but the real quality of our purpose and of ourselves. Of course, the first duty, the duty that we must keep in the foreground of our thought until it is accomplished, is to win the war. I have heard gentlemen recently say that we must get 5,000,000 men ready. Why limit it to 5,000,000?
I have asked the Congress of the United States to name no limit, because the Congress intends, I am sure, as we all intend, that every ship that can carry men or supplies shall go laden upon every voyage with every man and every supply she can carry. And we are not to be diverted from the grim purpose of winning the war by any insincere approaches upon the subject of peace. I can say with a clear conscience that I have tested those intimations and have found them insincere. I now recognize them for what they are, an opportunity to have a free hand, particularly in the East, to carry out purposes of conquest and exploitation.
Every proposal with regard to accommodation in the West involves a reservation with regard to the East. Now, so far as I am concerned, I intend to stand by Russia as well as France. The helpless and the friendless are the very ones that need friends and succor, and if any men in Germany think we are going to sacrifice anybody for our own sake, I tell them now they are mistaken. For the glory of this war, my fellow-citizens, so far as we are concerned, is that it is, perhaps for the first time in history, an unselfish war. I could not be proud to fight for a selfish purpose, but I can be proud to fight for mankind. If they wish peace let them come forward through accredited representatives and lay their terms on the table. We have laid ours and they know what they are.
But behind all this grim purpose, my friends, lies the opportunity to demonstrate not only force, which will be demonstrated to the utmost, but the opportunity to demonstrate character, and it is that opportunity that we have most conspicuously in the work of the Red Cross. Not that our men in arms do not represent our character, for they do, and it is a character which those who see and realize appreciate and admire; but their duty is the duty of force. The duty of the Red Cross is the duty of mercy and succor and friendship.
WHAT THE WAR IS DOING
Have you formed a picture in your imagination of what this war is doing for us and for the world? In my own mind I am convinced that not a hundred years of peace could have knitted this nation together as this single year of war has knitted it together, and better even than that, if possible, it is knitting the world together. Look at the picture. In the centre of the scene, four nations engaged against the world, and at every point of vantage, showing that they are seeking selfish aggrandizement; and, against them, twenty-three Governments representing the greater part of the population of the world, drawn together into a new sense of community of interest, a new sense of community of purpose, sense of unity of life. The Secretary of War told me an interesting incident the other day. He said when he was in Italy a member of the Italian Government was explaining to him the many reasons why Italy felt near to the United States.
He said: "If you want to try an interesting experiment go up to any one of these troop trains and ask in English how many of them have been in America, and see what happens." He tried the experiment. He went up to a troop train and he said, "How many of you boys have been in America?" and he said it seemed to him as if half of them sprang up. "Me from San Francisco"; "Me from New York"; all over. There was part of the heart of America in the Italian Army. People that had been knitted to us by association, who knew us, who had lived among us, who had worked shoulder to shoulder with us, and now friends of America, were fighting for their native Italy.
Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. And this intimate contact of the great Red Cross with the peoples who are suffering the terrors and deprivations of this war is going to be one of the greatest instrumentalities of friendship that the world ever knew, and the centre of the heart of it all, if we sustain it properly, will be this land that we so dearly love.
SERVICE BY GIVING
My friends, a great day of duty has come, and duty finds a man's soul as no kind of work can ever find it. May I say this? The duty that faces us all now is to serve one another, and no man can afford to make a fortune out of this war. There are men among us who have forgotten that, if they ever saw it. Some of you are old enough—I am old enough—to remember men who made fortunes out of the civil war, and you know how they were regarded by their fellow-citizens. That was a war to save one country—this is a war to save the world. And your relation to the Red Cross is one of the relations which will relieve you of the stigma. You can't give anything to the Government of the United States; it won't accept it. There is a law of Congress against accepting even services without pay. The only thing that the Government will accept is a loan, and duties performed; but it is a great deal better to give than to lend or to pay, and your great channel for giving is the American Red Cross.
Down in your hearts you can't take very much satisfaction in the last analysis in lending money to the Government of the United States, because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets, it is a commercial transaction, and some men have even dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the incidental commentary that constitutes upon their attitude.
But when you give, something of your something of your soul, something of yourself goes with the gift, particularly when it is given in such form that it never can come back by way of direct benefit to yourself. You know there is the old cynical definition of gratitude as "the lively expectation of favors to come." Well, there is no expectation of favors to come in this kind of giving. These things are bestowed in order that the world may be a fitter place to live in, that men may be succored, that homes may be restored, that suffering may be relieved, that the face of the earth may have the blight of destruction taken away from it, and that wherever force goes there shall go mercy and helpfulness.
And when you give, give absolutely all that you can spare, and don't consider yourself liberal in the giving. If you give with self-adulation, you are not giving at all, you are giving to your own vanity; but if you give until it hurts, then your heartblood goes with it.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
And think what we have here! We call it the American Red Cross, but it is merely a branch of a great international organization, which is not only recognized by the statutes of each of the civilized Governments of the world, but it is recognized by international agreement and treaty, as the recognized and accepted instrumentality of mercy and succor. And one of the deepest stains that rests upon the reputation of the German Army is that they have not respected the Red Cross.
That goes to the root of the matter. They have not respected the instrumentality they themselves participated in setting up as the thing which no man was to touch, because it was the expression of common humanity. We are members, by being members of the American Red Cross, of a great fraternity and comradeship which extends all over the world, and this cross which these ladies bore today is an emblem of Christianity itself.
It fills my imagination, ladies and gentlemen, to think of the women all over this country who are busy tonight and are busy every night and every day doing the work of the Red Cross, busy with a great eagerness to find out the most serviceable thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness of all the old frivolities of their social relationships, ready to curtail the duties of the household in order that they may contribute to this common work that all their hearts are engaged in, and in doing which their hearts become acquainted with each other.
When you think of this, you realize how the people of the United States are being drawn together into a great intimate family whose heart is being used for the service of the soldiers not only, but for the service of civilians, where they suffer and are lost in a maze of distresses and distractions. And you have, then, this noble picture of justice and mercy as the two servants of liberty. For only where men are free do they think the thoughts of comradeship; only where they are free do they think the thoughts of sympathy; only where they are free are they mutually helpful; only where they are free do they realize their dependence upon one another and their comradeship in a common interest and common necessity.
MAKING THE WORLD DEMOCRATIC
I heard a story told the other day that was ridiculous, but it is worth repeating, because it contains the germ of truth. An Indian was enlisted in the army. He returned to the reservation on a furlough. He was asked what he thought of it. He said: "No much good; too much salute; not much shoot." Then he was asked: "Are you going back?" "Yes." "Well, do you know what you are fighting for?" "Yes, me know; fight to make whole damn world Democratic Party." He had evidently misunderstood some innocent sentence of my own.
But, after all, although there is no party purpose in it, he got it right as far as the word "party"—to make the whole world democratic in the sense of community of interest and of purpose; and if you ladies and gentlemen could read some of the touching dispatches which come through official channels, for even through those channels there come voices of humanity that are infinitely pathetic; if you could catch some of those voices that speak the utter longing of oppressed and helpless peoples all over the world, to hear something like the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," to hear the feet of the great hosts of liberty going to set them free, to set their minds free, set their lives free, set their children free, you would know what comes into the heart of those who are trying to contribute all the brains and power they have to this great enterprise of liberty.
I summon you to the comradeship. I summon you in this next week to say how much and how sincerely and how unanimously you sustain the heart of the world.
Address on Revenue Legislation
[Delivered Before Congress May 27, 1918, by President Wilson]
It is with unaffected reluctance that I come to ask you to prolong your session long enough to provide more adequate resources for the Treasury for the conduct of the war. I have reason to appreciate as fully as you do how arduous the session has been. Your labors have been severe and protracted. You have passed a long series of measures which required the debate of many doubtful questions of judgment and many exceedingly difficult questions of principle, as well as of practice. The Summer is upon us, in which labor and counsel are twice arduous and are constantly apt to be impaired by lassitude and fatigue. The elections are at hand, and we ought as soon as possible to go and render an intimate account of our trusteeship to the people who delegated us to act for them in the weighty and anxious matters that crowd upon us in these days of critical choice and action. But we dare not go to the elections until we have done our duty to the full. These are days when duty stands stark and naked, and even with closed eyes we know it is there. Excuses are unavailing. We have either done our duty or we have not. The fact will be as gross and plain as the duty itself. In such a case lassitude and fatigue seem negligible enough. The facts are tonic and suffice to freshen the labor.
And the facts are these: Additional revenues must manifestly be provided for. It would be a most unsound policy to raise too large a proportion of them by loan, and it is evident that the $4,000,000,000 now provided for by taxation will not of themselves sustain the greatly enlarged budget to which we must immediately look forward. We cannot in fairness wait until the end of the fiscal year is at hand to apprise our people of the taxes they must pay on their earnings of the present calendar year, whose accountings and expenditures will then be closed. We cannot get increased taxes unless the country knows what they are to be and practices the necessary economy to make them available. Definiteness, early definiteness, as to what its tasks are to be is absolutely necessary for the successful administration of the Treasury. It cannot frame fair and workable regulations in haste; and it must frame its regulations in haste if it is not to know its exact task until the very eve of its performance. The present tax laws are marred, moreover, by inequities which ought to be remedied. Indisputable facts, every one; and we cannot alter or blink them. To state them is argument enough.
WAR PROFITS AND LUXURIES
And yet, perhaps, you will permit me to dwell for a moment upon the situation they disclose. Enormous loans freely spent in the stimulation of industry of almost every sort produce inflations and extravagances which presently make the whole economic structure questionable and insecure, and the very basis of credit is cut away. Only fair, equitably distributed taxation of the widest incidents and drawing chiefly from the sources which would be likely to demoralize credit by their very abundance can prevent inflation and keep our industrial system free of speculation and waste. We shall naturally turn, therefore, I suppose, to war profits and incomes and luxuries for the additional taxes. But the war profits and incomes upon which the increased taxes will be levied will be the profits and incomes of the calendar year 1918. It would be manifestly unfair to wait until the early months of 1919 to say what they are to be. It might be difficult, I should imagine, to run the mill with water that had already gone over the wheel.
Moreover, taxes of that sort will not be paid until June of next year, and the Treasury must anticipate them. It must use the money they are to produce before it is due. It must sell short-time certificates of indebtedness. In the Autumn a much larger sale of long-time bonds must be effected than has yet been attempted. What are the bankers to think of the certificates if they do not certainly know where the money is to come from which is to take them up? and how are investors to approach the purchase of bonds with any sort of confidence or knowledge of their own affairs if they do not know what taxes they are to pay and what economies and adjustments of their business they must effect? I cannot assure the country of a successful administration of the Treasury in 1918 if the question of further taxation is to be left undecided until 1919.
The consideration that dominates every other now, and makes every other seem trivial and negligible, is the winning of the war. We are not only in the midst of the war, we are at the very peak and crisis of it. Hundreds of thousands of our men, carrying our hearts with them and our fortunes, are in the field, and ships are crowding faster and faster to the ports of France and England with regiment after regiment, thousand after thousand, to join them until the enemy shall be beaten and brought to a reckoning with mankind. There can be no pause or intermission. The great enterprise must, on the contrary, be pushed with greater and greater energy. The volume of our might must steadily and rapidly be augmented until there can be no question of resisting it. If that is to be accomplished, gentlemen, money must sustain it to the utmost. Our financial program must no more be left in doubt or suffered to lag than our ordnance program or our ship program or our munition program or our program for making millions of men ready. These others are not programs, indeed, but mere plans upon paper, unless there is to be an unquestionable supply of money.
A TAX ON PROFITEERING
That is the situation, and it is the situation which creates the duty; no choice or preference of ours. There is only one way to meet that duty. We must meet it without selfishness or fear of consequences. Politics is adjourned. The elections will go to those who thing[?think?] least of it; to those who go to the constituencies without explanations or excuses, with a plain record of duty faithfully and disinterestedly performed. I for one, am always confident that the people of this country will give a just verdict upon the service of the men who act for them when the facts such that no man can disguise or conceal them. There is no danger of deceit now. An intense and pitiless light beats upon every man and every action in this tragic plot of war that is now upon the stage. If lobbyists hurry to Washington to attempt to turn what you do in the matter of taxation to their protection or advantage, the light will beat also upon them. There is abundant fuel for the light in the records of the Treasury with regard to profits of every sort. The profiteering that cannot be got at by the restraints of conscience and love of country can be got at by taxation. There is such profiteering now, and the information with regard to it is available and indisputable.
I am advising you to act upon this matter of taxation now, gentlemen, not because I do not know that you can see and interpret the facts and the duty they impose just as well and with as clear a perception of the obligation involved as I can, but because there is a certain solemn satisfaction in sharing with you the responsibilities of such a time. The world never stood in such a case before. Men never before had so clear and so moving a vision of duty. I know that you will begrudge the work to be done here by us no more than the men begrudge us theirs who lie in the trenches and sally forth to their death. There is a stimulating comradeship knitting us all together. And this task to which I invite your immediate consideration will be performed under favorable influences, if we will look to what the country is thinking and expecting and care nothing at all for what is being said and believed in the lobbies of Washington hotels, where the atmosphere seems to make it possible to believe what is believed nowhere else.
SPIRIT OF THE NATION
Have you not felt the spirit of the nation rise and its thought become a single and common thought since these eventful days came in which we have been sending our boys to the other side? I think you must read that thought, as I do, to mean this, that the people of this country are not only united in the resolute purpose to win this war, but are ready and willing to bear any burden and undergo any sacrifice that it may be necessary for them to bear in order to win it. We need not be afraid to tax them, if we lay taxes justly. They know that the war must be paid for, that it is they who must pay for it, and, if the burden is justly distributed and the sacrifice made a common sacrifice from which none escapes who can bear it at all, they will carry it cheerfully and with a sort of solemn pride. I have always been proud to be an American, and was never more proud than now, when all that we have said and all that we have foreseen about our people is coming true. The great days have come when the only thing that they ask for or admire is duty, greatly and adequately. done; when their only wish for America is that she may share the freedom she enjoys, when a great, compelling sympathy wells up in their hearts for men everywhere who suffer and are oppressed, and when they see at last the high uses for which their wealth has been piled up and their mighty power accumulated, and, counting neither blood nor treasure, now that their final day of opportunity has come, rejoice to spend and to be spent through a long night of suffering and terror in order that they and men everywhere may see the dawn of a day of righteousness and justice and peace. Shall we grow weary when they bid us act?
The President's Appeal for Economy
Secretary McAdoo, realizing that to carry the war through to a successful issue may test this nation's resources to the extreme limit of endurance and self-denial, inaugurated a campaign in the middle of May, 1918, for fuller conservation of food, fuel, labor, and money. In support of this campaign President Wilson issued the following signed letter on May 29:
This war is one of nations—not of armies—and all of our 100,000,000 people must be economically and industrially adjusted to war conditions if this nation is to play its full part in the conflict. The problem before us is not primarily a financial problem, but rather a problem of increased production of war essentials, and the saving of the materials and the labor necessary for the support and equipment of our army and our navy. Thoughtless expenditure of money for nonessentials uses up the labor of men, the products of the farm, mines, and factories, and overburdens transportation, all of which must be used to the utmost and at their best for war purposes.
The great results which we seek can be obtained only by the participation of every member of the nation, young and old, in a national concerted thrift movement. I therefore urge that our people everywhere pledge themselves, as suggested by the Secretary of the Treasury, to the practice of thrift; to serve the Government to their utmost in increasing production in all fields necessary to the winning of the war; to conserve food and fuel and useful materials of every kind; to devote their labor only to the most necessary tasks; and to buy only those things which are essential to individual health and efficiency; and that the people, as evidence of their loyalty, invest all that they can save in Liberty bonds and war savings stamps.
The securities issued by the Treasury Department are so many of them within the reach of every one that the door of opportunity in this matter is wide open to all of us. To practice thrift in peace times is a virtue and brings great benefit to the individual at all times; with the desperate need of the civilized world today for materials and labor with which to end the war, the practice of individual thrift is a patriotic duty and a necessity.
I appeal to all who now own either Liberty bonds or war savings stamps to continue to practice economy and thrift and to appeal to all who do not own Government securities to do likewise and purchase them to the extent of their means. The man who buys Government securities transfers the purchasing power of his money to the United States Government until after this war, and to that same degree does not buy in competition with the Government.
I earnestly appeal to every man, woman, and child to pledge themselves on or before the 28th of June to save constantly and to buy as regularly as possible the securities of the Government; and to do this, so far as possible, through membership in war savings societies. The 28th of June ends this special period of enlistment in the great volunteer army of production and saving here at home. May there be none unenlisted on that day!
WOODROW WILSON.
Memorial Day Proclamation, 1918
Following is the proclamation issued by the President of the United States for Decoration Day observance, May 30, 1918:
Whereas, The Congress of the United States on the second day of April last passed the following resolution:
Resolved, by the Senate, (the House of Representatives concurring,) That, it being a duty peculiarly incumbent in a time of war humbly and devoutly to acknowledge our dependence on Almighty Godand to implore His aid and protection, the President of the United States be, and is hereby, respectfully requested to recommend a day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting, to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnity and the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of our cause, His blessings on our arms, and a speedy restoration of an honorable and lasting peace to the nations of the earth; and,
Whereas, It has always been the reverent habit of the people of the United States to turn in humble appeal to Almighty God for His guidance in the affairs of their common life;
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, the 30th day of May, a day already freighted with sacred and stimulating memories, a day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting, and do exhort my fellow-citizens of all faiths and creeds to assemble on that day in their several places of worship and there, as well as in their homes, to pray Almighty God that He may forgive our sins and shortcomings as a people and purify our hearts to see and love the truth, to accept and defend all things that are just and right, and to purpose only those righteous acts and judgments which are in conformity with His will; beseeching Him that He will give victory for our armies as they fight for freedom, wisdom to those who take counsel on our behalf in these days of dark struggle and perplexity and steadfastness to our people to make sacrifice to the utmost in support of what is just and true, bringing us at last the peace in which men's hearts can be at rest because it is founded upon mercy, justice, and good-will.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done in the District of Columbia, this eleventh day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighteen, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-second.
WOODROW WILSON.
By the President:
ROBERT LANSING,
Secretary of State.
Mexico and the United States
The President's Pledge
President Wilson delivered the following important speech to a delegation of Mexican editors at the White House June 7, 1918:
I have never received a group of men who were more welcome than you are because it has been one of my distresses during the period of my Presidency that the Mexican people did not more thoroughly understand the attitude of the United States toward Mexico. I think I can assure you, and I hope you have had every evidence of the truth of my assurance, that that attitude is one of sincere friendship—not merely the sort of friendship which prompts one not to do his neighbor any harm, but the sort of friendship which earnestly desires to do his neighbor service.
My own policy and the policy of my own Administration toward Mexico was at every point based upon this principle; that the internal settlement of the affairs of Mexico was none of our business; that we had no right to interfere with or dictate to Mexico in any particular with regard to her own affairs.
Take one aspect of our relations which at one time may have been difficult for you to understand. When we sent our troops into Mexico our sincere desire was nothing else than to assist you to get rid of the man who was making the settlement of your affairs for the time being impossible. We had no desire to use our troops for any other purpose, and I was in hopes that by assisting in that way and thereupon immediately withdrawing the troops I might give you substantial proof of the truth of the assurances that I had given your Government through President Carranza.
GERMAN INTRIGUES
And at the present time it distresses me to learn that certain influences, which I assume to be German in their origin, are trying not only to make a wrong impression, but to give an absolutely untrue account of the things that happen.
You know distressing things have been happening just off our coast; you know of vessels that have been sunk. I yesterday received a quotation from a paper in Guadalajara which stated that thirteen of our battleships had been sunk off the Capes of Chesapeake.
You see how dreadful it is to have the people so radically misinformed. It was added that our Navy Department was withholding the facts with regard to these sinkings. I have no doubt that the publisher of the paper printed this in perfect innocence and without intending to convey a wrong impression, but it is evident that allegations of that sort proceed from those who wish to make trouble between Mexico and the United States.
An American patrol under a French officer in the trenches in France. Some of the rifles are equipped for firing grenades
(© Committee on Public Information, from international Film Service)
Pont-à-Mousson, in the Toul sector, showing the Church of St. Laurent. The transparent fabric hung across the street is for the purpose of misleading enemy aerial observers
(French Pictorial Service)
Now, gentlemen, for the time being at any rate, and I hope that it will not be a short time, the influence of the United States is somewhat pervasive in the affairs of the world, and I believe it is pervasive because those nations of the world which are less powerful than some of the greatest nations are coming to believe that our sincere desire is to do disinterested service.
We are the champions of those nations which have not had the military standing which would enable them to compete with the strongest nations in the world, and I look forward with pride to the time which I hope will come when we can give substantial evidence not only that we do not want anything out of this war, but that we would not accept anything out of this war; that it is absolutely a case of disinterested action.
And if you will watch the attitude of our people you will see that nothing stirs them so deeply as the assurances that this war, so far as we are concerned, is for idealistic objects. One of the difficulties that I experienced during the first three years of the war, the years when the United States was not in the war, was in getting the Foreign Offices of the European nations to believe that the United States was seeking nothing for herself, that her neutrality was not selfish, and that if she came in she would not come in to get anything substantial out of the war—any material object, any territory or trade or anything else of that sort.
In some Foreign Offices there were men who personally know me and they believed, I hope, that I was sincere in assuring them that our purposes were disinterested; but they thought that these assurances came from the academic gentleman removed from the ordinary sources of information and speaking the idealistic purposes of a cloister. They did not believe I was speaking the real heart of the American people, and I knew all along that I was. Now I believe every one who comes in contact with American people knows that I am speaking their purposes.
READY TO HELP RUSSIA
The other night in New York at the opening of the campaign for funds for our Red Cross I made an address. I had not intended to refer to Russia, but was speaking without notes, and in the course of what I said my own thought was led to Russia, and I said that we meant to stand by Russia just as firmly as we would stand by France or England or any other of our allies.
The audience to which I was speaking was not an audience from which I would have expected an enthusiastic response to that. It was rather too well dressed. It was an audience, in other words, made up of a class of people who would not have the most intimate feeling for the sufferings of the ordinary man in Russia; but that audience jumped to its feet in enthusiasm. Nothing else that I said on that occasion aroused anything like the enthusiasm that single sentence aroused.
Now that is a sample, gentlemen. We cannot make anything out of Russia. We cannot make anything out of our standing by Russia at this time—the remotest of European nations so far as we are concerned, the one with which we have had the least connections in trade and advantage—and yet the people of the United States rose to that suggestion as to no other that I made in that address.
That is part of America as we are ready to show it by any act of friendship toward Mexico. Some of us, if I may speak so privately, look back with regret upon some of the more ancient relations that we have had with Mexico long before our generation; and America, if I may now so accept it, would now feel ashamed to take advantage of her neighbor.
NO SELFISH AGGRESSION
So I hope you can carry back to your homes something better than assurances and words. You have had contact with our people. You know of your own personal reception. You know how gladly we have opened to you the doors of every establishment that you wanted to see and have shown you just what we are doing, and I hope you have gained the right impression as to why we are doing it. We are doing it, gentlemen, so that the world may never hereafter have to fear the only thing that any nation has to dread—the unjust and selfish aggression of another nation.
Some time ago, as you probably all know, I proposed a sort of Pan-American agreement. I had perceived that one difficulty in our past relations with Latin America was this: The famous Monroe Doctrine was adopted without your consent and without the consent of any Central American or South American States. If I may adopt a term that we so often use in this country, we said: "We are going to be your big brother whether you want us to be or not."
We did not ask whether it was agreeable to you that we should be your big brother. We said we are going to be. Now, that was all very well as far as protecting you from aggression from the other side of the water, but there was nothing in it that protected you from aggression from us, and I have repeatedly seen an uneasy feeling on the part of representatives of States of Central and South America that our self-appointed protection might be for our own benefit and our own interest and not for the interest of our neighbors. So I have said:
"Very well, let us make an arrangement by which we will give bonds. Let us have a common guarantee that all of us will sign a declaration of political independence and territorial integrity. Let us agree that if any one of us, the United States included, violates the political independence or territorial integrity of any of the others, all others will jump on her."
I pointed out to some gentlemen who were less inclined to enter into this arrangement than others that that was, in effect, giving bonds on the part of the United States that we would enter into an arrangement by which you would be protected from us.
PEACE BY MUTUAL TRUST
Now, that is the kind of agreement that will have to be the foundation of the future life of the nations of the world, gentlemen. The whole family of nations will have to guarantee to each nation that no nation shall violate its political independence or its territorial integrity. That is the basis—the only conceivable basis—for the future peace of the world, and I must admit that I was anxious to have the States of the two Continents of America show the way to the rest of the world as to how to make a basis of peace.
Peace can only come by trust. If you can once get a situation of trust then you have got a situation of permanent peace. Therefore, every one of us, it seems to me, owes it as a patriotic duty to his own country to plant the seeds of trust and confidence instead of seeds of suspicion.
That is the reason I began by saying to you that I had not had the pleasure of meeting a group of men who are more welcome than you are, because you are our near neighbors. Suspicion on your part, or misunderstanding on your part, distresses us more than we would be distressed by similar feelings on the part of those less near to us.
It is you who can see how Mexico's future must depend upon peace and honor, so that nobody shall exploit her. It must depend upon every nation that has any relation with her and the citizens of any nation that has any relations with her keeping within the bounds of honor and fair dealing and justice, because so soon as you can admit your own capital and the capital of the world to the free use of the resources of Mexico it will be one of the most wonderfully rich and prosperous countries in the world.
And when you have foundations of established order and the world has come to its senses again we shall, I hope, continue in connections that will assure us all permanent cordiality and friendship.
In Flanders Fields
By Lieut. Col. JOHN D. McCRAE
[Written during the second battle of Ypres,
April, 1915. The author,Dr. John McCrae of
Montreal, Canada, was killed on duty in
Flanders, Jan. 28, 1918.]
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amidst the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from falling hands, we throw
The torch. Be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
America's Answer
By R. W. LILLARD
[Written after the death of
Lieut. Col. McCrae, author of "In Flanders
Fields," and printed in The New York Evening Post.]
Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead.
The fight that ye so bravely led
We've taken up. And we will keep
True faith with you who lie asleep
With each a cross to mark his bed,
And poppies blowing overhead,
Where once his own life blood ran red.
So let your rest be sweet and deep
In Flanders fields.
Fear not that ye have died for naught.
The torch ye threw to us we caught.
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And Freedom's light shall never die!
We've learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders fields.
Secretary Lansing on War Themes
Why the United States Is at War
Robert Lansing, Secretary of State of the United States, delivered an address in New York on May 23, 1918, in honor of the third anniversary of Italy's entrance into the war. He said in part:
Oh, you of the blood of a people who have given so much to civilization, no greater task has ever fallen upon you, no greater duty has ever been the lot of the Italian race, than that which is yours today. You are called forth to defend the land which is enshrined in the hearts of the world as the cradle of justice and liberty. Fail you cannot, fail you must not, fail you will not in such a cause and such a crisis.
This is no time to measure the price which must be paid in blood and treasure. No price is too large, no sacrifice too great for the protection of your sacred heritage from the invaders.
Today, America, youngest of the great powers of the earth, is proud to cross the seas and to stand side by side with the most ancient power of Europe in upholding the standard of democracy, and to unite in proclaiming to the nations tortured by war that peace must be won and will be won by the might of liberty-loving men, a glorious peace which will endure throughout the ages because it is written in the book of destiny that freedom will rise triumphant from the ashes of this desolated world.
To gallant Italy, to our loyal associate and friend, we of America extend greetings on this day of reconsecration to a noble cause, on this day when the Italian people renew their solemn pledge to resist to the uttermost the accursed ambitions of the military rulers of Germany and Austria.
Italy's decision was the decision of a people who preferred the horrors of war to dishonor, who preferred to die rather than to be enslaved by Prussian masters or by Prussia's vassals. It breathed anew the valor of Rome.
United with you of the Latin race are we who could desire no prouder title than "the Romans of the West." A citizen of this young Republic could crave no higher public virtue nor covet a more devoted patriotism than that which inspired a dweller on the Seven Hills in the brave days of the old Roman Republic.
My friends of America and of Italy, we will win this war. It may be on the wasted fields of Flanders and Picardy; it may be in the valley of the Piave and the snow-crowned peaks of the Alps; or it may be on German lands beyond the Rhine. Somewhere and somehow and some time we will win. It cannot be otherwise, for we fight for justice, for liberty, and for humanity.
AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Secretary Lansing delivered another address in New York on June 5 at the commencement exercises of Columbia University. In accepting an honorary degree from that institution he said:
Today this Republic stands with the democracies of the earth arrayed in battle against the most relentless enemy of human liberty which the ages have produced. To save this country of ours and to save the civilized world from Prussianism has become the supreme duty of the American people and of all other peoples who love justice and freedom.
In this titanic struggle we are joined not only with France, our historic ally, but also with Great Britain, our ancient foe. On the blood-stained fields of France we three, together with Italy, Belgium, and Portugal, are standing shoulder to shoulder against the plunderers. Our traditional friendship for France, which can never be forgotten, and our traditional enmity for Great Britain, which is forgotten, are swallowed up in this supreme crisis of liberty, our common heritage. The grave perils to our lives as nations unite us with bonds of steel as our armies face the foe of all mankind.
I am proud that in these terrible days we are associated with the tenacious warriors of Britain; I am proud that with our blood we can on French soil prove the affection which we cherish for the French people; I am proud that Italy, superb in her determined resistance, is our partner in this conflict, and that the indomitable spirit of the Belgians and Serbs is a living inspiration to gallant deeds and noble sacrifice. I am proud, as I know every American is proud, to be thus united with the nations which hate Prussianism and loathe the evil desires which it engenders in the hearts of men.
Prussianism has appealed to the sword, and by the sword Prussianism must fall. It is the divine law of retribution which we as the instruments of justice must enforce so that the world may be forever rid of this abomination. * * *
Let us understand that a Prussian-made peace would not be the end; that it would only postpone the final struggle. Now that this war has come upon us we must carry it through to a decision. We must not transmit to future generations the germs of militarism. From the spirit of despotism, which has caused this awful tragedy, this war must free the world. We have suffered enough. The nations must never endure such black days of agony as those in which we are living.
It is the supreme task of civilization to put an end to Prussianism. To listen to proposals for a Prussian peace, to compromise with the butchers of individuals and of nations so that they would by agreement gain a benefit from their crimes would be to compound an international felony, which this Republic will never do.
Force is the one way to end Prussianism, for it is the only thing which the Prussian respects. This war for democracy must be waged to a successful conclusion to make liberty and justice supreme on the earth. It will be a bitter struggle, with lights and shadows, for the foe is strong and stubborn; but in the end we shall triumph, for we must triumph or abandon all that is worth while in this world. May every American so live and so serve that when the day of victory over the Prussians dawns, as it will dawn, he may, by right of faithful service, share in the glory.
To that bright hour let us look forward with confidence, for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe could not decree otherwise. He has imposed upon us and our brave comrades in arms the task of freeing mankind from the curse of avarice and inhumanity which besets us. He has put upon us the burden of making this world a fit dwelling place for civilized men. Let us not shrink from the task or seek to avoid the burden. Convinced of the righteousness of our cause and of our destiny let us make war with all our energy. Let us keep our banners unfurled and our trumpets sounding to battle until victory is achieved.
Prussia wickedly sought war and Prussia shall have war and more war and more war until the very thought of war is abhorrent to the Prussian mind. So I read the spirit of America. So I read the supreme purpose of the Allies. Victory lies before us and beyond victory a just and enduring peace. Until that peace is sure America cannot and will not put aside the sword.
ITALIAN AMBASSADOR'S SPEECH
Count Mocchi di Cellere, the Italian Ambassador to the United States, in his address at the Italian anniversary celebration, said:
Literally speaking, this is the third anniversary of Italy's formal entry into the war. But perhaps I need not remind you, gentlemen, that our struggle against the enemy goes back to the time when, some twenty centuries ago, on those selfsame fields and mountains that are now a part of our common allied front, the Roman eagle was already waging that fight against the barbarians in which the American eagle has more recently joined us.
The struggle of today is to us Italians the rounding-out of a tremendous cycle of world history, in which, alone of all civilized nations, Italy was in at the beginning and is in at the finish. Since the time when Roman law laid the foundations for the international intercourse of the world, the struggle has gone on against Teutonic brutality. We are in it as a nation with all the traditions and survivals of centuries, with all the memories of the race, with all the influences of obscure ancestral heredities.
One verse of our national hymn reminds us that no Teuton stick ever curbed Italy, and that the children of Rome do not bow their necks to a yoke. That was the blunder of the enemy—he did not realize that to a liberty-loving people the spirit of freedom is like the breathing of pure air, an essential of life. Sometimes a man does not know how essential it is until some one tries to take it from him. Then he must die or revolt. Italy revolted. * * *
Whatever the enemy may have to say or may desire others to believe about it, Italy is not in this war for any base and selfish motives of conquest, imperial or unlawful territorial aggrandizement. While in fact fighting for the liberation of mankind threatened with oppression and slavery, Italy is aiming at the liberation of her oppressed sons within and beyond the boundary imposed upon her by an iniquitous treaty.
For the freedom of our country we need security on land and sea; a security which nature herself had assured us with well defined geographic boundaries and which the violence of oppressive and barbarous nations has too long stolen from us. Now we see our duty clear; and faithful to our duty, we will not lay down our arms until the freedom of mankind, which implies the freedom of our oppressed brothers, and the security of our land, is attained.
Secretary Lansing delivered the chief address at the commencement exercises of Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., June 10. He said in part:
It is hardly open to debate, in the light of subsequent events, that the philosophical and political ideas which have been taught for years from the university platforms, from the pulpits, and through the printed word to young and old in Germany, excited in them an insolent pride of blood and infused into their national being an all-absorbing ambition to prove themselves supermen chosen by natural superiority and by Divine mandate to be rulers of the earth. Not only in Germany, but among those of German descent in other lands, has this pernicious belief spread, linking Germans everywhere to the Fatherland in the hope that they would be considered worthy to share in the future glory of the masters of the world. * * *
A decade before the war Reiner, inspired with the imperialism of Prussia, announced: "It is precisely our craving for expansion which drives us into the paths of conquest, in view of which all chatter about peace and humanity can and must remain nothing but chatter."
Not less ominous to liberty are the words of Professor Meinecke: "We want to become a world people. Let us remind ourselves that the belief in our mission as a world people has arisen from our originally purely spiritual impulse to absorb the world into ourselves."
Observe that extraordinary phrase, "to absorb the world into ourselves." To conceive such a national destiny is to resurrect the dead ambitions of an Alexander or a Caesar; to teach it as a right to young men is to sow in their minds an egotism which breeds distorted conceptions of individual honor and justice, and gives to them an utterly false standard of national life.
Not alone from the lecturer and the essayist came this idea that the Germans are a superior race set apart to rule the world. It was preached in the pulpits as a Divine truth by those who even had the effrontery to support their assertions by references to the Holy Scriptures. Listen to some of the thoughts proclaimed by ordained ministers of Christ to their German congregations:
"It may sound proud, my friends, but we are conscious that it is also in all humbleness that we say it; the German soul is God's soul; it shall and will rule over mankind."
May we be spared the consequences of a German "humbleness" which fairly struts and swaggers, and which finds further expression in the words of another Doctor of Divinity when he declares: "Verily the Bible is our book. It was given and assigned to us, and in it we read the original text of our destiny, which proclaims to mankind salvation or disaster as we will it."
"As we will it!" There in four words is the whole story of the Prussian doctrine of the "superman," of a "place in the sun."
Paganism, tinctured with modern materialism and a degenerate type of Christianity, broods today over Germany. Christian ministers have proclaimed Jehovah to be the national deity of the empire, a monopolized German God, who relies on the physical might of His people to destroy those who oppose His will as that will is interpreted by His chosen race. Thus the Prussian leaders would harmonize modern thought with their ancient religion of physical strength through brutalizing Christianity.
In view of the spirit of hypocrisy and bad faith manifesting an entire lack of conscience, we ought not to be astonished that the Berlin Foreign Office never permitted a promise or a treaty engagement to stand in the way of a course of action which the German Government deemed expedient. I need not cite as proof of this fact the flagrant violations of the treaty neutralizing Belgium—and the recent treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This discreditable characteristic of the German foreign policy was accepted by German diplomats as a matter of course and as a natural if not a praiseworthy method of dealing with other Governments.
Frederick the Great, with cynical frankness, once said: "If there is anything to be gained by it, we will be honest. If deception is necessary, let us be cheats." That is in brief the immoral principle which has controlled the foreign relations of Prussia for over 150 years.
It is a fact not generally known that within six weeks after the Imperial Government had, in the case of the Sussex, given to this Government its solemn promise that it would cease ruthless slaughter on the high seas, Count Bernstorff, appreciating the worthlessness of the promise, asked the Berlin Foreign Office to advise him in ample time before the campaign of submarine murder was renewed, in order that he might notify the German merchant ships in American ports to destroy their machinery because he anticipated that the renewal of that method of warfare would in all probability bring the United States into the war.
How well the Ambassador knew the character of his Government, and how perfectly frank he was! He asked for the information without apology or indirection. The very bluntness of his message shows that he was sure that his superiors would not take offense at the assumption that their word was valueless and had only been given to gain time, and that, when an increase of Germany's submarine fleet warranted, the promise would be broken without hesitation or compunction. What a commentary on Bernstorff's estimate of the sense of honor and good faith of his own Government!
We must go on with the war. There is no other way. This task must not be left half done. We must not transmit to posterity a legacy of blood and misery. We may in this great conflict go down into the Valley of Shadows, because our foe is powerful and inured to war. We must be prepared to meet disappointment and temporary reverse, but we must, with American spirit, rise above them; with courageous hearts we must go forward until this war is won.
Premier Lloyd George Lauds Americans
David Lloyd George, the British Premier, speaking at the Printers' Pension Fund dinner in London, June 7, 1918, paid this tribute to the American soldiers in France:
I have only just returned from France, and met a French statesman who had been at the front shortly after a battle in which the Americans took part. He was full of admiration not merely of their superb valor but of the trained skill with which they attacked and defeated the foe.
His report of the conduct of the American troops, a division that had been in action for the first time, was one of the most encouraging things I have heard, because they are coming in steadily. There is a great flow, and we are depending upon them, and the fact that we know that when they appear in the battleline they will fight in a way which is worthy of the great traditions of their great country is in itself a source of support and sustenance and encouragement to all of those who with anxious hearts are watching the conflict which is going on in France.
The toast with which you have done me the honor to associate my name is "Success to the Allied Cause." If for any cause the Allies were not to succeed, it would be a sorry world to live in. Most times people are inclined to exaggerate events of the day, but there are occasions when generations of men underestimate the significance of events. You cannot exaggerate the importance or significance of the issues with which we are confronted today.
In the past you have had in the history of the world great struggles for domination of a certain civilization, a certain ideal or a certain religion, and the fate of the world and the destiny of man and the lives of untold millions for generations have been fashioned upon the triumph or failure of this cause. Take the time of Turkish military power in the past or the Saracens' attempt to trample down and overrun the civilization of the West. Nations were wiped out, great countries devastated. You had untold misery and wretchedness throughout vast tracts of territory for ages. At last that tide was stemmed. Supposing that had failed. What a difference it would have made for European civilization today!
At this hour there is a struggle with an ideal more material, more sordid, more brutal, than almost any other which has been sought to be imposed upon Europe—the Prussian military ideal, with its contempt for liberty, its contempt for human right, its contempt for humanity. If they were to succeed today, you would fling back human civilization into the dark dungeons of the past.
The crisis is not past, but with a stout heart we shall win through, and then woe to the plague. In the interests of civilization, in the interests of the human race, it must be stamped out. You cannot allow it to come again to darken the lives of millions, and to desolate millions of homes. That is what we are fighting for.
This is a country which has faced a great crisis in the past. We hear about Ludendorff's hammer blows. Hammer blows crack and crumble poor material. Hammer blows harden and consolidate good metal. There is good metal in British hearts. It has stood the test of centuries. It will stand this. So will that gallant little people, that gallant great people across the Channel who are fighting for their liberties, for the honor of their native land, fighting without flinching. I have seen them. I never saw signs of wavering in any French face. They are full of courage, full of determination to fight through to the end, and it is a united France more than ever. So it is a united Britain. Unity and resolution are two qualities we need. We have sunk our political differences. We have bigger things to think about. I am not despising the political controversies of the past. In some form or another they will come again. These controversies are the very essence of freedom, but for the moment we have one purpose.
Let us be one people, one in aim, one in courage, one in the resolve never to give in. Let Britain stand like a breakwater against the torrent, and, God willing, we will break it in two.
Clemenceau's Defiance of Obstructors
Premier Clemenceau of France received a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies on June 6, 1918, by a vote of 377 to 110. An attempt was made by the militant Socialists to embarrass the Government by demanding information of military matters which it was deemed inexpedient to reveal. In his victorious speech defying his critics he said:
The collapse of Russia enabled the enemy to set free an army of a million men to add to his forces on our front. Anybody can understand that under such enormous weight our line must give way at some points. Some of our men have fought one against five without sleeping for three or four days. The losses of our allies, the British, in the heroic struggle have been more than we could have believed possible.
The situation has become dangerous for our armies, but in all this I see nothing to diminish our confidence in our troops. As to the Government, it will continue to make war stubbornly and obstinately. We will never capitulate. If you are not satisfied with our work, turn us out. It is for you to decide.
The only thing that matters is final success. Our effectives are lessening in number, but so are those of Germany, while the Americans are coming in larger and larger numbers to take part in the final victory. * * *
Down there all that the heroes can do is to die, but you by your firm and resolute attitude can give them what they deserve—victory. You have before you a Government which told you the very first day that it did not enter into power to negotiate without victory. As long as we are here the fatherland will be defended at all costs, and no force will be spared to obtain success.
We have allies who represent the greatest nations in the world, that have decided to go on until success is certain, success which is near. The Americans are arriving for the final blow.
The Living Line
By HAROLD BEGBIE
[By arrangement with The London Chronicle]
As long as faith and freedom last,
And earth goes round the sun,
This stands—the British line held fast
And so the fight was won.
The greatest fight that ever yet
Brought all the world to dearth;
A fight of two great nations set
To battle for the earth.
That bleeding line, that falling fence,
That stubborn ebbing wave,
That string of suffering human sense,
Shuddered, but never gave.
A living line of human flesh,
It quivered like a brain;
Swarm after swarm came on afresh
And crashed, but crashed in vain.
The world shall tell how they stood fast,
And how the fight was won,
As long as faith and freedom last
And earth goes round the sun.
Brute Force Versus Humanity
By MAURICE MAETERLINCK
[Translated for Current History Magazine from Les Annales, Paris]
The struggle of today is only a resumption of the conflict that has never ceased to redden the soil of Western Europe ever since its birth into history. The two chief episodes of this conflict, as everybody knows, are the invasion of Roman Gaul (including Northern Italy) by the Germans, and the conquest of Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. Ignoring questions of race, which are complex, uncertain, and always debatable, one can, by viewing the subject from another point, see in the persistence and desperation of this war the conflict of two wills, either one of which succumbs for a moment only to rise again with more energy and determination.
On one side there is the will of earth, or of nature, which openly, in the human species, as in all others, favors physical and brutal force; on the other, the will of humanity, or at least of a part of humanity that is seeking to establish the reign of other energies more subtile and less animal. It is incontestable that brute force thus far has always triumphed. But it is equally certain that it has never triumphed save in appearance and for a brief moment. Gaul, invaded and overcome, quickly assimiliated the invaders, and England gradually transformed her conquerors. The instruments of the will of earth turned against it on the morrow of victory and armed the hand of the vanquished.
It is probable that, even today, if events followed the course prescribed by destiny, the same phenomenon would be reproduced. Germany, after having crushed and enslaved the greater part of Europe, throwing it back and overwhelming it with numberless evils, would herself end by turning against the will which she represents; and that will, which hitherto had found a docile instrument and a chosen accomplice in the German race, would be obliged to find these elsewhere, a task less easy than formerly.
But now, to the stupefaction of those who will some day examine this epoch dispassionately, behold, events are suddenly moving upward against the irresistible current, and, for the first time since man is in a position to observe it, brute force is meeting an unexpected and insurmountable resistance. If this resistance remains victorious to the end, there will, perhaps, never have been a change of course comparable to it in the history of man; it will mean a triumph over the will of earth, of nature, or of fate, a triumph infinitely more significant, more heavy with consequences, and perhaps more decisive, than all those which in other domains appear to have crowned our effort with more glory.
Let us be not at all astonished, then, that the resistance is enormous and prolonged beyond all that experience of war has taught us. Our prompt and easy defeat was written in the annals of destiny. We had against us all the force of aggression acquired since the origin of Europe. We have to reverse the wheel of history. We are on the point of succeeding; and if it is true that intelligent beings on the heights of other worlds are watching us, they are doubtless contemplating the most curious spectacle that our planet has offered them since they discovered it in the star dust scintillating around them in space. They must be saying to themselves, disconcerted, that age-long and fundamental laws are being unexpectedly transgressed.
Unexpectedly? That is too much to say. This transgression of an inferior law, no longer as high as man, has long been in process of preparation; but it came very near to being frightfully punished. Its success will be due only to the aid of a part of those who formerly swelled the great flood which today they are resisting with us, as if something in the history of the world or in the plans of destiny had been changed; or, rather, as if we had finally succeeded in changing something, and in bending laws to which we have hitherto been entirely subject.
But we need not think that after victory the struggle will be ended. The profound forces of earth (brute force) will not lay down their arms so soon, and the invisible war will go on for a long time under peace. If we do not take care, victory will be even more fatal than defeat. In fact, this defeat, like its predecessors, would have been only an adjourned victory. It would have worn out, scattered, absorbed, the adversary by dispersing his energies over the world, while our victory will bring us a double danger. It will leave our enemies in a fierce isolation, where, massed upon themselves, fenced in, purified by misfortune and misery, they will secretly strengthen their formidable virtues, while we, no longer held in check by their intolerable but salutary menace, may give free rein to defects and vices which, soon or late, will place us at their mercy. Before thinking of peace, therefore, it would be well to assure ourselves of the future and make it powerless to harm us. We cannot take too many precautions when going, as we are, against the manifest desire of the power that is carrying us.
This is why our effort is painful and meritorious. We are going, it cannot be too often repeated, against the law of force. Our adversaries are driven forward by a power that drives us back. They are advancing in the direction of nature, whereas we are swimming against the great current that flows around the globe. Earth has an idea that is no longer ours. She is convinced that man is an animal in all respects like other animals. She has not yet noticed that he has drawn away from the herd. She does not yet know that he has climbed her highest mountains. She has not yet heard of justice, of pity, of loyalty, of honor; she knows not what these are, or she confuses them with weakness, inefficiency, stupidity, and fear. She has held to the original certitudes that were indispensable in the beginnings of life. She is falling behind us, and the space between is growing rapidly. She thinks less swiftly and has yet had the time to comprehend us. Besides, she does not count as we do, and the ages for her are less than our years. She is slow because she is almost eternal, while we are swift because we have not many hours before us. It is possible that her thought may some day rejoin ours; meanwhile, we have to defend our advance and prove to ourselves, as we are beginning to do, that it is permitted to be right against her will, that our advance is not fatal, and that it is possible to maintain it.
For it is beginning to be difficult to maintain that earth, or nature, or brute force, is always right, and that those who do not blindly follow its mandates are doomed to perish. We have learned to observe nature more attentively and have acquired the right to judge her. We have ascertained that, far from being infallible, she never ceases to deceive herself. She hesitates, she gropes. She does not know just what she wants. She begins with enormous blunders. She first peoples the world with fantastic and inchoate monsters, not one of which is stable, and they all disappear. Gradually, at the expense of the life which she creates, she acquires an experience which is the cruel fruit of innumerable sufferings inflicted with indifference. In the long run she grows wiser, learns moderation, corrects herself, retraces her steps, redresses her errors, and devotes to their reparation the best of her intelligence and of her forces. It is incontestable that she is perfecting her methods and that she is showing herself more able, more prudent, less given to excess, than in the beginning. It is none the less true that in all reigns, in all organisms, and even in our own bodies, the bad workmanship, the double uses, the inadvertencies, the things repented of, the absurdities, the useless complications, the sordid economies, and the senseless wastes continue.
There is no reason, therefore, to believe that our enemies have the truth on their side because nature's primal force is with them. Nature does not possess the truth any more than we do. She searches for it as we do, and does not find it any more easily. She does not seem to know any more than we where she is going or whither she is being led by that which leads all things. We do not have to obey her without questioning, and there is no need to be disturbed or to despair if one is not of her opinion. We are not dealing with an infallible and immutable wisdom against which it would be madness to oppose one's thought. We are on the way to prove to her that she is in error, that the raison d'être of man is higher than that which she has provisionally assigned to him, that he has already surpassed her previsions, and that she is wrong to retard his march. Besides, she is full of good-will, knows how to recognize her faults on occasion, to avoid their disastrous consequences, and never stiffens herself in an inflexible and majestic self-esteem. We can convince her if we can persevere. It will take a great deal of time, for, I repeat, she is slow, but not at all obstinate. It will take a great deal of time, because it involves a very long future, a very great change of direction, and the most important victory for which man has ever hoped.
The Battle of Jutland
Debatable Phases of the Great Naval Conflict Reviewed by Eminent British Experts
By ADMIRAL SIR CYPRIAN BRIDGE, G. C. B.
In the May number of Current History Magazine appeared a general review of the battle of Jutland by Mr. Thomas G. Frothingham, with a footnote and diagrams by Professor Westcott of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. The article was brought to the attention of Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, one of the most noted naval experts of Great Britain, and was also sent to Mr. Arthur Pollen, an internationally recognized naval writer in England, both of whom contribute comments on the American writer's article. Since his review appeared Mr. Frothingham has joined the National Army of the United States as Captain.—Editor.
There is only one thing certain in naval history, and that is that every great sea fight—as to the circumstances of which we have detailed information—has been criticised as indecisive and as not fought in the way which it should have been. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, whose fairness and accuracy as a naval historian have been generally recognized, has said: "Every historian ought to feel a sense of the most lively gratitude toward Nelson; in his various encounters he never left any possible room for dispute as to which side had come out first best." Unfortunately, this is going rather too far, for the merits of every one of Nelson's battles have been disputed, and his way of fighting each has been adversely criticised. This fate he shares with the great De Ruyter and with less important men. Rodney and Lord Howe, as commanders in general actions, were fiercely criticised. Lord Hawke did not receive the customary recognition of his services until seventeen years after the great battle of Quiberon Bay. Roosevelt tells us that: "In every one of De Ruyter's last six battles each side claimed the victory." If we had minute accounts of the talk that went on in the gardens and porches of ancient Athens we should, without doubt, learn that Salamis was far from being decisive and that, anyhow, it ought to have been fought in a different way. It is just as well to remember this whenever we are discussing a naval battle, whether of old date or recent. Land battles have not been treated in quite the same fashion. Their results have not been disputed so often, nor has the manner in which they were fought been so often adversely criticised.
Perhaps we may account for this difference in the treatment of conflicts on the two elements by noting the fact that naval historians and critics of naval operations have but rarely been men of naval experience, while the historians and critics of military operations have usually been soldiers. There has, of course, been some conflict of opinion as to the results of fighting on shore, as we can see on comparing the communiques of the contending sides in the present war. Even after allowing for the unprecedented mendacity of the German authorities and the unprecedented gullibility of the German public there is still some sign of an honest difference of opinion. The difference is not due to lay or unprofessional ignorance.
As regards naval operations in war—indeed, as regards naval affairs in general—it has been shown times without number that it is impossible for any one without naval experience to take a comprehensive or accurate view of naval conditions. This is by no means to disparage what shoregoing writers have done in naval history or in the discussion of some subjects largely though not totally naval. As long as they record facts they do very valuable work. It is when they express opinions and draw inferences from very technical data that they are almost certain to go astray. As a searcher in authoritative records and a narrator of detailed occurrences James is distinctly superior to Mahan; but who would give a fig for James's opinions? Whereas Mahan's govern the naval thought of the world.
JUTLAND RECORDS INCOMPLETE
Thomas G. Frothingham's "Review of the Battle of Jutland" in The New York Times Current History Magazine is a valuable account of the events of the engagement. It would not have been possible within the limits of his article to have related every incident, but he has made a judicious selection of those which he does bring forward. He had, of course, to depend on his sources; and on some important points these contained little or no information. Anything like a full account from the German side was virtually nonexistent. It would have been instructive to have put the German naval authorities into the witness box and to have subjected them to that species of cross-examination which consists in a comparison of some of their statements with others and with the statements of their opponents. It would be here that a writer with the true instinct of a historian, which Mr. Frothingham evidently does possess, could render valuable service had the necessary materials been at his disposal.
A writer who draws inferences from data by no means full and perhaps open to dispute can hardly expect to carry conviction to every reader. It might be sufficient to deal with Mr. Frothingham's general conclusion concerning the battle of Jutland; but it will be well before doing so to notice also one or two minor but still important inferences which he draws from the events of the battle.
GERMAN FLEET'S OBJECT
Mr. Frothingham maintains that the German fleet came out with the object, and no other, of engaging the British fleet, a force known to be greatly superior in number of ships and power of ordnance. He apparently, but not quite clearly, suggests that the Germans knew how the British fleet would be employed and how it would be disposed. It would be difficult to put any other construction on the words—"With the object of engaging a fleet usually so disposed and so employed, the Germans came out from their bases." Surely this is a pure assumption which can only be supported by other assumptions founded on improbability rather than on probability. There is another assumption which is more plausible and which is supported by evidence—indirect, it is true, but copious. The war had been going on for more than a year and a half, and yet the German High Sea Fleet, in spite of its name, had sedulously refrained from venturing on the high seas. This made it the object of perpetual taunts by the enemies of Germany. There was some not completely suppressed restlessness among the German people.
It has been an almost invariable rule in war that the fleet which keeps on lying in port is eventually forced to put to sea by public opinion. The tone and wording of many official German statements justify the conclusion that the German fleet put to sea with the object, not of meeting the British fleet, but of returning to port with the assertion that the British fleet had kept out of the way and that the North Sea had been "swept" for it in vain. Contrary to the probable expectation, Sir David Beatty's force was met with and there seemed a chance of being able to attack him with the whole strength of the German Navy. Unforeseen opportunities of the kind have frequently occurred in naval war, and may be expected frequently to occur again.
FRENCH EXPERT'S OPINION
Here may be quoted some observations, dated March 11, 1918, by the very distinguished French flag officer Vice Admiral E. F. Fournier, in a preface to a translation of an account of the general work of the British Navy:
Je m'associe également aux regrets de l'auteur de cette notice qu'une ombre injustifiée ait été portée sur le tableau, si flatteur pour l'amour-propre de la Grande Bretagne, par certains critiques de la presse anglaise sur la bataille du Jutland. Je le fais d'autant plus volontiers que, dès la nouvelle de cette memorable rencontre navale, j'écrivis dans le Matin un article ou je vantais l'esprit de décision et la résolution si opportune de l'Amiral Beatty, n'hésitant pas à se jeter, malgré l'infériorité de ses forces, à la tête de la flotte allemande toute entière pour la contrecarrer dans ses desseins, en s'y accrochant énergiquement jusqu'a l'arrivée du renfort anglais, comme l'eût fait, sans aucun doute, Nelson lui-même, en pareil cas.
TRANSLATION:
I regret as much as does the author of this article that an unjustified shadow has been cast upon the picture, so flattering for the self-esteem of Great Britain, by certain English press criticisms upon the battle of Jutland. I indorse his view the more willingly because, on first receiving the news of that memorable naval combat, I wrote for the Matin an article in which I extolled Admiral Beatty's spirit of decision and very opportune resolution, in not hesitating to throw himself, despite the inferiority of his forces, at the head of the whole German fleet to checkmate its designs, and in hanging on firmly until the arrival of English reinforcements, as Nelson himself undoubtedly would have done in such a case.
Mr. Frothingham holds that the German fleet had not been led into a trap. Here, perhaps, something turns on the meaning given to particular words. A trap may be reasonably defined as an unforeseen and unfavorable position. Was it a deliberately sought or an unforeseen result that at 9 P. M. the German fleet was so placed that it had between it and its bases a hostile fleet which, as Mr. Frothingham tells us, still had an "overwhelming superiority in ships and guns?" Was such a position favorable or unfavorable? Surely there can be but one answer to each of these questions.
LOSS OF BRITISH SHIPS
Those who prefer to do so may use long words like "psychology" and "mentality," but the plain English of the situation is that the public mind in the allied and neutral countries was greatly impressed by the news that the British fleet had lost several ships, and by the fact that these losses were announced in the earlier part of the official communiqué concerning the battle. In the few great sea fights of which anything was generally remembered, the British had not lost ships. This, however, was far from being the universal rule.
In the great naval actions of the seventeenth century we lost many ships. It was recognized that a fleet might be victorious and still lose ships. The great Lord Hawke at Quiberon Bay lost ships. The contending fleets of the present day are so very large that they recall those of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when ships were lost in action by both sides. This, especially in view of the power of the naval ordnance of today, is almost certain to occur again. There is a wide difference between the naval gun of the present day and that of Nelson's and earlier times. The primary object of the older gun was to cause casualties among the enemy's crews; the modern naval gun is meant to destroy his ships. A fifteen-inch gun is not necessary to kill or wound a man. Naval weapons would be complete failures if, in sea fights, they were to prove incapable of destroying ships, and there is no probability that the destruction will fall on one side only.
Mr. Frothingham's final conclusion is that the "actual tactical result of the battle was indecisive." A very full definition of an indecisive tactical result would be instructive. One result of the battle of Jutland is beyond dispute and is in no way a matter of opinion. These lines are being written on the 12th of May, 1918, close upon two years after the battle of Jutland was fought. Not once during all that long time has the German High Sea Fleet ventured on the high seas or done more than just peep over the edge of its sheltering mine fields.
Comment by Mr. Arthur Pollen
Arthur Pollen, the English naval critic, offers the following observations on debatable phases of the battle:
I have read Mr. Frothingham's article, and it seems to me to be substantially accurate as a synopsis of the officially published events of the afternoon and evening. The writer's comments also seem to be judicious and fair. The battle raises, however, so many and such large problems, strategical, tactical, and technical, that it is impossible for any writer to exhaust the matter, or even to indicate the disputable points in so small a space as Mr. Frothingham has been able to devote to it.
In one or two not unimportant particulars I hold a different view of the facts and different opinions from the writer. For example, it seems to me that the Grand Fleet did not, as Mr. Frothingham states on Page 339, at 6:25 form in battle line astern of the battle cruisers. The plan published with the dispatches makes it seem more probable that the van of the Grand Fleet followed a course considerably to the north though parallel to that of the battle cruisers, and that it was not until about 7:05 that they turned from an easterly to a southerly course and formed astern of the Vice Admiral commanding the battle cruiser fleet. The story of the action might have been very different had circumstances permitted of the Grand Fleet going into action astern of the Vice Admiral at 6:15.
Again, Page 337, I cannot agree that it is evident that the German fleet was not forced into action with the Grand Fleet, but that Vice Admiral Scheer deliberately chose to engage that force. There is nothing to show that Scheer suspected Jellicoe was on the scene until he began to turn from north to southeast about a quarter of an hour before the Grand Fleet was sighted.
Again, Page 339, I cannot agree that it was the night disposition of the fleet that was the crucial decision. It is true it ended the battle for the night, but the decision which gave the battle its character was taken earlier in the day, when the enemy was allowed to open the range under the cover of destroyer attacks and smoke screens. In the existing atmospheric conditions and light it was impossible for gunnery to be effective, even at 12,000 and 9,000 yards and the only terms on which the German fleet could be defeated and sunk would have been those of close action. The refusal of close action was due to the menace of the German destroyer attacks, used on this occasion for purposes of defense and to afford an opportunity of evasion, with masterly skill and decisive effect. The dispositions and tactics of the night action are a different matter, but of these we are still completely ignorant.
Battle of Skagerrak as Germany Sees It
By CAPTAIN VON KUEHLWETTER
of the German Imperial Navy
[This article on the battle of Jutland was written during the
week following the day on which it was fought, May 31, 1916]
Although Trafalgar, Tsushima, and Skagerrak will be treated and discussed together in future naval histories, it is not yet possible to draw the full historical consequences from the two last-named naval battles. We can estimate the effects of Trafalgar on the history of the world, for we know that it laid the foundations of British naval supremacy. With the exception of the immediate military advantage gained, the full results of the battle of Tsushima have not yet been developed. Still less can the battle of Skagerrak have left its impress upon world history.
For us Skagerrak [Jutland] has been a great, decisive victory, which our whole High Sea Fleet gained after a long, bitterly contested battle on the open sea, far from the home coast and its points of support, against the superior British Grand Fleet. Our naval forces inflicted upon the British fleet losses which, in terms of tons, even according to the British Admiralty, were double ours. But the tonnage does not fully represent the seriousness of the losses, since the British lost three dreadnoughts, as against one of ours, and three armored cruisers, as against one of our old armored cruisers.
If we add to this what our own observations, supported by statements of British prisoners, show, the enemy's losses were three and a half times ours; that is, in terms of fighting units, six dreadnoughts, including two older types, as against one dreadnought and one pre-dreadnought, and four armored cruisers and one small cruiser, as against four small cruisers.
The purpose of a battle is destruction, the victor being the side which goes further in this direction. The figures just quoted can leave no doubt on this point.
The German fleet remained on the battle area. After the repeatedly successful attacks of our torpedo boat flotillas the British fleet was forced to sheer off, and we never saw it again. Although the British ships were superior in speed and were reinforced by the arrival of twelve additional battleships, they made no attempt to recover contact with us and continue the battle. Our numerous torpedo boats searched for the British fleet all night without finding it, and instead utilized the opportunity to rescue a large number of British sailors.
This justifies us in calling the battle an absolute victory for us. It has demonstrated that the German fleet had within it the power to beat the more numerous and more up-to-date British fleet, and it opens up great possibilities for the future.
The battle of Skagerrak did not decide the war. Neither did Trafalgar nor Tsushima, nor did Tannenburg or the battle of the Masurian Lakes. A single battle between great powers will never be ultimately decisive. How much it contributes to the final outcome of a war cannot be estimated. The greatest result so far is not in the fact that Great Britain lost ships, but in the victory.
TRAFALGAR AND JUTLAND
Trafalgar and the name of Nelson stand high in naval history. Let us draw a military comparison between Trafalgar and the battle of Skagerrak. At Trafalgar there were on the British side 27 ships of the line, (of which 8 had 80 guns, 16 had 74 guns, and 3 had 64 guns,) four frigates, and two smaller vessels. On the side of the allied French and Spanish fleet there were 33 ships of the line, (of which 10 had from 80 to 110 guns, 22 had 74 guns, and one had 64 guns,) three frigates, and two smaller vessels. The French and Spanish fleet was not only numerically stronger, but its ships were better built and better armed.
A GERMAN DIAGRAM OF THE BATTLE OF THE SKAGERRAK (JUTLAND)
In the battle of Skagerrak we had opposing each other: On the British side, thirty-one dreadnoughts, inclusive of six battle cruisers, and four armored cruisers; on the German side, twenty-one dreadnoughts, inclusive of five battle cruisers, and six older cruisers. Roughly speaking, we had twenty-seven big ships against thirty-live. Here also the better quality, judged by size, up-to-dateness, and armament, was on the side of the larger fleet. Apart from these big ships, there were on each side about fifty smaller vessels.
The total tonnage of the British fleet at Trafalgar was equal to about two modern dreadnoughts, as one of the ships of the line in Nelson's time was of about 2,000 tons. In numbers of guns and of crew there were more at Trafalgar, as at that time the ships were sailing vessels.
The British had between 17,000 and 20,000 men engaged, against 21,000 to 24,000. At Skagerrak we had from 35,000 to 40,000, as against 45,000 to 50,000 men. In this way we can compare the battle in its general aspect with Trafalgar. But if we look into the matter more closely, the French and Spanish fleet had within it an element of weakness arising from the fact that it consisted of two allied forces, between which there is never complete co-ordination. The French were further weakened by effects of the Revolution and exhaustion from previous battles. The French Admiral himself said: "Never before was the French fleet at such a low standard. We had bad masts, bad sails, bad rigging, bad officers, and bad seamen." Of the Spanish, Nelson said: "They have neither seamen nor officers." At the head of the allied forces was a French Admiral who had no confidence in the fleet and who was acting under instructions issued by Napoleon, which he felt incapable of carrying out. Opposed to him was the seasoned and well-schooled fleet of Nelson, so that it was not a battle of equal opponents and the result was annihilation. None of the French or Spanish ships was again seen at sea; nineteen were captured or destroyed, ten were driven into harbor and blockaded; four escaped, only to fall into the hands of the victors a few days later.
COMPARED WITH TSUSHIMA
And now Tsushima, another parallel. A Russian fleet, made up of any old vessels the Russians could get together, and of what ships still remained in the East—supported by Port Arthur—made one last bid against the sea power of the enemy. Without training, without points of support, honeycombed with revolutionary ideas, the Russian fleet started on its trip to the Far East, where it arrived on May 27, after suffering terrible hardships and being more than six months on the way to meet the enemy. Meanwhile, Port Arthur, with its fleet, had fallen. The Russian Admiral knew that he had absolutely no chance, but he did not have enough courage to retreat. Blindly and without confidence he started the battle against an opponent who was superior in numbers, equipment, and training. Of the 38 Russian ships which arrived on the morning of May 27, 1905, in the Strait of Korea, 19 were sunk and 7 captured, including 2 hospital ships. The Russian Admiral, 273 officers, and 5,833 petty officers and men were taken prisoner; 201 officers and 4,344 men were killed. Against this the Japanese lost only three torpedo boats and about 700 men.
Trafalgar was not a battle between equal forces, and still less so was Tsushima; hence, as regards their military value, they cannot be compared with Skagerrak. In this battle for the first time there were two sides equally well trained, equally imbued with the same spirit, equally determined. Here also the smaller force won. The superior force had to quit the battle area, and only the power it retained within itself saved it from annihilation. This battle gave us, in the military sense, a victory such as naval history has never yet recorded. Its moral effect upon our fleet, especially after the long harassing wait, cannot be expressed in words. It did not end the war, but it gave us more confidence and startled England, who always thought she had an invincible fleet.
On the victory of Trafalgar England founded her colonial world power, because she thereby obtained the mastery of the seas, which remained unchallenged. Tsushima gave Japan the sea power in the East which she needed to carry out her military plans on land. It no more ended the Japanese-Russian war than Trafalgar had ended the struggle of that day, but it gave Japan a military success which was of great value to her in peace negotiations. We hope that Skagerrak is a blow against the victory of Trafalgar and the first step toward the smashing of British sea power, and that other mighty hammer blows will fall against the barriers which shut off other peoples from the freedom of the seas.
International Socialists' Peace Campaign
A Message Sent to the Socialists of the Central Powers by Those of the Entente Nations
Emile Vandervelde and Camille Huysmans, the Chairman and Secretary of the International Socialist Bureau, on March 1, 1918, signed and transmitted a message to the Socialists of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, inviting them to consider the declaration on war aims adopted by the Interallied Labor and Socialist Conference in London, Feb. 23, and asking them to propose conditions of their own for comparison. The communication was printed April 17 without comment in the German Socialist organ, Vorwärts, being reproduced by it from the Paris Humanité. It is as follows:
The third Interallied Socialist Conference, which was held in London from Feb. 20 to Feb. 23, has commissioned the President and Secretary of the International Socialist Bureau to communicate to you the authentic text of the memorandum which has been adopted by the meeting: of delegates of the Labor and Socialist organizations of Great Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium. The main ideas of this document have received, or had received in advance, the approval of the parties of Serbia, Portugal, Greece, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
A special mission, consisting of Stuart, Bunning, (England,) Jouhaux and Cachin, (France,) a Belgian delegate, an Italian delegate, and the Secretary of the International Socialist Bureau, Camille Huysmans, has gone to the United States in order to obtain the adhesion of the American working class to this memorandum, which expresses the point of view of the organized proletariat of the Entente countries with regard to the necessary foundations of a democratic peace and the principal conditions for a general international Labor and Socialist conference, which has been summoned to a neutral country by "a committee which provides all guarantees of impartiality toward the various elements which are called to take part."
In making this communication to you the signatories of this message consider it profitable to recall objectively the reasons which determined the acceptance of the procedure proposed by the London Conference.
The conference was of the opinion that it would be of no use to assemble a general congress unless its aim had been established in principle.
The conference was of the opinion that "the principal condition for the holding of a plenary assembly of the International consists in its organizers satisfying themselves that all the organizations to be represented formulate in precise terms and by a public declaration their peace conditions upon the basis of the principles of peace without annexations and without indemnities of a punitive character, and the right of the peoples to self-determination," and, further, that these organizations will "work with all their power to obtain from their Governments the necessary guarantee that these principles shall be applied honestly and without arriere-pensées in the settlement of all questions raised at the official peace conference."
In order itself to satisfy these conditions, the London Conference has considered it necessary to state precisely its views and its action in the memorandum which we are commissioned to communicate to you.
The conference expects that your party, following the same idea, will resolve to issue a public declaration of a similar kind, whether separately or jointly with the Labor and Socialist organizations of Central Europe.
In the opinion of those who took part in the London Conference the comparison of these documents will be of the greatest importance. It will be a principal means of establishing whether a sufficient agreement of views exists between the proletariats of the two belligerent groups to make possible a common action against imperialism and for a democratic peace. This preliminary examination is all the more necessary, because it is obvious that no important party, conscious of its responsibility, will run the risk of having the resolutions of an international congress imposed upon it by the will of a majority. Only resolutions which were the expression of a general and common will would possess moral authority and practical effect.
The sum of the matter is that the Socialists of the Entente countries request you in this grave hour, in which it is necessary to know whether the world is to be freed by democracy or to be handed over to imperialism, to ask your consciences whether a real, sincere, and effective agreement of the wills of the proletariats is possible in order to put an end to the law of violence, in order to lay the foundations not of a peace, but of the peace, and in order to help the peoples to liberate themselves from the endless chain of military war which leads to economic wars, and of economic wars which will again produce military wars.
We add to the messages only one observation. Since the London Conference momentous events have taken place which constitute the gravest menace for the workers of all countries. The principles to which they appeal have been shamefully violated. The right of the peoples to self-determination has been openly disregarded. In Austria and Germany themselves Socialists have expressed the fear that Russia, disarmed and for the moment impotent, might become a battleground in which the rival imperialisms and their claims would meet and ultimately satisfy themselves jointly at the cost of the defeated revolution.
The working classes have a common interest in protesting against such events and in preventing the realization of such projects.
That is the wish of the authors and the signatories of the memorandum. In the same spirit we beg you to subject this document to a conscientious and thorough examination.
In communicating this request to you we address to you, comrades, our Socialist greetings.
At a meeting of the Socialist Party Committee in Berlin on May 31, according to the Vorwärts, Friedrich Ebert, Vice President of the Social Democrats, announced that the party leaders had indirectly received a copy of the Entente Socialist memorandum on war aims. Philipp Scheidemann declared that the aims of the Entente Socialists were to a great extent in complete accord with the annexationist aims of the Entente Governments. The committee adopted a resolution pledging continued adherence to the Reichstag peace resolution of July, 1917, which declared for no annexations and no indemnities.
Trade After the War
The State Department at Washington announced on June 5, 1918, that it had appointed an economic representative, who was to join the American Embassy at Rome. This was regarded as the first step in a general policy of more active participation by the United States in preparations of the nations at war with Germany for the after-the-war trade struggle.
The new treaty of alliance between Germany and Austria to control all Central European sources of raw materials, and to exclude other nations from equal trade privileges, with similar restrictions imposed by the new treaties forced on Finland, Ukrainia, and Rumania, changed the attitude of the American Government, which at first had not assented to the proposals of the Paris Economic Conference to interpose artificial obstructions to free commerce with the Central Powers after the war.
The Italian Government recently named a commission to study after-the-war problems, and with this commission the American economic delegate will have close relations. Italian importing and exporting interests in the United States also have taken advantage of the opportunity afforded by the decision of the Italian Government to consider this important subject, and have joined in the dispatch of a committee to Italy to co-operate. Italian industries, though of great potential strength and capable of returning large profits on their capitalization, are said to require substantial assistance from America if they are to go on after the war without relapsing into the control of German financiers.
It is reported that economic representatives will be sent to the American Embassies in all the allied capitals.
On May 14 Mr. Bonar Law, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in the House of Commons that, in order to leave its country's hands free for the time when peace arrived, the French Government had denounced all commercial conventions containing a general clause regarding "most-favored nations"; and that, in view of the probable scarcity of raw material after the war and the necessity for providing for the needs of the British Empire and the Allies, the British Government intended to adopt a similar course.
In answer to other questions, Mr. Bonar Law said that the British Government had not changed its policy expressed in the Paris resolutions since the entrance of the United States into the war; he had every reason to believe that America was very anxious for unity of economic control, and agreed that any useful action would be much more effective if taken in conjunction with our allies.
Lord Balfour of Burleigh's committee considered the question of the denunciation of commercial treaties and reported against it. The report contains a summary of the various commercial treaties which are in existence between Great Britain and other countries. Those with enemy countries have been terminated by the war. In the case of allied countries commercial treaties on the basis of reciprocal most-favored-nation treatment are in force between the United Kingdom and Italy, Portugal, Russia, the United States, Japan, Serbia, and Montenegro. There is a similar treaty with Rumania. United Kingdom goods have most-favored-nation treatment in France, owing to a legislative enactment and not by treaty right, for customs duties were excepted from the scope of the Anglo-French commercial convention of 1882.
Great Britain has commercial treaties on the most-favored-nation basis with Switzerland and Greece. In the case of the Netherlands and Denmark, the general principle of most-favored-nation treatment is subject to minor limitations. The position with regard to Sweden and Norway is doubtful; but the old treaty of 1826 with Sweden and Norway on a reciprocal most-favored-nation basis has continued in operation in practice, in spite of the dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway in 1905.
Outside Europe, Great Britain has commercial treaties providing for reciprocal and unconditional most-favored-nation treatment with Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Those with Costa Rica and Liberia are conditional.
Nearly all these commercial treaties are subject to a fixed period of notice on either side as a condition of denunciation. The treaty with Japan cannot be terminated before 1923. The treaty with Portugal has only recently been completed, after years of negotiation. Twelve months' notice of termination is required in the case of the treaty with Switzerland and of most of those with neutral countries outside Europe. The Spanish agreement—it is based on an exchange of notes in 1894—is subject to six months' notice.
Before the war there was no commercial treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany. The United Kingdom enjoyed most-favored-nation treatment in Germany in customs matters by virtue of a biennial law.
Exchange of Naval Greetings With England
The following exchange of greetings between the heads of the navies of the United States and Great Britain was made public:
Washington, April 5, 1918.
My Dear Sir: Your references to the splendid spirit of co-operation between the navies of our two countries, and your warm praise of the officers and men of the navy who have gone abroad, have been most grateful to me and to the men in the navy and to all Americans. The brightest spot in the tragedy of this war is this mutual appreciation of the men in the naval service. Our officers who have returned confirm the statements of Vice Admiral Sims of the courtesies and kindness shown in every way by the Admiralty and officers of the British fleet, and we have reciprocated by receiving cordially the able and efficient officers who have come from your country to confer and work elbow to elbow with our officers in the difficult work which this war imposes upon the naval service of all the countries allied in the war against the submarine menace.
I had hoped to have the pleasure of visiting Great Britain and personally expressing this feeling of mutual working together and of exchanging views, but the task here of making ready more and more units for the fleet is a very serious one, and my duty chains me here. The order in all the navy is "full speed ahead" in the construction of destroyers and other craft, and the whole service is keyed up to press this programme forward as rapidly as possible. Therefore I shall not have the pleasure until this program shall materialize better and better of personal acquaintance and conference, which would be of such interest and value.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed) JOSEPHUS DANIELS.
Sir Eric Geddes, First Lord of the Admiralty, London.
April 23.
Dear Mr. Daniels: I am exceedingly grateful to you for your letter of April 5, in which you thank me for the public reference which I have made to the very cordial relations which exist between the navies of our two countries. As you know, we all of us here have a great admiration for your officers and men and for the splendid help which they are giving in European waters; and, further, we find Vice Admiral Sims invaluable in counsel and co-operation.
I fully appreciate how onerous your office must be at the present time; and much though I regret that you do not see your way to visiting this country in the near future, I hope that we may some day have the pleasure of welcoming you here. Yours sincerely,
(Signed) E. C. GEDDES.
Commander in Chief's Office,
Queenstown, May 4.
On the anniversary of the arrival of the first United States men-of-war at Queenstown, I wish to express my deep gratitude to the United States officers and ratings for the skill, energy, and unfailing good nature which they have all consistently shown, and which qualities have so materially assisted the war by enabling the ships of the allied powers to cross the ocean in comparative freedom.
To command you is an honor, to work with you is a pleasure, and to know you is to know the best traits of the Anglo-Saxon race.
(Signed) LEWIS BAYLY,
Admiral, Commander in Chief.
England and the War's Causes
Prince Lichnowsky's Memorandum a Document of Vital Importance to History
By VISCOUNT BRYCE
Former British Ambassador to the United States
[Copyright, 1918, by The New York Times Company]
The secret memorandum which Prince Lichnowsky wrote as a record and vindication of his conduct while German Ambassador in England is the most important single document which has come before the world since the first days of the war. It was not meant to become known during the war, perhaps not within his own lifetime. It was written not to justify England but to criticise the policy which tied Germany to Austria, and was published without, and indeed against, its author's will. It may have been composed partly to relieve the writer's own feelings, from an impulse which those will understand who are prevented by considerations of public duty from vindicating their conduct to the world. It may also be due to the sense, natural to men who have borne a part in great events, that they owe it to posterity to contribute what they can to the truth of history. Anyhow, it has exposed him to the anger and persecution of the German Government; and this persecution is evidence of the importance it attaches to it as a condemnation of its conduct. The truth of its contents has been confirmed, if indeed it needed confirmation, by the statements of Herr von Jagow, late German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and of Herr Mühlon, one of the Krupp directors.
Prince Lichnowsky appears in this document as a man of clear vision and cool judgment, an acute observer of social as well as political phenomena, a good witness both to what he noted during his residence here and to what he knew of the action of his own Government. And now let us see what he records.
When the war began in August, 1914, the German Government entered on two campaigns, which it has ever since prosecuted with equal energy and an equal disregard of honor and humanity.
One of these was the campaign by arms. It suddenly invaded Belgium, a peaceful neutral country, whose neutrality it was pledged to respect, and which it has treated with the utmost cruelty, murdering, or reducing to the slavery of forced labor, its civilian and noncombatant inhabitants. It has similarly enslaved the inhabitants of Poland, and has encouraged its Turkish allies to massacre their innocent Armenian subjects.
A CAMPAIGN OF FALSEHOOD
The other campaign was one of falsehood, conducted by speeches and through the press, and intended to mislead public opinion. It was an effort to deceive both its own people and neutral nations by mendacious misrepresentations of German aims, purposes, and conduct, and by equally false descriptions of the aims, purposes, and conduct of Germany's antagonists, and especially of the British Government and the British people. It tried to represent the war as having been forced upon Germany by Britain. Germany, it said, was merely defending herself against an unprovoked attack. She desired to live at peace with her neighbors, developing her own resources, cherishing no aggressive designs. Her enormous army and navy had been created only to protect her against the jealous and malicious enemies by whom she was surrounded, and especially against Great Britain. Britain, it seems, was envious of Germany. Being herself "a decadent nation"—this was the prevailing German view—she feared the commercial competition of Germany, and tried to keep the latter out of all foreign markets. British policy—so they said—under the direction of King Edward VII., had formed alliances with France and Russia in order to hem in Germany, and after trying to block Germany's outlets in Africa and Asia, contrived this war to destroy by arms the rival whom she could not face up to in trade and manufacturing industry.
While these accusations were brought against Britain, attempts were made to excuse the invasion of Belgium by the false stories, dropped as soon as they had served their temporary purpose, that French officers had been sent into Belgium to help to organize the Belgian troops against Germany and that French aviators had been flying over German territory.
Grotesque as all these inventions were, they were repeated with such audacity as to produce some effect in neutral countries. But their chief and more lasting influence was on the German people. A large part of the German press, inspired and controlled by the German Government, had for some time past been holding up England as the persistent foe of Germany. It now redoubled its falsehoods, representing Sir Edward Grey as having plotted to bring about a war, and urged Russia to refuse a peaceful solution; and it added equally groundless charges that England had secretly planned with Belgium to attack Germany through Belgian territory. These fables, repeated incessantly by German politicians, as well as by the newspapers, found ready credence with the German people, easily led by their press, always docile to the orders of their Government, and now swept off their feet by a wave of patriotism and by the belief that they were about to achieve a victory as rapid and complete as that of 1870. It was this conviction of the malevolence and the grasping ambition of England that created that ferocious hatred of the English which has continued to display itself in the treatment of English prisoners and in the exultation over such crimes as the sinking of the Lusitania.
ORGANIZED HATE
This sudden outburst of hatred in a nation so intelligent startled and amazed us. It can be understood only when we remember that the German Government did everything in its power not only to create hatred, but also to stifle every voice that was raised to let the people know the truth. They never have been permitted to know the truth, and the disappointment that fell upon them when their march on Paris was arrested with the help of a British Army and their coasts strictly blockaded by a British fleet added fuel to their anger and has made it ever since an easier matter to keep the truth from them.
Now, what was the truth?
The British people bore no hatred whatever toward the German people. King Edward VII. meant no harm to Germany when he showed his liking for the French. Neither did his Ministers when they took steps to remove the differences that had been causing trouble between ourselves and France, and again when they came to a friendly understanding with Russia. These arrangements were made in the interests of European peace and good-will, not in order to damage Germany. British merchants and manufacturers never dreamed of fighting Germany to get rid of her commercial competition. Had such an idea occurred to them, they would have reflected that Germany was England's best foreign customer, not to add that two years of even a successful war would have inflicted far more loss upon them than the extension of German trade competition could have repaired in twenty years. British men of science and learning admired the immense contributions Germany had been making to the progress of knowledge, and they had many personal friends in Germany. British statesmen did not desire to add to British possessions abroad, feeling that we had already all we needed, and that the greatest interest of the British Empire was a universal peace.
No section of our people, neither traders, nor thinkers and writers, nor statesmen, had any idea of the dangers to the mind and the purpose of those who ruled Germany. We did not realize what the feudal aristocracy and military caste of Germany were pondering and planning, nor how little weight they attached to considerations either of good faith or of humanity. Hence, beyond maintaining a strong fleet, the indispensable protection of a country open to sea attack which did not maintain a large army, we had made no preparations for war, and had scarcely bethought ourselves of what action we should have to take on land if we became involved in war. In this belief and attitude there may have been less prudence than was needed. But our absence of suspicion is the best proof of how little we expected aggression. It is an absolute refutation of the calumny that Britain, with her tiny army, was planning an attack on the greatest military power in the world.
All this every Englishman knows. I repeat it only because it has now received not only a confirmation but also a valuable further proof in the Lichnowsky memorandum, a proof unsolicited and uncontemplated, and, moreover, unimpeachable, because it comes from one who bore a leading part in what it records, and who never meant to let it become known.
ENGLAND'S PACIFIC SPIRIT
First—The memorandum bears witness to the pacific spirit of the British people. Here are some of its words:
"The commercial jealousy about which we [in Germany] hear so much is based on a wrong conception of the circumstances. Certainly Germany's rise as a commercial power after 1870 and during the following decades was a menace to British commercial circles which with their industries and export houses had held a virtual monopoly. The increasing commerce with Germany, which was the leading country in Europe as regards British exports, had, however, given rise to the wish to maintain friendly relations with their best customer and business friend, and had driven all other considerations into the background. Notably, in commercial spirit and the effort to further our common commercial interests.
"At the English cities to which I was invited (by the Chambers of Commerce and municipalities) I was well received everywhere. * * * In all other circles I also met with the most friendly reception and co-operation—at Court, in society, and from the Government.
"On account of our fleet alone England would not have drawn the sword any more than on account of our trade, which has been alleged to have produced jealousy and finally war. * * * It was possible to arrive at an understanding in spite of the fleet, and without a 'naval holiday,' [intermission of naval shipbuilding.]"
Second—The memorandum shows that the attitude of the British Government, and in particular of Sir Edward Grey, then Foreign Minister, was entirely pacific. The admirable characterization of Sir Edward it contains is too long to quote, but it testifies to his perfect straightforwardness and constant wish to maintain good relations with Germany, and after describing how "the simplicity and honesty of his ways secured him the respect even of his opponents," it adds: "This is a true picture of the man who is decried [in Germany] as 'Liar Grey' and instigator of the world war."
The memorandum goes on to show how sincerely Sir Edward had worked for peace, first in 1913, during the Balkan troubles, when he went hand-in-hand with Germany, "hardly ever supporting the French or Russian claims. He conducted the negotiations with circumspection, calm, and tact." Frequently, when appealed to by Lichnowsky to use his influence with the Russian Government to arrange difficulties between it and Germany, "Sir Edward gladly did this, and his intervention contributed in no small degree to smooth the matter over."
Third—A still weightier evidence of the good-will of the British Government is supplied by the account given of the concessions made to German wishes in Asia and Africa. "Sir Edward Grey," says the memorandum, "after having outstanding points of difference with France and Russia, wished to make similar agreements with us. It was not his object to isolate us, but to the best of his power to make us partners in the existing association. As he had succeeded in overcoming Anglo-French and Anglo-Russian differences, so he also wished to do his best to eliminate the Anglo-German, and, by a network of treaties, which would no doubt have led in the end to an agreement on the troublesome question of naval armaments, to insure the peace of the world.
THE BAGDAD RAILWAY
"His plan was, in his own words, without interfering with England's existing friendship, which had no aggressive aims and does not entail any binding obligations, to arrive at a friendly rapprochement and understanding with Germany to bring the two groups [of powers] nearer." In pursuance of this policy, the British Government went a very long way to meet German wishes in respect to the Bagdad Railway. They agreed to let it be prolonged to El Basra; they included the whole of Mesopotamia as far as that town in the German sphere of influence, and also the whole district of the Bagdad and Anatolian railway, i. e., all the centre of Asia Minor.
Not less large were the concessions made in South Central Africa. "The new agreement [regarding the interests of Germany and England in the African possessions of Portugal] was fully in accord with German wishes and interests. For these the British Government showed the greatest consideration. Sir E. Grey intended to demonstrate his good-will toward us, but he also wished to assist our colonial development as a whole." These arrangements were embodied in two treaties highly advantageous to Germany, which, however, the German Government, for some reasons of its own, had postponed signing, so that they remained unpublished up till the outbreak of the war. Had we in the inner spirit of the German Government, and the use it would make of our concessions, British Ministers might well have hesitated to go so far as they did. But that they conceded so much is the completest proof of their good-will and the most convincing refutation of the charges which the German Ministers and press have brought against them.
It would take too long to follow out in this article the constant efforts of the British Government during the fateful days before the outbreak of the war to avoid a conflict by means of Sir E. Grey's repeated plans of mediation and adjustment. The memorandum shows how earnestly he labored for peace at Berlin, at Petersburg, at Vienna, and how all his attempts were baffled by the settled purpose of the German Government to force on war.
THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE
Britain may, like other nations, have in the past sometimes indulged her ambition, sometimes abused her strength, sometimes embarked in wars that might well have been avoided. But on this occasion at least she is blameless. Never in her long history has she had so perfectly clear a conscience as in the case of this war. Her people neither contemplated it nor desired it. They were driven into it by the action of the German Government, which persisted in pushing it on even when Austria seemed willing to draw back. All had evidently been settled at that famous Potsdam conference, when (as the German Ambassador at Constantinople, before Italy had declared war against Austria, told his Italian colleague) the Emperor had inquired of his military and naval chiefs whether they were ready for the conflict for which, during some months preceding, preparations had been in progress. Neither when the war began did Britain wish to do more than prevent Germany from destroying Belgium and mortally wounding France. Sir E. Grey spoke truly for the nation when, as the memorandum records, he said: "We don't want to crush Germany."
Germany and Great Britain in 1912
Lord Haldane's Official Report of His Conciliatory Mission Prior to the War
Lord Haldane, the British Minister for War in 1912, was sent on a mission to Berlin in that year to confer with the German Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg, in the hope of reaching some agreement with Germany for a mutual reduction of armament, and for the establishment of conditions that would preserve European peace. The hope regarding armaments was not fulfilled, and the conversations that had taken place were not made public by either Government; but late in May, 1918, in view of the revelations of Prince Lichnowsky regarding Germany's responsibility for the war, the British Government at length published Lord Haldane's report. It is in the form of a daily record, beginning Feb. 8, 1912, and is here reproduced in full, with the exception of parts relating solely to British defensive measures:
At the interview with the Chancellor, which took place at 2 o'clock and lasted for more than an hour and a half, I began by giving him the message of good wishes for the conversations and for the future of Anglo-German relations with which the King had intrusted me at the audience I had before leaving. He was pleased with this message, and intimated that he would write through the German Ambassador to thank the King. I then said that perhaps it would be convenient if I defined the capacity in which I was in Berlin, and there to talk to him; and I defined it as above intimated. I proceeded to ask whether he wished to make any observations or desired that I should begin. He wished me to begin, and I went on at once to speak to him as arranged in a conversation I had had with Sir Edward Grey before leaving London.
"At the interview with the Chancellor, which took place at 2 o'clock and lasted for more than an hour and a half, I began by giving him the message of good wishes for the conversations and for the future of Anglo-German relations with which the King had intrusted me at the audience I had before leaving. He was pleased with this message, and intimated that he would write through the German Ambassador to thank the King. I then said that perhaps it would be convenient if I defined the capacity in which I was in Berlin, and there to talk to him; and I defined it as above intimated. I proceeded to ask whether he wished to make any observations or desired that I should begin. He wished me to begin, and I went on at once to speak to him as arranged in a conversation I had had with Sir Edward Grey before leaving London."
"I told him that I felt there had been a great deal of drifting away between Germany and England, and that it was important to ask what was the cause. To ascertain this, events of recent history had to be taken into account. Germany had built up, and was building up, magnificent armaments, and with the aid of the Triple Alliance she had become the centre of a tremendous group. The natural consequence was that other powers had tended to approximate. I was not questioning for a moment Germany's policy, but this was the natural and inevitable consequence in the interests of security. We used to have much the same situation with France when she was very powerful on the sea that we had with Germany now. While the fact to which I referred created a difficulty, the difficulty was not insuperable; for two groups of powers might be on very friendly relations if there was only an increasing sense of mutual understanding and confidence. The present seemed to me to be a favorable moment for a new departure. The Morocco question was now out of the way, and we had no agreements with France or Russia except those that were in writing and published to the world."
"The Chancellor interrupted me, and asked me whether this was really so. I replied that I could give him the assurance that it was so without reserve, and that in the situation, which now existed I saw no reason why it should not be possible for us to enter into a new and cordial friendship, carrying the two old ones into it, perhaps, to the profit of Russia and France as well as Germany herself. He replied that he had no reason to differ from this view."
"In connection with my remarks as to the events of last Summer, he interposed that we had military preparations. I replied that no preparations had been made which were other than those required to bring the capacity of the British Army in point of mobilization to something approaching the standard which Germany had long ago reached, and which was with her a matter of routine. For this purpose we had studied our deficiencies and modes of operation * * * We could not be caught unprepared."
NO AGGRESSIVE ALLIANCES
The Chancellor seemed much pleased with Lord Haldane's explanation, and said: "There had been much talk of our fleet and our army, and the steps we had taken, but that he understood the position I had indicated." "I said, in reply, that it was a pleasure to me to hear this, and that I hoped I should carry him with me still further in my belief that if Germany had really, which I did not at all suppose, intended to crush France and destroy her capacity to defend herself, we in England would have had such a direct interest in the result that we could not have sat by and seen this done."
"He said he did not dissent from this view, nor did he wish to hamper our freedom in such a case. But he wished to propose a formula; the balance of power was a phrase he did not like, though he admitted that the historical considerations I had referred to made it natural that some grouping should take place, and that England should lean toward the weaker side. He had, however, proposed, in his communication to us, a formula of neutrality which might go a long way to help."
"I said I cordially agreed with the good intention of his formula, the working of which was that neither was to enter into any combinations against the other. If this meant combinations for attack or aggression, I was entirely of his mind. But I must put on spectacles in looking at his words, and, first of all, I would put on German spectacles. How would Germany find herself if, when bound by such a formula, we were so wicked as to attack her ally Austria or to try to grab Denmark, which was of deep strategical interest to her? Again, suppose Germany joined in an attack on Japan or Portugal or Belgium—he then interposed 'or Holland'—but I said I really hadn't all our treaties sufficiently in my head to be as sure about Holland as I was about the others. Or if, I added, Germany were to pounce upon France and proceed to dismember her, what would happen? He answered that these cases were not at all likely, but he admitted that they were fatal to his formula. I asked him whether he would be satisfied with mutual undertakings against aggressive or unprovoked attacks and against all combinations, military and naval agreements, and plans directed to the purpose of aggression and unprovoked attack. He said it was very difficult to define what was meant by aggression or unprovoked attack. I replied that you could not define the number of grains which it took to make a heap, but one knew a heap when one saw one." * * *
QUESTION OF GERMAN FLEET
"We then passed on to the question of the German fleet, as to which he asked me to make any observations. I said I must. He and I had been talking with the most absolute candor and friendliness to each other, and I felt he would regard me as wanting in character were I not very frank with him about the new navy law. What was the use of entering into a solemn agreement for concord and against attack if Germany at the same moment was going to increase her battle fleet as a precaution against us, and we had consequently to increase our battle fleet as a precaution against her? This was vital from our point of view, because we were an island power dependent for our food supplies on the power of protecting our commerce, and for this we needed the two-power standard and a substantial preponderance in battle fleets. He said that it was absolutely essential to Germany to have a third squadron in full readiness for war. At present, owing to her system of recruiting, for three months in the year she had virtually, owing to the necessity for training recruits, no fleet ready at all. I said I did not contest this; she was quite entitled to have it if she thought it necessary, but the result would be that we should not be able to rely on the two battle squadrons and reserve squadrons which had sufficed hitherto, but that we should be compelled to have five, or even six, squadrons ready in home waters, perhaps bringing ships from the Mediterranean to strengthen them."
"He asked me was that necessary if we had a friendly agreement? I said it would be a less convincing proof of friendliness if Germany prepared her third squadron, and we should have no option. Still, I said, this was not so serious as the proposal to add a third ship every second year to the German construction program. This would put us in great difficulties so far as securing the good opinion of the public in England about the value of an agreement. We should certainly have to proceed at once to lay down two keels to each one of the new German additions, and that would cost money and cause feeling. It was true that each country could bear the additional cost without difficulty. They were rich and so were we. If it was for the purpose of the navy our people would not complain, in my opinion, of the addition of another shilling to the income tax, but it would be a great pity. He asked was that really likely to be our program, the laying down of two additional keels for each German one. I said that I had no doubt that it would be the result, and the Government would be turned out if they failed to accomplish it; and therefore some modification seemed to be of the utmost importance, if the agreement was to be a real success."
"After a pause he said he would consider this and 'die Sache überlegen.' The conversation up to this point had been largely in German, I taking to English whenever there was a delicate topic, and the Chancellor occasionally speaking English, but nearly always German. In order to avoid misunderstanding repeated sentences in the other language. I was impressed by his evident desire to meet us wherever he could, and I derived considerable hope from the manner and emphasis with which he said that he would reconsider the question of the ships. But I must add that he went on to say that the question of the new squadron was vital, and that some new ships would be necessary in it. Could I suggest any way out, for they must keep to the plan of a new law. I observed that it was not for me to venture to make any suggestion to his Excellency, but that a spreading out in size of the new program might make a difference. He said, 'Perhaps, eight or nine years'; I added, 'or twelve, if he could not do better.' He again said that he would take this matter into serious consideration and consult his experts. 'My Admirals,' he said, 'are very difficult.' 'That was an experience,' I observed, 'which we sometimes found in England also.'"
THE KAISER AND VON TIRPITZ
On the following day, Feb. 9, Lord Haldane had an interview with the Emperor, the Chancellor, and Admiral Tirpitz on the navy, at which Tirpitz held out for the new German naval program, which was discussed at great length. Lord Haldane wrote:
"I insisted that fundamental modification was essential. The tone was thoroughly friendly, but I felt that I had come to the most difficult part of my task of getting material fit to bring back for the consideration of my colleagues. The utmost I was able to get was this: The Emperor was so disturbed at the idea that the world would not believe in the reality of the agreement unless the shipbuilding program was modified that he asked me what I would suggest. I said that it was a too technical matter for me to discuss here, but that if he would not drop the new law—which I saw he felt he could not—he might at least drop out a ship. This idea was never abandoned, but Admiral Tirpitz combated it so hard that I said: 'Well, can we not spread the tempo?' After much talking we got to this, that, as I insisted that they must not inaugurate the agreement by building an additional ship at once, they should put off building the first ship till 1913, and then should not lay down another till three years after, (1916,) and not lay down the third till 1919."
"Admiral Tirpitz wanted us to give some understanding about our own shipbuilding. He thought the two-power standard a hard one for Germany, and, indeed, Germany could not make any admission about it. I said it was not a matter of admission. Germany must be free and we must be free, and we should probably lay down two keels to their one. In this case the initiative was not with us, but with them. An idea occurred to all of us on this observation that we should try to avoid defining a standard proportion in the agreement, and that, indeed, we should say nothing at all about shipbuilding in the if the political agreement was concluded the Emperor should at once announce to the German public that this entirely new fact modified his desire for the fleet law as originally conceived, and that it should be delayed and spread out to the extent we had discussed. For the rest, each of us would remain masters in our own houses as far as naval matters were concerned."
"The Emperor thought the agreement would affect profoundly the tendency in shipbuilding, and he certainly should not desire to go beyond the three ships. The fact of the agreement was the key to everything. The Chancellor, he said, would propose to me this afternoon a formula which he had drafted. I said that I would see the Chancellor and discuss any further territorial questions with him, and would then return as speedily as I could and report the good disposition which I had found to my colleagues, and leave the difficulties of not being able to stop shipbuilding more completely, and, indeed, all other matters to their judgment. I could only assure the Emperor that I had been much struck with the friendly disposition in Berlin, and that he would find a not less friendly disposition in London."
NO AGREEMENT REACHED
Lord Haldane mentions that he was in communication with M. Jules Cambon, the French Ambassador in Berlin, and recounted his conversations to him. The Ambassador quite appreciated that the purpose of the mission was to create a detente, as distinguished from an entente. M. Jules Cambon reported his conversation with Lord Haldane to M. Poincaré.
Lord Haldane had another conversation with the Chancellor in the hope of arriving at a formula with regard to the navy. The Chancellor said that the "forces he had to contend with were almost insuperable. Public opinion in Germany expected a new law and the third squadron, and he must have these. I said we could not contest Germany's right to do in these matters, and indeed in other matters, as she pleased. But why not postpone the shipbuilding for longer and adapt the law accordingly? * * *"
"The Chancellor said he would try. He asked me to consult the experts in London and make a suggestion. I had said, he remarked, that everything was good only on balance, and Germany must for a greater end give up a minor advantage. The new squadron and the new fleet law she must have, but it was a question for the experts, on which he did not pronounce, whether a retardation of greater magnitude than Tirpitz proposed might not be possible. I promised to let him know privately the state of feeling here about the Tirpitz proposals on my return."
The Ministers then endeavored to arrive at a formula, the whole purpose of which was to bring about conditions which would prevent war; to endeavor to get a definition of the duty of neutrality; and, in the event of war, to combine in order to localize the conflict.
After Lord Haldane's return to London, negotiations in search of a formula were continued. Prince Lichnowsky preserved a friendly atmosphere, but the German Government never agreed to conditions which would have safeguarded the neutrality of Belgium or maintained her honorable obligations to our allies. The nearest they got at the eleventh hour was, as Lord Grey said, "far too narrow an engagement for us."
British Official Statement Issued in 1915
The German press in 1915 made certain incorrect allegations regarding the Haldane Mission, whereupon on Aug. 31, 1915, the British Government issued the following official statement:
The Foreign Office Issued the Following Statement Respecting the Anglo-German Negotiations of 1912:
An account of the 1912 Anglo-German negotiations was published in the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung last month. This account was misleading, and was no doubt intended to mislead, and made it appear that the British Government had at that time rejected what would be regarded in many quarters as a reasonable offer of friendship from Germany.
In these circumstances it may be as well to publish a statement of the facts compiled from official records here. Early in 1912 the German Chancellor sketched to Lord Haldane the following formula as one which would meet the views of the Imperial Government:
1. The high contracting parties assure each other mutually of their desire of peace and friendship.
2. They will not either of them make or prepare to make any (unprovoked) attack upon the other, or join in any combination or design against the other for purposes of aggression, or become party to any plan or naval or military enterprise alone or in combination with any other power directed to such an end, and declare not to be bound by any such engagement.
3. If either of the high contracting parties become entangled in a war with one or more powers in which it cannot be said to be the aggressor, the other party will at least observe toward the power so entangled a benevolent neutrality, and will use its utmost endeavor for the localization of the conflict. If either of the high contracting parties is forced to go to war by obvious provocation from a third party, they bind themselves to enter into an exchange of views concerning their attitude in such a conflict.
4. The duty of neutrality which arises out of the preceding article has no application in so far as it may not be reconcilable with existing agreements which the high contracting parties have already made.
5. The making of new agreements which render it impossible for either of the parties to observe neutrality toward the other beyond what is provided by the preceding limitation is excluded in conformity with the provisions in Article 2.
6. The high contracting parties declare that they will do all in their power to prevent differences and misunderstandings arising between either of them and other powers.
GERMAN PLAN ONE-SIDED
These conditions, although in appearance fair as between the parties, would have been grossly unfair and one-sided in their operation. Owing to the general position of the European powers and the treaty engagements by which they were bound, the result of Articles 4 and 5 would have been that, while Germany in the case of a European conflict would have remained free to support her friends, this country would have been forbidden to raise a finger in defense of hers.
Germany could arrange without difficulty that the formal inception of hostilities should rest with Austria. If Austria and Russia were at war, Germany would support Austria, as is evident from what occurred at the end of July, 1914; while as soon as Russia was attacked by two powers France was bound to come to her assistance. In other words, the pledge of neutrality offered by Germany would have been absolutely valueless, because she could always plead the necessity of fulfilling her existing obligations under the Triple Alliance as an excuse for departing from neutrality. On the other hand, no such departure, however serious the provocation, would have been possible for this country, which was bound by no alliances with the exception of those with Japan and Portugal, while the making of fresh alliances was prohibited by Article 5. In a word, as appeared still more evident later, there was to be a guarantee of absolute neutrality on one side but not on the other.
It was impossible for us to enter into a contract so obviously inequitable, and the formula was accordingly rejected by Sir Edward Grey.
Count Metternich upon this pressed for counter proposals, which he stated would be without prejudice and not binding unless we were satisfied that our wishes were met on the naval question. On this understanding Sir Edward Grey on the 14th of March, 1912, gave Count Metternich the following draft formula, which had been approved by the Cabinet:
England will make no unprovoked attack upon Germany, and pursue no aggressive policy toward her.
Aggression upon Germany is not the subject, and forms no part of any treaty, understanding, or combination to which England is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object.
Count Metternich thought this formula inadequate, and suggested two alternative additional clauses:
England will therefore observe at least a benevolent neutrality should war be forced upon Germany; or
England will therefore, as a matter of course, remain neutral if a war is forced upon Germany.
This, he added, would not be binding unless our wishes were met with regard to the naval program.
SIR EDWARD GREY'S VIEW
Sir Edward Grey considered that the British proposals were sufficient. He explained that, if Germany desired to crush France, England might not be able to sit still, though, if France were aggressive or attacked Germany, no support would be given by his Majesty's Government or approved by England. It is obvious that the real object of the German proposal was to obtain the neutrality of England in all eventualities, since, should a war break out, Germany would certainly contend that it had been forced upon her, and would claim that England should remain neutral. An admirable example of this is the present war, in which, in spite of the facts, Germany contends that war has been forced upon her. Even the third member of the Triple Alliance, who had sources of information not open to us, did not share this view, but regarded it as an aggressive war.
Sir Edward Grey eventually proposed the following formula:
The two powers being mutually desirous of securing peace and friendship between them, England declares that she will neither make nor join in any unprovoked attack upon Germany. Aggression upon Germany is not the subject, and forms no part of, any treaty, understanding, or combination to which England is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object.
Sir Edward Grey when he handed this formula to Count Metternich said that the use of the word "neutrality" would convey the impression that more was meant than was warranted by the text; he suggested that the substance of what was required would be obtained and more accurately expressed by the words "will neither make nor join in any unprovoked attack."
Count Metternich thereupon received instructions to make it quite clear that the Chancellor could recommend the Emperor to give up the essential parts of the Novelle (the bill then pending for the increase of the German Navy) only if we could conclude an agreement guaranteeing neutrality of a far-reaching character and leaving no doubt as to any interpretation. He admitted that the Chancellor's wish amounted to a guarantee of absolute neutrality, failing which the Novelle must proceed.
Count Metternich stated that there was no chance of the withdrawal of the Novelle, but said that it might be modified; it would be disappointing to the Chancellor if we did not go beyond the formula we had suggested.
Sir Edward Grey said that he could understand that there would be disappointment if his Majesty's Government were to state that the carrying out of the Novelle would put an end to the negotiations and form an insurmountable obstacle to better relations. His Majesty's Government did not say this, and it hoped that the formula which it had suggested might be considered in connection with the discussion of territorial arrangements, even if it did not prove effective in preventing the increase of naval expenditure.
Sir Edward Grey added that if some arrangement could be made between the two Governments it would have a favorable though indirect effect upon naval expenditure as time went on; it would have, moreover, a favorable and direct effect upon public opinion in both countries.
A few days afterward Count Metternich communicated to Sir Edward Grey the substance of a letter from the Chancellor, in which the latter said that, as the formula suggested by his Majesty's Government was from the German point of view insufficient, and as his Majesty's Government could not agree to the larger formula for which he had asked, the Novelle must proceed on the lines on which it had been presented to the Federal Council. The negotiations then came to an end, and with them the hope of a mutual reduction in the expenditure on armaments of the two countries.
THE EUROPEAN WAR AS SEEN BY CARTOONISTS
[American Cartoon]
"Advance!"
—From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
[Italian Cartoon]
There Is a Reason
——From Il 420, Florence.
ST. PETER: "Why do you not protest against these German barbarities?"
POPE BENEDICT: "Because I don't want to be a protestant pope!"
[German Cartoon]
The Modern Miracle
The Statue of Liberty suddenly changed into a Fury!
[Referring to President Wilson's "force to the uttermost" speech.]
[German Cartoon]
Paris Under Bombardment
Poincaré and Clemenceau when the big gun roars.
[German Cartoon]
German Hatred of England
A Berlin version of what would happen if the
peoples under British rule could do as they pleased.
—From Kladderadatsch,Berlin.
[Dutch Cartoon]
Emperor Charles' "Dear Sixtus" Letter
—From De Amsterdammer, Amsterdam.
JESTER VON BUELOW: "I was discharged because my master talked too much."
JESTER CZERNIN: "And I because my master wrote too much."
[English Cartoon]
The "Dear Sixtus" Episode
"And a smile on the face of the tiger!"
—From Passing Show,London.
[English Cartoon]
Another War Problem
—From London Opinion.
THE LAND LADY: "Will you show me to the underclothing department, please?"
THE SHOPWALKER: "Certainly—er—men's or women's?"
[Swiss Cartoon]
The War and the Bread Basket
—From Nebelspalter, Zurich.
[Italian Cartoon]
The German Drive
—From L'Asino, Rome
Still more blood—by the wish of the Kaiser and his people.
[American Cartoon]
"Men! Bah!"
—From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
[American Cartoons]
Change, Son, It's One or the Other
—St. Louis Republic.
"We Must Tighten the Bonds"
—Baltimore American.
No Compromise
—St. Louis Republic.
The Harder the Blow the Brighter the Sparks
—Cincinnati Post.
[German Cartoon]
The German Obsession of Militarism
TROTZKY TO DIPLOMATS: "Nothing doing, gentlemen. I'm deaf in both ears."
TROTZKY TO ARMY OFFICERS: "Why—yes!— With pleasure—and haste!
Any peace looks good to me!"
—From Kladderadatsch, Berlin.
[American Cartoon]
Good Fishing in Troubled Waters
—From The New York Times.
[French Cartoon]
Bombs and Shells
—From La Victoire, Paris.
"Who said peace?"
[American Cartoon]
"The Bear That Walks Like a"—Lamb!
—From The New York Herald.
[American Cartoon]
Shearing the Victim
—From The New York Times.
THE ALLIES: "Perhaps we should save the Bear, even though he doesn't yelp."
[German Cartoon]
German Anti-Japanese Propaganda
How "Wily Wilson" and "Juggling John" tried to use the Japanese puma—
—and the result, somewhat different from what they expected.
[Italian Cartoon]
Italy's Fighters in France
—From Il 420, Florence.
ITALY: "Here I am, to lend a hand!"
[Spanish Cartoon]
The Russian Peace
—From Iberia, Barcelona.
TROTZKY AND LENINE: "We have done more than Kerensky!"
[German Cartoon]
The American Brother
"Damn! I believe I'm too late for the entry into Berlin!"
[German Cartoon]
The Effect in New York When the long-distance shells fall in Paris.
[German Cartoon]
Seventy-five Miles
A Berlin boast of what the long-range gun will do.
[American Cartoon]
Picking the Lock
—From The Galveston News.
He expected inconvenience; he found difficulty, and is coming up against impossibility.
[German Cartoon]
The Wish Is Father to the Thought
—From Kladderadatsch, Berlin.
To the Adventurer: Stay at home and remain all write, (right.)
[Dutch Cartoons]
Holland Begging From Warring Powers
SHADE OF ADRIAAN VAN DER WERFF: "Has my story taught you nothing?
Look out for yourself. Suffer anything rather than budge."
Paris Bombarded by the Kaiser
—From De Amsterdammer, Amsterdam.
[American Cartoons]
How Long Can They Keep It Up?
—Chicago Herald and Examiner.
A Bumper Hun Harvest Is Predicted
—Central Press Association.
The New Austro-German Treaty>
—Dayton Daily News.
[American Cartoons]
Family Troubles
The Winning Hand
Ukrainian Independence
The Watch on the Rhine
—From The San Francisco Chronicle.