Our Part in the Great War

by Arthur Gleason

(1) The enemy.

(2) The Allies.

(3) The Neutrals.

The first two relationships have long been realized. The third—that of relationship toward neutrals—has never been realized. It is not fully realized to-day. The failure to realize it led America and England into the fight of 1812. It led to the Mason and Slidell case between England and America in the Civil War. The importance of winning neutral good will and public opinion is not, even to-day, included in the forefront of the national effort. It is still spoken of as a minor matter of giving "penny-a-liner" journalists "interviews." England has steered her way through diplomatic difficulties with neutral governments. But that is only one-half the actual problem of a foreign policy. The other half is to win the public opinion of the neutral people, because there is no such thing finally as neutrality.[2] Public opinion turns either Pro or Anti, in the end. At present about thirty per cent of American public opinion is Pro-Ally. Ten per cent is anti-British, ten per cent anti-Russian, ten per cent Pro-German, and forty per cent neutral. The final weight will rest in whichever cause wins the forty per cent neutral element. That element is contained in the Middle West. The failure in dealing with America has been the failure to see that we needed facts, if we were to come to a decision. Our only way of getting facts is through the representatives whom we send over.

A clear proof that the cause of the Allies has not touched America except on the Atlantic Seaboard lies in the exact number of men from the Eastern Universities who have come across to help France, as compared with the number from the Middle Western institutions of learning. For instance, in the American Field Ambulance Service Harvard has 98 men, Princeton, 28, Yale 27, Columbia 9, Dartmouth 8. These are Eastern institutions. From the Middle West, with the exception of the University of Michigan, which has sent several, there is occasionally one man from a college. The official report up to the beginning of 1916 shows not a man from what many consider the leading University of America, the State University of Wisconsin, and less than six from the entire Middle West. There is no need of elaborating the point. The Middle West has not been allowed to know the facts.

Because my wife told her friends in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the facts of the war, three men have come four thousand miles to help France. One is Robert Toms, General Manager of the Marion Water Works, one is Dr. Cogswell, a successful physician, one is Verne Marshall, Editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Each man of the three is a successful worker, and gave up his job. These three men are as significant as the 98 college boys from Harvard.

What took place in that little Iowa group will take place throughout the whole vast Middle Western territory, when the Allies are willing to use the only methods that avail in a modern democracy—namely, the use of public opinion, publicity, and the periodicals,—by granting facilities for information to the representatives of a democracy when they come desiring to know the truth. Constantly, one is met in London and Paris when seeking information on German atrocities, German frightfulness, German methods:

"But surely your people know all that."

How can they know it? Our newspaper men have rarely been permitted access to the facts by the Allies. But to every phase of the war they have been personally conducted by the German General Staff. It has been as much as our liberty was worth, and once or twice almost as much as our life was worth, to endeavor to build up the Pro-Ally case, so constant have been the obstacles placed in our way. Much of the interesting war news, most of the arresting interviews, have come from the German side. The German General Staff has shown an understanding of American psychology, a flexibility in handling public opinion. The best "stories" have often come out of Germany, given to American correspondents. Their public men and their officers, including Generals, have unbent, and stated their case. An American writer, going to Germany, has received every aid in gathering his material. A writer, with the Allies, is constantly harassed. This is a novel experience to any American journalist whose status at home is equal to that of the public and professional men, whose work he makes known and aids. My own belief for the first twenty-two months of work in obtaining information and passing it on to my countrymen was that such effort in their behalf was not desired by France and England, that their officials and public men would be better pleased if we ceased to annoy them. I was thoroughly discouraged by the experience, so slight was the official interest over here in having America know the truth.

This foreign policy, which dickers with the State Department, but neglects the people, is a survival of the Tory tradition. One of the ablest interpreters of that tradition calls such a foreign policy—"the preference for negotiating with governments rather than with peoples." But the foreign policy of the United States is created by public opinion. Negotiation with the State Department leaves the people, who are the creators of policy, cold and neutral, or heated and hostile, because uninformed. If the Allied Governments had released facts to the representatives of American public opinion, our foreign policy of the last two years might have been more firm and enlightened, instead of hesitant and cloudy. As a people we have made no moral contribution to the present struggle, because in part we did not have the fact-basis and the intellectual material on which to work.