The war myth in United States history

by C. H. Hamlin

Soon after war was declared in 1914, Great Britain placed mines in the North Sea and with the aid of her navy blockaded Germany and the adjacent neutral portions of North Europe. As a result, all goods going in that direction were captured. The United States protested, but Great Britain refused to yield the point, claiming it to be a military necessity albeit illegal from the point of view of international law. Great Britain blockaded Germany by mines, and cut off all foreign trade with Germany and neutral ports near Germany to prevent the entrance of goods into Germany. Germany retaliated in February, 1915, by employing the submarine to blockade Great Britain. One policy was as legal as the other. Mr. Wilson protested, but neither side yielded. In no case in history has a nation at war observed the established rules if the rules conflict with military expediency. The United States has been no exception to this procedure. Since the object of warfare is the physical destruction of an opponent, once you justify the war you must justify any means employed to gain the victory. In protesting to Germany, we argued that the submarines could not warn ships to take off passengers before they were sunk, but neither could the mines planted by Great Britain. American ships kept out of the mine zones but disregarded the submarine zones for reasons we shall later explain. The Lusitania, a British ship, was sunk by a submarine on May 7, 1915. One hundred and fourteen Americans lost their lives. We immediately protested. But the facts have shown that the Lusitania carried a large quantity of munitions of war. At the time the boat was sunk a United States senator asked the Treasury Department for the bill of lading. He was told it had been turned over to the State Department. When the senator asked the State Department for a copy of the bill of lading in order to see what was on board, the State Department refused to disclose the contents, on the grounds that it was to be kept for diplomatic correspondence. It was not known till after the war was over what had actually been on board the ship. Since then it has been officially stated by the collector of customs then at New York that the Lusitania carried munitions of war. Besides, Germany had warned the passengers before getting on board that in all probability the ship would be sunk. This notice was officially published in the New York papers before the ship sailed. There is no question but that the passengers had been given due warning. Whether the sinking was legal or not depends upon the point of view. According to Germany, she did more than the law required by her warning before the ship left harbor, which is rather better than being warned a few minutes before being sunk in mid-ocean.

The British seized and searched the mails. United States officials below the rank of minister were searched by the British while traveling to and from the continent. Before the close of 1914, thirty-one cargoes of copper valued at $5,500,000 had been captured by Great Britain, but the United States owners were compensated. Their seizure, however, was illegal. Early in 1916, Germany agreed to give up the use of the submarine, but on condition that the United States make Great Britain obey international law. We could not force Great Britain to abide by international law, and consequently Germany resumed her submarine warfare in 1917, which was our official reason for entering the war. But this was only our legal excuse. The effective causes were our economic ties with the Allies, and Allied propaganda in the United States. We will examine these causes more carefully.

Modern warfare is a conflict of economic resources as well as armies. The British navy cut off all economic intercourse between Germany and the United States. In this way, the economic resources of the United States were in the hands of the Allies. American agriculture, credit, and industry soon became indispensable to the Allied cause. In 1915 an Anglo-French mission came to New York and secured a loan of $500,000,000. This money was left with various banks in New York for the purpose of buying supplies from America. The Allied governments continued to borrow in Wall Street, and these banks loaned England and France money with which to buy materials. Soon the House of Morgan became the purchasing agent of the Allies. The Morgan firm selected Edward R. Stetinius, President of the Diamond Match Company, as the purchasing agent. Mr. Stetinius selected one hundred and seventy-five men to assist him in the task. They were soon purchasing supplies for the Allies at the rate of $10,000,000 a day. By September, 1917, the Morgan firm had purchased $3,000,000,000 in merchandise and munitions for the Allies in addition to the selling of Allied bonds. The day the United States declared war against Germany the British government's bank account with Morgan was heavily overdrawn.

When Kitchener became Minister of War in Great Britain in 1915 one of his first acts was to cable Charles M. Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Company to come to England immediately. Schwab went and agreed to sell all the output of the Bethlehem Steel Company to the British government. In less than two years, he shipped about $300,000,000 worth of war material to England. Twenty submarines were built and sent in parts to Canada where they were assembled and sent across to England. This was done a year before the German submarine Deutschland came to the United States and was advertised as the first to cross the Atlantic. (See John Moody, "Masters of Capital," pages 162-172.)

American industry had become one with the Allies. Our greatest banking and industrial institutions had become dependent upon an Allied victory and an Allied victory was dependent upon them. American industry became pro-Ally because the British blockade cut off our trade with Germany. German and Austrian agents such as Dumba, Karl Boy-Ed and Franz von Papen were expelled from the country because of their un-neutral activities on behalf of the Central Powers.

"Patriotic" societies such as "The Navy League," "The American Defense Society," and the "National Security League" were all tied up financially with munition plants. These societies were propaganda bureaus for "preparedness" and later for our entrance into the conflict. The nineteen men who founded the Navy League had among their number representatives of the three manufacturers of armor plate in America,—the Midvale, Bethlehem, and Carnegie Companies. The Navy League was in practice the propaganda bureau of the three companies working together to sell armor plate.

Modern warfare has become even more than a conflict of armies and of economic resources. Propaganda to secure popular support, has become more and more necessary. Both sides in the European conflict made great efforts to present their propaganda before America, but the Central Powers failed primarily because of the British blockade. The Allies, on their side, had the co-operation of American business, and easily accomplished their purpose. Professor Hayes in his "Brief History of the Great War" says: "The British resorted to every known device of propaganda from employing secret service agents in New York to maintaining at Washington the great journalist, Lord Northcliffe, with a host of assistants, as a publicity director." These propagandists had the co-operation of the bankers who had made loans to the Allies or had acted as purchasing agents. All this happened in 1916, but the American people never knew the source of their "war news" until the conflict was over. Mr. Rathom, of the Providence Journal, of Providence, R.I., was notorious for his accounts of German "crimes." The Boston Herald of December 30, 1923, in an editorial comment, says: "It is, of course, true, as most well informed people now understand, that the Rathom disclosures which made the Providence Journal famous during the war were fiction—but Rathom did this for the praiseworthy purpose of arousing his countrymen to a war fury. He took one of the practical ways of doing so." Captain Ferdinand Tuohy of the British Secret Service in "The Secret Corps" says: "All the trickery and subterfuge and war-wisdom of the ages brought up-to-date, intensified and harnessed to every modern invention and device, ... a Machiavelli, a Talleyrand or some other master schemer of the ages come back to earth, would have thrilled at the amazing cunning and corruption of it all." The Belgium authorities themselves have denied the truth of the crimes given out in the Bryce Report. Mr. Lloyd George has stated in print that careful investigations disclosed no case of Belgian children with hands cut off. Yet these are some of the crimes with which the American public were fed during 1916, 1917 and 1918. The peoples of the Central Powers were, of course, furnished similar crimes attributed to the Allies. There were many crimes committed as in all wars, but every nation, including the United States, was guilty of them.

It is not easy to explain the attitudes of many prominent officials of the United States during the years preceding our entrance into the war. Ambassador Walter H. Page, our representative in London, was guilty of direct disloyalty to the American Government and people. When President Wilson protested to the British Government against her disregard of neutral rights Mr. Page did not give the messages to Sir Edward Grey of the British Foreign Office. He would read them to him and would then ask Grey to co-operate with him in making a reply to the United States. Sir Edward Grey says in his memoirs: "Page came to see me at the foreign office one day and produced a long dispatch from Washington contesting our claims to act as we were doing in stopping contraband in going to neutral ports. 'I am instructed' he said 'to read this dispatch to you.' He read and I listened. He then said 'I have now read the dispatch but I do not agree with it. Let us consider how it should be answered.'" In all diplomacy there is no other example of such a procedure. Page was determined upon our entrance from the very beginning of the war. Many of our representatives at the principal courts of Europe were connected with the Allies personally through business or banking interests in this country.

Mr. Wilson himself was pro-British in scholarship. He was a great admirer of the cabinet-parliamentary form of government used in England. All his heroes in political science were English authorities. Mr. Wilson's former attorney-general, Thomas W. Gregory, says in a letter to the New York Times of February 9, 1925, that Wilson was "by inheritance, tradition, and reasoning at all times the friend of the Allies." Mr. Tumulty also now says Mr. Wilson was never neutral.

President Wilson had become converted to the idea of intervention by the spring of 1916. Sir Edward Grey says in his memoirs that Colonel House assured him in February, 1916, that Wilson would do his best to bring the United States to the aid of the Allies. In April, 1916, the President consulted Champ Clark, Speaker of the House; Claude Kitchen, Democratic Leader; H. D. Flood, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; and other Democratic leaders regarding their willingness to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side. This is known as the famous "Sunrise Conference." They refused, and Mr. Wilson allowed his party to use as the 1916 slogan, "He kept us out of war." At the time he was afraid to advocate intervention for fear of splitting his party. There were demands on the part of certain political leaders and the press for immediate intervention but these demands were not representative of public opinion at the time. Ambassador Page brought his influence to bear on preventing the Allies from considering German proposals for peace offered in 1916 and 1917.