Germany, The Next Republic?

by Carl W. Ackerman

The United States enters the greatest war in history at the psychological moment with a capable and determined president, a united nation and almost unlimited resources in men, money and munitions.

There is a tremendous difference between the situation in the United States and that in any other European country. During the two years I was in Europe I visited every nation at war except Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. I saw conditions in the neutral countries of Holland, Denmark, Switzerland and Spain. The one big thing which impressed me upon my arrival in New York was that the United States, in contrast to all these countries, has, as yet, not been touched by the war. Americans are not living under the strain and worry which hang like dreadful dull clouds over every European power. In Switzerland the economic worries and the sufferings of the neighbouring belligerents have made the Swiss people feel that they are in the centre of the war itself. In France, although Paris is gay, although people smile (they have almost forgotten how to smile in Germany), although streets are crowded, and stores busy, the atmosphere is earnest and serious. Spain is torn by internal troubles. There is a great army of unemployed. The submarine war has destroyed many Spanish ships and interrupted Spanish trade with belligerents. Business houses are unable to obtain credit. German propaganda is sowing sedition and the King himself is uncertain about the future. But in the United States there is a gigantic display of energy and potential power which makes this country appear to possess sufficient force in itself to defeat Germany. Berlin is drained and dead in comparison. Paris, while busy, is war-busy and every one and everything seems to move and live because of the war. In New York and throughout the country there are young men by the hundreds of thousands. Germany and France have no young men outside the armies. Here there are millions of automobiles and millions of people hurrying, happy and contented, to and from their work. In Germany there are no automobiles which are not in the service of the Government and rubber tires are so nearly exhausted that practically all automobiles have iron wheels.

Some Americans have lived for many years with the idea that only certain sections of the United States were related to Europe. Many people, especially those in the Middle West, have had the impression that only the big shipping interests and exporters had direct interests in affairs across the ocean. But when Germany began to take American lives on the high seas, when German submarines began to treat American ships like all other belligerent vessels, it began to dawn upon people here that this country was very closely connected to Europe by blood ties as well as by business bonds. It has taken the United States two years to learn that Europe was not, after all, three thousand miles away when it came to the vital moral issues of live international policies. Before Congress declared war I found many Americans criticising President Wilson for not declaring war two years ago. While I do not know what the situation was during my absence still the impression which Americans abroad had, even American officials, was that President Wilson would not have had the support of a united people which he has to-day had he entered the war before all question of doubt regarding the moral issues had disappeared.

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR'S CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE REICHSTAG ON APRIL 5TH, 1916.]

In the issue of April 14th of this year the New Republic, of New York, in an editorial on "Who willed American participation?" cast an interesting light upon the reasons for our intervention in the Great War.

"Pacifist agitators who have been so courageously opposing, against such heavy odds, American participation in the war have been the victims of one natural but considerable mistake," says The New Republic. "They have insisted that the chief beneficiaries of American participation would be the munition-makers, bankers and in general the capitalist class, that the chief sufferers would be the petty business men and the wage-earners. They have consequently considered the former classes to be conspiring in favour of war, and now that war has come, they condemn it as the work of a small but powerful group of profiteers. Senator Norris had some such meaning in his head when he asserted that a declaration of war would be equivalent to stamping the dollar mark on the American flag.

"This explanation of the great decision is an absurd mistake, but the pacifists have had some excuses for making it. They have seen a great democratic nation gradually forced into war, in spite of the manifest indifference or reluctance of the majority of its population; and they have rightly attributed the successful pressure to the ability of a small but influential minority to impose its will on the rest of the country. But the numerically insignificant class whose influence has been successfully exerted in favour of American participation does not consist of the bankers and the capitalists. Neither will they be the chief beneficiaries of American participation. The bankers and the capitalists have favoured war, but they have favoured it without realising the extent to which it would injure their own interests, and their support has been one of the most formidable political obstacles to American participation. The effective and decisive work on behalf of war has been accomplished by an entirely different class--a class which must be comprehensively but loosely described as the 'intellectuals.'

"The American nation is entering this war under the influence of a moral verdict reached, after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community. They gradually came to a decision that the attack made by Germany on the international order was sufficiently flagrant and dangerous to justify this country in abandoning its cherished isolation and in using its resources to bring about German defeat. But these thoughtful people were always a small minority. They were able to impose their will upon a reluctant or indifferent majority partly because the increasingly offensive nature of German military and diplomatic policy made plausible opposition to American participation very difficult, but still more because of the overwhelming preponderance of pro-Ally conviction in the intellectual life of the country. If the several important professional and social groups could have voted separately on the question of war and peace, the list of college professors would probably have yielded the largest majority in favour of war, except perhaps that contained in the Social Register. A fighting anti-German spirit was more general among physicians, lawyers and clergymen than it was among business men--except those with Wall Street and banking connections. Finally, it was not less general among writers on magazines and in the newspapers. They popularised what the college professors had been thinking. Owing to this consensus of influences opposition to pro-Ally orthodoxy became intellectually somewhat disreputable, and when a final decision had to be made this factor counted with unprecedented and overwhelming force. College professors headed by a President who had himself been a college professor contributed more effectively to the decision in favour of war than did the farmers, the business men or the politicians.