A Woman and the War

by Countess of Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Warwick

Royalists have spoken to me glibly about the corruption that is said to be inherent in republics. It is about the only charge they can formulate, and the reply is obvious. In republics corruption is hard to hide, it comes to the surface and is visible to all. In monarchies corruption, no less rife, is hard to expose; all the avenues to light and free speech are closed.

Your republic brings character and brains to the top; your monarchy makes statesmen of courtiers and sycophants, men who will bow the knee to the Baal of the hour.

A republic is open to the air of heaven. A monarchy is a garden enclosed, richer in rank weeds than flowers. If Germany had been a republic, the Social Democrats could have learned the truth and acted upon it; had Austria been a republic, giving equal voice to all the interests it affects to represent, sympathy with the Slavs would have kept the rulers from their disastrous attempt to reduce Serbia to the status of a vassal kingdom.

Kings have served their time. The ruler who rode to war at the head of his troops, who could handle the heaviest sword or battle-axe, who was both the ruler and judge of his people, belongs to a bygone era. His last raison d'être passed with the era of industry and rapid transit. He became an anachronism when people began to realise that life is a gift to be wisely used, and that racial antagonisms may be cured or dispersed by close relationship. It is for kings and for kings alone that millions of men who have no real quarrel have slaughtered one another under conditions of horror that make description inadequate. Until we understand that simple truth that the natural inclination of civilised man is to live on friendly terms with his neighbour in spite of all divisions of boundaries, whether of place, blood, or religion, civilisation will be rendered null. Kings have ceased to represent their people; the time has come when the people can represent themselves.

Unhappily they do not yet recognise their own power, and nothing is farther from the wishes of Europe's tottering dynasties than that they should do so. Education, their first aid to emancipation, has been grudgingly conceded. Representation is in its infancy and is hedged round with so many safeguards to royalty that in many countries it is still struggling for effective existence. For all our brave talk Europe is still in its first youth, but the tragedy through which we are passing may yet serve to stimulate its growth as surely as the blood shed on its fields will yield return in the fruits of the earth.

Will democracy rise from the conflict not only strong but determined? Will it carry destruction to the source of destruction? Will it assert its inalienable right to the fruits of peace, progress, and utility? I pray that it may, but I do not disguise from myself the enormous difficulty of the task. Demos is yet so unskilled, so easily flattered, so readily deceived, he will be met by men who have all the traditions of humbug at their finger tips; indeed, these traditions are almost their sole inheritance and equipment.

Yet, "all that a man hath will he give for his life," and the democrat will not only be fighting for his own but for his children's lives and for the well being of the human race. He will have faced death, and will have realised that though man may die but once, the condition of rule that makes war possible makes the doom recurrent with every generation. He should know that the old traditions of rule are in the melting pot, and though all the forces of reaction will labour to shape them again as of old, it is in his power, if it is in his will, to frustrate their action.

The United States looks to have a voice in the making of peace. Doubtless it will do useful work, but I cannot conceive of any better task for the great republicans of to-day than to give the western world the lead that may help it most of all. Most of them have seen monarchies at their best and worst; all of them are patriots; they know what republicanism has done for their own fair land. Will they stand silent now while the western world is faced by the danger of the perpetuation of a régime that has little or nothing to justify it? If they do, they have missed the finest possible chance of spreading the light that shone upon them when the Declaration of Independence was signed one hundred and forty years ago.

With the end of the war, if it does not result in the hegemony of Germany, in which case liberty will be no more than a name, all manner of schemes for the regeneration of Europe will be afoot. Few, if any, will go to the root of the evils that have devastated Belgium, Poland, and a part of France. It is safe to say that the disposition to bring about sweeping reforms will not find ready expression. We are all too close to events over here, the blessing of a clear, serene outlook is denied us. The United States has stood far above the turmoil, it has seen more of the truth than has been visible to any combatant nation, it can survey the whole situation sanely.

It seems to me in these circumstances that the greatest republic of the world has a serious duty, a grave responsibility. It has thriven on a gigantic scale without patronage or privileged classes, without titles, without such honours as are merely honours in name. Freed by the Atlantic from the domination of Europe, it has grown in power and given its citizens a life removed from the worst anxieties that beset the Continent. It knows what kingship in its absolute aspect has cost Europe, and it embraces within its wide domain the children of every European nation; they dwell side by side in peace and amity. The freedom enjoyed by the republic would not be bartered for the wealth of the world, for that freedom is the secret of its eternal youth, its boundless energy, its untrammelled progress.