There was reason for America’s swift stature. She was a land not of war, but of peace. Rich, she threw open her doors. Frank, free, honest, generous, she made welcome all who came. She suspected none, trusted all, and to prove this, offered partnership in her wealth to any man of the world, under a system of naturalization laws whose like, in broadness and generosity, does not exist. Peace—and the chance to grow and to be happy. Peace—and a partnership in all she had. Peace—and a seat free at the richest table of the world. That was what America offered; and in spite of the pinch and the unrest of growing numbers, in spite of problems imported and not native to our long-untroubled land, that was the theory of American life up to a date four years earlier than this.
In that four years America has changed more than in any forty of her earlier life. But yesterday, young, rich, laughing, free of care, Homerically mirthful and joyous, America to-day is mature, unsmiling, grave, dignified—and wise. What once she never suspected, now she knows. She has been betrayed.
But America, traditionally resourceful, now suddenly agonized in the discovery of treachery at her own table, has out of the very anguish of her indignant horror, out of the very need of the hour, suddenly and adequately risen to her emergency. She always has done so. When the arms of the appointed agents of the law ever have wearied, she has upheld them. She has done so now, at the very moment of our country’s greatest need.
The story of how that was done; how the very force of the situation demanded and received an instant and sufficient answer; how the civilians rallied to their own flag; how they came out of private life unasked, unsummoned, as though at spoken command of some central power—that is a great and splendid story of which few ever have known anything at all.
It is a great and splendid story because it verifies America and her intent before all the high courts of things. These men did obey the summons of a vast central power. But it was no more than the soul of America that spoke. It was no more than her theory of the democracy of mankind which issued that unwritten order to assemble the minute men, each armed and garbed in his own way and each resolved to do what he could in a new and tremendous day of Lexington.
It was not autocracy which gave the assembly call to these silent legions. They mobilized themselves, so rapidly as to offer one of the most curious psychological problems of history. Why did these men leave their homes almost all at once, each unknown at first to the other, in large part each unknown to the other even now? How did it come about that an army of a quarter of a million men enlisted themselves and then offered their services to a government which needed them but never had asked for them? How did it come that—contrary to all European traditions—this tremendous striking-power began at the bottom in our democratic war-born instinct, and worked upward into the Government itself, as a new institution, wholly unrecognized in the constitution of state or nation? Usually the Government issues the order for mobilization. But here the greatest band of minute men ever known in the world mobilized as though unconsciously, as though to some spiritual trumpet call. Having done so, it offered itself to the Nation’s heads, saying, “Here we are. Take us and use us. We ask no pay. We enlist till the end of the war.”
It was the spirit voice of anguished America which mobilized the American Protective League. There never was a time when America could lose this war. The answer was always written in the stars. Somewhere, high up in the heavens, blind Justice let fall her sword in a gesture of command; and that was all. The issue of the war was determined from that moment. It was certain that Germany, brutal, bloody, autocratic, destructive, would be defeated beyond the sea. Yes, and on this side of the sea.
On this side, much was to be done, more than we had dreamed. Troubled but unparticipating, we stood aloof and watched the soil of all Europe redden with the blood of men—and of women and children. Even we still stood aloof, hands clenched, gasping in an enraged incredulity, watching the sea also—the free and open highway of the world, redden with the blood of men—and of women and children. But still we took no part, though indeed some of our young men could no longer stay at home and so enlisted under some Allied flag.
We held in mind our ancient remoteness from all this. We heard still the counsel against entangling alliances. And, quite aside from the idea of material profit, we tried to be fair and impartial in a fight that was not yet ours, though every American heart bled with France and Belgium, ached in pain with that of Britain, locked in death grapple in her greatest war—that which must name her still free or forever enslaved. And from Washington came admonition to be calm. President Wilson’s appeal went out again and again to the people, and whether or not it ever once seemed to all of us a possible thing for the United States to keep out of this war, at least we sought to do so and were advised and commanded to do so by the chief of our own forces.
Whether or not we all wished to be neutral so many years, we officially and nationally were neutral. Therefore we retained our commercial rights under neutrality. Doing no more than Germany always previously had done, we made and sold arms and munitions in the open markets of the world.