The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

Every movement toward peace, in fact every international attempt toward doing away with the horrors of war, has found in the New World the most jealous and enthusiastic supporters; whenever two nations have come to blows the sympathies of the Americans have always been on the side of the weaker nation, no matter which seemed to be the side of justice. And the mere circumstance that two nations have gone to war puts the stronger power in a bad light in the eyes of America.

The nation has grown strong by peaceful industry; its greatest strength has lain in trade and the arts, its best population has come across the ocean in order to escape the military burdens of Europe; and the policy of the founders of the Republic, now become a tradition, was always to hold aloof from any dealings with the quarrelsome continent of Europe. During the short time of its existence, the United States has settled forty-nine international disputes in a peaceable court of arbitration, and oftentimes these have been in extremely important matters; and America has been a party in over half of the disputes which have been settled before a court of arbitration in recent times. America was an important participant in the founding of the Peace Tribunal at The Hague. When negotiations for that tribunal threatened to be frustrated by the opposing nations of Europe, the American government sent its representatives to the very centre of the opposition, and won a victory for the side of peace.

It is almost a matter of course that it is the munificent gift of an American which has erected a palace at The Hague for this international Peace Tribunal. While the European nations are groaning under the burden of their standing armies, and are weakened by wars over religious matters or the succession of dynasties, happy America knows nothing of this; her pride is the freedom of her citizens, her battles are fought out at the ballot-box. The disputes between sects and royal houses are unknown in the New World; its only neighbours are two oceans on the east and west, and on the north and south good friends. No end of progress remains to be made, but everything works together under the protection of the American Constitution to produce a splendid home in the New World for peace. America is the one world power which makes for peace; and it will only depend on the future growth of this nation, which has been ordained to become such an example, whether the idea of peace will finally prevail throughout the world over the immoral settlement of disputes by mere force of arms.

All this is not merely the programme of a party or of a group of people, but the confession of faith of every American. The American finds no problem here, since none would dispute the contention. It has all impressed itself so fully on the consciousness of the American people that it gives to the whole nation a feeling of moral superiority. Nor is this merely the pathos uttered in moral orations; it is the conviction with which every child grows up and with which every farmer goes to his plough, every artisan and merchant to his machine and desk, and the President to his executive chamber. And this conviction is so admirable that it has always been contagious, and all Europe has become quite accustomed to considering the Republic across the water as the firmest partisan of peace. The Republic has in fact been this, is now, and always will be so; while the riddle is—how it can be such a friend of peace when it was conceived in war, has settled its most serious problems by war, has gone to war again and again, has almost played with declarations of war, is at war to-day, and presumably will be at war many times again.

The Spanish war has shown clearly to European onlookers the other side of the shield, and many have at once concluded that the boasted American love of peace has been from the first a grand hypocrisy, that at least under McKinley’s administration an entirely new spirit had suddenly seized the New World. But McKinley’s predecessor, Cleveland, in the disputes arising between England and Venezuela, had waved the sabre until it hissed so loudly that it was not at all due to the American love of peace but rather to England’s preoccupation in the Transvaal which prevented the President’s message and the national love of interference from stirring up a war. And it is now several years since the successor of McKinley moved into the White House, yet McKinley’s war is still going on; for although a war has never been officially declared in the Philippines, war seems the only correct name for the condition which there prevails.

This Philippine question is a real political problem. That America is to serve the interests of peace is certain; every one is agreed on that; and the great majority of the people was also enthusiastically in favour of ending the Spanish misrule in Cuba. But the same is not true of the war in the Philippines, and becomes less true every day. The enthusiasts have subsided, the masses have become indifferent, while the politicians carry on the discussion; and since it is a question of motives which cannot be put aside for the present, and which at any time may so excite the nation as to become the centre of political discussion, it is well worth while to look more fully into these points.

The imperialists say that the events in the Pacific Ocean have followed exactly the traditions of the land; that expansion has always been a fundamental instinct of the nation; that its whole development shows that from the day when the Union was founded it commenced to increase its territory. The tremendous expansion gained by the purchase of Louisiana was followed by the annexation of Florida, and still later by that of the great tract called Texas. In the war with Mexico the region between Texas and California was acquired. Alaska was next gathered in. The narrow strip originally occupied by the Thirteen States became a huge country within a century, and thus the nation simply remains true to its traditions in stretching out over the ocean and carrying the Stars and Stripes toward Asia.

To this the anti-imperialists reply, on the contrary, that the United States is repudiating an honourable history and trampling down that which has been sacred for centuries. For if there has been any underlying principle at all to guide the United States in moments of perplexity, it has been a firm faith in the rights of people to govern themselves. The United States has never exchanged or acquired a foot of land without the consent of those who dwelt thereon. Where such lands have held nothing but the scattered dwellings of isolated colonists there existed no national consent to be consulted, and where there were no people no national self-government could come in question; neither Louisiana, California, nor Alaska was settled by a real nation, and Texas had of itself decided to become independent of Mexico. But the Philippines are inhabited by ten million people, with striking national traits and an organized will; and the United States, for the first time in history, now misuses its strength by oppressing another nation and forcing its own will on a prostrate people.

Now the imperialists reply they do not mean at all to dispute the right of self-government, a principle on which the greatness of our nation is founded. But it is a narrow and absurd conception of self-government which regards every people, however backward and unruly, capable thereof, and divinely privileged to misrule itself. The right of self-government must be deserved; it is the highest possession of civilized nations, and they have earned it by labour and self-discipline. The Americans derive their right to govern themselves from the toil of thirty generations. The Filipinos have still to be educated up to such a plane. To this the anti-imperialists enquire, Is that to be called education which subdues, like rebels, a people desirous of freedom? Are you helping those people by sending soldiers to assert your sovereignty?

And the imperialists reply again that we have sufficiently shown, in the case of Cuba, how seriously we take our moral obligations toward weaker peoples. When we had done away by force of arms with all Spanish domination in America, and had Cuba quite in our power, all Europe was convinced that we should never relax our hold, and that the war would result simply in a mere annexation of the rich island; in short, that we should pursue a typical European policy. But we have shown the world that America does not send her sons to battle merely for aggrandizement, but only in a moral cause; just as we demanded of the conquered Spaniards no indemnity, so we have made a general sacrifice for Cuba. We have laboured tirelessly for the hygiene and the education of the island, have strengthened its trade and awakened to new life the country which had been desolated by Spanish misrule, and, having finished the work, we have restored to Cuba her freedom and her right of self-government; and we recognize that we owe a similar duty to the Philippines. We have not sought to obtain those islands. At the outset of the war no American foresaw that the island kingdom in the tropics, ten thousand miles away, would fall into our hands; but when the chain of events brought it about, we could not escape the call of duty. Were we to leave the discontented Philippine population once more to the cruelty of their Spanish masters, or were we to displace the Spaniards and then leave the wild race of the islands to their own anarchy, and thus invoke such internal hostilities as would again wipe out all the beginnings which had been made toward culture? Was it not rather our duty to protect those who turned to us, against the vengeance of their enemies, and before all else to establish order and quietude? The anti-imperialists retort—the quietude of a grave-yard. If America’s policy had been truly unselfish, it should have made every preparation for dealing with the Philippines as it had dealt with Cuba; instead of fighting with the Filipinos we should at once have co-operated with Aguinaldo and sent over a civil instead of a military regiment. Nor is the world deceived into supposing that our boasted civil rule in the Philippines is anything more than a name, used in order somewhat to pacify the sentimentalists of the New England States; while in reality our rule is a military one, and the small success of a few well-meaning civil officials merely distracts the world’s attention from the constant outbreaks of war. We have not worked from the point of view of the Philippines, but from that of the United States.