April 22, 1914. In the evening came rumors that war with Mexico has begun, though not yet declared. Vera Cruz has been invested, the Customhouse occupied. Four of our young men have been killed, twenty wounded, Mexican loss about one hundred and fifty. This dreadful news somewhat discounted by a talk with Captain Belknap, who thinks there is strong hope the matter may go no further. Our Japanese servant, Matsura, gave warning at six o’clock, with the following note:
“They have a great Japanese (of East) an assembly at New York, so I must go there to meet. I will start this night, and if you do not pay money that I earned six days you may don’t pay.”
With this he departed. In speaking to J. of this meeting, he mentioned “Carnegie Hall.” He came to us late one night two years ago without recommendations, pale, thin, hollow-eyed, all his belongings, a map of the U. S. A., and a Japanese and English dictionary, tied up in a handkerchief. He leaves with two handsome, brand-new, leather suit cases, much better than J.’s, filled with clothes J. has given him, fat as a seal, and speaking and writing English.
August 4, 1914. Looked in at Lady Decies’ tea. She afflicted by the news of war, which now takes all the color out of life. We think and speak of little else. I am deeply afflicted by this war. Where is all the boasted progress, the hope of peace universal?
August 9, 1914. Captain Belknap sailed to-day with twenty-four hours’ warning, on the Tennessee, as aide to Mr. Breckenridge in carrying help to stranded Americans in Europe. The whole Continent is honeycombed with Americans, gone over to spend the summer and take their good American money out of the country. This war will teach them how good a place U. S. A. is to live in! The papers are too full of the small discomforts of these travelers. Millionaires are coming home in the steerage; this may improve the conditions in the steerage for future emigrants.
August 17, 1914. The war news always worse and worse, the whole of Germany and the whole of England are pitted against each other. The sweet summer earth has become one awful carnage pit. We in America can only agonize and try to help the stricken peoples with a little money, saved or earned, so that we are morally helped by our intense desire to serve those others. There are also great commercial opportunities, brought us now by the conditions of world struggle, and every day the press harks on the people to take advantage of the fact that we can supply the markets that, for the moment, neither of the fighting nations can supply. Still we seem to suffer, too. The prices of flour, sugar, beef, almost everything, except fruit, have gone up dreadfully.
September 24, 1914. The grim tragedy of the war settles more and more upon our spirits. The horror of horrors is that so many intelligent people feel that the peace movement and all the ideals of the higher civilization are proven to be all in vain, and that the world must and will, after this lesson, return to the more purely military attitude of an earlier time. What we call the higher civilization seems to these people merely a symptom of effete weakness. The word for the hour is “In time of peace prepare for war!” People talk most about our own unpreparedness. Roosevelt says in a recent speech that he has seen the plans of two foreign nations for the conquest of the United States; it is understood that Germany is one of these nations. His comment is:
“Let them destroy our cities, but do not let us give a dollar for ransom.”
The ransoms demanded by these modern Goths upon the cities of Belgium, the cheerful, hard-working, little nation, are enough to sicken the stoutest optimist. Laura and I are now glad that Mother has not lived to endure this pain. The worst of it is, the mildest people are turned into furies, even by the faint and distant echoes of the passions that are destroying Europe and England. I feel a savage exultation when I hear of so many Germans killed or wounded. Then comes remorse for the hateful feeling, the remembrance that those men are inspired by a passionate patriotism, that their wives and mothers love them as much as English wives and mothers love their men; but the ugly feeling was there, was uppermost before reflection seized and tried to down it.
Gardiner, October 19, 1914. Here in my sister’s house they do not feel the war quite as we do, and the gloom is not quite so intense as in our own house, and yet the news, of course, is the thing of the day, but after it is read the day’s work is taken up quite firmly. The girls are all knitting socks for the soldiers. The idle hands of many American women, I trust, will grow as tirelessly useful as the hands of the German women! A telegram from the Progressive National Service, asking me to speak for Gifford Pinchot in his campaign for senatorship in Pennsylvania. I am more interested in relief work. The whole political world seems to be overclouded and obscured by Europe’s horror; we somehow feel that our fate, too, is bound up in the great struggle.