The American people as a whole did truly enter into war in the spirit of crusaders. They sent out their sons as rescuers of stricken peoples fighting desperately against criminal powers. They had no selfish interests behind their sacrifice, and they did not understand that defeat of the nations allied against Germany would inevitably menace them with dire perils to their sovereign power, to their commercial prosperity, and to their ideals of civilization. Those things were true, but it was not because of them that the people of the United States were uplifted by a wonderful exaltation and that they put their full strength into preparing themselves for a long and bloody war. Every little home was turned into a Red Cross factory. Every young man of pluck and pride was eager to get the first call for active service in the field. Girls took on men's jobs, old ladies knitted until their eyes were dim. Hard business men gave away their dollars in bundles, denied themselves at meal-time so that Europe should be fed, tried by some little sacrifice to share the spirit of those who made offer of their lives. The materialism of which America had been accused, not unjustly, was broken through by a spiritual idealism which touched every class, and Americans did not shrink from sacrifice, but asked for it as a privilege, and were regretful that as a people they suffered so little in comparison with those who had fought and agonized so long....
All this I heard when I went to America in the spring, between armistice and peace, and with my own eyes and ears I saw and heard the proof of it. Down Fifth Avenue I saw the march past of troops whom I had seen before marching along the roads of war to Ypres and Amiens, when the British army was hard pressed and glad to see these newcomers. In New York clubs I met young American officers who had been training with British staffs and battalions before they fought alongside British troops. And in American homes I met women who were still waiting for their men whom they had sent away with brave faces, hiding the fear in their hearts, and now knew, with thankfulness, that they were safe. Victory had come quickly after the entry of the American troops, but it was only the low braggart who said, "We won the war—and taught the English how to fight." The main body of educated people whom I met in many American cities said, rather: "We were the last straw that broke the camel's back. We were glad to share the victory, but we did not suffer enough. We came in too late to take our full share of sacrifice."
At that time, after the armistice and when Mr. Wilson was in Europe at the Peace Conference, the people I met were not so much buoyed up with the sense of victory as perplexed and anxious about the new responsibilities which they would be asked to fulfill. A tremendous controversy raged round the President, who baffled them by his acts and speeches and silences. When in an article which I wrote soon after my landing I said I was "all for Wilson" I received an immense number of letters "putting me wise" as to the failure of the President to gain the confidence of the American people and their grievous apprehensions that he was, out of personal vanity and with a stubborn, autocratic spirit, bartering away the rights and liberties of the United States, without the knowledge or support of the people, and involving them in European entanglements which they were not prepared to accept. This antagonism to the President was summed up clearly enough in some such words as those that follow:
Taft and Roosevelt quarreled; Wilson was born of it. Wilson is all there is to the Democratic party. He has had to dominate it; the brain of America is in the Republican camp. He refused to use this material when offered for the war. He would not allow Roosevelt to go to France and fight; he would not use General Wood, who was the "Lord Bobs" of this country in regard to preparedness. For the winning of the war we put party aside and the Congress gave Wilson unlimited power. (Lincoln put party aside and used the best he could get.) Now Mr. Wilson asks and gets very little advice. When he has a difficult question he secludes himself, except for Colonel House—and we know nothing about Colonel House. Mr. Wilson dominated America and no one objected; the war was being won. In the fall he saw, of course, victory, and was planning his trip abroad. He boldly asked for a Democratic Senate, which would give him control of the treaty-making power. He said, practically: "Everybody shows himself bigger than party. I will, too. All together now! But you prove it and give me a party Senate, not a Senate picked from the best brains of this America, but a Democratic Senate, so that I can have full power in the Peace Conference." The laugh that went up must have hit the stars, and we almost forgot the war to watch the election. Can you imagine Roosevelt in New York in this crisis? He held a monster meeting and said what he thought, through his teeth. "Unconditional surrender for Germany, no matter what it costs" (not idle words—Quentin's death in France had cost Roosevelt his famous boyishness of spirit), "and a Senate that will curb autocratic power in America." Then he told his hearers that they would not need a key to understand his speech. Now, power goes to people's heads. Mr. Wilson had changed. Time and again opposition in Congress failed. You would hear, "Wilson always wins." Always a dominating figure, he grew defiant, a trifle ruthless, heady. The American answer to Wilson was a Republican Senate, and the Senators were put there to balance him. When he decided to go to Europe he simply said he was going. He did not ask our approval, nor find out our wishes, nor even tell us what he was going to say, but did take over the cables and put them under government control. He made himself so inaccessible at that time that no one could get his ear. On his flying visit to New York he said that he returned to France to tell them that we backed him. Is that true? We don't know what we think yet. We haven't made up our minds. We will back him when he is frank and when we are convinced. We can't sign our souls away, all our wonderful heritages, without knowing all about it.... If we join a League of Nations, shall we prevent war? Or, if we join, shall we be absorbed and make the fight a bigger one?
This, I believe, is a fair statement of the views held by many educated people in the United States at the time between armistice and peace. I heard just such words in the City Club of New York, in the Union League Club, from people in Boston and Philadelphia and Washington, and at many dinner-tables where, after the preliminary courtesies of conversation, there was a quick clash of opinion among the guests, husbands differing from wives, brothers from sisters, and friends from friends, over the personality and purpose of the President, and the practical possibilities of a League of Nations. The defenders of the President waived aside all personal issues and supported him ardently because they believed that it was only by the application of his ideals, modified, no doubt, by contact with the actual problems of European states, that a new war more devastating to the world than the one just past could be prevented, and that his obstinacy and singleness of purpose on behalf of a League of Nations pointed him out as the Man of Destiny who would lead humanity out of the jungle to a higher plane of civilized philosophy.
That was my own view of his mission and character, though now I think he failed at the Peace Conference in carrying out the principles of his own Fourteen Points, and weakened under the pressure of the governing powers of France, Belgium, and England, who desired revenge as well as reparation, and the death of German militarism under the heel of an Allied militarism based on the old German philosophy of might. The President failed largely because he insisted upon playing "a lone hand," and did not have the confidence of his country behind him, nor its understanding of his purpose, while he himself wavered in his principles.
America, during the time of my visit, was afraid of taking too strong a lead in the resettlement of Europe. So far from wishing to "boss the show," as some people suspected, most Americans had an unnatural timidity, and one count of their charge against Wilson was his obstinacy in his dealings with Lloyd George and Clemenceau. It was a consciousness of ignorance about European problems which made the Americans draw back from strong decisions, and above all it was the fear of being "dragged in" to new wars, not of their concern, which made them deeply suspicious of the League of Nations. In many conversations I found this fear the dominant thought. "If you people want to fight each other again, you will have to do without us," said American soldiers just back from the front. "No more crusades for us!" said others. "American isolation—and a plague on all your little nations!" said civilians as well as soldiers. Bitter memories of French "economy" spoiled for American soldiers the romance of the Lafayette tradition. "I lost my leg," said one man, "for a country which charged for the trenches where we fought, and for people who put up their prices three hundred per cent. when the American armies came to rescue them. France can go to hell as far as I'm concerned."... Nevertheless, it became more clear to thinking minds in America that the days of "isolation" were gone, and that for good or evil the United States is linked up by unbreakable bonds of interest and responsibility with other great powers of the world. Never again can she be indifferent to their fate. If another great convulsion happens in Europe, American troops will again be there, quicker than before, because her action in the last war and her share of the terms of peace have made her responsible in honor for the safety of certain peoples and the upholding of certain agreements. The Atlantic has shrunk in size to a narrow strip of water and the sky is a corridor which will be quickly traversed by aircraft before the next great war. But these physical conditions which are changing by mechanical development, altering the time-tables of traffic, are of no account compared with the vast change that happened in the world when the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the fields of France and Flanders, when the bodies of America's heroic youth were laid to rest there under little white crosses, and when the United States of America entered into an intimate and enduring relationship with Great Britain and France.
The effect of this change is not yet apparent in its fullness. America is still in a state of transition, watching, studying, thinking, feeling, and talking herself into convictions which will alter the fate of the world. I believe with all my heart and soul that America's closer relationship with Europe will be all the better for Europe. I believe that the spirit of the American people is essentially and unalterably democratic, and that as far as their power goes it will be used against the tyranny of military castes and attempted oppression of peoples. I believe that the influence of this spirit, visible to me in many people I met, will be of enormous benefit to England and France, because it will be used as an arbitrating factor in the conflict which is bound to come in both those countries between the old régime and the new. The influence of America will be the determining power in the settlement of Ireland on a basis of common sense free from the silly old fetishes of historical enmities on both sides. It will intervene to give a chance of life to the German race after they have paid the forfeit for their guilt in the last war, and will, I am certain, react against the stupid philosophy of enduring vengeance with its desire to make a slave-state in Central Europe, which still animates bloody-minded men and women so passionate of revenge that they are kindling the fires of another terrible and devastating war. The United States of America is bound up with the fate of Europe, but its people will still remain rather aloof in mentality from the passions of European nations, and will be more judicial in their judgment because of that. Instinctively, rather than intellectually, Americans will act in behalf of democratic rights against autocratic plots. They will not allow the Russian people to be hounded back to the heels of grand dukes and under the lash of the knout. They will give their support to the League of Nations not as a machinery to stifle popular progress by a combination of governments, but as a court for the reform of international laws and the safeguarding of liberty. Europe will not be able to ignore the judgment of America. That country is, as I said, the rich uncle whose temper they must consult because of gratitude for favors to come—and because of wealth and power in the world's markets.
America is at the threshold of her supreme destiny in the world. By her action in the war, when for the first time her strength was revealed as a mighty nation, full grown and conscious of power, she has attained the highest place among the peoples, and her will shall prevail if it is based upon justice and liberty. I believe that America's destiny will be glorious for mankind, not because I think that the individual American is a better, nobler, more spiritual being than the individual Englishman, Frenchman, or Russian, but because I see, or think I see, that this great country is inspired more than any other nation among the big powers by the united, organized qualities of simple, commonplace people, with kindness of heart, independence of spirit, and sincerity of ideas, free from the old heritage of caste, snobbishness, militarism, and fetish-worship, which still lingers among the Junkers of Europe. They are a middle-class empire, untainted by imperial ambition or ancient traditions of overlordship. They are governed by middle-class sentiment. They put all problems of life to the test of that simplicity which is found in middle-class homes, where neither anarchy is welcome nor aristocratic privilege. America is the empire of the wage-earner, where even her plutocrats have but little power over the independence of the people. It is a nation of nobodies great with the power of the common man and the plain sense that governs his way of life. Other nations are still ruled by their "somebodies"—by their pomposities and High Panjandrums. But it is the nobodies whose turn is coming in history, and America is on their side. In that great federation of United States I saw, even in a brief visit, possible dangers that may spoil America's chance. I saw a luxury of wealth in New York and other cities which may be a vicious canker in the soul of the people. I saw a sullen discontent among wage-earners and home-coming soldiers because too many people had an unfair share of wealth. I met American Junkers who would use the military possibilities of the greatest army in the world for imperialistic adventures and world dominance. I heard of anarchy being whispered among foreign-born masses in American cities and passed over to other laborers not of foreign origin. In the censorship of news I saw the first and most ominous sign of government autocracy desiring to work its will upon the people by keeping them in ignorance and warping their opinions; and now and then I was conscious of an intolerance of free thought which happened to conflict with popular sentiment, as ruthless as in Russia during Czardom. I saw hatred based on ignorance and the brute spirit of men inflamed by war. But these were only accidental things, to be found wherever humanity is crowded, and after my visit to America I came away with memories, which are still strong in my heart, of a people filled with vital energy, kind in heart, sincere and simple in their ways of thought and speech, idealistic in emotion, practical in conduct, and democratic by faith and upbringing. The soil of America is clean and strong and free; and the power that comes out of it will, I think and hope and pray, be used to gain the liberties of other nations, and to help forward the welfare of the human family.