What is more serious is that the note to Russia implied not only his loss of the initiative for a negotiated peace but even the desire for it. “The day has come when we must conquer or submit.” This has a very strange ring coming from a President who in his very war-message still insisted that he had not altered in any way the principles of his “peace without victory” note. The note to Russia did not attempt to explain how “peace without victory” was to be reconciled with “conquer or submit,” nor has any such explanation been forthcoming. The implication is that the entire strategy of the negotiated peace has passed out of American hands into those of Russia, and that this country is committed to the new strategy of the “knockout blow.” If this is true, then we have the virtual collapse of the strategy, and with it the justification, of our entrance into the war.
Whether American strategy has changed or not, the effect upon opinion in the Allied countries seems to be as if it had. Each pronouncement of America’s war-aims is received with disconcerting unanimity in England, France and Italy as ratifying their own aspirations and policies. Any hint that Allied policies disagree with ours is received with marked disfavor by our own loyal press. When we entered the war, the Allied aims stood as stated in their reply to the President’s December note. This reply was then interpreted by American liberals as a diplomatic programme of maximum demands. They have therefore called repeatedly upon the President to secure from the Allied governments a resolution of the ambiguities and a revision of the more extreme terms, in order that we might make common cause with them toward a just peace. In this campaign the American liberals have put themselves squarely on the side of the new Russia, which has also clamored for a clear and liberal statement of what the war is being fought for. Unfortunately the Administration has been unable or unwilling to secure from the Allies any such resolution or revision. The Russian pressure has elicited certain statements, which, however, proved little more satisfactory to the Russian radicals than the original statement. Our own war-aims have been stated in terms as ambiguous and unsatisfactory as those of the Allies. Illiberal opinion in the other countries has not been slow in seizing upon President Wilson’s pronouncements as confirming all that their hearts could wish. Most significant has been the satisfaction of Italian imperialistic opinion, the most predatory and illiberal force in any Allied country. The President has done nothing to disabuse Italian minds of their belief. He has made no disavowal of the Allied reactionary ratification. The sharp divergence of interpretation between the Allied governments and the Russian radicals persists. In lieu of any clear statement to the contrary, opinion in the Allied countries has good ground for believing that the American government will back up whatever of their original programme can be carried through. Particularly is this true after the President’s chiding of Russia. The animus behind the enthusiasm for Pershing in France is the conviction that American force will be the decisive factor in the winning back of Alsace-Lorraine. It is no mere sentimental pleasure at American alliance. It is an immense stiffening of the determination to hold out to the uttermost, to the “peace with victory” of which Ribot speaks. Deluded France carries on the war to complete exhaustion on the strength of the American millions who are supposedly rushing to save her. The immediate effect of American participation in England and Italy as well has been an intense will to hold out not for the “peace without victory” but pour la victoire intégrale, for the conquest so crushing that Germany will never be feared again.
Now the crux of American strategy was the liberalization of Allied policy in order that that peace might be obtained which was a hopeful basis for a League of Nations. American participation has evidently not gone one inch toward liberalizing the Allies. We are further from the negotiated peace than we were in December, though the only change in the military and political situation is the Russian revolution which immensely increased the plausibility of that peace. As Allied hope of victory grows, the covenant of nations fades into the background. And it is Allied hope of victory that our participation has inflamed and augmented.
The President’s Flag Day address marks without a doubt the collapse of American strategy. That address, coupled with the hints of “effective readjustments” in the note to Russia, implies that America is ready to pour out endless blood and treasure, not to the end of a negotiated peace, but to the utter crushing of the Central Powers, to their dismemberment and political annihilation. The war is pictured in that address as a struggle to the death against the military empire of Mittel-Europa. The American rôle changes from that of mediator in the interest of international organization to that of formidable support to the breaking of this menace to the peace and liberty of Europe. It will be remembered that American liberals interpreted our entrance into the war as primarily defensive, an enterprise to prevent Germany’s threatened victory on the sea. We came in, not to secure an Allied “peace with victory,” but to prevent a German “peace with victory,” and so restore the situation favorable to a negotiated peace. The strategy of the negotiated peace depended largely on the belief that a military decision was either impossible or was not worth the colossal sacrifice it demanded. But it is only as the result of a sweeping military decision that any assured destruction of Mittel-Europa could come. In basing his case on Mittel-Europa, therefore, the President has clearly swung from a strategy of “peace without victory” to a strategy of “war to exhaustion for the sake of a military decision.” He implies that a country which came only after hesitation to the defense of the seas and the Atlantic world will contentedly pour out its indefinite blood and treasure for the sake of spoiling the coalition of Mittel-Europa and of making readjustments in the map of Europe effective against German influence on the Continent. Such an implication means the “end of American isolation” with a vengeance. No one can be blamed who sees in the Flag Day Address the almost unlimited countersigning of Allied designs and territorial schemes.
The change of American strategy to a will for a military decision would explain the creation of the vast American army which in the original policy was required only “as a reserve and a precaution.” It explains our close coöperation with the Allied governments following the visits of the Missions. An American army of millions would undoubtedly be a decisive factor in the remaking of the map of Europe and the permanent garrisoning of strategic points bearing upon Germany. But this change of strategy does not explain itself. The continental military and political situation has not altered in any way which justifies so fundamental an alteration in American strategy. American liberals justified our entrance into the war as a response to a sudden exigency. But the menace of Mittel-Europa has existed ever since the entrance of Bulgaria in 1915. If it now challenges us and justifies our change of strategy, it challenged us and justified our assault a full two years ago. American shudders at its bogey are doubly curious because it is probably less of a menace now than it has ever been. President Wilson ignores the effect of a democratic Russia on the success of such a military coalition. Such heterogeneous states could be held together only through the pressure of a strong external fear. But the passing of predatory Russia removes that fear. Furthermore, Bulgaria, the most democratic of the Balkan States, would always be an uncertain partner in such a coalition. Bagdad has long been in British hands. There are strong democratic and federalistic forces at work in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The materials seem less ready than ever for the creation of any such predatory and subjugated Empire as the Flag Day Address describes. Whatever the outcome of the war, there is likely to result an economic union which could bring needed civilization to neglected and primitive lands. But such a union would be a blessing to Europe rather than a curse. It was such a union that England was on the point of granting to Germany when the war broke out. The Balkans and Asia Minor need German science, German organization, German industrial development. We can hardly be fighting to prevent such German influence in these lands. The irony of the President’s words lies in the fact that the hopes of Mittel-Europa as a military coalition seem to grow dimmer rather than brighter. He must know that this “enslavement” of the peoples of which he speaks can only be destroyed by the peoples themselves and not at the imposition of a military conqueror. The will to resist this Prussian enslavement seems to have been generated in Austro-Hungary. The President’s perspective is belated. If our fighting to crush this amazing plot is justified now, it was more than justified as soon as Rumania was defeated. The President convicts himself of criminal negligence in not urging us into the war at that time. If our rôle was to aid in conquest, we could not have begun our work too soon.
The new strategy is announced by the President in no uncertain terms—“The day has come when we must conquer or submit.” But the strategy of conquest implies the necessity of means for consolidating the conquest. If the world is to be made safe for democracy, democracy must to a certain extent be imposed on the world. There is little point in conquering unless you carry through the purposes for which you have conquered. The earlier American strategy sought to bring democracy to Germany by appealing directly to the democratic forces in Germany itself. We relied on a self-motivated regeneration on the part of our enemy. We believed that democracy could be imposed only from within. If the German people cannot effect their own political reorganization, nobody can do it for them. They would continue to prefer the native Hohenzollerns to the most liberal government imposed by their conquering enemies. A Germany forced to be democratic under the tutelage of a watchful and victorious Entente would indeed be a constant menace to the peace of Europe. Just so far then as our changed American strategy contributes toward a conquest over Germany, it will work against our desire to see that country spontaneously democratized. There is reason for hope that democracy will not have to be forced on Germany. From the present submission of the German people to the war-régime nothing can be deduced as to their subserviency after the war. Prodigious slaughter will effect profound social changes. There may be going on a progressive selection in favor of democratic elements. The Russian army was transformed into a democratic instrument by the wiping-out in battle of the upper-class officers. Men of democratic and revolutionary sympathies took their places. A similar process may happen in the German army. The end of the war may leave the German “army of the people” a genuine popular army intent upon securing control of the civil government. Furthermore, the continuance of Pan-German predatory imperialism depends on a younger generation of Junkers to replace the veterans now in control. The most daring of those aristocrats will almost certainly have been destroyed in battle. The mortality in upper-class leadership will certainly have proved far larger than the mortality in lower-class leadership. The maturing of these tendencies is the hope of German democracy. A speedy ending of the war, before the country is exhausted and the popular morale destroyed, is likely best to mature these tendencies. In this light it is almost immaterial what terms are made. Winning or losing, Germany cannot replace her younger generation of the ruling class. And without a ruling class to continue the imperial tradition, democracy could scarcely be delayed. An enfeebled ruling class could neither hold a vast world military Empire together nor resist the revolutionary elements at home. The prolongation of the war delays democracy in Germany by convincing the German people that they are fighting for their very existence and thereby forcing them to cling even more desperately to their military leaders. In announcing an American strategy of “conquer or submit,” the President virtually urges the German people to prolong the war. And not only are the German people, at the apparent price of their existence, tacitly urged to continue the fight to the uttermost, but the Allied governments are tacitly urged to wield the “knockout blow.” All those reactionary elements in England, France and Italy, whose spirits drooped at the President’s original bid for a negotiated peace, now take heart again at this apparent countersigning of their most extreme programmes.
American liberals who urged the nation to war are therefore suffering the humiliation of seeing their liberal strategy for peace transformed into a strategy for prolonged war. This government was to announce such war-aims as should persuade the peoples of the Central Powers to make an irresistible demand for a democratic peace. Our initiative with the Allied governments was to make this peace the basis of an international covenant, “the creation of a community of limited independencies,” of which Norman Angell speaks. Those Americans who opposed our entrance into the war believed that this object could best be worked for by a strategy of continued neutrality and the constant pressure of mediation. They believed that war would defeat the strategy for a liberal peace. The liberal intellectuals who supported the President felt that only by active participation on an independent basis could their purposes be achieved. The event has signally betrayed them. We have not ended the submarine menace. We have lost all power for mediation. We have not even retained the democratic leadership among the Allied nations. We have surrendered the initiative for peace. We have involved ourselves in a moral obligation to send large armies to Europe to secure a military decision for the Allies. We have prolonged the war. We have encouraged the reactionary elements in every Allied country to hold out for extreme demands. We have discouraged the German democratic forces. Our strategy has gradually become indistinguishable from that of the Allies. With the arrival of the British Mission our “independent basis” became a polite fiction. The President’s Flag Day Address merely registers the collapse of American strategy. All this the realistic pacifists foresaw when they held out so bitterly and unaccountably against our entering the war. The liberals felt a naïve faith in the sagacity of the President to make their strategy prevail. They looked to him single-handedly to liberalize the liberal nations. They trusted him to use a war-technique which should consist of an olive-branch in one hand and a sword in the other. They have had to see their strategy collapse under the very weight of that war-technique. Guarding neutrality, we might have counted toward a speedy and democratic peace. In the war, we are a rudderless nation, to be exploited as the Allies wish, politically and materially, and towed, to their aggrandizement, in any direction which they may desire.
V
A WAR DIARY
(September, 1917)