The philosopher's belief is based on the faith that the principles of justice, of law, of humanity are stronger, more enduring than any organization of force no matter how efficient, for this is a moral world. And the individual or nation who relies upon might to enforce wrong must in the end, perceiving the irrationality of his world, collapse. The grinding of the mill may be heart-breakingly slow, but the grist is as sure as life itself.
Similarly, the statesman Hanotaux has expressed "The Moral Victory": "It is the noblest, the highest of causes which has been submitted to the arbitrament of arms. Its grandeur justifies the terrible extent of the drama and the immense sacrifices it imposes. The material results of victory will be immense, the moral results will be even greater…. Moral forces are superior to physical forces, and in spite of all they will have the last word…. Our youth has gone to the front in the serene conviction that it was fighting not only for the patrie, but for humanity, that this war was a sort of crusade, that they could claim place beside St. Louis and Jeanne d'Arc."
It is that heroic consciousness of a righteous martyrdom that I read on the faces of the black-robed women in the street, too proud for tears; in the silent figures on the hospital beds, suffering without protest an agony too deep for words. And when I encountered a file of soldiers in the muddy trenches, flattening themselves out against the earth walls to let me pass, carrying pails of soup to the comrades up front, or sitting motionless beside their burrows along the trench wall, their hands clasping their rifles,—dirty, grimed, and bearded,—I saw the same thing in their tired eyes, their drawn faces. Mute martyrs in the cause of humanity, in my cause, they were giving their lives for others, for me, not merely that the German might be driven from France, but that justice and honor and peace between men might prevail in the world!
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Because the French people are inspired with the grandeur and the moral significance of their cause, they cannot understand a certain cynical attitude of mind, well illustrated by a former Senator of the United States, who has been high in the councils of the defunct Progressive Party. After spending ten days in Paris last spring, he remarked at a luncheon given him by some distinguished Frenchmen,—"Don't tell me about the justice of your cause or about the atrocities. I am not interested in that. What I want to know is, who is going to win!" Who is going to win! There spoke the barbarian mind. The barbarian mind cannot comprehend that the winning itself in a world cause is inextricably involved in the justice and worth of the cause.
For the same reason the French people have been puzzled by the sort of neutrality preached and practiced at Washington since the outbreak of the war. It is plain enough that neither France nor England desires to have the United States go to war with Germany. We can help them better as a huge supply house than as an ally, much as that might offend our vanity. The French appreciate also our President's desire to keep his country at peace. They are a peace-loving people and know the frightful costs of war. But they cannot understand a neutrality that avoids committing itself upon a moral issue such as was presented to the world in Belgium, in the sinking of the Lusitania. And in spite of the strict censorship, which for obvious reasons has muzzled the French press in its comment upon our diplomacy with Germany, occasionally flashes of a biting scorn of the Wilson neutrality have appeared in print, as the following from Hanotaux: "We should be wanting truly in frankness toward our great sister republic if we left her in the belief that this series of documents, of a tone particularly friendly and affectionate, addressed to the German Government after such acts as theirs, had not occasioned in France a certain surprise…. Up to this time the Allies, who have not, God be praised, compromised or even menaced the life of any neutral, of any American, have not received the twentieth part of these friendly terms that the German Government has brought forth by its implacable acts…. What the world awaits from President Wilson is not merely a note, it is a verdict. What do neutral peoples, what does the American Government, what does President Wilson think of the German doctrine,—'Necessity knows no law—the end justifies the means'?… Every Government that acts or speaks at the present hour decides the nature of the real peace, whether it will be an affirmation of those eternal principles that are alone capable of directing humanity toward its sacred end."
To our eternal shame as a nation our Government has evaded, up to this hour, pronouncing the expected verdict, has preferred to quibble and define, in its vain attempt to hold the barbarian to a "strict accountability"—whatever that may mean. France does not want our army or our navy, not even our money and our factories, except on business terms, but she has looked in vain for our affirmation as a nation of our belief in her great cause, which should be our own cause—the cause of all free peoples.
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What a timid and verbal interpretation of neutrality has prevented our Government from affirming, the American people, let us be thankful, have done generously, abundantly. They have pronounced a not uncertain verdict, and they have followed this moral verdict with countless acts of sympathy. The cause of France, the faith of the French, have roused the chivalry of the best Americans. Our youths are fighting in the trenches, our doctors and nurses are giving their services, our money is helping to stanch the wounds of France. As a people we too have affirmed our faith in the cause and are doing generously, spontaneously, as is our wont, what we can to win that cause for the world. The splendid hospital of the American Ambulance at Neuilly, equipped and operated on the generous American scale, is the real monument to the beliefs, the hopes, the faith of the American people.
In that modification of the Anglo-Saxon tradition which America is fast evolving, there is a subtle sympathy and likeness with the Latin, which this crisis has brought into evidence. We are less English than French in spirit, in our ideal of culture, of life.