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When the old fourteen-knot steamer finally dropped anchor off quarantine in New York Harbor and the reporters came on board with the dust of America on their shoes, the roar of America in their voices, I was surer than ever that this greatest of world wars meant a vast deal more to us than trade or charity or politics, which is what we seem to be making of it for the most part. It means the form which our national character is to take ultimately. The German peril, which is held before the public in moving pictures and in alarmist appeals for "preparedness," is already in our midst, not so much at work blowing up our factories as insidiously at work in our hearts. The German apologist—even of Anglo-Saxon blood—is suggesting the reasonableness of a German verdict. "After all," one hears from his lips, "there is much on the other side of the shield, which our English prejudices have prevented us from seeing. Germany cannot be the monster of barbarism that she has been painted. As for broken treaties, the atrocities, the submarines, the murder of Edith Cavell, and her rough work over here,—well, we must remember it is war, and the Russian Cossacks have not been saints!… As to her military autocracy, perhaps a little of it would not be a bad thing for America. At any rate, Germany seems to have the power—it is useless to think of putting her down…. The American public will forget all about German crimes once Germany is victorious." "Nothing succeeds like success." "There is always a reason for success," etc. Which cynical acceptance proves that we have already "committed adultery in our hearts."
There are many voices in the air, too many. Americans have not yet found themselves in this crisis of world tragedy, and the Government at Washington has not helped them to an understanding. We are vastly relieved at not finding ourselves "involved" and accept shabby verbal subterfuges as a triumph of American diplomacy. Meanwhile the Lusitania incident has been conveniently forgotten, with the awkward phrase "strictly accountable." Along the eastern seaboard the anxious and the timid are clamoring for "defense"—against what? The talkative pacifists, who would make a grotesque farce of the bloody sacrifice by a futile peace, are bringing further ridicule and contempt on their country with their impertinent if well-meant efforts. Meantime, the money-makers have taken this occasion to stage a spectacular bull market, grumbling on the fruits of war! And there is the "good-time" side to American life. For a few brief months after the outbreak of the war Americans were staggered by the awfulness of the tragedy and moved under its shadow. Their hearts went out in sympathy, in feeding the dispossessed, and sending aid to the wounded. We spent less on ourselves, partly because of financial fear, partly because of our desire to give, partly because our hearts were too heavy to play. But already that serious mood is passing, and to-day as a people we are hard at it again, chasing a good time. We feel once more the same old lustful urge to get and enjoy…. The other night as I looked out on the peopled sea of the New York opera-house, with its women richly dressed and jeweled, its white-faced men, leading the same life of easy prodigal expense, of sensual gratification, I remembered another opera staged in the mysterious twilight of Bayreuth where from the gloom emerged the hoarse bass of Fafner's cry,—"I lie here possessing!" The voice of the great worm proved to be the voice of Germany. Is it ours also?
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Do we Americans desire to have our world Germanized? Not in art and language and customs, though may Heaven preserve us from that fate also! But Germanized in soul? Do we want the German image or the Latin image of the world to prevail? And are we strong enough in our own ideal to resist a "peaceful penetration" by triumphant Germany into our minds and hearts? That is the urgent matter for us. No amount spent on big guns, superdreadnoughts, submarines, and continental guards—no amount of peace talk—can keep the German peril out of America if we surrender our souls to her creed, now that Germany seems to be imposing it successfully with her armies in Europe. Those dirty poilus in the front trenches are, indeed, fighting our battle for us, if we did but know it!
II
The Choice
"We have all sinned, your people as well as mine, the English, the French, the Germans, all, all of us,—but Germany has sinned most." When M. Hanotaux spoke these words with a Hebraic fervor of conviction, I did not have to be told what he meant. The people of our time have sinned through their hot desire for material possession of the earth and its riches—through commercialism, capitalism, call it what you will. Each great nation has made its selfish race for economic advancement at the expense of other peoples: commercial rivalry has largely begotten this bloody war, which is essentially a predatory raid by one barbarous tribe against the riches of its neighbors. Whether England or Russia under similar circumstances would have dared a similar attack on the liberties of the world is open to speculation. To Germany alone, however, has been reserved the distinction of elevating greed and the lust of power to the dignity of a philosophic system, a creed with the religious sanction of that "old German god" to smite the rivals of the Fatherland and take away their wealth. It is because Germany has made a consistent monster out of her materialistic interpretation of modern science that she is now held up before the nations of the world as a spectacle and a warning. "We have all sinned" in believing that the body is more than the spirit, that food and pleasure and power are the primary ends of all living; but Germany alone has had the effrontery to justify her cynicism by conscious theory and to teach it systematically to all her people. She has endowed with life a philosophical idea, given it the personality of her people, created a national Frankenstein to be feared and loathed. More, she is coming perilously nigh to imposing her god upon the world!
We have all worshiped at the shrine of material achievement—in America with the riot of young strength. England, like old King Amfortas, is now bleeding from the sins of her youth and calling in vain for some Parsifal to deliver her from their penalty. She has built her rich civilization on a morass of exploited millions, and her Nemesis is that in her hour of peril her sodden millions strike and drink and feel no imperative urge to give their lives for an England that sucked her prosperity from their veins. In the race for commercial supremacy the Latin nations—Italy, Spain, and France—have been deemed inferior to Germany, England, and the United States, because they were less tainted with the lust of possession, less materialistic in their reading of life, less powerful in their grasp upon economic opportunity than their rivals. In the Latin countries industry yet remains largely on the small scale, which is economically wasteful, but which does not build up fabulous wealth at the expense of the individual worker. The great corporation designed for the rapid creation of wealth has not found that congenial home on Latin soil which it has on ours, or on German soil. And this fact accounts for the touch of handicraft lingering in the product of Latin industry, for the strength and health individually of their working classes, for their fervor of devotion to the national tradition. The Latin has never forgotten the claims of the individual life: democracy to him is more than the right to vote. Therefore, pure art, pure science, pure literature—also the world of ideas—has a larger part in the life of Latin peoples than with us in the eternal struggle with the materialistic forces of life. To the Latin living is not solely the gratification of the body. He reckons on the intelligence and the spirit of man as well.
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