Lafayette, We Come! / The Story of How a Young Frenchman Fought for Liberty in America and How America Now Fights for Liberty in France

by Rupert Sargent Holland

The United States had a great President, a man who knew the temper of his people far better than those who criticized him. He knew the history of the country, he knew that its people loved peace and hated war, that Europe was far from the vision of most of them, and that they still cherished Washington’s advice against the making of “entangling alliances.” He tried to be patient, even with Germany, though he knew her for what she was; he waited, urging her to obey the laws of civilization, hoping that he might act as a peacemaker between the warring nations, feeling that peace might lie in the power of America, provided she kept neutral. But his efforts meant nothing to Germany; she believed in insincerity and the piling of lies on lies.

In many ways the United States had been very successful. It had grown tremendously, it had carried out many of the ideals of its founders. But in some ways it had fallen from its true course. Special privileges had allowed some men to grow enormously rich at the expense of their neighbors, city governments were too often the playthings of grafting politicians, men were often apt to prefer the liberty of the individual to the welfare of the state. The real question of the country was not as to whether we had won success, but as to whether liberty was still worth striving for. A nation is very much like an individual, and an individual often loses his ideals as he wins material success. Had America grown to be like a rich and torpid man who cares more for his ease and comfort than for the dreams of his youth? Had America forgotten Lafayette’s vision of her, forgotten that liberty is the one priceless gift? Were the youths, few in number but great in spirit, who were offering their lives for freedom in the airplanes and trenches of Europe the only part of the nation that still saw the vision clear?

Woodrow Wilson never doubted his people in that time of stress and strain. He knew what their answer must be when the call came to them. They had forgotten their heritage no more than he. The Declaration of Independence was still their testament; the hundred millions were the true sons of the few millions of the days of Washington. And when the German Menace dared to forbid Americans to travel in safety on the seas the answer of America came instantly. Yes, there was something better than comfort and peace and wealth; there was freedom, there was the goal of helping humanity to throw off the beasts of prey! The world must be made safe for all men! The mailed fist must be shown that might does not make right!

Germany notified the United States that she intended to carry on unrestricted submarine warfare, to become the lawless pirate of the seas. President Wilson handed the German Ambassador his passports and waited to see if Germany intended to carry out her threat. As usual, the House of Hohenzollern would not listen to reason. Germany turned pirate, throwing away the last vestige of any respect for law. And when this was plain the President went to Congress on April 2, 1917, and advised the representatives of the nation to accept the challenge of war thrust upon us by the German Empire.

“Let us be very clear,” said the President, “and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are.... Our object ... is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people....

“We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretentions and its power.... The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.”

Let us be thankful that our President could voice the same spirit in 1917 that Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence and that Lincoln proclaimed on the field at Gettysburg. Our country bore malice toward none, we wanted to be friends to all, we had no selfish desires for power or dominion. But as Lafayette heard the call to battle for the freedom of men in America in 1776, so America now heard the same call from the fields of Europe. On April 6, 1917, the United States formally declared war against the autocracy of Germany.

What were we fighting against? Against the old idea of feudalism that the ruler need respect no rights of the ruled, against the old Bourbon theory that the sovereign need obey none of the laws that govern the rest of humankind, against the principles of Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns that the people exist solely for the benefit of the ruling dynasties. All this Prussia had converted into the principle that the Fatherland is supreme, and that the people must obey the Fatherland in everything; and the autocrats of Prussia had made the Fatherland a savage monster, ruthless, unjust and cruel, devouring all it could to satisfy its greed. If you look back through history you will see that the crimes of all the despots are the crimes of Germany to-day and that whenever men were fighting tyranny, rapacity and cruelty they were fighting the same battle that America and her allies fight to-day.

More than that. In fighting for freedom we are fighting for our preservation. The world cannot exist one half slave, the other half free. Let tyranny succeed in Europe and it can only be a short time before it will look hungrily at America. The Menace must be destroyed before it grows so powerful that none can withstand it. “The time has come,” wrote President Wilson shortly after the declaration of war, “to conquer or submit.” Submission would have been to surrender all the principles of the republic, the country to which lovers of liberty had looked for more than a century to prove the actual realization of their dreams.

It is the German machine-made government, the autocratic ruling military caste, the idea that might makes right, and that small nations have no rights that big nations need respect, it is all these old and hideous beliefs of the Dark Ages and the era of despots that the liberty-loving nations are fighting to-day. The individual German is, after all, a human being like ourselves, though warped and twisted in his ideas of what is right and wrong by his selfish and barbarous government. The individual German may become a civilized man again, provided he can come to see the monstrous tyranny of his government. And for this reason President Wilson said to Congress in his speech of April 2, 1917, “We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools.”