Some destiny must call, some imperative necessity must beckon, some divine authority must be invoked. The campaign for "100 percent Americanism," carefully thought out, generously financed and carried to every nook and corner of the United States aims to prove this necessity. The war waged by the Department of Justice and by other public officers against the "Reds" is intended to arouse in the American people a sense of the present danger of impending calamity. The divine sanction was expressed by President Wilson in his address to the Senate on July 10, 1919. The President discussed the Peace Treaty in some of its aspects and then said, "It is thus that a new responsibility has come to this great nation that we honor and that we would all wish to lift to yet higher service and achievement. The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving but by the hand of God who has led us into this war. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted and freshened spirit to follow the vision."
8. The Open Road
The American people took a long step forward on November 2, 1920. The era of modern imperialism, begun in 1896 by the election of McKinley, found its expression in the annexation of Hawaii; the conquest of Cuba and the Philippines; the seizure of Panama, and a rapid commercial and financial expansion into Latin America. In 1912 the Republicans were divided. The more conservative elements backed Taft for reëlection. The more aggressive group (notably United States Steel) supported Roosevelt. Between them they divided the Republican strength, and while they polled a total vote of 7,604,463 as compared with Wilson's 6,293,910, the Republican split enabled Wilson to secure a plurality of 2,173,512, although he had less than half of the total vote.
President Wilson entered office with the ideals of "The New Freedom." He was out to back the "man on the make," the small tradesman and manufacturer; the small farmer; the worker, ambitious to rise into the ranks of business or professional life. With the support, primarily, of little business, Wilson managed to hold his own for four years, and at the 1916 election to poll a plurality, over the Republican Party, of more than half a million votes. He won, however, primarily because "he kept us out of war." April, 1917, deprived him of that argument. His "New Freedom" doctrines, translated into international politics (in the Fourteen Points) were roughly handled in Paris. The country rejected his leadership in the decisive Congressional elections of 1918, and he and his party went out of power in the avalanche of 1920, when Harding received a plurality nearly three times as great as the highest one ever before given a presidential candidate (Roosevelt, in 1904). Every state north of the Mason and Dixon Line went Republican. Tennessee left the Solid South and joined the same party. The Democrats carried only eleven states—the traditional Democratic stronghold.
The victory of Harding is a victory for organized, imperial, American business. The "man on the make" is brushed aside. In his place stands banker, manufacturer and trader, ready to carry American money and American products into Latin America and Asia.
Before the United States lies the open road of imperialism. Manifest destiny points the way in gestures that cannot be mistaken. Capitalist society in the United States has evolved to a place where it must make certain pressing demands upon neighboring communities. Surplus is to be invested; investments are to be protected, American authority is to be respected. All of these necessities imply the exercise of imperial power by the government of the United States.
Capitalism makes these demands upon the rulers of capitalist society. There is no gainsaying them. A refusal to comply with them means death.
Therefore the American nation, under the urge of economic necessity; guided half-intelligently, half-instinctively by the plutocracy, is moving along the imperial highroad, and woe to the man that steps across the path that leads to their fulfillment. He who seeks to thwart imperial destiny will be branded as traitor to his country and as blasphemer against God.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] "New American History," A. B. Hart. American Book Co., 1917, p. 348.