Formerly Attorney-General of the United States.
"The cause of our entrance into the great war," declares Dr. David Jayne Hill in a recent essay, "being the violation by the German Imperial Government of our legal rights as a nation, our object in the war was to make our rights respected. The one clear duty of the treaty-making power in concluding peace with Germany, therefore, is to secure this result." [25]
[25] "Americanizing the Treaty."—North American Review, August, 1919.
In these words, one of the most distinguished and accomplished of the opponents of the treaty of Paris reveals the profound abyss which separates those who oppose from those who are urging the approval of the Treaty of Versailles. Dr. Hill, perhaps unconsciously, gives expression to a sordid, narrow, selfish view of the issues of the war, which would transmute into the most elemental act of self-defense one of the greatest crusades of high idealism ever conducted by any people in the history of nations. If, in fact, the cause of our participation in the war was merely to repel attacks upon our legal rights as a nation, then indeed, that end being attained, and the aggressor reduced to impotence for the future, we may return within our own borders, withdraw unto ourselves, disclaim all responsibility for the condition of the world elsewhere and plunge into the selfish exploitation of our national resources, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." It is a strange perversion of the facts of recent history that leads to such a conception of America's responsibility for the future of civilization.
There were undoubtedly, as Mr. Wilson said, "violations of right which touched us to the quick." Was it merely violations of our own national rights that roused this peace-loving nation to array itself for battle; that sent two million of our young men across three thousand miles of ocean to take their places beside the heroes of Verdun and the Marne, the veterans of Cambrai and Arras, Ypres and the Somme; infused the weary defenders of civilization with new courage; converted their defense into an irresistible offensive which shattered the greatest military machine of history, overthrew the Kaiser and his government, and brought the German nation to its knees? No! It was not the German attacks upon our rights as a nation; it was the German challenge of the whole basis of modern Christian civilization. It was her cynical disclaimer of the binding character of treaties; her inhuman method of warfare; her brutal cruelties of non-combatant men, women and children; her ruthless destruction of monuments of art—the possessions of not merely one nation, but of the entire world of men and women in every land who love beauty and revere art. It was the growing conviction that a government which ordered the sinking of the Lusitania and the Sussex; that destroyed the priceless literary treasures of Louvain; that separated families in Belgium and France, and deported great companies of men to work in German munition factories; that ruthlessly cut up by the roots the fruit trees and shrubs of the occupied regions of France; that sought to destroy not merely the men, but the souls of nations, so that its own horrid philosophy of Force might reign over them—that such a government must no longer exist; that its pestilential influence was more noxious than tuberculosis or the bubonic plague.
THE BASIS OF PEACE
Therefore, the Youth of America joyously leaped to arms and crowded overseas in the greatest of all crusades, insuring victory and promising the opening of a new and better epoch of human history. It was the recognition of human kinship; the perception of human brotherhood, that inspired them to the great endeavor. Our proud sense of American nationality took on a deeper and holier significance as we joined forces with the older peoples in defense of the great principles of human right which had been formulated by our fathers and upon which was reared the American State. We were no less Americans that we had accepted a common responsibility with Great Britain, France and Italy for the preservation of the ideals of human freedom for which Washington fought and Lincoln died. Nay! better Americans, as we realized that the war was being fought in defense of those principles upon which our own institutions were founded and by which we had become the great, strong, free nation we are.
And as the hideous carnage went on, and we saw a whole generation of the youth of the free nations of Europe butchered because the German people had become so obsessed with their own sense of superiority that they were determined to rule the world and impose upon all other peoples subservience to their Moloch-like gospel of efficiency, another feeling began to struggle for expression in Europe and America alike—a determination that all wars of aggression must cease; that disputes between nations must be settled like those between individuals, by peaceful arbitration or conciliation; that the causes of war must be examined and, so far as possible, removed, and that no such war as this ever again should desolate the earth. This was the meaning of the phrase one came to hear on many lips, that it was "a war against war." How could such a result be attained? Obviously, only by the continued association in peace of those powers whose close coöperation in war was compelling the overthrow of German militarism, and the widening of that association to include all the other nations who should accept its program and give an earnest of adherence to its ideals. There was also the hope that some time—when they should have offered up that ancient sacrifice, "an humble and a contrite heart"—even the German people, enfranchised and regenerated, might be admitted into the society of Free Peoples and with new significance become entitled to be called a civilized nation.
These were the principles that underlay Mr. Wilson's program of peace—the fourteen points of January 8, 1918, and subsequent addresses; the only definite formulation of the basis of peace which was laid before the world, a program concerning which the American Congress expressed no definite criticism and for which it offered no substitute; a program which was accepted by Allies and opponents alike, and which constituted the Chart by which the Conference of Paris was required to endeavor to formulate the terms of the Treaty of Peace.
The work of that Conference now has been submitted to the judgment of mankind. It was accepted by the new government of Germany with a wry face, as the judgment of the victors naturally would be taken by the vanquished. It has been ratified by the Parliament of Great Britain, by Italy, by France and by Japan. It has been for weeks under debate in the Senate of the United States. Daily efforts have been made to create a partisan political issue over it, and to visit upon it party resentment against the past actions of the President. [26]