Current History: A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times, May 1918 / Vol. VIII, Part I, No. 2

by Various

Mr. President: The German historian, Professor Meyer, in a book written since the beginning of the war, in which he sums up the issues involved, or rather the issue, because it all resolves itself into one, uses this language: "The truth of the whole matter undoubtedly is that the time has arrived when two distinct forms of State organization must face each other in a life-and-death struggle."

That is undoubtedly the understanding and belief of those who are responsible for this war. It is coming to be the understanding and belief of those who have had the war forced upon them. We have finally put aside the tragedy at the Bosnian capital and the wrongs inflicted upon Belgium as the moving causes of the war. They were but the prologue to the imperial theme. We now see and understand clearly and unmistakably the cause at all times lying back of these things. Upon the one hand are Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the principles of human liberty which they embody and preserve. Upon the other hand is that peculiar form of State organization which, in the language of the Emperor, rests alone upon the strength of the army and whose highest creed finds expression in the words of one of its greatest advocates that war is a part of the eternal order instituted by God. We go back to Runnymede, where fearless men wrenched from the hands of power habeas corpus and the trial by jury. They point us to Breslau and Molwitz, where Frederick the Great, in violation of his plighted word, inaugurated the rule of fraud and force and laid the foundation for that mighty structure whose central and dominating principle is that of power.

It is that power with which we are at war today. Shall men, shall the people, be governed by some remorseless and soulless entity softly called the "State" or shall the instrumentalities of government yield alone and at all times to the wants and necessities, the hopes and aspirations, of the masses? That is now the issue. Nothing should longer conceal it. It is but another and more stupendous phase of the old struggle, a struggle as ancient and as inevitable as the thirst for power and the love of liberty, a struggle in which men have fought and sacrificed all the way from Marathon to Verdun.

It seems strange now, and it will seem more extraordinary to those who come after us, that we did not recognize from the beginning that this was the issue. But, obscured by the débris of European life, confused with the dynastic quarrels and racial bitterness of the Old World, it was difficult to discern, and still more difficult to realize, that the very life of our institutions was at stake, that the scheme of the enemy, amazing and astounding, was not alone to control territory and dominate commerce, but to change the drift of human progress and to readjust the standards of the world's civilization. Perhaps, too, our love of peace, our traditional friendship for all nations, lulled suspicion and discouraged inquiry. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt now.

Whatever the cause, however perverse the fates which bring us to this crisis, we are called upon not to settle questions of territory or establish new spheres of national activity, but to defend the institutions under which we live. Who doubts should we fail that the whole theory and system of government for which we have labored and struggled, our whole conception of civilization, would be discredited utterly? Who but believes that, should we lose, militarism would be the searching test of all Governments and that the world would be an armed camp harried and tortured and decimated by endless wars?

No; we can no longer doubt the issue, and, notwithstanding some discouraging facts, we must not doubt the result. We are simply meeting the test which brave men have met before, for this issue has been fought over and over again for 3,000 years. Islam's fanaticism was grounded in the same design and made of the same stuff, but it broke upon the valor of Charles Martel's men at Tours. But the conflict was not conclusive. The elder Napoleon was obsessed by the same dream of world dominion, the same passion for military glory, that now obsesses those against whom we war. But he, too, saw his universal sceptre depart when chance and fate, which sometimes war on the side of liberty, turned from him on the field of Waterloo. And now the issue is again made up, and again this dream of world dominion, this passion for military glory, torments the souls of our would-be masters. And now again somewhere on the battlefields of Europe the same fate awaits the hosts of irresponsible power. In such a contest and with such an issue we cannot lose; it would not harmonize with the law of human progress.

It has been the proud belief of some that not only would this war result in greater prestige and greater security for free institutions, but that it would effectuate the spread of democracy throughout Europe. We all hope for great things, for we believe in the ultimate triumph of free institutions, but we must not expect these things out of hand. The broken sobs of nations struggling to be independent and free so often heard in that part of the world and then heard no more, the story of Russia just now being written in contention and blood, admonishes anew that the republican road to safety and stability is encompassed by all kinds of trials and beset by countless perils. Democracy is the severest test of character which can be put upon a people, and must be learned and acquired in the rigid school of experience. It cannot be handed whole and complete to any people, though every member of the community were a Socrates.

But what we have determined in this crisis, as I understand it, is that we will keep the road of democracy open. No one shall close it. If any nation shall hereafter rise to the sublime requirement of self-government and choose to go that way, it shall have the right to do so. Above all things we have determined, cost what it may in treasure and blood, that this experiment here upon this Western Continent shall justify the faith of its builders, that there shall remain here in all the integrity of its powers neither wrenched nor marred by the passions of war from within nor humbled nor dishonored by military power from without, the Republic of the fathers; that since the challenge has been thrown down that this is a war unto death between two opposing theories of government we are determined that whatever else happens as a result of this war this form of organization, this theory of state, this last great hope, this fruition of 130 years of struggle and toil, "shall not perish from the earth."

So, Sir, stripped of all incidental and confusing things, the problem which our soldiers will help to solve is whether the theory of government exemplified in the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns or the theory of government exemplified in the faith of Abraham Lincoln shall prevail. It is after all a war of ideals, a clash of systems, a death struggle of ideals.