The suggestion that America should take any such lead is resisted first on the ground that it is a violation of her traditional policy, and secondly that "economic and social forces" are bound to be ineffective unless backed by military, so that the plea would involve her in a militarist policy. With reference to these two points, I pointed out in the preceding article that America's isolation from a movement for world agreement would infallibly land her in a very pronounced militarist policy, the increase of her armaments, the militarization of her civilization and all that that implies.
There are open to America at this present moment two courses: one which will lead her to militarism and the indefinite increase of armaments—that is the course of isolation from the world's life, from the new efforts that will be made toward world organization; the other to anticipate events and take the initiative in the leadership of world organization, which would have the effect of rendering western civilization, including herself, less military, less dependent upon arms, and put the development of that civilization on a civilist rather than a militarist basis.
I believe that it is the failure to realize that this intervention can be non-military in character which explains the reluctance of very many Americans to depart from their traditional policy of non-intervention. With reference to that point it is surely germane to remember that the America of 1914 is not the America of 1776; circumstances which made Washington's advice sound and statesmanlike have been transformed. The situation today is not that of a tiny power not yet solidified, remote from the main currents of the world's life, out-matched in resources by any one of the greater powers of Europe. America is no longer so remote as to have little practical concern with Europe. Its contacts with Europe are instantaneous, daily, intimate, innumerable—so much so indeed that our own civilization will be intimately affected and modified by certain changes which threaten in the older world.
I will put the case thus: Suppose that there are certain developments in Europe which would profoundly threaten our own civilization and our own security, and suppose further that we could without great cost to ourselves so guide or direct those changes and developments as to render them no longer a menace to this country. If such a case could be established, would not adherence to a formula established under eighteenth century conditions have the same relation to sound politics that the incantations and taboos of superstitious barbarians have to sound religion? And I think such a case can be established.
I wonder whether it has occurred to many Americans to ask why all the belligerents in this present war are showing such remarkable deference to American public opinion. Some Americans may, of course, believe that it is the sheer personal fascination of individual Americans or simple tenderness of moral feeling that makes Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Austria take definitely so much trouble at a time when they have sufficient already, to demonstrate that they have taken the right course, that they are obeying all the laws of war, that they are not responsible for the war in any way, and so forth. Is it simply that our condemnation would hurt their feelings? This hardly agrees with certain other ideas which we hold as to the belligerents.
There is something beyond this order of motive at the bottom of the immense respect which all the combatants alike are paying to American opinion. It happened to the writer recently to meet a considerable number of Belgian refugees from Brussels, all of them full of stories (which I must admit were second or third or three-hundredth hand) of German barbarity and ferocity. Yet all were obliged to admit that German behavior in Brussels had on the whole been very good. But that, they explained, was "merely because the American Consul put his foot down." Yet one is not aware that President Wilson had authorized the American Consul so much as to hint at the possible military intervention of America in this war. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that these "Huns," so little susceptible in our view for the most part to moral considerations, were greatly influenced by the opinion of America; and we know also that the other belligerents have shown the same respect for the attitude of the United States.
I think we have here what so frequently happens in the development of the attitude of men toward large general questions: the intuitive recognition of a truth which those who recognize it are quite unable to put into words. It is a self-protective instinct, a movement that is made without its being necessary to think it out. (In the way that the untaught person is able instantly to detect the false note in a tune without knowing that such things as notes or crotchets and quavers exist.)
It is quite true that the Germans feared the bad opinion of the world because the bad opinion of the world may be translated into an element of resistance to the very ends which it is the object of the war to achieve for Germany.
Those ends include the extension of German influence, material and moral, of German commerce and culture. But a world very hostile to Germany might quite conceivably check both. We say, rightly enough, probably, that pride of place and power had its part—many declare the prominent part—in the motives that led Germany into this war. But it is quite conceivable that a universal revulsion of feeling against a power like Germany might neutralize the influence she would gain in the world by a mere extension of her territorial conquests.
Russia, for instance, has nearly five times the population and very many times the area of France; but one may doubt whether even a Russian would assert that Russian influence is five or ten times greater than that of France; still less that the world yielded him in any sense a proportionately greater deference than it yields the Frenchman. The extent to which the greatest power can impose itself by bayonets is very limited in area and depth. All the might of the Prussian Army cannot compel the children of Poland or of Lorraine to say their prayers in German; it cannot compel the housewives of Switzerland or Paraguay or of any other little State that has not a battleship to its name to buy German saucepans if so be they do not desire to. There are so many other things necessary to render political or military force effective, and there are so many that can offset it altogether.