The Verdict of the American People
By Newell Dwight Hillis.
Dr. Hillis, who occupies the pulpit of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, made famous by the pastorate of the late Henry Ward Beecher, delivered the following remarkable sermon on the European War on Sunday, Dec. 20, 1914, choosing as his text the words: "From whence come wars? Come they not from your own lusts?"
Nearly five months have now passed by since the German Army invaded Belgium and France. These 140 days have been packed with thrilling and momentous events. While from their safe vantage ground the American people have surveyed the scene, an old régime has literally crumbled under our very eyes. Europe is a loom on whose earthen framework demiurgic forces like Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Napoleon once wove the texture of European civilization. Now the demon of war has, with hot knife, shorn away the texture, and a modern Czar and Kaiser, King and President, with Generals and Admirals, are weaving the warp and woof of a new world. One hundred years ago the forces that bred wars were political forces; today the collision between nations is born of economic interests. The twentieth century influences are chiefly the force of wealth and the force of public opinion. These are the giant steeds, though the reins of the horses may be in the hands of Kings and Kaisers. In Napoleon's day antagonism grew out of the natural hatred of autocracy for democracy, of German imperialism for French radicalism. Today Germany is not even interested in France's republican form of Government, nor is France concerned with Germany's imperial autocrat. But all Europe is intensely concerned with the question of economic supremacy or financial subordination.
Ever since Oliver Cromwell's day England has been the mistress of the seas, and Germany is envious and believes that she has a right to supplant England in this naval leadership. France has long been the banker of Europe, and Germany covets financial leadership. From whence come wars? Come they not from men's lusts? Now that long time has passed, it is quite certain that neither Napoleon nor Bismarck nor William II. understood the future. It is a proverb that yesterday is a seed, today the stalk, and tomorrow is the full corn in the ear. Napoleon was a practical man, but he could not see the shock in the seed. When Napoleon said, "One hundred years from now Europe will be all republican or all Cossack"—Napoleon was quite wrong. Forty years ago Bismarck said that he had reduced France to the level of a fourth-class nation, and that henceforth France did not count; while as for the Balkan States, "the whole Eastern question is not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier"—Bismarck was quite wrong. The present Kaiser has no imagination. A man of any prevision of the future might have foreseen that any attack upon England would settle the Irish question; that any treaty with Turkey would force Italy, as Turkey's enemy in the late Italian-Turkish war, to break with Germany; any man with the least instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man is so incensed by an enemy's trespass upon his property, that Belgium would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three weeks of the entire war. If the history of great wars tells us anything, it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the present. There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and advisers of this war. Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain sides and cut certain swaths of brush. At the moment the man with his axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these words written in letters of fire, "Welcome to our Emperor." Today the demon of war has been writing with blazing letters certain lessons upon the hills and valleys of Europe, and fortunate is that youth who can read the writing and interpret aright the lessons of the times.
The people of the republic now realize for the first time what are the inevitable fruits of imperialism and militarism. One of the perils of America's distance from the scenes of autocracy is that our people have come to think that the forms of government are of little importance. We hear it said that climate determines government and that one nation likes autocracy and another limited monarchy, that we like democracy self-government, and that the people are about as happy under one form of control as another. This misconception is based upon a failure to understand foreign imperialism. Superficially, the fruits of autocracy are efficiency, industrial wealth, and military power. But now, after nearly five months of constant discussion, our people understand thoroughly the other side of imperialism. The 6,000,000 of German-Americans living in this country, with their high type of character, millions who have left their native land to escape service in the army, the burdens of taxation involved in militarism, and the law of lèse majesté, should have opened our eyes long ago. During the last five years I have lectured in more than one hundred cities on the New Germany and the lessons derived from her industrial efficiency, with the application of science to the production of wealth, but I did not appreciate fully the far-off harvest of militarism. And, lest an American overstate the meaning of militarism, let me condense Treitschke's view. He holds that the nation should be looked upon as a vast military engine; that its ruler should be the commander of the army; that his Cabinet should be under Generals; that the whole nation should march with the force of an armed regiment; that the real "sin against the Holy Ghost was the sin of military impotence; that such an army should take all it wants and the territory it needs and explain afterward." Manufacturers are essentially inventors of cannons and guns and dreadnoughts, incidentally self-supporting men. Bankers are here to finance the army and incidentally to make money. Physicians are here to heal the wounded soldiers. Gymnasiums are founded to train soldiers. Women are here to breed soldiers, and militarism is the path that will bring Germany to her place in the sun. The youth is first of all to be a soldier and incidentally to be a man. No one has indicted Germany's militarism in stronger language than the distinguished German-American, Carl Schurz. In words that burn the great statesman expressed his hatred of the imperialism and militarism against which he helped to organize a revolution that led to his flight to this country. Of late Americans have been asking themselves certain questions.
The American Ideal vs. the German.
What will be the result if Germany is allowed to seize any smaller State whose territory and property she covets? Is all Europe to become an armed camp? What is the meaning of this German professor's article in The North American Review, written two or three years ago, in which he says that once she is victorious the Monroe Doctrine will go and the United States will receive the "thrashing she so richly deserves"? Must we then go over to the military ideal? If Germany supports 8,000,000 soldiers out of 66,000,000, must we withdraw from productive industry 12,000,000 men for at least two or three of the best years of their young life? Must we start in on a programme of ten dreadnoughts a year instead of building ten colleges and universities for the same sum of money? Of late Americans who love their country have been searching their own hearts. Merchants hitherto busied with commerce are asking themselves whither this country is drifting. Is Germany to compel us to become a vast military machine? This military question is a subject of discussion on the street cars and in the stores, at the dining room table. No articles in paper and magazine are so eagerly read and analyzed. The American ideal is not a military machine, but a high quality of manhood. To make men free, with the gift of self-expression; to make men wise through the public school and the free press; to make men self-sufficing and happy in their homes, through freedom of industrial contracts; to make men sound in their manhood through religious liberty for Jew and Gentile and Catholic and Protestant—these are our national ideals. America stands at the other pole of the universe from imperialism and militarism. So far from being willing to desert the political faith of the fathers, this war has confirmed our confidence in self-government. Liberty to grow, freedom to climb as high as industry and ability will permit, liberty to analyze and discuss the views of President, Congress, Governor—these are our rights. In a military autocracy there can be no liberty of the printing press. If a man criticises the Kaiser, he goes to jail; in this republic, if Horace Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the great editor to jail, but writes the latter, "My paramount object is to save the Union," and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation. An American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany. He could not breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism. For a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government and the fruits of military imperialism.
The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens as to the rights and liberties of small States. In the republic the sin of trespass is one of the blackest of sins. Here we hold to the sanctity of property. A man's home is his castle, a citadel that cannot be invaded even by the power of the State. So deep is the American hatred of trespass against property rights that imperialism finds it impossible to understand this. Here the individual is a king of kings in his native right, and takes out an injunction against the city that wishes to trespass upon his property. This antagonism manifests itself in the laws that safeguard the small shopkeeper against the big firm, and the small manufacturer against any company with its billion dollars of capital. This antagonism to the sin of trespass has lent a peculiar sanctity to treaties between Canada and the United States. We have one hundred millions of people, and Canada nine millions. We need many things that Canada has, but it is intellectually unthinkable that "we should take what we want and explain afterward," or that we should violate our treaty guaranteeing neutrality to Canada. Our frontier line is three thousand miles long. There is not a fort from Maine to Victoria. If we adopted Germany's position we would have to build one thousand forts, withdraw two million young men from the farm, factory, store and bank, and load the working people with taxes to support them. In a free land, and in God's world, there should be a place for the poor man and for the small nation. In the olden time there was a king who had herds and flocks, and a poor man who had one pet lamb. It came to pass that a stranger claimed the right of hospitality at the rich man's palace, and the king sent out and took the poor man's one lamb and gave it for food to the stranger. And, soon or late, the time will come when history will tell the story of Germany's taking little Belgium, and conscience, like a prophet, will indict the militarism that seized the one lamb that belonged to the poor man. This episode is not closed. The German representative who says that Belgium is a part of Germany may be right in terms of future government and war, but the incident has just begun in the memory of the soldiers who never can forget that they first broke their sacred treaty, and then, when the Belgian defended his home as his castle, butchered the man, who died with a sacred treaty in his hand. Why, all over this land, teachers, fathers, editors, authors, have found it necessary to say to the young men and women of the republic, "Do not sign your name to an obligation unless you intend to keep it." Keep your faith. Remember that your word given should be as good as your bond. "Swear to your own hurt, and change not." All this is inevitable, as the result of Germany's trespass upon the property and the homes of Belgium. In some European lands the State is everything and the individual nothing. In this republic the individual is first, and the State is here to safeguard his rights and see to it that no one trespasses upon his property. The time will come when the nation that breaks its treaties and sows to the wind shall of that wind reap the whirlwind. It is an awful thing for a nation to make it inevitable that hereafter when other people sign a treaty with that country, that our representatives shall say: "Before we sign this treaty with you, we wish to ask one question. Later, if it is to your interest to break this treaty, is this document to be sneered at as a scrap of paper? Or does this treaty mean the faith of a nation that will die rather than break its word, given before the tribunal of civilized States?"