AN AMERICAN PEACEVERSUSA RUBBER-STAMP PEACE
October 22, 1918
In Wallace’s Farmer, a journal devoted to the interests of the farmer, and also to the interests of every good American citizen, but which has no concern with partisan politics, there is a strong editorial against our acceptance of a peace on the terms of the famous fourteen points laid down by President Wilson in his message of January last. It reads in part as follows:
Of course, Germany would like to make peace on the terms laid down by President Wilson in his speech of January 8, for it would allow Germany to escape the just penalty of her crimes and restore her to her condition before the war.
Of course, Germany would like to make peace on the terms laid down by President Wilson in his speech of January 8, for it would allow Germany to escape the just penalty of her crimes and restore her to her condition before the war.
On the other hand, the leading Socialist paper of New York enthusiastically champions the fourteen points, especially those demanding a league of nations, freedom of the seas according to the German party, and the removal of all economic barriers. This championship is natural, for the Socialists, likethe I.W.W. of this country, who have been bitterly pro-German and anti-American, and like the worst Russian Bolsheviks, have steadily worked in Germany’s interests; and like all its professional internationalists they hate the liberty-loving nations so bitterly that they are eagerly working for peace satisfactory to the German autocracy. All such persons, so far as they are not merely silly, seek their own profit in the destruction of civilization, and they would hail an inconclusive peace, which would mean the triumph of militarism, rather than see the free nations triumphant over both militarism and anarchy.
But in his last note to Austria, President Wilson himself flatly repudiates one of his fourteen points—that relating to autonomy for the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs under the Austro-Hungarian yoke. He announces that he has changed his position because facts have changed, but in reality the facts have not changed in even the smallest degree between January and October so far as these two nationalities are concerned. Many persons, including myself, had then been demanding for over a year this complete independence. Nothing whatever has changed in the situation exceptMr.Wilson’s mind, and obviously this has changed merely because the American people have gradually waked up and have forced him in this matter to take a course diametrically opposed to the one he had been advocating, precisely as a week ago an aroused and indignant public opinion forced him to absolutely reverse the course of negotiation on which he entered with Germany.The popular feeling would have been inarticulate and helpless if it had not received expression from various patriotic public servants and private citizens and from those fearless newspapers, which, at the risk of grave financial disaster, have ventured when the crisis was serious to defy the sinister efforts of the Administration to do away with the freedom of the press. Senators Lodge, Poindexter, and Thomas and Congressman Fess are examples of the public servants, and Professor Hobbs, of the University of Michigan, and Professor Thayer, of Harvard, are examples of private citizens who have well served the people of the United States in this crisis.
Of course, the entire cuckoo or rubber-stamp tribe of politicians tumbled over themselves in the effort to assure the President that no matter what somersault he turned they would flop with equal quickness, and that their responsibility was solely to him and not to the people of the United States or to the cause of right and of fearlessness and of honorable dealing. Senator Lewis, of Illinois, introduced a resolution stating that “the United States Senate approves whatever course may be taken by the President in dealing with the German Imperial Government and the Austrian Imperial Government and endorses and approves whatever methods he may employ.” Senator Lewis is, in private life, an amiable and kindly gentleman, but the above resolution is a somewhat abject announcement that in public life he aspires only to be a rubber stamp. If such position isproper, then there is no need of Senators or Congressmen, and our people should merely send written proxies to Washington and should otherwise copy the example of those big private corporations which are controlled by one man according to his own will and for his own benefit.
I do not believe that the American people will accept a view which is both so abject and so profoundly unpatriotic. This is the war of the American people and the peace which concludes it should be the peace imposed by the American people. Therefore, they should send to Washington public servants who will be self-respecting Americans and not rubber stamps.