A FIFTY-FIFTY WAR ATTITUDE
November 20, 1917
The attitude of the United States at this moment toward Germany’s three vassal allies, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria, is a fifty-fifty attitude between peace and war. It is not honest war, neither is it honest neutrality. It is the attitude of the backwoodsman, who, seeing a black animal in his pasture at dusk and not knowing whether it was a bear or a calf, fired so as to hit it if it was a bear and miss it if it was a calf. Such marksmanship is never happy.
Bulgaria is now simply the tool of Germany and Turkey. I was formerly a stanch champion ofBulgaria, and would be again if she returned to her senses. But she now serves the devil, and shame be upon us if we do not treat her accordingly. No one can doubt that the Bulgarian Legation is an agency for German spies in this country. The Administration has published reports showing that for over a year, previous to our entry into the war, the German Embassy was the center of the spies and dynamiters with whom Germany was already waging war against us. These papers show that Germany’s allies are her mere tools and that Germany is withheld by no scruple from the commission of every conceivable treacherous intrigue and brutal outrage against us. Under these conditions it is a grave offense against our allies not to declare war on all of Germany’s allies.
Turkey has been and is the tool of Germany, but Germany has permitted her on her own account to perpetrate massacres on the Armenian and Syrian Christians which renders it little short of an infamy now to remain at peace with her. It is hypocritical to express sympathy with the Armenians and appoint messages to be read in the churches about them and yet refuse to do the only thing that will permanently help them which is to declare war on Turkey.
With Austria our present relations are less definable than our relations with any other power. No one can truthfully say exactly whether our attitude is one of peace or war. We have not declared war on Austria and yet we are furnishing money, coal, andmunitions to Italy in order to enable her to fight Austria. If we really are at peace with Austria, we are flagrantly violating our duty as a neutral and we ought to be condemned in any international court. But if we are really at war, then we are committing the cardinal crime of hitting soft. If we had gone to war with Austria when we broke with Germany and had acted with proper energy, the disaster to Cadorna would probably not have occurred.
We are now taking part in the general council of our allies. The only way in which to make our part in the war thoroughly effective and our leadership felt to the utmost is whole-heartedly to throw ourself into the war on the side of all our allies and against all their and our enemies.