CHAPTER X

Did French officers remain in Liége or in any other Belgian fortress after hostilities had begun, and did France plan to go through Belgium? Germany has officially made both claims. The first can easily be substantiated by The Supreme Court of Civilization by an investigation of the prisoners of war taken in Belgium. Until an impartial investigation becomes possible no further proof than the claim made by the German Government can be produced.

As the French officers taken in Belgium are presumably in German detention camps, it wouldseem that Germany should first substantiate its defense by names, dates, and places, although even then the mere capture of French officers in Belgium after the invasion had begun does not necessarily indicate that they were in Belgium before the invasion.

Dr. von Mach adds in the reply, which he made in the New YorkTimesto an article contributed by the writer to that journal:

It is impossible to say here exactly what these proofs are which Germany possesses, and which for military reasons it has not yet been able to divulge....This is an important question, and the answer must be left to The Supreme Court of Civilization. The weight of the evidence would seem to point to a justification of Germany. Yet no friend of Germany can find fault with those who would wish to defer a verdict until such time when Germany can present her complete proof to the world, and this may be when the war is over.

This naïve suggestion, that the vital question of fact should be postponed, and in the meantime judgment should be entered for Germany, is refreshing in its novelty. Its only parallel was the contention of the celebrated Dr. Cook, who contended that the world should accept his claim as to the discovery of the North Pole and await the proofs later.

Professor von Mach, in his book, “What Germany Wants,” further explains this dilatory defense and amplifies it in a manner that is certainly unusual in an historian. He recognizes that the speech of the German Chancellor in the Reichstag on August 4th, in which von Bethmann-Hollweg admitted that the action of Germany in invading Belgium was wrong and only justified it on the ground of self-preservation, was a virtual plea of guilty by Prussia of the crime, of which it stands indicted at the bar of the civilized world.

Germany’s scholarly apologist, asamicus curiæ, then suggests that in criminal procedure, when a defendant pleads guilty, the Court often refuses to accept his plea, enters a plea of not guilty for him, and assigns counsel to defend the case. He therefore suggests that the Chancellor’s plea of guilty should be disregarded and the Court should assign counsel.

One difficulty with the analogy is that courts do not ordinarily refuse to accept a plea of guilty. On the contrary, they accept it almost invariably, for why try the guilt of a man when he himself in the most formal way acknowledges it?

The only instance in which a court does show such consideration to a prisoner is when the defendant is both poor and ignorant. Then, andonly then, with a fine regard for human right, is the procedure suggested by Prof. von Mach followed.

To this humiliating position, Professor von Mach asamicus curiæconsigns his great nation. For myself, as one who admires Germany and believes it to be much greater and truer than its ruling caste or its over-zealous apologists, I refuse to accept the justification of such an absurd and degrading analogy.

The blunt acknowledgment of the German Chancellor in the Reichstag, already quoted, is infinitely preferable to the disingenuous defenses of Germany’s ardent but sophistical apologists. Fully recognizing the import of his words, von Bethmann-Hollweg, addressing the representatives of the German nation, put aside with admirable candor all these sophistical artifices and rested the defense of Germany upon the single contention that Germany was beset by powerful enemies and that it was a matter of necessity for her to perpetrate this “wrong” and in this manner to “hack her way through.”

This defense is not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a plea of “Guilty” at the bar of the world. It has one merit. It does not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy.

After the civilized world had condemned the invasion of Belgium with an unprecedented approach to unanimity, the German Chancellor rather tardily discovered that public opinion was still a vital force in the world and that the strategic results of the occupation of Belgium had not compensated for the moral injury. For this reason he framed five months after this crime against civilization a belated defense, which proved so unconvincing that the Bernhardi plea of military necessity is clearly preferable, as at least having the merit of candor.

After proclaiming to the world that the German Foreign Office had discovered in Brussels certain secret documents, which disclosed the fact that the neutrality of Belgium at the time of the invasion was a sham and after the civilized world had refused to accept this bald and unsupported assertion, as it had also refused to accept the spurious evidence of a well-known Arctic explorer, the German Foreign Office in December, 1914 published its alleged proofs.

The first purported to be a report of the Chief of the Belgian General Staff to the Minister of War and reported his conversations in 1906 with a military attaché of the British Legation in Brussels.

The second purported to be a report of similar conversations in 1912 between the same officials.

In an authorized statement, published on January 27, 1915, Sir Edward Grey states that there is no record of either of these negotiations in the English Foreign Office or the War Office; but this fact is not in itself conclusive and as there is no evidence that the documents were forged, their genuineness should be assumed in the absence of some more specific denial.

The documents, however, do not appreciably advance the cause of Germany, for they disclose on their face that the conversations were not binding on the Governments of England or Belgium but were simply an informal exchange of view between the officials, and what is far more to the purpose, the whole of the first conversation of April 10, 1906, was expressly based upon the statement that “the entry of the English into Belgium would take place only after the violation of our neutrality by Germany.”

The second document also shows that the Belgian Chief of Staff expressly stated that any invasion of Belgium by England, made to repel a prior German invasion, could not take place without the express consent of Belgium, to be given when the occasion arose, and it is further evidentthat the statement of the English military attaché—clearly a subordinate official to define the foreign policy of a great Empire—expressly predicated his assumption, that England might disembark troops in Belgium, upon the statement that its object would be to repel a German invasion of Belgian territory.

If it be asked why England and Belgium were thus in 1906 and 1912 considering the contingency of a German invasion of Belgium and the method of effectually repelling it, the reply is obvious that such invasion, in the event of a war between Germany and France, was a commonplace of German military strategists. Of this purpose they made little, if any, concealment. The construction by Germany of numerous strategic railway lines on the Belgian frontier, which were out of proportion to the economic necessity of the territory, gave to Europe some indication of Germany’s purpose and there could have been little doubt as to such intention, if Germany had not, through its Foreign Office, given, as previously shown, repeated and continuous assurances to Belgium that such was not its intention.

The German Chancellor—whose stupendous blunders of speech and action in this crisis will be the marvel of posterity—has further attempted tocorrect his record by two equally disingenuous defenses. Speaking to the Reichstag on December 2, 1914, he said:

When on the 4th of August I referred to the wrong which we were doing in marching through Belgium, it was not yet known for certain whether the Brussels Government in the hour of need would not decide after all to spare the country and to retire to Antwerp under protest. You remember that, after the occupation of Liége, at the request of our army leaders I repeated the offer to the Belgian Government. For military reasons it was absolutely imperative that at the time, about the 4th of August, the possibility for such a development should be kept open.Even then the guilt of the Belgian Government was apparent from many a sign, although I had not yet any positive documentary proofs at my disposal.

This is much too vague to excuse a great crime. The guilt of Belgium is said to be “apparent from many a sign,” but what these signs are the Chancellor still fails to state. He admits that they were not documentary in character. If the guilt of Belgium had been so apparent to the Chancellor on August the 4th, when he made his confession of wrong doing in the Reichstag, then it is incredible that he would have made such an admission.

As to the overt acts of France, all that the Chancellor said in his speech of December 2 was “thatFrance’s plan of campaign was known to us and that it compelled us for reasons of self-preservation to march through Belgium.” But it is again significant that, speaking nearly five months after his first public utterance on the subject and with a full knowledge that the world had visited its destructive condemnation upon Germany for its wanton attack upon Belgium,the Chancellor can still give no specific allegation of any overt act by France which justified the invasion. All that is suggested is a supposed “plan of campaign.”

Following this unconvincing and plainly disingenuous speech, the Chancellor proceeded in an authorized newspaper interview on January 25, 1915 to state that his now famous—or infamous—remark about “the scrap of paper” had been misunderstood.

After stating that he felt a painful “surprise to learn that my phrase, ‘a scrap of paper,’ should have caused such an unfavorable impression on the United States,” he proceeds to explain that in his now historic interview with the British Ambassador,

he (von Bethmann-Hollweg) had spoken of the treaty not as a “scrap of paper” for Germany, but as an instrument which had become obsolete through Belgium’s forfeiture of its neutrality and that GreatBritain had quite other reasons for entering into the war, compared with which the neutrality treaty appeared to have only the value of a scrap of paper.

Let the reader here pause to note the twofold character of this defense.

It suggests that Germany’s guaranty of Belgium’s neutrality had become for Germany “a scrap of paper” because of Belgium’s alleged forfeiture of its rights as a neutral nation, although at the time referred to the German Chancellor had not only asked the permission of Belgium to cross its territory but immediately before his interview with the British Ambassador he had publicly testified in his speech in the Reichstag to the justice of Belgium’s protest.

The other and inconsistent suggestion is that, without respect to Belgium’s rights under the treaty of 1839, the violation of its territory by Germany was not the cause of England’s intervention; but obviously this hardly explains the German Chancellor’s contemptuous reference to the long standing and oft repeated guaranty of Belgium’s neutrality as merely a “scrap of paper.”

Having thus somewhat vaguely suggested a twofold defense, the Chancellor, without impeaching the accuracy of Goschen’s report of the interview, then proceeded to state that the conversationin question took place immediately after his speech in the Reichstag, in which, as stated, he had admitted the justice of Belgium’s protest against the violation of its territory, and he adds that,

when I spoke, I already hadcertain indications but no absolute proofupon which to base a public accusation that Belgium long before had abandoned its neutrality in its relations with England. Nevertheless I took Germany’s responsibilities toward the neutral States so seriously that I spoke frankly of the wrong committed by Germany.

If the German Chancellor is truthful in his statement that on August the 4th, when he spoke in the Reichstag and an hour later had his conversation with Goschen, he had “certain indications” that Belgium had forfeited its rights as an independent nation by hostile acts, then the German Chancellor took such a serious view of “Germany’s responsibilities” that, without any necessity or justification, he indicted his country at the bar of the whole world of a flagrant wrong. If he could not at that time justify the act of the German General Staff, he should at least have been silent, but, according to his incredible statement, although he had these “certain indications”and thusknewthat Germany, in invading Belgium, was simply attacking an already hostile country, he deliberately explains, not only to his nation but to the whole world, that such invasion was a wrong and had no justification in international law. How can any reasonable man, whose eyes are not blinded with the passions of the hour, accept this explanation?

It is even more remarkable that immediately following the session of the Reichstag, when he had his interview with Goschen, the German Chancellor never suggested in his own defense or that of his country, that he had “certain indications,” which justified the action that day taken, although he then knew that, unless he could justify it, England would immediately join the already powerful foes of Germany.

The reader need only reread Goschen’s report of that interview (ante, p.214) to know how disingenuous this belated explanation is. With the whole world ringing with the infamous phrase, the German Chancellor, after five months of reflection, can only make this pitiful defense. Its acceptance subjects even the most credulous to a severe strain. It exhausts the limit of gullibility.

The defense wholly ignores the fact that the Chancellor had previously sought to bribe Englandto condone in advance the invasion of Belgium by Germany, and that Germany had also coerced Luxemburg into a passive acquiescence in a similar invasion, and there is as yet no pretense that Luxemburg had failed in its obligation of neutrality.

Should the judgment of the civilized world turn from the terrible fate of Belgium and consider the wrong that was done to Luxemburg, then the German Chancellor may, unless better advised, frame further maladroit excuses with reference to that country.

All these explanations, as senseless as they are false, and savoring more of the tone of a criminal court then that of an imperial chancellery, should shock those who admire historic Germany. They are unworthy of so great a nation. Bismarck would never have stooped to such pitiful and transparent deception. The blunt candor of Maximilian Harden, which we have already quoted on page12, is infinitely preferable and the position of Germany at the bar of the civilized world will improve, when its maladroit Chancellor has the courage and the candor to say, as Harden did, that all this was done because Germany regarded it as for its vital interests and because “we willed it.”

Unless our boasted civilization is the thinnest veneering of barbarism; unless the law of the world is in fact only the ethics of the rifle and the conscience of the cannon; unless mankind, after uncounted centuries, has made no real advance in political morality beyond that of the cave dweller, then this answer of Germany cannot satisfy the “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” It is the negation of all that civilization stands for.

Belgium has been crucified in the face of the world. Its innocence of any offense, until it was attacked, is too clear for argument. Its voluntary immolation to preserve its solemn guarantee of neutrality will “plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of its taking off.”

It may be questioned whether, since the fall of Poland, Civilization has been stirred to more profound pity and intense indignation than by this wanton outrage. Pity, radiating to the utmost corners of the world by the “sightless couriers of the air,”

“Shall blow the horrid deed in every eyeThat tears shall drown the wind.”

Was it also, as with Macbeth, a case of

“Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itselfAnd falls on the other”?

Time will tell.

Had Germany not invaded Belgium, it is an even chance that England would not have intervened, at least at the beginning of the war.

Germany could have detached a relatively small part of its army to defend its highly fortified Western frontier, and leaving France to waste its strength on frontal attacks on that almost impregnable line of defense, Germany with the bulk of its army and that of Austria could have made a swift drive at Russia.

Is it not possible that that course would have yielded better results than the fiasco, which followed the fruitless drive at Paris?

If Germany succeeds, it will claim that “nothing succeeds like success,” and to the disciples of Treitschke and Bernhardi this will be a sufficing answer.

If it fail, posterity will be at a loss to determine which blundered the worst, the German Foreign Office or its General Staff, its diplomats or its generals.

The record has now been laid before the reader in all its essential details. The witnesses for the different countries have taken the stand and we have their respective contentions in their own words. Czar, Emperor, and King, as well as Prime Minister, Chancellor, and Ambassador, have testified as to the fateful events, which preceded the outbreak of the war, with a fullness of detail, to which history presents few parallels. The evidence which Germany and Austria have suppressed does not prevent the determination of the issue.

It is a great tribute to the force of public opinion and a clear recognition that the conscience of mankind does exist as something more than a visionary abstraction, that the secrets of diplomacy have been laid bare by most of the contending nations, and that there is an earnest desire on the part of all of them to justify their conduct respectively at the bar of the civilized world.

Even more impressive to the sincere friends of peace is the significant fact that concurrently with the most amazing display of physical force that the world has ever known has come a direct appeal by the belligerent nations to the neutral States, and especially to the United States, not for practical coöperation in the hostilities but for moral sympathy.

All past wars are insignificant in dimensions in comparison with this. The standing army of the Roman Empire, according to the estimate of Gibbon, did not exceed 400,000, and guarded that mighty Empire from the Euphrates to the Thames. The grand army of Napoleon, which was supposed to mark the maximum of human effort in the art of war and with which he crossed a century ago the Niemen, did not exceed 700,000. To-day at least fifteen millions of men are engaged in a titanic struggle, with implements of destruction, to which all past devices in the science of destruction are insignificant.

Apparently, therefore, the ideals of the pacificist are little better than a rainbow, a rainbow of promise, perhaps, but still a rainbow, formed by the rays of God’s justice shining through the tears of human pity.

But when, in contrast to this amazing display ofphysical power, there is contrasted an equally unprecedented desire on the part of the contending nations to justify their case at the bar of public opinion and to gain the moral sympathy of the neutral States, then it is seen that the “decent respect to the opinions of mankind” is still a mighty factor in human affairs, and the question as to the judgment of the world, upon the moral issues raised by this great controversy, becomes not merely of academic but of great practical interest.

What that judgment will be it is not difficult to determine, for the evidence in the case can admit of but one conclusion. It may be, as Mr. George Bernard Shaw says, that in the contending nations, the ears are too greatly deafened by the roar of the cannon and the eyes too blinded by the smoke of battle, to reach a dispassionate conclusion. But in the neutral States of the world, and especially in that greatest of all the neutral Powers, the United States of America, a judgment has been pronounced that is unmistakable.

The great Republic is more free than any other nation to reach a just conclusion “without fear, favor, or affection.” Without alliances with any Power and with no practical interest in the European balance of power, itself composed of men of all the contending nations, it can, above everyother people, proceed to judgment, “with malice toward none and with charity for all.”

It is a tribute to its unique position among the nations of the world that from the beginning of the war each of the contending Powers has invoked its judgment. The Kaiser, the President of the French Republic, and the King of Belgium have each in an especial way sought its moral support, while to the other nations the question of the attitude of the United States has been one of practical and recognized importance.

If the United States is thus a moral arbiter in the greatest war of history, its judgment is now, and may hereafter increasingly become, a potential factor of great significance.

The nature of that judgment is already apparent to all men. The people of the United States, numbering nearly one hundred millions, have reached, with an amazing approach to unanimity, certain clear and definite conclusions.

These conclusions maybe summarized as follows:

1. That Germany and Austria in a time of profound peace secretly concerted to impose their will upon Europe in a matter affecting the balance of power. Whether in so doing they intended to precipitate a European war to determine the hegemony of Europe is not satisfactorily established,although their whole course of conduct suggests this as a possibility. They made war almost inevitable by (a) issuing an ultimatum that was grossly unreasonable and disproportionate to any grievance that Austria may have had, and (b) in giving to Servia and Europe insufficient time to consider the rights and obligations of all interested nations.2. That Germany had at all times the power to induce Austria to preserve a reasonable and conciliatory course, but at no time effectively exerted its influence. On the contrary, it certainly abetted, and possibly instigated, Austria in its unreasonable course.3. That England, France, Italy, and Russia throughout the diplomatic controversy sincerely worked for peace, and in this spirit not only overlooked the original misconduct of Austria but made every reasonable concession in the hope of preserving peace.4. That Austria, having mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably justified in mobilizing its forces. Such act of mobilization is the right of any sovereign State, and as long as the Russian armies did not cross the border or take any aggressive action, no other nation had any just right to complain, each having the same right to make similar preparations.5. That Germany, in abruptly declaring war against Russia for failure to demobilize, when the other Powers had offered to make any reasonable concession and peace parleys were still in progress, precipitated the war.6. That the invasion of Belgium by Germany waswithout any provocation and in violation of Belgium’s inherent rights as a sovereign State. The sanctity of its territory does not depend exclusively upon the Treaty of 1839 or The Hague Convention, but upon fundamental and axiomatic principles of international law. These treaties were simply declaratory of Belgium’s rights as a sovereign nation and simply reaffirmed by a special covenant the duty of Germany and the other Powers to respect the neutrality of Belgium.7. England was justified in its declaration of war upon Germany, not only because of its direct interests in the neutrality of Belgium, but also because of the ethical duty of the strong nations to protect the weak upon adequate occasion from indefensible wrong. Apart from this general ethical justification, England was, under the Treaty of 1839, under an especial obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium, and had it failed to respect that obligation it would have broken its solemn covenant.

2. That Germany had at all times the power to induce Austria to preserve a reasonable and conciliatory course, but at no time effectively exerted its influence. On the contrary, it certainly abetted, and possibly instigated, Austria in its unreasonable course.

3. That England, France, Italy, and Russia throughout the diplomatic controversy sincerely worked for peace, and in this spirit not only overlooked the original misconduct of Austria but made every reasonable concession in the hope of preserving peace.

4. That Austria, having mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably justified in mobilizing its forces. Such act of mobilization is the right of any sovereign State, and as long as the Russian armies did not cross the border or take any aggressive action, no other nation had any just right to complain, each having the same right to make similar preparations.

5. That Germany, in abruptly declaring war against Russia for failure to demobilize, when the other Powers had offered to make any reasonable concession and peace parleys were still in progress, precipitated the war.

6. That the invasion of Belgium by Germany waswithout any provocation and in violation of Belgium’s inherent rights as a sovereign State. The sanctity of its territory does not depend exclusively upon the Treaty of 1839 or The Hague Convention, but upon fundamental and axiomatic principles of international law. These treaties were simply declaratory of Belgium’s rights as a sovereign nation and simply reaffirmed by a special covenant the duty of Germany and the other Powers to respect the neutrality of Belgium.

7. England was justified in its declaration of war upon Germany, not only because of its direct interests in the neutrality of Belgium, but also because of the ethical duty of the strong nations to protect the weak upon adequate occasion from indefensible wrong. Apart from this general ethical justification, England was, under the Treaty of 1839, under an especial obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium, and had it failed to respect that obligation it would have broken its solemn covenant.

If they are “thrice armed” who have their “quarrel just,” then England, France, Russia, and Belgium can await with confidence, not merely the immediate issue of the titanic conflict, but also the equally important judgment of history.

On the evening of July 31, 1914, the author reached Basle. The rapid progress of events, narrated in this volume, suggested the wisdom of continuing the journey to Paris that night, but as I wanted to see the tomb of Erasmus in the Basle Cathedral I determined to break my long journey from St. Moritz.

It seemed a fitting time to make a pilgrimage to the last resting-place of the great humanist philosopher of Rotterdam and Louvain, for in that prodigious upheaval of the sixteenth century, which has passed into history as the Reformation, Erasmus was the one noble spirit who looked with a tolerant and philosophical mind upon both parties to the great controversy. He suffered the fate of the conservative in a radical time, and as the great storm convulsed Europe the author of thePraise of Follyprobably said on more than one occasion: “A plague o’ both your houses.” Nearly four centuries have passed since he joined the “silent majority,” between whom is no quarreling, and the desolated Louvain, which he loved, isto-day in its ruins a standing witness that immeasurable folly still rules the darkened counsels of men.

As I reached Basle and saw the spires of the Cathedral rising above the Rhine, it seemed to me that the great convulsion, which was then rocking all Europe with seismic violence, was the greatest since that of the French Revolution and might have as lasting results as the great schism of the sixteenth century.

I was not fated to see the tomb, for when I reached my hotel the facilities of civilization had broken down so abruptly that if I did not wish to be interned in Switzerland I must leave early on the following morning for Paris. Transportation had almost entirely collapsed, communication was difficult, and credit itself was so strained that “mine host” of the Three Kings was disposed to look askance even at gold.

Our journey took us to France by way of Delle. Twenty-four hours after we passed that frontier town, German soldiers entered and blew out the brains of a French custom-house officer, thus the first victim in the greatest war that the world has ever known.

As we journeyed from Basle to Paris on that last day of July the fair fields of France never looked more beautiful. In the gleaming summersun they made a new “field of the cloth of gold,” and the hayricks looked like the aureate tents of a mighty army. It was harvest time, but already the laborers had deserted their fields which, although “white unto the harvest,” seemed bereft of the tillers. Some had left the bounty of nature to join in the harvest of death. From the high pasture lands of the Alps the herdsmen at the ringing of the village church bells had left their herds and before night had fallen were on their way to the front.

At Belfort the station was crowded with French troops and an elderly French couple came into our compartment. The eyes of the wife were red with weeping, while the man sank into his seat and with his head upon his breast gazed moodily into vacancy. They had just parted with their son, who had joined the colors. I stood for a time with this French gentleman in the corridor of the train, but as he could not speak English or German and I could not speak French, it was impossible for us to communicate the intense and tragical thoughts that were passing through our minds. Suddenly he pointed to the smiling harvest fields, by which we passed so swiftly, and said “Perdu! perdu!” This word of tragical import could have been applied to all civilization as well.

The night of our arrival in Paris I fully expected to see a half a million Frenchmen parading the streets and enthusiastically cheering for war and crying, as in 1870, “à Berlin!” I was to witness an extraordinary transformation of a great nation. An unusual silence brooded over the city. A few hundred people paraded the chief avenues, crying “down with war!”, while a separate crowd of equal size sang the national hymn. With these exceptions there was no cheering or enthusiasm, such as I would have expected from my preconceived idea of French excitability. Men spoke in undertones, with a quiet but subdued intensity of feeling rather than with frenzied enthusiasm.

With a devotion that was extraordinary and a pathetically brave submission to a possible fate, they seemed to be sternly resolved to die to the last man, if necessary, in defense of their noble nation. Although I subsequently saw in the thrilling days of mobilization many thousands of soldiers pass through the railroad stations on their way to the front, I never heard the rumble of a drum or saw the waving of regimental colors.

No sacrifice seemed to be too great, whether it was asked of man, woman, or child. The spirit of materialism for the time being vanished. The newspapers shrunk to a single sheet and all commercialadvertisements disappeared. Theaters, art galleries, museums, libraries, closed their doors. Upon some streets nearly every shop was closed, with the simple but eloquent placard “Gone to join the colors.” The French people neither exulted, boasted, nor complained. The only querulous element was a small minority of the large body of American tourists, so suddenly caught in a terrific storm of human passions, who seemed to feel that this Red Sea of blood should part until they could walk dry-shod to the shore of safety.

In Germany similar scenes were enacted and a like spirit of courage and self-sacrifice was shown.

It is a reflection upon civilization that two nations, each so brave, heroic, and self-sacrificing, should, without their consent and by the miserable and iniquitous folly of scheming statesmen and diplomats, be plunged into a war, of which no man can see the end and which has already swept away the flower of their manhood.

One great lesson of this conflict may be that no aggressive war ought to be initiated unless the policy of that war is first submitted to the masses of the people, upon whom the burdens in the last analysis fall and who must pay the dreadful penalty with their treasure and their lives.

If the policy of this war had been submitted bya referendum to the Austrian and German peoples with a full statement of the facts of the Servian controversy, would they not have rejected a form of arbitrament, which creates but does not settle questions, convinces no one, and only sows the seeds of greater hatred for future and richer harvests of death? If the be-ribboned diplomats and decorated generals of the General Staffs at Berlin and Vienna had been without power to precipitate this war, unless they themselves were willing to occupy the trenches on the firing line, this war might never have been.

Nearly five months have passed since that summer day, when I passed through smiling harvest fields from the mountains to the Seine. The trenches, in which innumerable brave men are writing with their blood the records of their statesmen’s follies, are filled with snow. The blackest Christmas Eve within the memory of living man has come and gone, perhaps the blackest, since in the stillness of the night there fell upon the wondering ears of the shepherds the gracious refrain of “Peace on earth, good will among men.” On that night devout German soldiers sang in their trenches in Flanders and along the Vistula the hymn of Christmas Eve, “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.”

Was this unconscious mockery, an expression of invincible faith, or a reversion from habit to the gentler associations of childhood? The spirit of Christmas was not wholly dead, for it is narrated that these brave men in English and German trenches on this saddest of Christmas Eves declared for a few hours of their own volition a Christmas truce.

“Some say that ever ’gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebratedThe bird of dawning singeth all night long,And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,So hallowed and so gracious is the time.”

There is not between the men in one trench and those in another, each seeking the speediest opportunity to kill the other, any personal quarrel. On occasion they even fraternize, only to resume the work of mutual extermination. They would not have quarreled, if the Berchtolds, the von Bethmann-Hollwegs, and the von Jagows had had sufficient loyalty to civilization to submit any possible grievance, which either had, to the judgment of Europe.

A spectacle more ghastly than this “far-flung battle line” has never been witnessed since theworld began, for these soldiers in gray or khaki are not savages but are beings of an advanced civilization. Their fighting can have in method none of the old-time chivalry, such as was witnessed at Fontenoy when the French commander courteously invited his English rival to fire first. The present is a chemical, mechanical war, than which no circle in Dante’sInfernois more horribly repellent.

When was better justified the terrible but beautiful imagery in Milton’s poem ofThe Nativity, when he says of Nature:

“Only with speeches fairShe woos the gentle airTo hide her guilty front with innocent snow,And on her naked shamePollute with sinful blameThe saintly veil of maiden white to throw;Confounded that her Maker’s eyesShould look so near upon her foul deformities.”

The snow cannot hide the horrors of the present conflict. Even night, in other wars more merciful, no longer throws its sable mantle of mercy over the dying and the dead. By the use of powerful searchlights the work of destruction continues. As though the surface of the earth were no longer sufficient for this malignant exercise of the geniusof man, the heavens above and the waters under the earth have become at length the battlefields of the nations. Even from the infinite azure falls

“....a ghastly dewFrom the nations’ airy navies, grappling in thecentral blue.”

Can all history afford a parallel in malignity to the submarine, which, having sunk one vessel with all its human lives, calmly awaits, with its periscope projecting above the water like the malignant eye of a devil fish, the arrival of rescuing ships to sink them also?

Was the gracious refrain of “Peace on earth, good will among men,” merely a mockery of man’s hope, making of his civilization a mere mirage? Will

“Cæsar’s spirit ranging for revengeWith Ate from his side come hot from Hell”—

forever crucify afresh and put to an open shame the gentle Galilean?

The angelic song of Bethlehem was neither the statement of a fact nor even a prophecy. In its true translation it was the statement of a profound moral truth, upon which in the last analysis the pacification of humanity must depend. The great promise was “Peace on earthto men of good will.”

Peace to the pacific, that was the great message. For all others the great Teacher had but one prediction and that was “the distress of nations, ... men’s hearts failing them for fear.” Until civilization can grasp the truth that there can be no peace until there is among all nations a spirit of conciliation and a common desire of justice, the cause of peace can be little more than a beautiful dream. Hague conventions, international tribunals, and agreements to arbitrate, while minimizing the causes of war and affording the machinery for the pacific adjustment of justiciable questions, will yet prove altogether ineffectual, irrespective of the size of the parchment, the imposing character of the seals, or the length of the red tape, unless the nations which execute them have sufficient loyalty to civilization to ask only that which seems just and to submit any disputable question to the pacific adjustment of an impartial tribunal.

I appreciate that some questions are not justiciable and cannot be arbitrated. The historic movements of races, like those of glaciers, cannot be stopped by mortal hands, and yet even these slow-moving masses of ice are stayed by an Invisible Hand and melt at length into gentle and fructifying streams. To create the universal stateand to develop a spirit of paramount loyalty to it affords the only solution of this seemingly insoluble problem.

History affords no more striking illustration of this fact than the present war. Each of the contending nations was pledged to peace. All of the greater ones were signatories to the Hague Convention, but as the chain can never be stronger than its weakest link, the pacific efforts of England, France, and Russia to adjust a purely justiciable question by negotiation and mediation wholly failed because Austria and Germany had determined to test the mastery of Europe by an appeal to the sword. The fundamental cause of the conflict was their lack of loyalty to civilization, due to a misguided and perverted spirit of excessive nationalism.

Until with the slow-moving progress of mankind the greater unit of the Universal State can be created, it should be the common and equal concern of all nations, not merely to defeat this primitive appeal to brute force but to make impossible the recurrence of such an iniquitous reversion to barbarism. To do this, while any nation unjustly appeals to force, force is unhappily necessary, but there would be few occasions to repel force by force if there were sufficient solidarity in mankindto make it the common concern of the civilized world to suppress promptly and effectually any disturber of its peace.

If the present wanton attack upon the very foundations of civilization had been regarded as the common concern of all nations, it would never have taken place and might never occur again. To prevent such recurrence, thoughtful men of all nations should coöperate, so that when the present titanic struggle is over, an earnest and universal effort can be made to create such a compact between the civilized nations as will insure coöperative effort when any nation attempts to apply the torch of war to the stately edifice of civilization. May not this great war prove the supreme travail of humanity, whereof this nobler era will be born?

It should be the especial duty of the United States to lead in this onward movement. It has been in no small measure the liberator of mankind. Let it now be its pacificator! Can it do so in any better spirit than that voiced by one of the noblest of its Presidents at the close of another gigantic conflict, of which he was to be the last and greatest martyr, when he said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to seethe right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan;and to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.

Back to Index Next