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The World Decision, a non-fiction book by Robert Herrick |
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Part 3. America - Chapter 1. What Does It Mean To Us? |
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_ Part Three. America Chapter I. What Does It Mean to Us? I went from the French front back to America. The steamer slipped down the Gironde between green vineyards, past peaceful villages, a whole universe distant from that grim, gray trench-land where the French army was holding the invader in Titan grip, stole cautiously into the Bay of Biscay at nightfall to escape prowling submarines, and began to roll in the Atlantic surges, part of those "three thousand miles of cool sea-water" on which our President so complacently relies as a nonconductor of warfare. I was homeward bound to America, the land of Peace, after four months spent in "war-ridden Europe"--to that homeland stranger somehow than the war lands, where my countrymen were protesting to both belligerents and making money, manufacturing war supplies and blowing up factories, talking "peace" and "preparedness" in the same breath; also--and God be thanked for that!--helping to feed the starving Belgians, sending men, money, and sympathy to the French. As the old steamer settled into her fourteen-knot gait, the submarines ceased to be of more than conversational concern, and I began to ask myself,--"What does it all mean to us, this bloody sacrifice of world war,--to us, strong, rich, peaceful, confident Americans?" For in spite of a curious indifference among many Americans to the outcome, so long as it did not get us into trouble with either party, betrayed by personal letters and press articles which I had received, I was profoundly convinced that the issues of the world tragedy were momentous to us too. "This European butchery means nothing," said one friend, who supplies editorial comment for a most widely read American weekly, "except a lot of poverty, a lot of cripples, and a lot of sodden hate in the hearts of the people engaged. Europe will not be changed appreciably as a result of the war!" Our pacifist ex-Secretary of State, I remember, wrote Baron d'Estournelles de Constant inquiring what the French were fighting for, implying that to the reasonable onlooker there was no clear issue involved in the whole business, merely the passions of misguided patriotism. The well-meaning agitation for peace, which as I write has been lifted into the grotesque by the Ford peace ship, is based largely on this inability to realize the reality of the issue between the belligerents. And there is our national attitude of strict neutrality, which fairly represents the evasive mind of many Americans. Happily, they seem to say to themselves, "This war is not our affair." We were warned by Washington to keep clear of European "quarrels," and wisely we covered our retreat at The Hague by inserting that little clause which relieved us from all real responsibility for the observance of the conventions. Excuse for cowardice and blindness of vision! Such Americans like to think that as a nation we have no more concern in the present war than a peaceable family in one house has with the domestic upheavals of an unfortunate family in the next house. The part of prudence is to ignore all evidences of unpleasantness, to profess good offices, and to keep on friendly terms with all the belligerents. The impression that such an attitude makes on the American in Europe is painful, whether it be expressed in personal letters, in newspapers and magazines, or in diplomatic "notes." He becomes impatient with the provincialism of his own people, ashamed of their transparent selfishness, astonished that human values should have got so fatally distorted in our fat, comfortable world. To the European, American neutrality has become a matter of public indifference, of private contempt. Inspired with the lofty ambition of playing the role of mediator in the world war, President Wilson has lost his chance of influencing the decision toward which Europe is bloodily fighting its way. At that great peace conference which every European has perpetually in mind, America will be ignored. Only those who have shared the bloody sacrifice--at least have had the courage to declare their beliefs--will penetrate its inner councils. We have had our reward--money and safety. It is not fantastic even to expect that the conquerors might under certain circumstances say to the conquered, "Take your losses from the Americans: they alone have made money out of our common woe!" No, ours has not been the _beau geste_ as a nation. Nor can the American take comfort in the thought that Washington diplomacy does not fairly represent the sentiment of our people. As the weeks slip past, it is only too evident that our President has interpreted exactly the national will. The farther west one travels the colder is the American heart, and duller the American vision. The numerical center of the United States is somewhere in the Mississippi Valley. Europe gave Chicago, in her distress after the great fire, eighty cents per person; Chicago has given Belgium and France seven cents per Chicagoan. Not a single Chicago bank appears on the list of subscribers to the Anglo-French loan,--very few banks anywhere west of the Alleghanies. "It is not our quarrel; we are not concerned except to get our money for the goods we sell them!" * * * * * But are we not concerned? I asked myself as the old steamer throbbed wheezily westward. Beneath the deck in the ship's strong room there were thick bundles of American bonds, millions of them, part of the big American mortgage that Europe has been obliged to sell back to us. They represent European savings, hopes of tranquil old age, girls' _dots_, boys' education and start in life. The American mortgage is being lifted rapidly. The stocks and bonds were going home to pay for the heavy cargoes of foodstuffs and ammunition and clothes which we had been shipping to Europe. The savings of the thrifty French were going to us, who were too rich already. The French were bleeding their thrift into our bulging pockets, selling their investments for shells and guns and barbed wire which would not keep old age warm, marry their girls, or start their boys in life. They were doing it freely, proudly, for the salvation of their _patrie_, which they love as the supreme part of themselves. And to us what did all this sacrifice mean? Oh, that we were growing richer day by day while the war lasted; "dollar exchange" was coming nearer; we were fast getting "rotten with money," as a genial young coal merchant who had the deck chair next mine remarked affably. Yes, the war meant that to us surely,--we were fast raking in most of the gold that Europe has been forced to throw on the table of international finance, the savings, the _dots_, the stakes of her next generation. The number of lean-faced American business men, war brokers, on the steamer was plain evidence of that. Already Prosperity was flooding into America--that prosperity upon which our President congratulated the country in his Thanksgiving address. But is that prosperity a good thing for the American people just now? Aside from the speculation excited by the superabundance of gold in our banks, there is the envy of hungry Europe to be reckoned with a few months or years hence, after the close of the great war, an envy that might readily be translated into predatory action under certain circumstances, as some thoughtful Americans are beginning to perceive. Eastern America, where the war money has largely settled, is already fearful, desires to arm the nation to protect its prosperity. And there is the more subtle, the more profound danger that this undigested war bloat of ours will dull the American vision still further to the real issue at stake--the kind of world we are willing, the kind of soul we wish, to possess. Can we safely digest the prosperity that the happy accident of our temporary isolation and the prudent policies of our Government have given us? Are we not feeding a cancer that will take another war to cut from our vitals? * * * * * Most of us on board were Americans going about our businesses on a belligerent nation's ship in defiance of Mr. Bryan's advice. The man next to me was building a new munitions plant for France, and beyond him was the European manager for a large American corporation whose factories have been taken over by the German Government. He was returning to America to enter the munitions business in Pittsburg or Connecticut. To these commercial travelers of war the European struggle meant, naturally, first of all money, the opportunity of a lifetime to make money quickly; it meant also less vividly helping the Allies, who needed everything they could get from us and were willing to pay almost any price for it. Sometimes they talked of the long list of "accidents" that were happening daily in American factories and genially cursed the hyphenated Germans. As for the other sort of Germans they felt vaguely that some day America must reckon with them, too. Evidently they put small faith in the "three thousand miles of cool sea-water" as a nonconductor of warfare! So here was another aspect of the war--the possible dangers to us, without a friend in the world, as every one agreed. And we talked "preparedness" in the usual desultory way. The munitions men seemed to think that they were patriotically working for their own country in getting "the plant" of war into being. "Some day we shall need guns and shells too!" Afterwards I found in America that this vague fear of probable enemies had seized hold of the country quite generally, and that the very Government which had done nothing toward settling the present war rightly was planning for "defense" with a prodigal hand. Peaceful America was getting alarmed--of what? There were also in our number some young doctors and nurses who were returning from the hospitals in France for a little needed rest. They were of those young Americans who are giving themselves so generously for the cause, eager, courageous, sympathetic. They seemed to me to have gotten most from the war of all us Americans, much more than the munitions men who were making money so fast. In Belgium, in Serbia, behind the French lines, in the great hospital at Neuilly, they had got comprehension and all the priceless rewards of pure giving. They had seen horror, suffering, and waste indescribable; but they had seen heroism and devotion and chivalry. And with them should be joined all the tender-hearted and generous Americans at home who have aided their efforts, who are working with the energy of the American character "for the cause." Alas, already the word was coming of a relaxation in the generosities, the devotions, the enthusiasms of these Americans. Other interests were coming into our rapid activities to distract us from last year's sympathies.... * * * * * So as we rolled on through the soft summer night while the passengers discussed the latest Russian reverse of which news had been received by wireless, I kept asking myself,--"What does it really mean to us? To vast, rich, young America?" Surely not merely more money, more power, even a loftier inspiration for the few who have given themselves generously in sympathy and aid. After all, these were but incidental. The threat we were beginning to feel to our own security, this campaign for "preparedness," did not seem of prime, moving importance. Probably in our bewildered state of mind we should wrangle politically about the matter of how much defense we needed, then drop some more hundreds of millions into the bottomless pit of governmental extravagance and waste. We had already spent enough to equip another Germany! When peace was finally made in Europe, we would forget our fears; our Congressmen and their parasites would fatten on the new appropriations, which would be as actually futile as all their predecessors had been. No; these were hardly the significant aspects of the war to us as a people. No more was that acrobatic exhibition of diplomatic tight-rope walking we had witnessed from Washington. Mere "words, words, words, professor!" Our dialectic President had thus far failed to establish any one of his contentions, either with Germany or Great Britain, nor did it seem likely that he ever could. While he was still modifying that awkward phrase, "strict accountability," Germany obviously would murder whomsoever it suited her purpose to murder, and England would hold up any ship that attempted to trade with Germany. All those neutral rights for which Washington was paying big cable tolls had not been advanced an atom. The time had gone by when our strong voice could compel respect from the barbarian, could hearten the soul of other weaker neutrals. Europe had taken our exact measure. We should have saved some dignity had we not murmured more than a formal protest.... And yet, returning from "war-ridden Europe" I was more convinced than of anything else in life that what was being slowly settled in that grim trench--land over there did mean something to us--more, much more than money or neutral rights or sympathetic charities. Not that I was apprehensive of an immediate German raid on New York, the crumbling of her sky-scrapers and the exaction of colossal indemnities. For it looked to me that Germany might well have other occupation after peace was made in Europe, whichever way the war should go. The German peril did not lie, I thought, in her big guns, her ships, her "Prussianized machine." It lay deeper, in herself, in her image of the world. If Germany could win even a partial victory under that monstrous creed of applied materialism, illuminated as it had been with every sort of cynical crime, with its reasoned defiance of contract, its principle of "indispensable severities," its "military reasons," _that_ must become inexorably the law of the world--the barbarians' law. Germany would have made the morality of the world! And of all the world's peoples to accept the victor's new reading of the commandments, proud America would be the first. For we cannot resist the fascination of success. The German aim, the German tyranny over the individual, the German morality--one for you and me as individuals and another utterly lawless one when we get together in a social state--would be imitated more than the German lesson of thoroughness in civil and military organization. Hypnotized by German success, we should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers. For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood, there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion of triumphant force. American "Big Business" can understand the Kaiser's philosophy, can reverence his "old German god" when he brings victory, more than any other people outside of Germany. For it, too, believes in "putting things over" with a strong hand. There is not an argument of the German militarist propaganda that would not find a sympathetic echo somewhere in the headquarters of American corporations. * * * * * When the old fourteen-knot steamer finally dropped anchor off quarantine in New York Harbor and the reporters came on board with the dust of America on their shoes, the roar of America in their voices, I was surer than ever that this greatest of world wars meant a vast deal more to us than trade or charity or politics, which is what we seem to be making of it for the most part. It means the form which our national character is to take ultimately. The German peril, which is held before the public in moving pictures and in alarmist appeals for "preparedness," is already in our midst, not so much at work blowing up our factories as insidiously at work in our hearts. The German apologist--even of Anglo-Saxon blood--is suggesting the reasonableness of a German verdict. "After all," one hears from his lips, "there is much on the other side of the shield, which our English prejudices have prevented us from seeing. Germany cannot be the monster of barbarism that she has been painted. As for broken treaties, the atrocities, the submarines, the murder of Edith Cavell, and her rough work over here,--well, we must remember it is war, and the Russian Cossacks have not been saints!... As to her military autocracy, perhaps a little of it would not be a bad thing for America. At any rate, Germany seems to have the power--it is useless to think of putting her down.... The American public will forget all about German crimes once Germany is victorious." "Nothing succeeds like success." "There is always a reason for success," etc. Which cynical acceptance proves that we have already "committed adultery in our hearts." There are many voices in the air, too many. Americans have not yet found themselves in this crisis of world tragedy, and the Government at Washington has not helped them to an understanding. We are vastly relieved at not finding ourselves "involved" and accept shabby verbal subterfuges as a triumph of American diplomacy. Meanwhile the Lusitania incident has been conveniently forgotten, with the awkward phrase "strictly accountable." Along the eastern seaboard the anxious and the timid are clamoring for "defense"--against what? The talkative pacifists, who would make a grotesque farce of the bloody sacrifice by a futile peace, are bringing further ridicule and contempt on their country with their impertinent if well-meant efforts. Meantime, the money-makers have taken this occasion to stage a spectacular bull market, grumbling on the fruits of war! And there is the "good-time" side to American life. For a few brief months after the outbreak of the war Americans were staggered by the awfulness of the tragedy and moved under its shadow. Their hearts went out in sympathy, in feeding the dispossessed, and sending aid to the wounded. We spent less on ourselves, partly because of financial fear, partly because of our desire to give, partly because our hearts were too heavy to play. But already that serious mood is passing, and to-day as a people we are hard at it again, chasing a good time. We feel once more the same old lustful urge to get and enjoy.... The other night as I looked out on the peopled sea of the New York opera-house, with its women richly dressed and jeweled, its white-faced men, leading the same life of easy prodigal expense, of sensual gratification, I remembered another opera staged in the mysterious twilight of Bayreuth where from the gloom emerged the hoarse bass of Fafner's cry,--"I lie here possessing!" The voice of the great worm proved to be the voice of Germany. Is it ours also? * * * * * Do we Americans desire to have our world Germanized? Not in art and language and customs, though may Heaven preserve us from that fate also! But Germanized in soul? Do we want the German image or the Latin image of the world to prevail? And are we strong enough in our own ideal to resist a "peaceful penetration" by triumphant Germany into our minds and hearts? That is the urgent matter for us. No amount spent on big guns, superdreadnoughts, submarines, and continental guards--no amount of peace talk--can keep the German peril out of America if we surrender our souls to her creed, now that Germany seems to be imposing it successfully with her armies in Europe. Those dirty _poilus_ in the front trenches are, indeed, fighting our battle for us, if we did but know it! _ |
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