already acquired and not getting new views or fresh suggestions from men
and women.

He sees almost nobody except members of Congress for whom he sends for
special conferences, and he usually sees these in his office. The
railroad presidents and men he met in formal conference--no social
touch.

A member of his Cabinet told me that Mr. Wilson had shown confidence in
him, given him a wide range of action in his own Department and that he
relies on his judgment. This Cabinet member of course attends the
routine state dinners and receptions, as a matter of required duty. But
as for any social recognition of his existence--he had never received a
hint or nod. Nor does any member of the Cabinet (except, no doubt, Mr.
McAdoo, his son-in-law). There is no social sense nor reason in this. In
fact, it works to a very decided disadvantage to the President and to
the Nation.

By the way, that a notable man in our educational life could form such a
habit does not speak well for our educational life.

What an unspeakably lamentable loss of opportunity! This is the more
remarkable and lamentable because the President is a charming
personality, an uncommonly good talker, a man who could easily make
personal friends of all the world. He does his own thinking, untouched
by other men's ideas. He receives nothing from the outside. His domestic
life is spent with his own, nobody else, except House occasionally. His
contact with his own Cabinet is a business man's contact with his
business associates and kind--at his office.

He declined to see Cameron Forbes[41] on his return from the
Philippines.

The sadness of this mistake!

Another result is--the President doesn't hear the frank truth about the
men about him. He gives nobody a chance to tell him. Hence he has
several heavy encumbrances in his official family.

The influence of this lone-hand way of playing the game extends very
far. The members of the Cabinet do not seem to have the habit of
frankness with one another. Each lives and works in a water-tight
compartment. I sat at luncheon (at a hotel) with Lansing, Secretary of
State; Lane, Secretary of the Interior; Gregory, Attorney-General;
Baker, Secretary of War; Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; and Sharp,
Ambassador to France; and all the talk was jocular or semi-jocular, and
personal--mere cheap chaff. Not a question was asked either of the
Ambassador to France or of the Ambassador to Great Britain about the war
or about our foreign relations. The war wasn't mentioned. Sharp and I
might have come from Bungtown and Jonesville and not from France and
England. We were not encouraged to talk--the local personal joke held
the time and conversation. This astounding fact must be the result of
this lone-hand, water-tight compartment method and--of the neutrality
suppression of men. The Vice-President confessed to his neighbour at a
Gridiron dinner that he had read none of the White Papers, or Orange
Papers, etc., of the belligerent governments--confessed this with
pride--lest he should form an opinion and cease to be neutral! Miss X, a
member of the President's household, said to Mrs. Y, the day we lunched
there, that she had made a remark privately to Sharp showing her
admiration of the French.

"Was that a violation of neutrality?" she asked in all seriousness.

I can see it in no other way but this: the President suppressed free
thought and free speech when he insisted upon personal neutrality. He
held back the deliberate and spontaneous thought and speech of the
people except the pro-Germans, who saw their chance and improved it! The
mass of the American people found themselves forbidden to think or talk,
and this forbidding had a sufficient effect to make them take refuge in
indifference. It's the President's job. He's our leader. He'll attend to
this matter. We must not embarrass him. On this easy cushion of
non-responsibility the great masses fell back at their intellectual and
moral ease--softened, isolated, lulled.

That wasn't leadership in a democracy. Right here is the President's
vast failure. From it there is now no escape unless the Germans commit
more submarine crimes. They have kept the United States for their own
exploiting after the war. They have thus had a real triumph of us.

I have talked in Washington with few men who showed any clear conception
of the difference between the Germans and the British. To the minds of
these people and high Government officials, German and English are alike
foreign nations who are now foolishly engaged in war. Two of the men who
look upon the thing differently are Houston[42] and Logan Waller
Page[43]. In fact, there is no realization of the war in Washington.
Secretary Houston has a proper perspective of the situation. He would
have done precisely what I recommended--paved the way for claims and let
the English take their course. "International law" is no strict code and
it's all shot to pieces anyhow.

The Secretary [of State] betrayed not the slightest curiosity about our
relations with Great Britain. I saw him several times--(1) in his
office; (2) at his house; (3) at the French Ambassador's; (4) at
Wallace's; (5) at his office; (6) at Crozier's[44]--this during my first
stay in Washington. The only remark he made was that I'd find a
different atmosphere in Washington from the atmosphere in London. Truly.
All the rest of his talk was about "cases." Would I see Senator Owen?
Would I see Congressman Sherley? Would I take up this "case" and that?
His mind ran on "cases."

Well, at Y's, when I was almost in despair, I rammed down him a sort of
general statement of the situation as I saw it; at least, I made a
start. But soon he stopped me and ran off at a tangent on some
historical statement I had made, showing that his mind was not at all on
the real subject, the large subject. When I returned to Washington, and
he had read my interviews with Grey, Asquith, and Bryce[45], and my own
statement, he still said nothing, but he ceased to talk of "cases." At
my final interview he said that he had had difficulty in preventing
Congress from making the retaliatory resolution mandatory. He had tried
to keep it back till the very end of the session, etc.

This does not quite correspond with what the President told me--that the
State Department asked for this retaliatory resolution.

I made specific suggestions in my statement to the President and to
Lansing. They have (yet) said nothing about them. I fancy they will not.
I have found nowhere any policy--only "cases."

I proposed to Baker and Daniels that they send a General and an Admiral
as attachés to London. They both agreed. Daniels later told me that
Baker mentioned it to the President and he "stepped on the suggestion
with both feet." I did not bring it up. In the Franco-Prussian War of
1870, both General McClellan (or Sheridan[46]?) and General Forsythe
were sent to the German Army. Our military ideas have shrunk since then!

I find at this date (a month before the Presidential election), the
greatest tangle and uncertainty of political opinion that I have ever
observed in our country. The President, in spite of his unparalleled
leadership and authority in domestic policy, is by no means certain of
election. He has the open hostility of the Germans--all very well, if he
had got the fruits of a real hostility to them; but they have, in many
ways, directed his foreign policy. He has lost the silent confidence of
many men upon whose conscience this great question weighs heavily. If he
be defeated he will owe his defeat to the loss of confidence in his
leadership on this great subject. His opponent has put forth no
clear-cut opinion. He plays a silent game on the German "issue." Yet he
will command the support of many patriotic men merely as a lack of
confidence in the President.

Nor do I see any end of the results of this fundamental error. In the
economic and political readjustment of the world we shall be "out of the
game," in any event--unless we are yet forced into the war by Hughes's
election or by the renewal of the indiscriminate use of submarines by
the Germans.

There is a great lesson in this lamentable failure of the President
really to lead the Nation. The United States stands for democracy and
free opinion as it stands for nothing else and as no other nation stands
for it. Now when democracy and free opinion are at stake as they have
not before been, we take a "neutral" stand--we throw away our very
birthright. We may talk of "humanity" all we like: we have missed the
largest chance that ever came to help the large cause that brought us
into being as a Nation....

And the people, sitting on the comfortable seats of neutrality upon
which the President has pushed them back, are grateful for Peace, not
having taken the trouble to think out what Peace has cost us and cost
the world--except so many as have felt the uncomfortable stirrings of
the national conscience.

There is not a man in our State Department or in our Government who has
ever met any prominent statesmen in any European Government--except the
third Assistant Secretary of State, who has no authority in forming
policies; there is not a man who knows the atmosphere of Europe. Yet
when I proposed that one of the under Secretaries should go to England
on a visit of a few weeks for observation, the objection arose that
such a visit would not be "neutral."


III

The extraordinary feature of this experience was that Page had been
officially summoned home, presumably to discuss the European situation,
and that neither the President nor the State Department apparently had
the slightest interest in his visit.

"The President," Page wrote to Mr. Laughlin, "dominates the whole show
in a most extraordinary way. The men about him (and he sees them only on
'business') are very nearly all very, very small fry, or worse--the
narrowest twopenny lot I've ever come across. He has no real companions.
Nobody talks to him freely and frankly. I've never known quite such a
condition in American life." Perhaps the President had no desire to
discuss inconvenient matters with his Ambassador to Great Britain, but
Page was certainly determined to have an interview with the President.
"I'm not going back to London," he wrote Mr. Laughlin, "till the
President has said something to me or at least till I have said
something to him. I am now going down to Garden City and New York till
the President send for me; or, if he do not send for me, I'm going to
his house and sit on his front steps till he come out!" Page had brought
from England one of the medals which the Germans had struck in honour of
the _Lusitania_ sinking, and one reason why he particularly wished to
see the President alone was to show him this memento.

Another reason was that in early September Page had received important
news from London concerning the move which Germany was making for peace
and the attitude of Great Britain in this matter. The several plans
which Germany had had under consideration had now taken the form of a
definite determination to ask for an armistice before winter set in. A
letter from Mr. Laughlin, Chargé d'affaires in Page's absence, tells the
story.

_From Irwin Laughlin_

Embassy of the United States of America.
London, August 30, 1916.

DEAR MR. PAGE:

For some little time past I have heard persistent rumours, which
indeed are more than rumours, since they have come from important
sources, of an approaching movement by Germany toward an early
armistice. They have been so circumstantial and so closely
connected--in prospect--with the President, that I have examined
them with particular attention and I shall try to give you the
results, and my conclusions, with the recommendation that you take
the matter up directly with the President and the Secretary of
State. I have been a little at a loss to decide how to communicate
what I have learned to the Government in Washington, for the
present conditions make it impossible to set down what I want to
say in an official despatch, but the fortunate accident of your
being in the United States gives me the safe opportunity I want,
and so I send my information to you, and by the pouch, as time is
of less importance than secrecy.

There seems to be no doubt that Germany is casting about for an
opportunity to effect an armistice, if possible before the winter
closes in. She hopes it may result in peace--a peace more or less
favourable to her, of course--but even if such a result should fail
of accomplishment she would have gained a breathing space; have
secured an opportunity to improve her strategic position in a
military sense, perhaps by shortening her line in Flanders: have
stiffened the resistance of her people; and probably have
influenced a certain body of neutral opinion not only in her favour
but against her antagonists.

I shall not try to mention the various sources from which the
threads that compose this fabric have been drawn, but I finally
fastened on X of the Admiralty as a man with whom I could talk
profitably and confidentially, and he told me positively that his
information showed that Germany was looking in the direction I have
indicated, and that she would soon approach the President on the
subject--even if she had not already taken the first steps toward
preparing her advance to him.

I asked X if he thought it well for me to broach the subject to
Lord Grey and he suggested that I first consult Y, which I did. The
latter seemed very wary at the outset, but he warmed up at last and
in the course of the conversation told me he had reliable
information that when Bethmann-Hollweg went to Munich just before
the beginning of the allied offensive in the west in June he told
the King of Bavaria that he was confident the Allies would be
obliged to begin overtures for peace next October; adding that if
they didn't Germany would have to do so. The King, it appears,
asked him how Germany could approach the Allies if it proved to be
advisable and he replied: "Through our good friend Wilson."

I asked Y if the King of Spain's good offices would not be enlisted
jointly with those of the President in attempting to arrange an
armistice, but he thought not, and said that the King of Spain was
very well aware that the Allies would not consider anything short
of definite peace proposals from Germany and that His Majesty knew
the moment for them had not arrived. I then finally asked him point
blank if he thought the Germans would approach the President for an
armistice, and, if so, when. He said he was inclined to think they
might do so perhaps about October. On my asking him if he was
disposed to let me communicate his opinion privately to the
Government in Washington he replied after some hesitation that he
had no objection, but he quickly added that I must make it clear at
the same time that the British Government would not listen to any
such proposals.

These conversations took place during the course of last week, and
on Sunday--the 27th--I invited the Spanish Ambassador to luncheon
at Tangley when I was able to get him to confirm what Y had said of
his Sovereign's attitude and opinions.

I may mention for what it is worth that on Hoover's last trip to
Germany he was told by Bullock, of the Philadelphia _Ledger_, that
Zimmermann of the Berlin Foreign Office had told him that the
Germans had intended in June to take steps for an armistice which
were prevented by the preparations for the allied offensive in the
west.

Y was very emphatic in what he said of the attitude of his
government and the British people toward continuing the war to an
absolutely conclusive end, and I was much impressed. He said among
other things that the execution of Captain Fryatt had had a
markedly perceptible effect in hardening British public opinion
against Germany and fixing the determination to fight to a
relentless finish. This corresponds exactly with my own
observations.

I leave this letter entirely in your hands. You will know what use
to make of it. It is meant as an official communication in
everything but the usual form from which I have departed for
reasons I need not explain further.

I look forward eagerly to your return,

Very sincerely yours,

IRWIN LAUGHLIN.

Page waited five weeks before he succeeded in obtaining his interview
with Mr. Wilson.

_To the President_

The New Willard, Washington, D.C.

Thursday, September 21, 1916.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

While I am waiting for a convenient time to come when you will see
me for a conference and report, I send you notes on conversations
with Lord Grey and Lord Bryce[47]. They are, in effect, though of
course not in form, messages to you.

The situation between our government and Great Britain seems to me
most alarming; and (let me add) easily removable, if I can get the
ear of anybody in authority. But I find here only an atmosphere of
suspicion--unwarranted by facts and easily dissipated by straight
and simple friendly methods. I am sure of this.

I have, besides, a most important and confidential message for you
from the British Government which they prefer should be orally
delivered.

And I have written out a statement of my own study of the situation
and of certain proposals which, I think, if they commend themselves
to you, will go far to remove this dangerous tension. I hope to go
over them with you at your convenience.

Yours faithfully,

WALTER H. PAGE.

The situation was alarming for more reasons than the determination of
Germany to force the peace issue. The State Department was especially
irritated at this time over the blockade. Among the "trade advisers"
there was a conviction, which all Page's explanations had not destroyed,
that Great Britain was using the blockade as a means of destroying
American commerce and securing America's customers for herself. Great
Britain's regulations on the blacklist and "bunker coal" had intensified
this feeling. In both these latter questions Page regarded the British
actions as tactless and unjust; he had had many sharp discussions at the
Foreign Office concerning them, but had not made much headway in his
efforts to obtain their abandonment. The purpose of the "blacklist" was
to strike at neutral firms with German affiliations which were trading
with Germany. The Trading with the Enemy Act provided that such firms
could not trade with Great Britain; that British vessels must refuse to
accept their cargoes, and that any neutral ship which accepted such
cargoes would be denied bunker coal at British ports. Under this law the
Ministry of Blockade issued a "blacklist" of more than 1,000 proscribed
exporting houses in the United States. So great was the indignation
against this boycott in the United States that Congress, in early
September, had passed a retaliatory act; this gave the President the
authority at any time to place an embargo upon the exports to the United
States of countries which discriminated against American firms and also
to deny clearance to ships which refused to accept American cargoes. The
two countries indeed seemed to be hastening toward a crisis.

Page's urgent letter to Mr. Wilson brought a telegram from Mr. Tumulty
inviting the Ambassador to spend the next evening and night with the
President at Shadow Lawn, the seaside house on the New Jersey coast in
which Mr. Wilson was spending the summer. Mr. Wilson received his old
friend with great courtesy and listened quietly and with apparent
interest to all that he had to say. The written statement to which Page
refers in his letter told the story of Anglo-American relations from the
time of the Panama tolls repeal up to the time of Page's visit to Shadow
Lawn. Quotations have already been made from it in preceding chapters,
and the ideas which it contains have abundantly appeared in letters
already printed. The document was an eloquent plea for American
coöperation with the Allies--for the dismissal of Bernstorff, for the
adoption of a manly attitude toward Germany, and for the vindication of
a high type of Americanism.

Page showed the President the _Lusitania_ medal, but that did not
especially impress him. "The President said to me," wrote Page in
reference to this visit, "that when the war began he and all the men he
met were in hearty sympathy with the Allies; but that now the sentiment
toward England had greatly changed. He saw no one who was not vexed and
irritated by the arbitrary English course. That is, I fear, true--that
he sees no one but has a complaint. So does the Secretary of State, and
the Trade Bureau and all the rest in Washington. But in Boston, in New
York, and in the South and in Auburn, N.Y., I saw no one whose sympathy
with the Allies had undergone any fundamental change. I saw men who felt
vexed at such an act as the blacklist, but that was merely vexation, not
a fundamental change of feeling. Of course, there came to see me men who
had 'cases.' Now these are the only kind of men, I fear, whom the
Government at Washington sees--these and the members of Congress whom
the Germans have scared or have 'put up' to scare the Government--who
are 'twisting the lion's tail,' in a word."

"The President said," wrote Page immediately after coming from Shadow
Lawn, "Tell those gentlemen for me'--and then followed a homily to the
effect that a damage done to any American citizen is a damage to him,
etc. He described the war as a result of many causes, some of long
origin. He spoke of England's having the earth and of Germany wanting
it. Of course, he said, the German system is directly opposed to
everything American. But I do not gather that he thought that this
carried any very great moral reprehensibility.

"He said that he wouldn't do anything with the retaliatory act till
after election lest it might seem that he was playing politics. But he
hinted that if there were continued provocation afterward (in case he
were elected) he would. He added that one of the worst provocations was
the long English delay in answering our Notes. Was this delay due to
fear or shame? He evidently felt that such a delay showed contempt. He
spoke of the Bryan treaty[48]. But on no question had the British
'locked horns' with us--on no question had they come to a clear issue so
that the matter might be referred to the Commission."

Page delivered his oral message about the German determination to obtain
an armistice. This was to the effect that Great Britain would not grant
it. Page intimated that Britain would be offended if the President
proposed it.

"If an armistice, no," answered Mr. Wilson. "That's a military matter
and is none of my business. But if they propose an armistice looking
toward peace--yes, I shall be glad."

The experience was an exceedingly trying one for both men. The
discussion showed how far apart were the President and his Ambassador on
practically every issue connected with the crisis. Naturally the
President's reference to the causes of the war--that there were many
causes, some of them of long persistence, and that Great Britain's
domination of the "earth" was one of them--conflicted with the judgment
of a man who attributed the origin of the struggle to German aggression.
The President's statement that American sympathy for the Allies had now
changed to irritation, and the tolerant attitude toward Germany which
Mr. Wilson displayed, affected Page with the profoundest discouragement.
The President's intimation that he would advance Germany's request for
an armistice, if it looked toward peace--this in reply to Page's message
that Great Britain would not receive such a proposal in a kindly
spirit--seemed to lay the basis of further misunderstandings. The
interview was a disheartening one for Page. Many people whom the
Ambassador met in the course of this visit still retain memories of his
fervour in what had now become with him a sacred cause. With many
friends and officials he discussed the European situation almost like a
man inspired. The present writer recalls two long conversations with
Page at this time: the recollection of his brilliant verbal portraiture,
his description of the determination of Englishmen, his admiration for
the heroic sacrifice of Englishwomen, remain as about the most vivid
memories of a life-time. And now the Ambassador had brought this same
eloquence to the President's ear at Shadow Lawn. It was in this
interview that Page had hoped to show Mr. Wilson the real merits of the
situation, and persuade him to adopt the course to which the national
honour and safety pointed; he talked long and eloquently, painting the
whole European tragedy with that intensity and readiness of utterance
and that moral conviction which had so moved all others with whom he had
come into contact during this memorable visit to the United States; but
Mr. Wilson was utterly cold, utterly unresponsive, interested only in
ending the war. The talk lasted for a whole morning; its nature may be
assumed from the many letters already printed; but Page's voice, when it
attempted to fire the conscience of the President, proved as ineffective
as his pen. However, there was nothing rasping or contentious about the
interview. The two men discussed everything with the utmost calmness and
without the slightest indications of ill-nature. Both men had in mind
their long association, both inevitably recalled the hopes with which
they had begun their official relationship three years before, at that
time neither having the faintest intimation of the tremendous problems
that were to draw them asunder. Mr. Wilson at this meeting did not
impress his Ambassador as a perverse character, but as an extremely
pathetic one. Page came away with no vexation or anger, but with a real
feeling for a much suffering and a much perplexed statesman. The fact
that the President's life was so solitary, and that he seemed to be so
completely out of touch with men and with the living thoughts of the
world, appealed strongly to Page's sympathies. "I think he is the
loneliest man I have ever known," Page remarked to his son Frank after
coming away from this visit.

Page felt this at the time, for, as he rose to say good-bye to the
President, he put his hand upon his shoulder. At this Mr. Wilson's eyes
filled with tears and he gave Page an affectionate good-bye. The two men
never met again.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 38: This is quoted from a hitherto unpublished despatch of
Bernstorff's to Berlin which is found among Page's papers.]

[Footnote 39: The _China_ case was a kind of _Trent_ case reversed. In
1861 the American ship _San Jacinto_ stopped the British vessel _Trent_
and took off Mason and Slidell, Confederate commissioners to Great
Britain. Similarly a British ship, in 1916, stopped an American ship,
the _China_, and removed several German subjects. As the British quickly
saw the analogy, and made suitable amends, the old excitement over the
_Trent_ was not duplicated in the recent war.]

[Footnote 40: See Chapter XIII, page 434.]

[Footnote 41: Mr. Forbes had been Governor-General of the Philippines
from 1909 to 1913. His work had been extraordinarily successful.]

[Footnote 42: Secretary of Agriculture.]

[Footnote 43: In charge of government road building, a distant relative
of the Ambassador.]

[Footnote 44: Major General William Crozier, U.S.A., Chief of Ordnance.]

[Footnote 45: See Chapter XIX, pages 160-164.]

[Footnote 46: It was General Sheridan.]

[Footnote 47: See Chapter XIX, pages 160 and 164.]

[Footnote 48: The treaty between the United States and Great Britain,
adopted through the urgency of Mr. Bryan, providing for the arbitration
of disputes between the two countries.]




CHAPTER XX

"PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY"


"Of one thing I am sure," Page wrote to his wife from Washington, while
waiting to see President Wilson. "We wish to come home March 4th at
midnight and to go about our proper business. There's nothing here that
I would for the world be mixed up with. As soon as I can escape with
dignity I shall make my bow and exit.... But I am not unhappy or
hopeless for the long run. They'll find out the truth some day, paying,
I fear, a heavy penalty for delay. But the visit here has confirmed me
in our previous conclusions--that if we can carry the load until March
4th, midnight, we shall be grateful that we have pulled through."

Soon after President Wilson's reëlection, therefore, Page sent his
resignation to Washington. The above quotation shows that he intended
this to be more than a "courtesy resignation," a term traditionally
applied to the kind of leave-takings which Ambassadors usually send on
the formation of a new administration, or at the beginning of a new
Presidential term, for the purpose of giving the President the
opportunity of reorganizing his official family. Page believed that his
work in London had been finished, that he had done everything in his
power to make Mr. Wilson see the situation in its true light and that he
had not succeeded. He therefore wished to give up his post and come
home. This explains the fact that his resignation did not consist of the
half dozen perfunctory lines which most diplomatic officers find
sufficient on such an occasion, but took the form of a review of the
reasons why the United States should align itself on the side of the
Allies.

_To the President_

London, November 24, 1916.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

We have all known for many years that the rich and populous and
organized states in which the big cities are do not constitute the
political United States. But, I confess, I hardly expected so soon
to see this fact proclaimed at the ballot-box. To me that's the
surprise of the election. And your popular majority as well as your
clear majority in the Electoral College is a great personal triumph
for you. And you have remade the ancient and demoralized Democratic
party. Four years ago it consisted of a protest and of the wreck
wrought by Mr. Bryan's long captaincy. This rebirth, with a popular
majority, is an historical achievement--of your own.

You have relaid the foundation and reset the pillars of a party
that may enjoy a long supremacy for domestic reasons. Now, if you
will permit me to say so, from my somewhat distant view (four years
make a long period of absence) the big party task is to build up a
clearer and more positive foreign policy. We are in the world and
we've got to choose what active part we shall play in it--I fear
rather quickly. I have the conviction, as you know, that this whole
round globe now hangs as a ripe apple for our plucking, if we use
the right ladder while the chance lasts. I do not mean that we want
or could get the apple for ourselves, but that we can see to it
that it is put to proper uses. What we have to do, in my judgment,
is to go back to our political fathers for our clue. If my longtime
memory be good, they were sure that their establishment of a great
free Republic would soon be imitated by European peoples--that
democracies would take the place of autocracies in all so-called
civilized countries; for that was the form that the fight took in
their day against organized Privilege. But for one reason or
another--in our life-time partly because we chose so completely to
isolate ourselves--the democratic idea took root in Europe with
disappointing slowness. It is, for instance, now perhaps for the
first time, in a thoroughgoing way, within sight in this Kingdom.
The dream of the American Fathers, therefore, is not yet come true.
They fought against organized Privilege exerted from over the sea.
In principle it is the same fight that we have made, in our
domestic field, during recent decades. Now the same fight has come
on a far larger scale than men ever dreamed of before.

It isn't, therefore, for merely doctrinal reasons that we are
concerned for the spread of democracy nor merely because a
democracy is the only scheme of organization yet wrought out that
keeps the door of opportunity open and invites all men to their
fullest development. But we are interested in it because under no
other system can the world be made an even reasonably safe place to
live in. For only autocracies wage aggressive wars. Aggressive
autocracies, especially military autocracies, must be softened down
by peace (and they have never been so softened) or destroyed by
war. The All-Highest doctrine of Germany to-day is the same as the
Taxation-without-Representation of George III--only more virulent,
stronger, and farther-reaching. Only by its end can the German
people recover and build up their character and take the permanent
place in the world that they--thus changed--will be entitled to.
They will either reduce Europe to the vassalage of a military
autocracy, which may then overrun the whole world or drench it in
blood, or they must through stages of Liberalism work their way
toward some approach to a democracy; and there is no doubt which
event is impending. The Liberal idea will win this struggle, and
Europe will be out of danger of a general assault on free
institutions till some other autocracy which has a military caste
try the same Napoleonic game. The defeat of Germany, therefore,
will make for the spread of the doctrine of our Fathers and our
doctrine yet.

An interesting book might be made of concrete evidences of the
natural antipathy that the present German autocracy has for
successful democracy and hence for us. A new instance has just come
to me. My son, Arthur, who succeeded to most of my activities at
home, has been over here for a month and he has just come from a
visit to France. In Paris he had a long conversation with Delcassé,
who told him that the Kaiser himself once made a proposal to him to
join in producing "the complete isolation" of the United States.
What the Kaiser meant was that if the great Powers of Europe would
hold off, he would put the Monroe Doctrine to the test and smash
it.

The great tide of the world will, by reason of the war, now flow
toward democracy--at present, alas! a tide of blood. For a century
democracies and Liberal governments have kept themselves too much
isolated, trusting prematurely and too simply to international law
and treaties and Hague conventions. These things have never been
respected, except as springs to catch woodcock, where the Divine
Right held sway. The outgrowing or the overthrow of the Divine
Right is a condition precedent to the effectiveness of
international law and treaties.

It has seemed to me, looking at the subject only with reference to
our country's duty and safety, that somehow and at some early time
our championship of democracy must lead us to redeclare our faith
and to show that we believe in our historic creed. Then we may
escape falling away from the Liberal forces of the Old World and
escape the suspicion of indifference to the great scheme of
government which was set up by our fathers' giving their blood for
it. I see no other way for us to take the best and biggest
opportunity that has ever come to prove true to our faith as well
as to secure our own safety and the safety of the world. Only some
sort of active and open identification with the Allies can put us
in effective protest against the assassins of the Armenians and the
assassins of Belgium, Poland, and Serbia, and in a friendly
attitude to the German people themselves, as distinguished from
their military rulers. This is the attitude surely that our fathers
would have wished us to take--and would have expected us to
take--and that our children will be proud of us for taking; for it
is our proper historic attitude, whether looked at from the past or
looked back at from the future. There can be no historic approval
of neutrality for years, while the world is bleeding to death.

The complete severance of relations, diplomatic at first and later
possibly economic as well, with the Turks and the Germans, would
probably not cost us a man in battle nor any considerable treasure;
for the moral effect of withdrawing even our formal approval of
their conduct--at least our passive acquiescence--would be--that
the Germans would see that practically all the Liberal world stands
against their system, and the war would end before we should need
to or could put an army in the field. The Liberal Germans are
themselves beginning to see that it is not they, but the German
system, that is the object of attack because it is _the_ dangerous
thing in the world. Maximilian Harden presents this view in his
Berlin paper. He says in effect that Germany must get rid of its
predatory feudalism. That was all that was the matter with George
III.

Among the practical results of such action by us would, I believe,
be the following:

1. The early ending of the war and the saving of, perhaps, millions
of lives and of incalculable treasure;

2. The establishment in Germany of some form of more liberal
government;

3. A league to enforce peace, ready-made, under our guidance--i.e.,
the Allies and ourselves;

4. The sympathetic coöperation and the moral force of every Allied
Government in dealing with Mexico:

5. The acceptance--and even documentary approval--of every Allied
Government of the Monroe Doctrine;

6. The warding off and no doubt the final prevention of danger from
Japan, and, most of all, the impressive and memorable spectacle of
our Great Democracy thus putting an end to this colossal crime,
merely from the impulse and necessity to keep our own ideals and to
lead the world right on. We should do for Europe on a large scale
essentially what we did for Cuba on a small scale and thereby usher
in a new era in human history.

I write thus freely, Mr. President, because at no time can I write