"It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.
"But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
"To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. G.o.d helping her, she can do no other."
CHAPTER I
WHY WE WENT TO WAR
MEMORIES OF BEAUTIFUL FRANCE--WHY I WAS NOT ACCEPTED AS CONSUL TO GERMANY
BY HON. JAMES MARTIN MILLER
FORMER UNITED STATES CONSUL IN FRANCE
To have lived on the princ.i.p.al battle ground of the world war was a privilege the author did not appreciate at the time. As representative of the United States Government in the Consular district of France that includes the departments of the Aisne, Ardennes, Marne, Aube, Meuse, Vosges, Haute-Marne and Meurthe-et-Moselle, he lived and had his headquarters at Reims, some years before the war. Reims is (or rather was) a beautiful city of 112,000 people. The story of the city goes back to the days of the Roman empire, and bears the mark of many Gallic insurrections. In comparatively later times Joan of Arc caused Charles VII to be crowned in the great Cathedral there--one of the most glorious and stately in all Europe, now a ruin. A history of the eight departments (or small states) mentioned above would include a history of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, and of the greatest and most desperate of all wars, the one just brought to a close.
My Consular district bordered on Belgium, Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine.
The Marne, the Aisne, the Vesle, and other streams whose names adorn with sad pride so many of America"s battle-flags, flow through it. After 1914 Belgium saw very little fighting; but this district saw almost four years of continuous and enormous battle. It was overrun time and again.
Neither Belgium nor any other country suffered such devastation, nor such material destruction. Today it is a vast graveyard. Hundreds of thousands of men dyed its soil with their lifeblood. All America and all the world knows about Chateau Thierry and St. Mihiel, and the gallantry of American troops in those two brilliant and significant actions. It is difficult to realize the stupendous tragedy that through all those years hung over that beautiful country, whose fields were once as familiar to me as any fields of home. I look back to that time with affection, in the glow of happy memories.
Americans before this war had held the Monroe Doctrine in high reverence. Presidents had strengthened it in their messages. Candidates for office for more than half a century had argued as a campaign issue that the United States must never be drawn into foreign entanglements; that no European nation ever would be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the American continents. This doctrine was so deeply rooted that objectors everywhere rose up when we began to talk of "preparedness" against the ultimate day when we could no longer keep out of the fight. Many declared it would be "unconst.i.tutional" for the United States to send troops to Europe. The war lords of Germany took advantage of this traditional sentiment among our people and felt sure that the United States never would come in, no matter how many American lives nor how much American property Germany might destroy, nor how many of our ships German pirates might sink at sea, without warning. The German government had built up a propaganda in this country that at one time threatened to poison the minds of all our people. There were some among us who hated England, and wanted to see Germany win for no other reason than that. Others hated Russia, and so desired Germany to win.
Germany"s secret intrigues in Mexico came near to getting us into a war with that country. In the face of all these things there was a strong sentiment among our people and even in Congress favorable to Germany. It is easy now to say that we should have gone to war when the Lusitania was sunk, but pro-German feeling was so noisy and so strong, even though it was held by a minority, that the Congress itself was affected and withheld its hand.
Public sentiment had to be crystalized so that it would stand back of the administration. With our lack of a secret service capable of coping with the German agents who were busy everywhere and all the time, we were at a disadvantage in gathering evidence to convince our people that the Germans were menacing our very existence. Even after the secret service was built up it took many months of hard work and several thousand government men to uncover and stamp out their organizations and their ruthless plots. The slimy tracks of the German amba.s.sador at Washington had to be followed through devious underground channels that no one had suspected. The emba.s.sy had filled the country with German poison gas, and backed the German campaign of wholesale arson. Germans living here, many of them American born, were busily counteracting public opinion as the evidences acc.u.mulated.
Democracies are always at a disadvantage in dealing with monarchies; in the initial stages of war at least. We have seen it demonstrated that a democracy must become autocratic if it is to carry on a war successfully. But an American autocracy takes the shape of a temporary delegation of unusual power in conditions that cannot wait for the slow action of ordinary times; and those who exercise it are put in power by the people themselves, to do the people"s will. It was necessary to consolidate not only the direction of the nation itself, but of our military affairs abroad. We soon got the home situation in hand, and then the President of the United States threw his influence, backed by all the American people, toward bringing the allied armies and those of the United States under one head in the person of General Foch as Field Marshal. This was not accomplished until after the great Italian disaster, when it looked as though the Austro-Hungarian armies would crush Italy. The same may be said of the threatened disaster to the British army early in 1918, when von Hindenburg began his great drive toward Calais and Paris. Here were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, four monarchies dominated by the German government, fighting nearly all the democracies of the world, not considering Russia, which dropped out shortly before the United States effectively entered the war.
We will not consider j.a.pan"s position as a nominal member of the entente, except for her action at the beginning of the war in capturing Kiauchau, China, the German fortified port and naval base in the Orient, and sweeping Germany out of the Pacific by taking the Marshall islands.
Beyond this, j.a.pan sent soldiers to Eastern Siberia to help in police duty, and in guarding the great stores of supplies acc.u.mulated by the Russians at Vladivostok. These stores had been bought largely upon the credit extended to Russia by the United States.
With Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary gone as monarchies, j.a.pan is the greatest of the remaining imperial states. We have seen more than a dozen kings, emperors, princes and grand dukes pa.s.s into the discard as a result of a war which they themselves brought on.
France tried to discard kings and princes in 1798. The sovereignty of the people was proclaimed in that war, but the governments which have ruled France since have been many, and presented wide differences. In this present age, no doubt it will be much easier to establish a stable democracy upon the wreck of a monarchy than it could have been a century ago. Still, the construction of a democracy is a difficult ordeal for people who have always been imperialists. The several monarchies, big and little, that have fallen in this war, present most perplexing problems. There are boundary and racial disputes of the most bitter kind between some of their peoples. But the great democracies of the world that won this war are taking the part of "big brothers" to these, and are seeing to it that their petty quarrels and internal differences are held in check. Each of these countries, even though they establish democracies, will have strong royalist parties that will const.i.tute a standing threat. France even to this day has a royalist group of considerable strength. Their persistent claim is that France will again be a monarchy. The United States is really the only democracy without such a party. It is the only republic that was not founded on the ruin of a monarchy.
WHY I WAS NOT ACCEPTED AS CONSUL TO GERMANY
I have had some personal experience with the late German Imperial Government. As a war correspondent it was my duty to give to the world an account of the forcible deportation of King Mataafa from Samoa to the Marshall Islands, where he was kept in exile six years. The Germans had shoved him aside to make room for Malieto, an imbecile and a German figurehead. I was there again when Mataafa, at the end of those six years, returned to Samoa, to the great joy of his people.
A few years later I discovered that Germany"s policy was to "mark" any individual who wrote or spoke in criticism of anything German.
I was appointed United States Consul to Aix la Chapelle, Germany, four years after those articles appeared. My appointment came from President Roosevelt, and was confirmed by the United States Senate. When I arrived in Germany I found I was United States Consul so far as the United States Government was concerned, but I was put off in the matter of my exequatur (certificate of authority) from the government to which I was accredited; and without an exequatur, I could not act. I was kept cooling my heels in the consulate several months before I found out what was the matter. My newspaper articles describing what the Germans had done in Samoa, published four years earlier, were being held against me.
My presence in Germany was not desired.
I had crossed the Atlantic with Prince Henry, the Kaiser"s brother and Admiral of the German Navy, in February, 1901, when the Prince brought his party of a dozen or so militarists to this country to "further cement the amity and good will" existing between the great republic and the great empire. It later developed that this was a well planned operation in German propaganda. As a representative of the a.s.sociated Press, I had written of it. That was just after I had written the Samoan articles.
Speck von Sternberg was the German Amba.s.sador to Washington. He was in Paris. I went there to see him and ascertain, if I could, why my exequatur was withheld. The Government at Washington could get no information on the subject. The whole affair was clothed in mystery.
After some conversation I suggested to Amba.s.sador von Sternberg that perhaps the foreign office at Berlin was withholding the doc.u.ment because of my writings on German colonial matters. Then it came out--my guess was true. Some underlings in the foreign office had the case in charge. The Amba.s.sador suggested that as I knew Prince Henry, I would better write him at Kiel. I did this, with the result that the obstacle was removed and the exequatur issued.
WHY WE WENT TO WAR
_German Propaganda in the United States and Mexico_--_Sinking of the Lusitania_--_Unrestricted Submarine Warfare_.
WHY WE WENT TO WAR
During two years preceding our entrance upon war, Germany had been carrying on open warfare against us, within our own borders. For more than thirty years Germany"s policy of preparatory penetration had been in course. As we know now, every country, all round the globe, but especially the United States in North America and Brazil and Venezuela in South America, had been filled with Germans, ostensibly settlers, business men and followers of the higher professions, but for the greater part agents of Germany, in continuous contact with Potsdam and under Potsdam direction. It was the business of these imported Germans to foster the German idea, exalt Germany"s leadership in military power and in science and the arts, impress their language, their literature, music and customs upon our people, and to do all those things which might work for the day when Germany, having faked a partnership with Almighty G.o.d, should reach out for world dominion.
The processes were pressed with that strange blend of industry, stupidity, mendacity and cunning which characterize the Prussian and all his acts. Under our noses a German solidarity was attempted here, and in part achieved. Organizations having Prussian ends in view were numerous, large, popular and unsuspected. Threading them through and through was a spy system unbelievably thorough and amazingly adroit. Potsdam had us marked as a nation of easy going money getters, to be bled white, crammed with her muddy kultur and taught the goose-step, at her imperial leisure, after France and England had fallen to her guns.
But her blend of qualities, no matter how strong in itself, was nullified by just one lack: the total inability of the Prussian mind to understand the mind of the world exterior to Germany. In the day of test it failed.
Because of that inability, and knowing full well how readily the German mind could be terrorized, the outbreak of war in Europe brought an outbreak of blind German violence in the United States. We were to be impressed by the German power to strike. Our soil was chosen as a garden of domestic sedition, and of foreign conspiracy against powers with which we were at peace. To keep us busy with troubles of our own, German propaganda and German money in Mexico raised on our southern border a threatening spectre of war. We were to have been rushed into conflict with Mexico and kept employed there while being terrorized by wholesale arson and sabotage at home, so that by no chance could any friendly European power look to us for help. The scheme came near to succeeding, for our people were aroused by Mexican aggression, and the flaunting insults of Mexican authority, prompted by German agents. The policy of our Government saved us from falling into a trap that might have held us fast while Germany overran the whole of Europe and made ready to come a-plundering here at her own time and convenience.
If the truth had been known by the people then as clearly as it was known at Washington, nothing could have held us back: We would not have bothered with Mexico at all. We would have joined the free nations of Europe, and n.o.body may guess what would have happened. Certainly we could not have a.s.sembled the men and the resources we actually and swiftly did a.s.semble later, when the real hour sounded. We would have cut a sorry figure and gone into the mess confusedly. Washington knew.
The President knew so well that through 1915 and 1916 he and others in high places never ceased crying a warning to "prepare." The President himself toured the country and told the people everywhere that with a world on fire we could not hope to escape unsinged.
He said openly as much as he dared. Under the surface the Government did much more. The rapid movement of events once we were declared a combatant would have been impossible otherwise. That rapidity of effective action surprised the world only because it had all been planned before a word was said.
In the years of our neutrality our course as a nation was surely shaping itself for war, without an outward sign or act. Ruthless destruction of property and of life became too open, too frequent, too outrageous, for the patience of even a long-suffering, tolerant people such as we. The first impulse of genuine resentment was given when the Lusitania went down with its neutral pa.s.sengers, a defenseless ship on a peaceful errand, drowning more than a hundred Americans of both s.e.xes and all ages without the slightest notice, or the faintest chance of escape.
Any nation other than ours would have gone to war in a moment over such a blow in the face. We did not. Farther, we endured a sudden and flagrant increase of German propaganda in high quarters and low, and of German insolence openly and defiantly parading itself. The catalogue of provocations grew daily, and daily bred anger, but our temper held until in February of 1917, when Germany proclaimed unrestricted piracy by submarines, and under the thin pretext of starving out the British Isles, American and other ships were destroyed with all on board, wholesale.
Even then our hand was withheld until Germany advised us that we might send just one ship a week to Europe, one ship and no more, provided that solitary ship were painted in a manner prescribed in the permission, and then held strictly to a course laid down by the German admiralty.
Germany, a third rate naval power, had arbitrarily forbidden us the freedom of the seas.
Then our patience broke. For this and all the other causes Germany had given us, and for our own safety and the rescue of a world that without us would have perished, the United States went to war.
WORK OR FIGHT
Back of every American soldier about fifty men and women were needed in order that he be supplied with everything his physical, moral and military well being might require. They were put there. The result was a sweeping change, an immense expansion of energy in the United States itself. The draft took care of the army. No time or trouble had to be given to filling the ranks and keeping them full. The enormous sums of money necessary to finance our allies as well as ourselves were promptly oversubscribed in a series of loans, the first and least of which ran into three billion dollars, the fourth into six billions, a sum larger than any single loan ever floated by any other nation. Idleness was abolished. The order to "work or fight" was strictly enforced upon all the people, rich and poor alike, for any attempt to except any one or any cla.s.s would have been blown away in a gale of laughter. In a s.p.a.ce incredibly brief the United States became a nation of actual workers, in which every individual did his or her share, submitting meanwhile, with good grace and no murmuring, to being rationed. Interstate utilities were taken over and operated by the government, including the railway, telegraph and telephone lines; and government fixed prices on the necessaries of life. Everything was subordinated to the one and only purpose of winning the war. All that we were and all that we had was thoroughly mobilized behind the fighting arms, the army and the navy.
RATIONING THE NATIONS
Almost immediately after the first military and naval preparations had been set in operation the United States Government, taking no chance as against the future, began to regulate the lives and living of Americans at home. A policy of conservation, so well devised that it went into effect without the slightest disturbance of daily living and daily routine, was at once adopted.
England, France and Belgium had to be fed. Belgium had to be clothed and housed as well as fed. Out of our abundance had to come the means to those ends, as well as to equip and maintain vast armies of our own, from bases three thousand miles away in Europe and twice as far in Asia.
The whole nation was mobilized for war.
Britain and France had come through more than three years of close-lipped but bone-cracking effort, in which every aspect of domestic life was changed, the final ounce of strength exerted, privations unheard of endured in grim silence. America saved them, and not alone by force of arms against the common enemy.