I am sorry to see the New York World fly off at a tangent about this latest of the Wilsonian hobbies. Frank Irving Cobb, the editor of the World, is, as I have often said, the strongest writer on the New York press since Horace Greeley. But he can hardly be called a sentimentalist, as Greeley was, and there is nothing but sentiment--gush and gammon--in the proposed League of Nations.
It may be all right for England. There are certainly no flies on it for France. But we don"t need it. Its effects can only be to tie our hands, not keep the dogs away, and even at the worst, in stress of weather, we are strong enough to keep the dogs away ourselves.
We should say to Europe: "Shinny on your own side of the water and we will shinny on our side." It may be that Napoleon"s opinion will come true that ultimately Europe will be "all Cossack or all republican."
Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the United States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities of democracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage by Federal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and const.i.tutional amendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and then!--Lord, how glad I feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and shall not live to see it!
Chapter the Thirty-First
The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Const.i.tutional Shortcomings
I
The years intervening between 1865 and 1919 may be accounted the most momentous in all the cycles of the ages. The bells that something more than half a century ago rang forth to welcome peace in America have been from that day to this jangled out of tune and harsh with the sounding of war"s alarms in every other part of the world. We flatter ourselves with the thought that our tragedy lies behind us. Whether this be true or not, the tragedy of Europe is at hand and ahead. The miracles of modern invention, surpa.s.sing those of old, have made for strife, not for peace.
Civilization has gone backward, not forward. Rulers, intoxicated by the l.u.s.t of power and conquest, have lost their reason, and nations, following after, like cattle led to slaughter, seem as the bereft of Heaven "that knew not G.o.d."
We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the current chronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house, and, over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, we reflect upon the money-zealot"s progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling array, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and fall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone--the innocent and the gentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the court--and we draw back aghast. Yet, if we speak of these things we are called pessimists.
I have always counted myself an optimist. I know that I do not lie awake nights musing on the ingrat.i.tude either of my stars or my countrymen. I pity the man who does. Looking backward, I have sincere compa.s.sion for Webster and for Clay! What boots it to them, now that they lie beneath the mold, and that the drums and tramplings of nearly seventy years of the world"s strifes and follies and sordid ambitions and mean repinings, and longings, and laughter, and tears, have pa.s.sed over their graves, what boots it to them, now, that they failed to get all they wanted?
There is indeed snug lying in the churchyard; but the flowers smell as sweet and the birds sing as merry, and the stars look down as loving upon the G.o.d-hallowed mounds of the lowly and the poor, as upon the man-bedecked monuments of the Kings of men. All of us, the least with the greatest, let us hope and believe shall attain immortal life at last. What was there for Webster, what was there for Clay to quibble about? I read with a kind of wonder, and a sickening sense of the littleness of great things, those pa.s.sages in the story of their lives where it is told how they stormed and swore, when tidings reached them that they had been balked of their desires.
Yet they might have been so happy; so happy in their daily toil, with its lofty aims and fair surroundings; so happy in the sense of duty done; so happy, above all, in their own Heaven-sent genius, with its n.o.ble opportunities and splendid achievements. They should have emulated the satisfaction told of Franklin Pierce. It is related that an enemy was inveighing against him, when an alleged friend spoke up and said: "You should not talk so about the President, I a.s.sure you that he is not at all the man you describe him to be. On the contrary, he is a man of the rarest gifts and virtues. He has long been regarded as the greatest orator in New England, and the greatest lawyer in New England, and surely no one of his predecessors ever sent such state papers to Congress."
"How are you going to prove it," angrily retorted the first speaker.
"I don"t need to prove it," coolly replied the second. "He admits it."
I cannot tell just how I should feel if I were President, though, on the whole, I fancy fairly comfortable, but I am quite certain that I would not exchange places with any of the men who have been President, and I have known quite a number of them.
II
I am myself accused sometimes of being a "pessimist." a.s.suredly I am no optimist of the Billy Sunday sort, who fancies the adoption of the prohibition amendment the coming of "de jubilo." Early in life, while yet a recognized baseball authority, Mr. Sunday discovered "pay dirt" in what Col. Mulberry Sellers called "piousness." He made it an a.s.set and began to issue celestial notes, countersigned by himself and made redeemable in Heaven. From that day to this he has been following the lead of the renowned Simon Suggs, who, having in true camp meeting style acquired "the grace of G.o.d," turned loose as an exhorter shouting "Step up to the mourner"s bench, my brethering, step up lively, and be saved!
I come in on na "er par, an" see what I draw"d! Religion"s the only game whar you can"t lose. Him that trusts the Lord holds fo" aces!"
The Billy Sunday game has made Billy Sunday rich. Having exhausted h.e.l.l-fire-and-brimstone, the evangel turns to the Demon Rum. Satan, with hide and horns, has had his day. Prohibition is now the trick card.
The fanatic is never either very discriminating or very particular. As a rule, for him any taking "ism" will suffice. To-day, it happens to be "whisky." To-morrow it will be tobacco. Finally, having established the spy system and made house-to-house espionage a rule of conventicle, it will become a misdemeanor for a man to kiss his wife.
From fakers who have cards up their sleeves, not to mention snakes in their boots, we hear a great deal about "the people," p.r.o.nounced by them as if it were spelled "pee-pul." It is the unfailing recourse of the professional politician in quest of place. Yet scarcely any reference, or referee, were faultier.
The people en ma.s.se const.i.tute what we call the mob. Mobs have rarely been right--never except when capably led. It was the mob of Jerusalem that did the unoffending Jesus of Nazareth to death. It was the mob in Paris that made the Reign of Terror. Mobs have seldom been tempted, even had a chance to go wrong, that they have not gone wrong.
The "people" is a fetish. It was the people, misled, who precipitated the South into the madness of secession and the ruin of a hopelessly unequal war of sections. It was the people backing if not compelling the Kaiser, who committed hari-kari for themselves and their empire in Germany. It is the people leaderless who are making havoc in Russia.
Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, in all lands and ages, the people, when turned loose, have raised every inch of h.e.l.l to the square foot they were able to raise, often upon the slightest pretext, or no pretext at all.
This is merely to note the mortal fallibility of man, most fallible when herded in groups and p.r.o.ne to do in the aggregate what he would hesitate to do when left to himself and his individual accountability.
Under a wise dispensation of power, despotism, we are told embodies the best of all government. The trouble is that despotism is seldom, if ever, wise. It is its nature to be inconsiderate, being essentially selfish, grasping and tyrannous. As a rule therefore revolution--usually of force--has been required to change or reform it. Perfectibility was not designed for mortal man. That indeed furnishes the strongest argument in favor of the immortality of the soul, life on earth but the ante-chamber of eternal life. It would be a cruel Deity that condemned man to the brief and vexed span of human existence with nothing beyond the grave.
We know not whence we came, or whither we go; but it is a fair guess that we shall in the end get better than we have known.
III
Historic democracy is dead.
This is not to say that a Democratic party organization has ceased to exist. Nor does it mean that there are no more Democrats and that the Democratic party is dead in the sense that the Federalist party is dead or the Whig party is dead, or the Greenback party is dead, or the Populist party is dead. That which has died is the Democratic party of Jefferson and Jackson and Tilden. The principles of government which they laid down and advocated have been for the most part obliterated.
What slavery and secession were unable to accomplish has been brought about by nationalizing sumptuary laws and suffrage.
The death-blow to Jeffersonian democracy was delivered by the Democratic Senators and Representatives from the South and West who carried through the prohibition amendment. The _coup de grace_ was administered by a President of the United States elected as a Democrat when he approved the Federal suffrage amendment to the Const.i.tution.
The kind of government for which the Jeffersonian democracy successfully battled for more than a century was thus repudiated; centralization was invited; State rights were a.s.sa.s.sinated in the very citadel of State rights. The charter of local self-government become a sc.r.a.p of paper, the way is open for the obliteration of the States in all their essential functions and the erection of a Federal Government more powerful than anything of which Alexander Hamilton dared to dream.
When the history of these times comes to be written it may be said of Woodrow Wilson: he rose to world celebrity by circ.u.mstance rather than by character. He was favored of the G.o.ds. He possessed a bright, forceful mind. His achievements were thrust upon him. Though it sometimes ran away with him, his pen possessed extraordinary facility.
Thus he was ever able to put his best foot foremost. Never in the larger sense a leader of men as were Chatham and Fox, as were Washington, Clay and Lincoln; nor of ideas as were Rousseau, Voltaire and Franklin, he had the subtle tenacity of Louis the Eleventh of France, the keen foresight of Richelieu with a talent for the surprising which would have raised him to eminence in journalism. In short he was an opportunist void of conviction and indifferent to consistency.
The pen is mightier than the sword only when it has behind it a heart as well as a brain. He who wields it must be brave, upright and steadfast.
We are giving our Chief Executive enormous powers. As a rule his wishes prevail. His name becomes the symbol of party loyalty. Yet it is after all a figure of speech not a personality that appeals to our sense of duty without necessarily engaging our affection.
Historic Republicanism is likewise dead, as dead as historic Democracy, only in both cases the labels surviving.
IV
We are told by Herbert Spencer that the political superst.i.tion of the past having been the divine right of kings, the political superst.i.tion of the present is the divine right of parliaments and he might have said of peoples. The oil of anointing seems unawares, he thinks, to have dripped from the head of the one upon the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also, and to their decrees.
That the Proletariat, the Bolsheviki, the People are on the way seems plain enough. How far they will go, and where they will end, is not so clear. With a kind of education--most men taught to read, very few to think--the ma.s.ses are likely to demand yet more and more for themselves.
They will continue strenuously and effectively to resent the startling contrasts of fortune which apt.i.tude and opportunity have created in a social and political structure claiming to rest upon the formula "equality for all, special privilege for none."
The law of force will yield to the rule of numbers. Socialism, disappointed of its Utopia, may then repeat the familiar lesson and reproduce the man-on-horseback, or the world may drop into another abyss, and, after the ensuing "dark ages," like those that swallowed Babylon and Tyre, Greece and Rome, emerge with a new civilization and religion.
"Man never is, but always to be blessed." We know not whence we came, or whither we go. Hope that springs eternal in the human breast tells us nothing. History seems, as Napoleon said, a series of lies agreed upon, yet not without dispute.
V