Charles Seymour

“ I am proposing as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. ”

“ There was always the ancient prejudice against participation in European affairs, which had not been broken even by the events of the past two years. The people, even more than the Senate, were ignorant of foreign conditions and failed to understand the character of the obligations which the nation would assume under the treaty and the covenant of the League. There was genuine fear lest the United States should become involved in wars and squabbles in which it had no material interest, and lest it should surrender its independence of action to a council of foreign powers. ”

“ Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war—it is a Nation. To this end our people must draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this cannot be if each man pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one purpose. ”

“ Woodrow Wilson, however, is not to be assessed by his accomplishment. It is as prophet and not as man of action that he will be regarded by history. Like the prophets of old, like Luther or Mazzini, he lacked the capacity for carrying to practical success the ideal which he preached. But to assume that he must accordingly be adjudged a failure is to ignore the significance of the ideals to which he awakened the world. Much there was that was unattainable and intangible, but its value to mankind in the development of international relations may be inestimable. ”

“ But "if American ships and American lives should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral governments will take the same course." ”

“ Instead of the old system of alliances there should be a general concert of powers: "There is no entangling alliance in a concert of powers. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection." As the result of such a concert no one power would dominate the sea or the land; armaments might safely be limited; peace would be organized by the major force of mankind. ”

“ Define the elements, let us know that we are not fighting for the prevalence of this nation over that, for the ambitions of this group of nations as compared with the ambitions of that group of nations; let us once be convinced that we are called in to a great combination to fight for the rights of mankind and America will unite her force and spill her blood for the great things which she has always believed in and followed. ”

“ Despite the wars and rumors of wars in Europe after 1910, few Americans perceived the gathering of the clouds, and probably not one in ten thousand felt more than an ordinary thrill of interest on the morning of June 29, 1914, when they read that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated. Nor, a month later, when it became obvious that the resulting crisis was to precipitate another war in the Balkans, did most Americans realize that the world was hovering on the brink of momentous events. ”

“ Alone of the great powers the United States had no selfish designs to hide behind fair promises of a better future. As President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson might look for the confidence of Europe; there was no European Government which could arouse similar trust. So long as the war lasted, the President's success as a prophet of the ideal was assured, alike by his ability to voice inarticulate hopes and by reason of his position as chief of the most powerful and most disinterested nation of the world. ”

“ Indeed the historian of the future may ask whether it is as important, in this age of democracy, to know exactly what sort of man he was as to know what the people thought he was. And yet in the case of a statesman who was to play a rôle of supreme importance in the affairs of the country and the world, it is perhaps more than a matter of merely personal interest to underline his salient traits. ”

“ He went on to define the objects of the war more specifically, referring to his earlier addresses: "Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles." Democracy must be the soul of the new international order: "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. ”

“ Not merely enthusiasm and brains enabled America to make the extraordinary efforts demanded by the exigencies of war. Behind every line of activity lay the need of money: and the raising of money in amounts so large that they passed the comprehension of the average citizen, forms one of the most romantic stories of the war. It is the story of the enthusiastic coöperation of rich and poor: Wall Street and the humblest foreign immigrants gave of their utmost in the attempt to provide the all-important funds for America and her associates in the war. ”

“ The principle of justice, as the underlying basis of intercourse between nations, has received wide support at all epochs of history; the cause of international peace, as an ultimate ideal, has always been advocated in the abstract; the idea of a League of Nations has frequently been mooted. But it was Wilson's fate to be ruler of a great nation at the moment when the need of peace, justice, and international organization was more clearly demonstrated than ever before in the world's history. ”

“ Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own." Because the existing German Government was clearly at odds with all such ideals, "We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. ”

“ He had begun to elaborate an idealistic policy of service to the world, not unreminiscent of the altruistic schemes of Clay and Webster for assisting oppressed republicans in Europe during the first third of the nineteenth century. Wilson, like those statesmen, had always felt that the position of the United States in the world was of a special sort, quite different from that of the European states, and circumstances were forcing him to take the stand that the nation must assume the lead in the world in order to ensure the operation of the principles that Americans believe in. ”

“ During a debate upon the southern boundary of Austria, President Wilson might have been seen on all fours, kneeling on the floor and tracing out the suggested frontier on a huge map, while other peace commissioners and experts surrounded him, also on their hands and knees. Hours of labor were long. There was, certainly, much discussion that hinged upon selfish nationalist interests, but also much that was inspired by a sincere desire to secure the solution that would permanently restore the tranquillity of Europe. ”

“ I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization.... I cannot imagine any man with American principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things."
Blinded by prejudice and tradition, a handful of Senators, twelve "willful men," as Wilson described them, blocked, through a filibuster, the resolution granting the power requested by the President. But the storm of popular obloquy which covered them proved that the nation as a whole was determined to support him in the defense of American rights. ”

“ A master organizer, with keen flair for efficient subordinates, of broad vision never muddied by details, with sound knowledge of business economics, and a gift for dramatic appeal, Hoover was ideally fitted to conduct the greatest experiment in economic organization the world had seen. Unsentimental himself, he knew how to arouse emotion—a necessary quality, since the food problem demanded heavy personal sacrifices which would touch every individual ”

“ If the President expected to be hailed at home as conquering hero, he was destined to bitter disappointment. He must now pay the price for those tactical mistakes which had aroused opinion against him in the previous autumn. The elements which he had antagonized by his war-policies, by his demand for a Democratic Congress, by his failure to coöperate with the Senate in the formulation of American policy and in the appointment of the Peace Commission, and which had opposed his departure in person to Paris—all those elements now had their chance. ”

“ The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty."
Wilson thus imagined the war as a crusade, the sort of crusade for American ideals which Clay and Webster once imagined. He was in truth originating nothing, but rather resuscitating the generous dreams which had once inspired those statesmen. ”

“ The whole Nation must be a team, in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted.
If President Wilson deserves severe criticism for his failure to endorse adequate plans of preparation for war while his country was at peace, he should be given due credit for his appreciation that the home front must be organized if the fighting front was to be victorious. He perceived clearly that it was necessary to carry into the industrial life of the nation that centralizing process which characterized his military policy. ”

“ How many Americans caught the real significance of Wilson's thought with all its consequences is doubtful. The country certainly looked upon the war as a crusade. But there was in the national emotion much that did not accord with the ideals of Wilson. The people hated Germany for the sinking of the Lusitania and all the other submarine outrages, for her crimes in Belgium, for the plots and explosions in this country, for the Zimmermann note, and finally for her direct and insulting defiance of American rights. They recognized that the Allies were fighting for civilization ”

“ Most Americans entered the struggle, therefore, with a sober gladness, based partly on emotional, partly on quixotic, and partly on selfish grounds. But nearly all fought rather to beat Germany than to secure a new international order. Hence it was that after Germany was beaten, Wilson was destined to discover that his idealistic preaching had not fully penetrated, and that he had failed to educate his country, as completely as he believed, to the ideal of a partnership of democratic and peace-loving peoples as the essential condition of a new and safe world. ”

“ Entrance into the war at that time would have been based upon neither judgment nor ideals, but merely upon emotion. The American people were in no way prepared to bring material aid to the cause of justice, nor did the nation yet appreciate the moral issues involved. It would have been a war of revenge for American lives lost. The President was by temperament disinclined to listen to the passionate demands for intervention, and, as historian, he must have had in mind the error committed by McKinley when he permitted the declaration of war on Spain, after the sinking of the Maine in 1898. ”

“ As a guarantee of future justice and tranquillity the terms that settled the present war must be based upon justice and not be of the sort ordinarily dictated by the victor to the vanquished. It must be a "peace without victory." Thus while Wilson warned Germany that her ambitions for continental domination would not be tolerated, he also warned the Allies that they could not count upon the United States to help them to crush Germany for their selfish individual purposes. ”

“ By securing the eastern front and releasing prisoners as well as troops there, they would be able to establish a crushing superiority in the west; France would be annihilated before the American armies could count, if indeed they were ever raised. Hence the heavy terms of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest and the preparations for the great drive of March. As Wilson said, "The tragical circumstance is that this one party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees to be just." ”

“ They read back into their thoughts of those early days the realization which, in truth, came only later, that Germany was the brutal aggressor attacking those aspects of modern civilization which are dear to America. In fact there were not many then who grasped the essential truth that the cause defended by Great Britain and France was indeed that of America and that their defeat would bring the United States face to face with vital danger, both material and moral. ”

“ Germany's cynical disregard of Belgian independence, the horrors and waste of the war for which Germany was chiefly responsible, the diplomatic disorganization of Europe, which permitted this world disaster, desired by merely a handful of firebrands—all these tragic and pitiful facts had been burned into the mind of the age. ”

“ What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia." This recognition of our interest in world affairs immediately took him considerably beyond the position he had assumed during the earlier stages of the submarine controversy. Until the spring of 1916 he had restricted his aims to the championship of neutral and human rights in time of war. But now he began to demand something more far-reaching, namely a system that would prevent unjust war altogether and would protect the rights of all peoples in time of peace. ”

“ In view of the possibility of war Wilson wanted to define the issue exactly. "We have never yet," he said at Omaha, a peace center, on the 5th of October, "sufficiently formulated our programme for America with regard to the part she is going to play in the world, and it is imperative that she should formulate it at once.... It is very important that the statesmen of other parts of the world should understand America.... We are holding off, not because we do not feel concerned, but because when we exert the force of this nation we want to know what we are exerting it for." ”

“ Because of the practical blockade of American ports which followed the hesitation of American shipping interests to send boats unarmed into the dangers of the "war zone," President Wilson came again to Congress on the 26th of February to ask authority to arm merchant vessels for purposes of defense. Again he stressed his unwillingness to enter upon formal warfare and emphasized the idealistic aspect of the issue: "It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life itself. ”

“ If Clemenceau had yielded in January when the League was demanded by Wilson, it was with the mental reservation that when the "practical" issues came up, the victory should be his. The French press were not slow to give support to their Government, and within a short time the President, so recently a popular idol, found himself anathematized as a pro-German and the sole obstacle to a speedy and satisfactory peace. The more noisy section of the British press followed suit. Liberals were silenced and American idealism was cursed as meddlesome myopia. ”

“ Infinitely more difficult than the problem of man-power were those of training and supplies. As we have seen, these problems were complicated by the decision to send abroad an effective fighting force, a decision which completely changed the entire military situation. The original plan of maintaining an army only in the United States, as a reserve, permitted the questions of camps, supplies, equipment, munitions, and training to be undertaken at comparative leisure. But if a large army was to be placed in France by 1918, these problems must be solved immediately and upon an emergency basis. ”

“ The advance of American divisions with the French in the clearing of the Marne sector was of the first military importance. The Americans were better qualified than any European troops, at that stage of the war, to carry through offensive operations. They were fearless not merely because of natural hardihood, but through ignorance of danger; they were fresh and undefeated, physically and morally capable of undergoing the gruelling punishment delivered by the rearguards of the retreating Germans; their training had been primarily for open warfare. ”