Walter E. Weyl

“ Whatever was true in the past, however, we need no longer be so completely defenceless that we must fear that peace in Europe would mean a conquest of America. We should rather have Europe fight itself than us, but—in dollars and cents as in other values—we should prefer to see the world at peace.
We shall not secure peace, however, by merely wishing for it or by merely preaching it. In the midst of war there has always been the longing for peace, and throughout the centuries voices have been raised calling upon mankind to give up its war upon itself. ”

“ It is to this feeling of patriotism, sober or half-sober, to which the men who have something to gain from imperialism appeal. The home nation has its sacred duty to perform to the backward country, which does not pay its debts and is rent by revolutions, fomented perhaps abroad. The home nation must not relinquish its arduous privilege. It must not haul down the flag. It must not defer to other nations. Beyond the seas there is to be created a New England, a New France, a New Germany, to which all the national virtues are to be transplanted. ”

“ An Anglo-American imperialism, indeed any Anglo-American alliance which does not include France, Germany, Russia and other powers, thus brings us no nearer to peace or to a solution of the international problem. It is but the prelude to a new balance of power, a new alignment of hostile national ambitions. If Great Britain and the United States grow and prevent other nations from growing, exploit and prevent other nations from exploiting, we shall be merely reproducing the present fatal scission of Europe upon a large scale. ”

“ Growing up in a peaceful environment we had imbibed the idea that war was a thing alien to us, monarchial, European. We had come to hold that a nation could avoid war by not desiring it, by not preparing for it, by minding its own business. We believed that what share in the world we had and wanted was what every reasonable nation would willingly concede us, and if certain powers proved refractory and unreasonable—a most improbable contingency—we could always send forth our millions of minute men, armed with patriotism and fowling-pieces. ”

“ If this were true, pacifism might as well resign. In truth, this interpretation of war as a mere expression of man's fighting instincts is no more adequate than is the personal devil theory. War has outgrown the fighting instinct. It has become deliberate, businesslike, scientific. It demands sacrifices from those to whom fighting is an abomination. How many red-blooded warriors could the German Emperor or the French President have enrolled, had there been no appeal to national interest, duty, justice, indignation? War is won to-day by peace-loving men, who abhor the arms in their hands. ”

“ There had been famine in Lorraine and pestilence from Flanders to Bohemia, and all the discontent, hunger and ambition of western Europe answered to Urbano's call. "A stream of emigration set towards the East, such as would in modern times flow towards a newly discovered gold-field—a stream carrying in its turbid waters much refuse, tramps and bankrupts, camp-followers and hucksters, fugitive monks and escaped villains, and marked by the same motley grouping, the same fever of life, the same alternations of affluence and beggary, which mark the rush for a gold-field to-day." ”

“ As the first stage of mere instinctive arming passes, however, it suddenly appears as though the true cleavage in American thought and feeling runs perpendicular to the division between those who favour and those who oppose armament. The real issue is the purpose to which the arms are to be put. We may use our armed strength to secure concessions in China or Mexico, to "punish" small nations, to enter the balance of power of Europe or to aid in the promotion of international peace. We may use our strength wisely or unwisely, for good or for ill. ”

“ We must ward off certain dangers, securing ourselves as other nations secure themselves. But for better or worse, we have become a world power and a world influence, and what we do outside, as well as within, our borders, must affect the decisions and actions of other nations. If our ideal is not aggrandisement or empire but an equal fellowship with other great nations, if we desire to contribute to the progress of international development and not merely get all we can in the scramble, how shall we shape our foreign policy? ”

“ As in ancient days, in India, Babylon, Persia, China, Hellas and Rome, so to-day, men will choose "to die greatly and with a glory that will surpass the glories of the past." Men are always greater than the earthly considerations that seem to guide their lives. As patriotism ruled the hosts of Rome and Carthage, as the ideal of empire drove forth the valorous Englishmen who conquered India, so to-day, to-morrow and until the end of time high and noble ideas, far above the comprehension of mere rationalists, will impel men to war, "to die greatly." ”

“ It is upon this divided America that there comes the sense of the impinging of Europe. These men of two opposed types (with innumerable intermediate variations) suddenly perceive that the great war is being fought not only near our shores but even within our borders. They dimly perceive that the war is but an incident in a greater, though less spectacular contest, that it is in reality a phase of a long drawn-out economic struggle in which we too have blindly played our part. To both groups, to all Americans, the war comes close. ”

“ CHAPTER I AMERICA AMONG THE NATIONS
The Great War has thrown America back upon itself. It has come as a test and challenge to all our theories. Suddenly, yet subtly, it has shaken our optimism and undermined our faith in the peaceful progress of humanity. Our isolation is gone, and with it our sense of security and self-direction. Americans, who a few days ago would have dared to abolish army and navy as a supreme earnest of good faith, reluctantly agree to arm. "Self-defence," they now say, "comes before progress. We must lay aside our hopes of a world at peace and must guard our gates." ”

“ They have only to do what other aggressive and imperialistic nations have done—prepare the means of fighting and threaten to fight either alone or with allies whenever a favouring opportunity offers. But for those of us who desire to make America an agency in the creation of international peace the problem is infinitely more difficult. Peace and internationalism cannot be secured by fervent wishes or piety but only by persistent effort and measureless patience. That for which men have sought in vain during so many centuries will not fall like ripe fruit into our laps. ”

“ Nor can we stay at home and, ignorant of the causes of war, content ourselves with a long-distance preaching of peace to the menaced nations of Europe. Each of the two courses open to us involves self-direction, valour and strength. If we are to enter upon a struggle for place, power and profits, we must prepare for a dangerous contest: if we are to labour for a new international harmony, for peace and good-will and the delicate adjustments without which these are but words, we shall also need courage—and infinite patience. Without knowledge we shall accomplish nothing. ”

“ Are we, for instance, to become the defenders of small nationalities, ready to go to war whenever one is invaded? Has a small nation a right to hold its present territory when that right conflicts with the economic advance, let us say, of a whole continent? Should we respect Canada's right to keep New York, had that city originally been settled by Canadians? Should we compel Russia to treat her Poles and Jews fairly and concede to Russia the right to compel us to treat our Negroes fairly? ”

“ As "business men" we hated wars as we hated strikes and whatever else "interfered with business." Our ideal was a strenuous life of acquisition, in which dollars were added to dollars, and the prosperity of all depended upon the bank account of each. Wars were like earthquakes and other interruptions of the ordained process of accumulation; you could no more win a war than you could win an earthquake. America's manifest destiny was to multiply and increase. We were to mind our own business and live in peace with neighbours, whom we did not know and rather despised. ”

“ The present desire of Americans for a world peace is no vaguer or more ineffectual than was the seemingly faint sense of the wickedness of slavery, as it existed in our Northern States in the days of the Missouri Compromise. Yet out of that undirected, crude and luke-warm emotion, there burst forth within a generation the white-hot flame, which consumed the detested institution and freed the millions of Negro slaves. ”

“ To the average American of a few years ago the maintenance of peace seemed as natural and easy as breathing. Except for our brief and episodical conflict with Spain we had had no war with a European Power for a hundred years and we saw no reason why we should go to war in any of the coming centuries. Peace was merely an abstention from war, a not doing something, which we had no desire to do. We had no reason to provoke war, no foreign nation had a legitimate grievance against us. In any case we were inherently different from Europe. We were peaceful while Europe was war-like. ”

“ Without such idealism, manufactured or evolved, you can no more win wars, especially in these latter days, than without ammunition. Idealism is a weapon with which we kill our enemies. Yet if we read our history rightly, we shall find less of this luminous nobility among warriors than our annalists pretend. The Greeks of the Trojan War were not patriots but free-booters. Those great English sailors, Drake, Morgan and the rest, who ravaged the Caribbean and smashed the Spanish sea-power, were pirates, unashamed of their piracy. ”

“ Peace cannot come by international machinery alone; neither can it come without machinery.
Peace between nations, like peace within a nation, does not depend upon force alone. Unless the effective majority of the nations (or of the citizens) are reconciled to the system to be enforced, unless they desire peace, whether international or internal, the application of force will be impossible. On the other hand, peace is equally impossible without force. If no compulsion can be applied the smallest minority can throw the world into war. ”

“ Men speak as though a miracle had swept away the Atlantic Ocean, leaving us stranded on Europe's western shore. Fortunately the Ocean, always America's ally, still lies there, narrowed and curbed, yet three thousand miles of storm-swept water. Physically and morally, however, our isolation has dwindled. Dreadnaughts, submarines and airships can now reach us and our commerce, industry and national ambitions are interwoven with those of Europe. We shall never again stand aloof from the world. ”

“ Look where you will, at the great wars and at the blood-tracked colonising movements of history, and always you will find two kinds of men: the stone-blind idealist, and the crass, open-eyed, fleshly man. One fights for ideals, the other for something else worth fighting for. Both, however, are in reality impelled by economic motive, working upon them either directly and consciously, or transmuted into ideals through the medium of a people's thought. ”

“ We can no longer stand aside and do nothing, for that is the worst and most dangerous of policies. We must either plunge into national competitive imperialism, with all its profits and dangers, following our financiers wherever they lead, or must seek out some method by which the economic needs and desires of rival industrial nations may be compromised and appeased, so that foreign trade may go on and capital develop backward lands without the interested nations flying at each other's throat. Isolation, aloofness, a hermit life among the nations is no longer safe or possible. ”

“ Or if one nation, say England, could take over all colonies and run them in the common interest of the industrial nations alone, imperialism would be robbed of its greatest peril, that of embroiling the nations in war. Unfortunately we have hit upon no such device for preserving the common interest of imperialist nations, while safe-guarding their separate interests. Each nation desires the biggest share for itself. ”

“ Yet nothing could more clearly have revealed our moral detachment, our obliviousness to the fact that the passions which brought forth this war were human, not European passions. We, the virtuous, interceded for the vicious; our prayer was "deliver them from evil." With malice toward none, with charity towards all, envying no nation its treasures, content to enjoy in peace what God had given us, America folded its hands in prayer. ”

“ War was attacked not because it was evil in the eyes of God but because, like high taxes, monopolies and tariffs, it was adverse to the economic interests of nations and peoples. The growth of the doctrine of laissez-faire and of free trade gave a new impetus to the pacifist movement. The people of the world were looked upon as a myriad of human atoms, whose welfare did not depend upon the power of the particular State of which they chanced to form a part, but upon the free enterprise of each and the unobstructed exchange of products among all these individuals. ”

“ It was because it paid that we kept at peace; any other policy would have been wasteful, even suicidal. Our future depended upon our ability to keep out of war. A sparse population on the edge of a vast continent, our hope of national success lay in an isolation, which would give us strength for future struggles. Our mission was to settle the empty lands to the West before other nations could pre-empt them. To embroil ourselves with strong powers was to court disaster, while even to interest ourselves in European politics would divert our mind from our own imperative task. ”