Our Part in the Great War
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Those who wish to assure themselves that a healthy nationalism is the method by which a people serves humanity will find an exalted statement in Mazzini's "The Duties of Man." A correction of his overemphasis is contained in "Human Nature in Politics," by Graham Wallas. Valuable books on Nationality have been written by Ramsay Muir and Holland Rose. Lord Acton's essay on Nationality in his "The History of Freedom and Other Essays" should be consulted. He shows the defects of the nation-State.
On the American aspects of nationality, Emile Hovelaque and Alfred Zimmern are the two visitors who have shown clear recognition of the spiritual weakness of our country, and at the same time have pushed through to the cause, and so offered opportunity for amendment. Hovelaque's articles in the Revue de Paris of the spring of 1916 I have summarized in the chapter on the Middle West. From Zimmern I have jammed together in what follows isolated sentences of various essays. This is of course unfair to his thought, but will serve to stimulate the reader's interest in looking up the essays themselves.
"There is to-day no American nation. America consists at present of a congeries of nations who happen to be united under a common federal government. America is not a melting pot. It does not assimilate its aliens. It is the old old story of the conflict between human instincts and social institutions. The human soul can strike no roots in the America of to-day. I watched the workings of that ruthless economic process sometimes described as 'the miracle of assimilation.' I watched the steam-roller of American industrialism – so much more terrible to me in its consequences than Prussian or Magyar tyranny – grinding out the spiritual life of the immigrant proletariat, turning honest, primitive peasants into the helpless and degraded tools of the Trust magnate and the Tammany boss. Nowhere in the world as in the United States have false theories of liberty and education persuaded statesmen on so large a scale to make a Babel and call it a nation."
And the remedy?
"Those make the best citizens of a new country who, like the French in Canada and Louisiana, or the Dutch in South Africa, bear with them on their pilgrimage, and religiously treasure in their new homes, the best of the spiritual heritage bequeathed them by their fathers."
Alfred Zimmern is the author of "The Greek Commonwealth," contributor to the "Round Table," and one of the promoters of the Workers Educational Association. Those who wish to get his full thought on Nationality should consult the pamphlet "Education and the Working Class," the volume "International Relationships in the Light of Christianity," and the Sociological Review for July, 1912, and October, 1915.
The most penetrating recent articles on the American democracy as opposed to the cosmopolitanism of the melting pot were written by Horace M. Kallen in issues of the New York Nation of February, 1915. Dr. Kallen is a Jewish pupil of the late William James, of outstanding ability, the spiritual leader of the younger generation of Jews. He has touched off a group of thinkers on the American problem, of whom one is Randolph Bourne.
Those interested in the interweaving of French and early American history should read the book by Ambassador Jusserand, called "With Americans of Past and Present Days."
A careful investigation of the myth-making machinery used by nations in war-time is given by Fernand van Langenhove in "The Growth of a Legend" – a study based upon the German accounts of francs-tireurs and "wicked priests" in Belgium. It is made up of German documents.
A fuller study of the German letters and diaries is contained in the pamphlets of Professor Joseph Bedier, the books of Professor J. H. Morgan, and the volumes by Jacques de Dampierre "L'Allemagne et le Droit des Gens" and "Carnets de Route de Combattants Allemands." After an examination of these German documents, no student will speak of German atrocities as "alleged." The most careful collection of testimony by eye-witnesses is that contained in the report of the French Government Commission, "Rapports et Procès-Verbaux D'Enquête." I have personally examined several of the witnesses to this report. They are responsible witnesses. Their testimony is accurately rendered in the Government record. I trust that some American of high responsibility, such as Professor Stowell, of the Department of International Law at Columbia University, will make an exhaustive study of the German documents held by the French Ministry of War.
For the peasant incidents in the last section of my book, I refer to the book by Will Irwin, "The Latin at War," as independent corroboration.
II
TO NEUTRAL CRITICS
Certain points in my testimony have been challenged by persons sitting in security, three thousand miles away from the invaded country, where at my own cost and risk I have patiently gathered the facts on which I have based my statements.
I have built my testimony on three classes of evidence.
First: The things I have seen. I have given names, places and dates.
Second: The testimony of eye-witnesses, made to me in the presence of men and women, well-known in France, England and America. These eye-witnesses I have used in precisely the same way in which a case is built up in the courts of law.
Third: The diaries and letters written by Germans in which they describe the atrocities they have committed. I have seen the originals of these documents.
It is noticeable that the specific fact has never been challenged. The date has never been found misplaced, the place has never been confused, the person has never been declared non-existent. The denial has always been in blanket form.
The New York Evening Post says: "After the spy came the invasion, and after the invasion came the 'steam roller,' flattening out Belgium. This is all given in a general way."
It is given with exact specifications.
Clement Wood, in the Socialist paper, The New York Call, writes: "This book attempts more of a summing up of German offenses, and, being written to sustain an opinion rather than to give impartially the facts, correspondingly loses in interest and persuasiveness. Its usefulness to the general reader or the person who desires an unbiased understanding of the conflict is slight." He speaks of "the alleged German atrocities in Belgium."
My statements do not deal with opinion but with things seen. Apparently it is an offense to take sides on this war. One is a trusthworthy witness if one has seen only picturesque incidents that do not reveal the method of warfare practiced by an invading army. One is fair-minded only by shutting the eyes to the burned houses of Melle, Termonde and Lorraine, and the dead bodies of peasants; and by closing the ears to the statements of outraged persons. One is judicial only by defending the Germans against the acts of their soldiers, and the written evidence of their officers and privates.
The Independent says: "He saw the wreck of the convent school, but learned none of the sisters had been harmed."
The critic selects that portion of my testimony on the convent school which relieves the Germans of the charge of rape. As always, I have given every bit of evidence in favor of the Germans that came my way. I have told of the individual soldier who was revolted by his orders. I have published the diaries of German soldiers which revealed nobility. But is that scrupulous care of mine a justification to the Independent for omitting to tell the humiliations visited on that convent school?
My testimony of bayonetted dying peasants is "credible in so far as no testimony from the other side was obtainable."
"Mr. Gleason also saw the ruins of bombarded Belgian cities."
Is it fair of the Independent to be inaccurate? My evidence is not of bombarded Belgian cities. It is of Belgian cities, burned house by house, with certain houses spared where "Do not burn by incendiary methods" was chalked on the door.
"Otherwise his evidence is at second or third hand mainly."
On the contrary, I have quoted witnesses whom I can produce.
The Times, of Los Angeles, says: "He is quite rabid. He writes with the frenzy of a zealot."
I do not think the colorless recitation of facts, fortified by name, place and date, is rabid or frenzied.
The Literary Digest says: "Of the 'atrocities' in Belgium, we find reports of a 'friend,' or a 'friend's friend,' or what 'some one saw or heard.'"
I have told what I myself saw and heard.
"Fair-minded readers will be inclined to reserve judgment."
But in the light cast by eye-witnesses and German diaries, we have reserved judgment too long. Our American Revolution would have been a drearier affair, if the French had reserved judgment. In a crisis the need is to form a judgment in time to make it tell for the cause of justice. Truth-seeking is a living function of the mind.
Another critic says: "By careful reading one sees that, while it pretends to give real evidence, there isn't any that is real except where not essential. Mr. Gleason attempts to belittle the stories of priests inciting girls to deeds of violence."
I do not attempt to belittle those stories. I disprove them on the evidence given by German generals, whose names I cite. Because I defend Roman Catholic priests from slander does not mean that I am anti-Protestant. Because I prove that Belgium and France have suffered injustice does not mean that I am anti-German. I went over to find out whether Belgian and French peasants, old men, women and children, were a lawless, murderous mob, or whether the German military had sinned in burning their homes and shooting the non-combatants. Neutrals can not have it both ways – either the peasants were guilty, or the German Army was guilty. I found it was the German Army that had sinned.
This critic goes on to say: "Only a few years ago the entire world was shocked by the horrible atrocities carried on in the Congo."
Evidently those atrocities were proved to his satisfaction. But was the case not established by the same process I have used – personal observation, documentary proof, and the testimony of eye-witnesses?
The Post-Dispatch, of St. Louis, says: "Gleason in trying to make out a strong case against Germany goes too far. He is too venomous. It will be a hard thing to convince neutral Americans that German soldiers maliciously ran their bayonets through the backs of girl children. The volume would be of much greater historical value if Gleason had used his head more and his heart less." Dr. Hamilton, in The Survey, makes the same point.
In my testimony I detail my evidence, and they who deny it rest on general statements. I assure them it is not in lightness that I record these conclusions about the German Army. I have gone into the zone of fire to bring out German wounded. I have taken the same hazards as thousands of other men have taken to save German life. Does venom act so?
I find in these criticisms an underlying assumption, a mental attitude, toward war, and therefore toward facts about war. Some of these periodicals are sincere pacifists. In the cause of social reform, in their several and very different ways, they have served the common good. But because they believe war is the worst of all evils, they assume that both sides are equally guilty or equally foolish. It is not a mental attitude which leaves them open-minded. I want to ask them on what body of facts they base their criticism. Were they present in Belgium at the moment of impact? Has the German Government provided them with detailed documentary proof that in the villages I have mentioned, on the dates given, the persons I have named were not burned, were not bayonetted? Have they examined the originals of the German diaries and found that I have omitted or altered words? Have they spent many days in Lorraine taking testimony from curé and sister and Mayor and peasant? Has that testimony shown that the destruction and murder did not take place? Has Leon Mirman, Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle, given them a statement in which he retracts what he said to me?
Several of these critics happen to be personal friends. It would be impossible to write in resentment of anything they say. I am not interested in making out a case for myself. But I am very much interested in inducing my fellow countrymen to accept the facts of the present world struggle. My books about the war have been written with one purpose only – to bring home to Americans the undeserved suffering of Belgium and France. To do that I need the help of all men of good will. I ask them not to break the force of the facts which I have patiently collected, by the carelessness which calls systematically burned cities "bombarded" cities, and by the mental attitude which finds me "rabid," when I have given every favoring incident to German soldiers that I could find. I have spent nearly two years in observing the facts of this war. Against my desires, my pre-war philosophy, my hopes of internationalism, I was driven by the facts to certain conclusions.
1
Some of our people go further even than the giving of banquets to the efficient staff of the Deutschland. They give praise to U-53. In a newspaper, edited and owned by Americans, and published in an American Middle Western city of 40,000 inhabitants, the leading editorial on the exploits of U-53 was headed, "Hats Off to German Seamen," and the writer says:
"The world in general that had educated itself to regard the German as a phlegmatic and plodding citizen will remove its headgear in token of approbation of the sustained series of sensational feats by German commanders and sailors. The entire aspect of affairs has been changed by the events of two years. The Germans have accumulated as much heroic and romantic material in that time as has been gathered by other nations since the date of the American Revolution."
In the second section of this book, I have told why we talk like that. The mixture of races (mixed but not blended), the modern theory of cosmopolitanism, a self-complacency in our attitude toward Europe, an assumption that we alone champion freedom and justice, the fading of our historic tradition – these have caused us to preach internationalism, but fail to defend ourselves or the little nation of Belgium. They have led us to admire successful force.
2
Mazzini's idea of neutrality was this:
"A law of Solon decreed that those who in an insurrection abstained from taking part on one side or the other should be degraded. It was a just and holy law, founded on the belief – then instinctive in the heart of Solon, but now comprehended and expressed in a thousand formulæ – in the solidarity of mankind. It would be just now more than ever. What! you are in the midst of the uprising, not of a town, but of the whole human race; you see brute force on the one side, and right on the other … whole nations are struggling under oppression … men die in hundreds, by thousands, fighting for or against an idea. This idea is either good or evil; and you continue to call yourselves men and Christians, you claim the right of remaining neutral? You cannot do so without moral degradation. Neutrality – that is to say, indifference between good and evil, the just and the unjust, liberty and oppression – is simply Atheism."