The Lost Fruits of Waterloo

If we are to contribute a material part to the suppression of aggression in the world, we have a right to say in what way and to what end our sacrifice will have been made. As the greatest of the anti-German allies we shall have the largest burden to bear in proportion to the time in which we are to fight. That we should guarantee to Great Britain and our other allies the full existence of their rights is but fair. It is equally reasonable that we shall demand that the future does not inure to the special advantage of any one of the group; but in fixing upon the terms under which it shall be arranged the main end in view should be the good of all the nations in the world.

This is a view which is likely to have the support of all the anti-German allies, with the possible exception of Britain. France and Russia, to say nothing of the smaller states, have the same interest as we in making the common welfare the chief aim in peace negotiations. If we were not in the group and if victory came to it, these nations would perforce have to yield the lead to Great Britain, since she would outclass them in strength by reason of her sea power. She might well say that as the nation on which would fall the largest burden in keeping Germany in a state of restraint, she should have the largest influence in deciding what was to be done. She cannot make such a claim under existing conditions.

Of course, there is the difficulty that the United States may not be guided by statesmen who realize the importance of following a thoroughly American policy. It has long been a practice with a great many Americans to follow the lead of Great Britain. Unaccustomed to take a normal share of responsibility in world problems, we may now be inclined to hold back, leaving the game to hands that have acquired greater skill in playing it. Such a course would be a misfortune. It would mean that statesmen would be given charge of the situation who derived all their ideas under the old system of Balance of Power, and it would be strange if they did not try to carry on the world in the future with a strong squint at the only principles of international policy they know anything about. To break into this well crystallized realm of so-called practical ideas, demands an unusually strong man, a man well founded in principles and able to convince others of the wisdom of his views.

It is true that the President of the United States now in office has many of the traits that seem necessary to a correct conduct of the situation. A man who had the training of a mere politician might well be less than able to deal with the situation that faces us. President Wilson’s knowledge of history enables him to think in terms of large national movements. That is the chief value of historical training to a statesman. If he knows the history of the attempts to settle the affairs of the nations after the great world struggles of the past, he is better able to understand how the various suggested plans will work in the crisis that is to be passed through.

President Wilson has, also, the unusual faculty of doing what he wishes to do. When he has formed a purpose it is not generally a compromise with a number of men whose chief concern is how the result of action will affect their party support. At least this is true in matters not clearly within the bounds of party activity. Moreover, he has spoken and written words which seem to show that he understands the need of providing for such a course of conduct between the nations as will assure us of coöperation for the elimination of future wars. In his long delay in urging war and in his early pronouncement for a league of peace, he gave us the assurance, if nothing else, that he understands the situation and is capable of holding a firm course in accordance with his principles.

If the submarines fail, therefore, and if we come to a settlement of the largely new world problems that will confront us, and if our policy is in the hands of wise men, what principles will guide our actions and the actions of the rest of the world? This is a question that all intelligent citizens should consider, since it cannot be answered well unless there is a restrained and broad-minded public opinion to support the leaders of the people. It is a matter for the consideration of Germans as well as their opponents; for their attitude toward any policy adopted will have a strong effect upon the continuation of the policy.

The first question we should ask ourselves is: What are we to do to the Germans? How shall we punish them for what they have done to make the world miserable? My answer to that is: Let God punish them. For us it is not a question of giving the Germans their deserts but a question of coming out of this cataclysm with a clear gain for the cause of human happiness. Let us look upon the Germans as suffering from a kind of disease of the mind which produces bad results on those with whom they are in contact. It is ours to prescribe a cure, both for their sake and for ours. I suggest that we first put them on a liquid diet to reduce their exuberant vitality and then give them the rest cure. At any rate, that is better than cropping their ears or putting them into strait-jackets. To treat an impassioned man you do not kick and beat him but try to bring him to his senses. To bring the Germans into a realization that this world is run on the principle of live-and-let-live, we ourselves must show a willingness to let live.

We had a large amount of the opposite spirit in the United States from 1865 to 1875. The South, passionately convinced that slavery was no evil, had made as good a fight to preserve her cause as Germany has made or can make. She held out to the last with what her own people called a stout heart, but her foes said with a stiff neck. For a year and a half after the outside world concluded that she could never win, she held on in the hope that her adversaries would tire of war and make peace without victory. Now all this was exasperating, and the mass of the Northern people felt in 1865 that some punishment should be inflicted on the perverse people who had inflicted so much unnecessary misery on the country. But Lincoln did not feel that way. There is no reason to think that he gave a moment’s thought to making the South suffer for her course. For him all thought was how to smooth the wrinkles out of the present, and how to make the Southern people cast out their hatred of the union and come back to their former loyalty. The Lincoln spirit should guide the world at the end of the present struggle.

War lives on hatred. To make your people put all their energy into the fight make them hate the other people; and you may rest in the assurance that the leaders of the others are striving to make their followers hate the men on your side. The mill of hate grinds steadily and at a high speed while war lasts. In Germany in these days is a vast amount of industrious abusing of England. That makes the German people support the war. In Great Britain is a great activity in describing atrocities in Belgium and Armenia, and it exists in order to make the British people mad for war. When you see a new crop of the testimony concerning the torturing horrors of the first month of war in Belgium, you may know that the war spirit is running low in Britain. Unhappily, such propaganda is a necessary feature of war. We are naturally good-hearted, and we do not go out to kill men until we are made to hate them.

The moment war ends all this kind of thing should cease. The time will then have come for the propaganda of peace. Unfortunately there are few men whose mission it is to spread such ideas. Merchants and tourists may do what is their nature to do, but they are not sufficient; and it generally takes years for the fires to cool off.

The aftermath of our civil war was as unhappy a series of events as we have encountered within our national history. Undertaken as a means of making sure of the gains of the civil war, it became a procession of passion in which stalked all the worst feelings that divided the people in actual warfare. There are still men in the North who have Andersonville in mind when they vote, and men in the South who can never respect the republican party because it was responsible for the reconstruction acts of 1867. It will be extremely unfortunate if we take up the problems that are soon to be upon us in the spirit with which we assumed the duties of reconstructing the South.

During the civil war the South was possessed of a fixed idea: the same thing is true of Germany today. The South was committed to a position that the rest of the world had abandoned: Germany is committed to a type of bureaucratic government which is as much out of date in a modern world as slavery. No ordinary system of reasoning could show fair and honest Southern men in what respect they had the sentiment of civilization against them: the German is thoroughly convinced that he is fighting for the preservation of the most efficient type of government the world has seen. The South went to her defeat after a long and astonishingly effective resistance: Germany seems to be destined to a similarly long and steady process of reduction into complete prostration. The South was ruled by a small but able class of landed proprietors who refused to see the plain truth of the situation before them and prolonged the struggle until they were exhausted, although by making a favorable adjustment in accordance with the logic of the conditions before them they might have ended the war in 1864 and saved their people from the uttermost bitterness of defeat: the Germans, ruled by their Junkers, are equally deaf to argument, equally determined to die at their posts, and equally opposed to a compromise by which they will have to give up their antiquated “institution,” relinquish their special privileges, and make their country like the rest of the world. There are so many parallels between the two countries that we wonder if there will not also be a disposition of the victorious opposing allies to degrade Germany in her defeat.

Probably her best adjusted punishment will be the reflection that her “peculiar institution” proved a failure in time of need. For a century she has been training an army, but it is not the army that has failed her. It has done all that could have been expected of it. Nor did the Southern army fail the South. It is not the sense of loyalty, nor the scientific efficiency, nor the unity of purpose within the empire, that have failed her. They are all splendid and have done what could be demanded of them. The thing that has failed is the peculiar way in which the German ruling classes have made use of these forces. They have used army, scientific efficiency, loyalty, and unity of purpose to promote the ends of an aggressive ruling class. Now the best treatment is to defeat them in the war and allow them plenty of time, with no unnecessary antagonisms, to learn that their system does not pay, and that any attempt to revive it in the future will be followed by another punishment as severe as that which this war brought. The support of a military caste and the training of all the men in a great army are heavy burdens on the economic life of the state. Will any nation continue to bear them if they come to nothing in the day of trial? Armies for defense do not demand the great expenditures that Germany has made in the last decades.

No penalty that the victors could lay on Germany would be permanently effective in reducing her. So great are her economic energies that they would restore her to prosperity within a short time, and she would be ready to take advantage of any favorable combination to strike in revenge. Disarmament would not be a guaranty that she would cease to be troublesome to her neighbors; for she would still have her excellently trained soldiers who could be reassembled in a great army at short notice. She might well be required to dismantle her great armament factories; and since they are essential to the re-arming of a great army some check on her restoration would come from such dismantling. But it would be a temporary check. It is only necessary to remember that the beginning of the present German army was the attempt of one conqueror, Napoleon, to limit the Prussian army to 42,000 men.

Moreover, what nations could be expected to agree among themselves while standing guard over Germany? Under the Balance of Power, we might expect a fair amount of mobility of alliances. We have just seen that not even the Triple Alliance was proof against the skillful hands of Delcassé. If Italy could be withdrawn by France from that powerful combination, how can we doubt that a humiliated Germany would find means of weakening the combination against her? She would have the greatest inducement to do so; and it is not probable that complete harmony would prevail long between the victors, if they were held together only by the bonds of mutual friendship. The history of diplomacy is the record of broken friendships.

To see what readjustment might occur with respect to a humiliated Germany, it is only necessary to recall the position of France after the Napoleonic wars. Beaten beyond resistance, suspected of carrying the germs of bad government from which all other nations felt that they must be protected as from deadly disease, and held down by great armies of occupation, her situation would seem to have been most deplorable. But her isolation lasted for only a moment. She was admitted to the Congress of Vienna, – called to pass on the future arrangements of Europe, – because there was division among her conquerors. From that time she was suspected less and less, and at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1818, she was admitted to the Concert of Europe, but not with full fellowship; for the other powers made a secret agreement to watch her for a while longer. She progressed so rapidly in eliminating the republican virus in her system that in 1823 she was entrusted with the task of suppressing the constitution of Spain. Thus in eight years after the battle of Waterloo France was again in full accord with the other powers. Probably few people would have said in 1815 that her restoration would come about so rapidly. It would be no more singular if within ten years after the end of the present struggle a conquered Germany were to forget her antipathies of 1918 and be ready to give and be given in diplomatic alliances with as little regard for the past.

If, for example, a restored and highly nationalized Russia becomes a threat against Western Europe some years hence, the antagonisms of today would be forgotten and Germany, France, and Great Britain would probably be found fighting side by side to restrain the Muscovite giant. The old system is intensely selfish and it lends itself to rapid changes in policies. But it is an expensive thing to keep up the system. Large armies are necessary, great debts are created, and a vast amount of nervous strength is diverted from the normal activities of humanity. It is small hope for him who longs to see war put down permanently that only by fighting a war like that now raging may we expect the nations to defeat any future aspirant for universal power.

Finally, if the submarines fail and the anti-German allies break down the defenses of their enemies and thus are able to determine the kind of peace that is to be made, the treaty of peace should not have for its end the prolongation of the power of the Entente group. The history of the first half of the nineteenth century shows how easy it is for such a group to be re-arranged with the result that new wars threaten. We must trust the fair mindedness of human nature and the logic of the situation to do much for the Germans. It is on their acceptance of the issue that we must rest our hopes for a peaceful future.

These truths are especially pertinent to the interests of the United States. We are not fighting Europe’s war, but the world’s. We are the only nation in the struggle that has not a special interest at stake. We are the only member of our group of allies that has a right to take the side of the weakest member of that group against the desire of the strongest. If any one member should in a moment of more or less pardonable forgetfulness of the common good advance claims that would be based on a desire to recoup herself for her sufferings, we best of all could demand equal treatment and see that the seed of future discord are not sown. These are principles that every American citizen should understand.