CHAPTER VII

AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

1

THE war fell like a blow on Europe, although talk of war had been almost its daily diet for the last ten years, and since 1904 there had been no session of Parliament in which war with Germany had not been openly discussed and regarded as inevitable by some of the most influential English newspapers. British naval and military preparations were made always with the thought of Germany as the enemy. Across the Channel there was the same mental attitude. Both nations were firmly convinced there must come a day when they would have either to yield to Germany or fight for their existence; nevertheless in both countries the pacifist element was strong, Socialists, Internationalists, the men who love every other country except their own; the agents of Germany, who were to be found in every rank of society; Frenchmen and Englishmen, who loudly proclaimed their loyalty but were abetting Germany; Ministers of the Crown in England and members of the Government in France, - some of them in the highest places, either allowed

themselves to be blinded or deliberately sought to betray their country for the advantage of Germany.

The same social forces that brought Mr. Wilson into power did a few years earlier bring Mr. Asquith into power. In England as in America there had been a revolt of the masses against the classes; just as in America the people were resentful of the privileges of plutocracy, of class legislation, of favors extended to a select few, so in England the laboring man, the artisan, the great lower middle class were demanding their “rights", and conscious of their power, determined to exert it. Mr. Asquith's supporters were not only "Liberals" in the party sense, but radicals, social reformers, advanced thinkers; and to them force or restraint was intolerable. In economics they were free traders, because, as they believed in their delusion, free trade broke down the barriers between nations, and internationalism was one of the cardinal articles of their faith. They passionately advocated disarmament, because great navies and huge standing armies were a menace and a sure invitation to war, and to them war was anathema. There was more than a little leaven of idealism in all this; they were as selfish and grasping as the professional philanthropist. If instead of the people being taxed to build battleships and maintain armies their millions were used for the benefit of the people, for old-age pensions, workingman's insurance and other social reforms that were praiseworthy, and some of the fantastic schemes that

Utopia delights in, the people would be the gainers; especially if the rich were to be made to bear more than their equitable burden of taxation.

Holding his commission under these terms, Mr. Asquith was justified in enacting his program of social legislation. He represented for the time being the majority; that majority had demanded certain changes in the social fabric, and the reforms that enticed them he believed in. It was therefore not only his duty but his desire so to shape the foreign policy of his Administration as to remove the danger of war with Germany, and as an earnest of good faith to reduce to the lowest limits consistent with the national safety military expenditures. The foreign policy of his Administration, for which he was responsible but which was carried out through his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, is a sorry story of that curse of European diplomacy, treaty making in the dark. There were the usual secret agreements, the exchange of "confidential" letters, "private" conversations, the customary network of intrigue and deceit binding nations whose people were kept in ignorance and who, when they asked inconvenient questions, were told it would be unpatriotic to embarrass the government merely to have their idle curiosity satisfied. The whole story has since been told; it is now history and the world knows it, but it reflects little credit upon the men on whom responsibility rests.

Almost to the very day of war this policy of beguil

ing the people was followed, and scarcely a week passed but what members of the Cabinet told English audiences they had nothing to fear. A few months before the war, Mr. Lloyd George, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: "This is the most favorable moment in twenty years to overhaul our expenditures on armaments." About the same time Lord Haldane, the Lord Chancellor, the great authority in the Cabinet on Germany, who had been sent by the Prime Minister to Germany to see if an understanding could not be reached so as to remove the danger of war which every one feared, said: "Europe was an armed camp, but an armed camp in which the indications were that there was a far greater prospect of peace than ever there was before."

That was the picture within a few months of the declaration of war, but after the war had been in progress two months, for the first time the truth was told. Speaking at Cardiff, on October 2, 1914, Mr. Asquith admitted that for two years at least he had known that Germany was preparing to make her war of conquest. The German Government, in 1912, he said, "asked us to put it quite plainly they asked us for a free hand so far as we were concerned if, and when, they selected their opportunity, to overbear and dominate the European world."

2

Thus if the war came as a staggering and unexpected blow to the English people daily fed on the thought of war, discussed by their politicians and made an issue in party politics, Americans, to whom the thought of war was very remote, who knew of the politics of Europe only as they gleaned them from their newspapers, were amazed at the outbreak of the war. It was incredible. Nowhere was war so detested as in the United States; no people so profoundly believed that peace ruled the world as did Americans. A few men there were, it is true, wiser, a few students of European politics who saw as clearly as the elect in England or France and who were not deceived by the sophisms of Ministers or the fable of the lion and the lamb; but to the great majority of Americans the war that had so often been talked about and now had come was unbelievable.

One of Mr. Wilson's biographers, a friend and admirer, writing in 1916, when the United States was neutral and the policy of the President was misunderstood and it seemed necessary that his adherents should interpret and defend it, offers this inadequate explanation:

"The outbreak of the European war was a most untoward event for President Wilson. His thoughts and his plans had been concerned with the domestic problems of our politics and his Cabinet had been chosen with a view to such occupations. The country was