Title: The United States and the War
Author: Murray, Gilbert, 1866-1957
Language: English
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                                         THE
                                    UNITED STATES
                                         AND
                                       THE WAR

                                         BY
                                    GILBERT MURRAY.


                                       LONDON:
                                W. SPEAIGHT & SONS.
                                        1916.



                          THE UNITED STATES AND THE WAR.



                                      I.


It is dangerous to comment too freely on the psychology of foreign
nations. I knew a man who held the opinion that Americans cared for only
three things in the world--comfort, money, and safety--objects which
notoriously inspire aversion in the normal Briton. And he explained this
view at some length to two young Americans, one of whom had been working
fourteen hours a day at the relief of distress in Belgium, while the
other, with a sad disregard for truth and the feelings of his parents,
had passed himself off as a Canadian in order to fight in the British
Army.

I know another man, an American man of letters, who went off at his own
expense at the time of the German advance in Poland to help the Polish
refugees. He worked for months on end among people starving and dying of
typhus, often going without food himself and entirely abstaining from
some of the most ordinary comforts of life. When I last met him he had
seen a thousand people dead around him at one time. He was then on his
way back to continue his work, and I felt some nervousness on hearing he
was to pass through England. I have an inward feeling that someone at
this moment is explaining to him that Americans ask no questions about
the war except how much money they can make out of it, and the one thing
you can be sure of about a Yank is that he will be too proud to fight.

This particular man will very likely not retaliate. He will smile sadly
and search his conscience, and reflect sympathetically that people who
are suffering cannot help being irritable. But some millions of his
fellow-countrymen will answer for him, and they have rather a pretty wit
when they set about answering. A placard over a certain large cinema
show in New York once put the point neatly: ENGLISHMEN! YOUR KING AND
COUNTRY WANT YOU. WE DON'T.

The beauty of that statement is that it finishes the matter and leaves
nothing to argue about. But if you are unwise enough to wish to argue,
you will find ample material. Think of all the things, to begin with,
that are said against England by Englishmen. Remember all the things
that your most Radical friends have said in the past against the Tories
and Imperialists, and add it to all that the Tories used to say about
Lloyd George; double it by all that the U.D.C. on the one hand and Mr.
Maxse and the _Morning Post_ on the other are saying about everyone who
does not worship in their own particular tabernacles; sum them all
together, and put in front of them the words: "Honest Englishmen
themselves confess----!" The effect will be quite surprising. It would
be no wonder if the simple-minded American should feel some prejudice
against a nation whose leaders are all in the pay of Germany and whose
working-classes spend their lives in a constant debauch; a nation which
makes up for its inefficiency in the field by riotous levity at home, by
ferocious persecution of conscience and free speech, and by the extreme
bloodthirstiness of its ultimate intentions towards the enemy. The
wonder is that he feels it so little; that some sane instinct generally
helps him to know the grosser kind of lie when he sees it, and some
profound consciousness of ultimate brotherhood between the two great
English-speaking peoples is so much stronger than all the recurrent
incidents of superficial friction.

The main cause of friction is, without doubt, that in the greatest
crisis of our history we expected more from America than she was
disposed to give. We felt to her a little as the Danes felt towards us
in 1864, as the French felt towards us in 1870. When Belgium was
invaded, when the _Lusitania_ was sunk, the average Englishman did,
without doubt, look expectantly towards America, and America did not
respond to our expectations. Were those expectations reasonable and
natural, or were they not?

The answer seems to me quite clear. They were entirely natural, but not
quite reasonable. We could not help feeling them; but it was not at all
likely that the average American voter should feel as we did. How should
he? One need not speak of the six million Germans, and the innumerable
other aliens in the United States; nor yet of the traditional
anti-British feeling in the political "mob." The plain fact is that
nations do not go to war for remote philanthropic objects. They get near
it sometimes, as we got near it with Turkey in 1895, over the Armenian
massacres. But they do not go over the edge, except where the
philanthropic indignation is reinforced by other motives or causes of
quarrel. And even there, time is needed to awake a whole nation. Mental
preparation is needed; the culprit must have a bad character already;
the proof of the crime committed must be exceedingly clear. None of
these conditions was present in 1914. The Germans were greatly respected
in the United States. There had been a powerful and assiduous court paid
to American opinion. Every single crime committed by Germany was
accompanied by a cloud of dust and counter-accusation. It was the
Russians who insisted on war; it was France which invaded Belgium; it
was the Belgian women and children who committed atrocities on the
German soldiers; it was the English who used explosive bullets and
poisonous gas; I forget whether it was the _Lusitania_ which tried to
sink the poor submarine, or if that was only the _Arabic_; but at every
single point at which the national indignation of America might have
exploded the issue was confused and befogged. We should remember the
immortal words of the Pope, when confronted by the twentieth or
thirtieth demonstration of the bestialities done by the Germans in
Belgium: "_But you know, they say they didn't._" The same answer was
always open not only to Colonel Bryan (why should that eminent pacifist
be denied his full claim to military glory?), but to men of much less
nebulous judgment than he.

No; it was not reasonable to expect the United States to plunge into war
for motives of philanthropy. And if one begins to put the question on
other grounds, then clearly it is not for us foreigners to decide what
course best suits the interest or dignity of the United States. They
know their own case, _pro_ and _con_, far better than we can, and we
certainly need not complain of either the skill or the fervour with
which our friends in that great, strange country have stated our case.

But the matter is decided. America will not join in this war. Both
political parties are united on that point; and only a few voices of
independent thinkers, voices sometimes of great weight and eloquence,
are lifted in protest. I do not, of course, say that there might not
arise some new and unexpected issue which would compel her to change her
policy; but, as far as the issues are now known, the Americans have made
up their minds to have no war.

Such a decision has, of course, had its consequences. Any person who,
after hesitating, comes to a decision, likes afterwards to have as many
grounds as possible for justifying himself, and the same holds of a
nation. If America had, for good or evil, plunged into the war, she
would have found easily a thousand reasons for being enthusiastic about
it and for justifying her intimate sympathy with us. It is now the other
way. She cannot help feeling a certain coldness towards people who, as
she thinks, tempted her to dangerous courses; who certainly felt,
however unreasonably, a shade of disappointment about her. What right
had we to be disappointed; to hint by our manner, if not by words, that
she had chosen safety rather than the _beau rôle_? After all, why should
she fight England's battles? Wicked as the Germans are--and hardly any
normal American defends them--is England so entirely disinterested and
blameless? Is Ireland so much more contented than Alsace-Lorraine? Do
the "Black List" and the Paris Resolutions and the "Orders in Council"
suggest that the new Liberal England is so very different from the old
England that was America's natural enemy? The President has used
language which looks like a repudiation of all moral or human interest
in Europe's quarrels: "With the causes and objects of the war America is
not concerned." I do not believe that the President himself really
would hold to that dictum, and I am sure his countrymen would not. The
principle is too cynical for either. But, as far as direct public action
is concerned, that statement holds the field. Belgium, Armenia, Poland,
Miss Cavell, the horrors of Wittenberg, the wholesale deportations of
women, the habitual killing of unarmed civilians; all these are to count
as matters of indifference for the executive government of the United
States.

But not for the human beings who compose the United States, whether in
the Government or out of it. The more they have decided not to intervene
publicly in the war, the more they are ready to pour out their sympathy,
their work, and their riches to help the distresses of the war. Never
was there a nation so generous, so ready in sympathy, so quick to
respond to the call of suffering. They exceed England in these qualities
almost as much as England exceeds the average of Europe. They will stand
aloof from the savage old struggle, free, unpolluted, rejoicing in their
own peace and exceeding prosperity, but always ready to send their
missionaries and almoners to bind the wounds of more benighted lands.
The wars of Europe are not their business.

Unless, indeed, after the war, the victor should come out too powerful?
A victorious Germany is fortunately out of the question; but a
victorious England--might not that bring trouble? America must after all
be "prepared."



                                      II.


It is hard for an Englishman to understand how a very great nation, a
very proud nation, whom we, accustomed to range the whole circuit of the
world and find our brothers trading or governing in the antipodes, look
upon instinctively as our own kinsmen and natural friends, should be
content to stay apart from the great movement of the world, and to
strike no blow either for Democracy or Absolutism; to leave it to others
to decide whether peace or war shall be the main regulator of national
life, whether treaties shall be sacred or not, whether or not
"Government of the people by the people for the people" shall perish
from the greater part of the earth. And many Americans feel as we do.
The most brilliant and magnetic of America's recent Presidents feels as
we do. But, as a rule, I believe, the average American is not only
content, but proud to stand thus aloof and indifferent. The line of
thought leading to such a pride is one familiar to many generations of
Americans, the glory of their immense isolation.

Why should they turn back to mix again in the misery and
blood-guiltiness of that evil old world from which their fathers and
mothers fled? They will forgive it, now that they are free and safe.
They will forgive it; they will revisit it sometimes with a kind of
affection; they will pour out their abundant riches to alleviate its
sufferings, but they will never again be entangled in its schemes and
policies, they will never again give it power over them.

Generation after generation of American settlers have been refugees from
European persecution. Refugee Puritans, refugee Quakers, refugee
Catholics, French Huguenots, English and German Republicans, in later
days persecuted Jews and Poles and Russian revolutionaries have all
found shelter and freedom in America, and most of them some degree of
prosperity and public respect. And far more numerous than these definite
sufferers from religious or political persecution have been the swarms
of settlers who, for one reason or another, had found life too hard in
the Old World. In every generation the effect is repeated. Europe is
the place that people fly from; the place of tyrants and aristocracies,
of wars and crooked diplomacy, the place where the poor are so miserable
that they leave their homes and families and spend their last shilling
in order to work at the lowest manual labour in the one land on earth
which will really assure them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." No wonder it is easy for an American to reject all
responsibility for the troubles of Europe!

Nay, when you meet an American who is really interested in Europe, you
will be surprised to find how little he cares for the things that we
consider liberal or progressive. Such things are not what he wants of
Europe. He can get them at home. He likes Europe to be European. What he
asks of Europe is picturesqueness; old castles, and Louis XIV., and
Austrian rules of etiquette and an unreformed House of Lords. When we
reform such things away he is rather regretful, as we in England might
be at the Chinese cutting off their pigtails. In his leisure hours he
likes us as we are, and when it comes to business his only determination
is that we shall never again interfere with him.

I do not say that such an attitude is wise or right; much less that it
is universal in America. But it is a state of mind which is easily
intelligible and which must always be reckoned with.

A Liberal Englishman will quite understand it. He may, perhaps, regard
it with a good deal of sympathy, and even imagine that it must lead, on
the whole, to a feeling of friendliness towards England as contrasted
with the less liberal Powers. But it is not so. Every large wave of
feeling demands a human representative or symbol, and the course of
history has decreed that to the average American the symbol of European
tyranny is England. He knows, of course, that the government of Russia
or Prussia or Austria or divers other nations may be much worse than
that of England; but his own historical quarrel, repeated through many
generations, has been with England, and the typical fight for human
freedom against tyranny is the American War of Independence; next to
that comes the War of 1812. The cause is now won. Freedom is safe, and
his relations with England are peaceful, and even friendly. Yet the
price of freedom is eternal vigilance. When he hears the words Orders in
Council, Restriction of Trade, Right of Search, Black List, something
argumentative and anxious rises within him. When he hears that some
person has been condemned as a rebel against the British Government, he
tends to murmur, "So was George Washington!"

No; he bears no grudge against his old enemy, but England belongs to
Europe, not to America; and she can stay where she belongs. For his
part, what does he want with other nations?

He is a citizen of the greatest free nation in the world, and not only
the greatest but, by every sane standard that he believes in, infinitely
the best. It has a larger white population than the whole British
Empire. Its men and women are more prosperous, cleaner, better paid,
better fed, better dressed, better educated, better in physique than any
others on the face of the globe. They have simpler and saner ideals,
more kindliness and common-sense, more enterprise, and more humanity.
Silly people in Europe, blind, like their ancestors, imagine that
America somehow lacks culture, and must look abroad for its art and
learning; why, as a matter of fact, the greatest sculptor since Michael
Angelo was an American, St. Gaudens; the two best painters of the last
decades, Abbey and Sargent, were both Americans; up to last year the
most famous English novelist was an American; the best public
architecture is notoriously to be found in America, as well as the best
public concerts and libraries, and the most important foundations for
scientific research. And to crown our friend's confident picture, there
is no country on earth where the children are so happy.

A friend of mine stayed last year in a summer camp of young men and
women in a forest in the Middle-West, and never once heard the European
war mentioned. One night, as they looked over a moon-lit lake, a young
student spoke thoughtfully of the peacefulness of the scene, and the
contrast it made with the terrible sufferings of mankind elsewhere. My
friend agreed, and murmured something about the sufferings of Europe.
"Lord, I wasn't thinking of Europe," said the young man; "I was thinking
of the thunder-storms in Dakota."

If only they could really remain aloof! But they cannot. There is, at
least, one Power with whom they are constantly in contact, and whose
world-wide interests are constantly rubbing against theirs both by land
and sea; and that Power is Great Britain.

"When two empires find their interests continually rubbing against each
other in different parts of the world," said Sir Edward Grey in 1911,
"there is no half-way house possible between constant liability to
friction and cordial friendship." That is the gentle and statesmanlike
way of putting it. An eloquent American, whose speech this year has been
circulated widely across the continent, phrased the matter more
strongly. He advocated definitely a British Alliance on the ground that,
between two nations so intimately connected and touching each other at
so many points, there is no third way: it must be either Alliance or
War. Yet Alliance, after what we have seen, seems impossible; and War
cannot even for an instant be thought of. It would be the last disgrace
to the modern world, the final downfall of civilisation.

Let us try to consider what forces are working in either direction.



                                      III.


"Either Alliance or War!" It sounds at first hearing a fantastic
exaggeration. Yet the words have been spoken by sober-minded people, and
it is worth while trying to think them out. It is easy for an Englishman
to find in America confirmation of whatever opinions he happens to hold,
and terribly easy for him to get the proportional importance of such
opinions completely wrong. Indignation with Germany and horror at her
cruelties; emotion about the Irish rebellion and its suppression;
irritation at the Black List; angry alarm at the Paris Resolutions; a
general desire for kindness to everybody, and especially for a quick and
generous peace--all these waves of sentiment, and many others, are to be
found in America, and possess their own importance and influence. But it
seems to me that there are two currents of feeling that have swept the
whole continent, and are likely, whatever party is in power, to shape
the effective policy of the United States.

The first reaction produced by the war and the determination not to
participate in it has been the movement for "Preparedness." It is first
a preparedness for war. England, according to popular opinion, had been
unprepared, and France not much better. America, had she tried to enter
the war, would have been more utterly unprepared than either. Suppose
the German attack had fallen on her?

The direction of this first movement has gradually changed with the
course of events. The campaign of "Preparedness" presupposes some
possible or probable aggressor, and it has gradually become clear that
that aggressor will not, for many years to come, be Germany. The
prospect of a really victorious Germany would shake America to her
foundations and probably change completely the national policy; but
there is now no such prospect. The danger, if there is any, will come
from a victorious Great Britain, allied, as America always remembers,
with a victorious and unexhausted Japan. Other neutral nations in this
war may be waiting to side with the conqueror; but America is built on
too large a scale for that. She will arm against the conqueror, and be
prodigal of help to the vanquished.

The Preparedness campaign is still in its early stages and has not
assumed its definite form. But it started as a spontaneous non-party
movement; it was taken up by the Republican opposition; it was eagerly
supported by President Wilson and his Government; it has been clearly
thought out and firmly developed by Mr. Hughes. Army, Navy, and
mercantile marine are all to be increased and developed; but it is
noteworthy that more stress is laid on the Navy than on the Army, and
politicians have already uttered the ominous phrase, "a fleet that shall
not be at the mercy of the British fleet!" More important still must be
the preparation for a great mercantile rivalry. Vast sums have already
been appropriated for shipbuilding, and other steps, too, are to be
taken to secure for America her proper position in shipping and in
foreign trade. No more dependence upon English bottoms! Competition will
be very severe. At the end of the war, Mr. Hughes warned the audience in
his Notification Speech, "the energies of each of the new belligerent
nations, highly trained, will be turned to production. These are days of
terrible discipline for the nations at war. . . . Each is developing a
national solidarity, a knowledge of method, a realisation of capacity
hitherto unapproached." Mr. Hughes is too wise and broad-minded to put
his thought in a threatening shape. But most of his hearers throughout
that vast hall thought of the Resolutions of Paris, and felt that if the
Allies chose to pursue war-methods in their commercial action America
must be ready to respond.

One's heart sinks at the prospect opened out by this policy. Trade
rivalry; severe protection; the State deliberately entering into the
commercial contest with subsidies and penalties; competitive
shipbuilding; the desire for a strong Navy behind the merchant fleet;
and at the end of a vista that prize which has dazzled so many nations,
some of them perhaps not much less peace-loving and level-headed than
the United States, the position of recognised centrality and supremacy
among the great nations of the world.

Is there no prospect of escape?

Yes, there is. The above is the first great current of feeling that, in
my judgment, has swept the whole people of the United States; the second
is the antidote to it, and is almost, if not quite, equally strong. It
is the determination that, if America can help it, a colossal iniquity
like the present war shall not be allowed to occur again. The feeling
needs no explanation. It is that of every Englishman of moderately
liberal feelings, and is deeply ingrained in the nature of the ordinary
American. It has swept through all political parties and most other
sections of the community, except a few extreme pacifists and those
pro-Germans who are working for an inconclusive peace and a second war.

It was first formulated by Mr. Taft, as president of the League to
Enforce Peace. Mr. Taft's series of arbitration treaties, following on
those initiated by John Hay, made him the natural champion of this
further effort to organise the prevention of future wars. The general
idea is quite simple and well known: a League of Powers, bound to settle
their differences by conference or arbitration, and equally bound to
make joint war on any Power which, in a dispute with one of them,
refuses arbitration and insists on war.

The plan was immediately welcomed by public opinion in the States. It
spread everywhere. President Wilson committed himself to it last May in
an emphatic speech, which was perhaps a little too tenderly tactful
towards the Germans to be wholeheartedly acceptable in England. But in
point of fact most of the leaders of English thought had already
expressed approval of the principle. It is no less significant that the
federated Chamber of Commerce of the United States, a powerful and
extremely cautious body, has voted by large majorities in favour of the
policy of the League, and by overwhelming majorities for all the
proposals but one. (Just over a third of the delegates shrank from
committing themselves to actual war for the sake of peace, though they
were ready to agree to an absolute boycott of the peace-breaker.) And,
finally, Mr. Hughes, in his Notification Address, has thrown the whole
strength of the Republican Party into the scheme. His words are well
thought out:

"We are deeply interested in what I may term the organisation of peace.
We cherish no illusions. We know that the recurrence of war is not to
be prevented by pious wishes. If the conflict of national interests is
not to be brought to the final test of force there must be a development
of international organisation in order to provide international justice
and to safeguard as far as practicable the peace of the world." In
addition to the International Tribunal and the sanction of armed force
behind it, "there are also legislative needs. We need conferences of the
nations to formulate international rules, to establish principles, to
modify and extend international law so as to adapt it to new conditions
and remove causes of international difference."

This is obviously no fantastic scheme. It is accepted by the leaders of
both parties, and by the enormous preponderance of American opinion,
both progressive and conservative, both educated and uneducated. It is
only rejected by the open enemies of England and by some of the extreme
pacifists.

It is hard at present for the leaders of a belligerent nation to come
prominently forward in favour of such a scheme as this. For one thing
they cannot act without their Allies; for another, they must not lay
themselves open to the charge that they are spending their time and
thought on any object but the winning of the war. Still, there is little
doubt about the general attitude of the leaders of public opinion in
England towards a scheme of this kind. Mr. Asquith, Mr. Balfour, and
Viscount Grey, among others, have spoken pretty clearly.

"Long before this war," said the last named, on May 15, 1916, "I hoped
for a league of nations that would be united, quick, and instant to
prevent, and, if need be, to punish the violation of international
treaties, of public right, of national independence, and would say to
nations that came forward with grievances and claims: 'Put them before
an impartial tribunal. If you can win at this bar you will get what you
want. If you cannot you shall not have what you want. And if instead you
attempt to start a war, we shall adjudge you the common enemy of
humanity and treat you accordingly.' Unless mankind learns from this war
to avoid war the struggle will have been in vain."

Almost all opinion in England agrees; so, as far as my information goes,
does opinion in France. But in America the course of events has brought
the movement more sharply to the front and faced it with a far more
emphatic alternative. If we and our Allies respond to this movement
there is good hope for the world; the enemy may respond or not, as he
prefers. If we reject it there is before us not merely the possibility
of some unknown future war, such as there was before the present shaping
of the nations; there is a peril clearer and more precise. There are
definite seeds of international rivalry already sown and growing; there
are on both sides of the Atlantic the deliberate beginnings of a
movement which, however justifiable at present, needs but a little
development to become dangerous; there is the certain prospect of those
thousand disputes which are bound to arise between two great commercial
nations competing hard for the same markets.

American preparedness will soon be an accomplished fact; American
readiness for a League to Enforce Peace after the war is probably a fact
already. We must not, of course, be precipitate; we must not forget that
our actual Allies have obviously the first claim on us. We must not make
any claim as of right on American sympathy, or ask her for a jot more
than she is prepared to offer. But in the end it will rest largely,
though not entirely, with us in Great Britain to decide whether that
preparedness shall be merely an instrument for the promotion of American
interests against those of her rivals, or a great force to work in
conjunction with us and our friends for organising the peace of the
world. On those lines Alliance will be possible after all.


      _Printed in Great Britain by W. Speaight & Sons, London._


Transcriber's Notes:-

Pg 18 "The first, reaction produced"==>"The first reaction produced"

Pg 25 "disputes whieh are bound to arise"==>"disputes which are bound
     to arise"

Pg 25 "Ameriean sympathy"==>"American sympathy"





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