World's War Events Volume II Part 28

[Sidenote: The German reply evasive.]

The German reply was evasive--in accord with their traditional preference for diplomacy behind closed doors. Refusing to state to the world their terms, Germany and her allies merely proposed a conference.

They adjourned all discussion of any plan for a league of peace until after hostilities should end.

[Sidenote: Our concern the lasting restoration of peace.]

The response of the Entente Powers was frank and in harmony with our princ.i.p.al purpose. Many questions raised in the statement of their aims were so purely European in character as to have small interest for us; but our great concern in Europe was the lasting restoration of peace, and it was clear that this was also the chief interest of the Entente nations.

As to the wisdom of some of the measures they proposed toward this end, we might differ in opinion, but the trend of their proposals was the establishment of just frontiers based on the rights of all nations, the small as well as the great, to decide their own destinies.

The aims of the belligerents were now becoming clear. From the outbreak of hostilities the German Government had claimed that it was fighting a war of defense. But the tone of its recent proposals had been that of a conqueror. It sought a peace based on victory.

[Sidenote: Central Empires desire domination over other races.]

The Central Empires aspired to extend their domination over other races.

They were willing to make liberal terms to any one of their enemies, in a separate peace which would free their hands to crush other opponents.

But they were not willing to accept any peace which did not, all fronts considered, leave them victors and the dominating imperial power of Europe.

The war aims of the Entente showed a determination to thwart this ambition of the Imperial German Government. Against the German peace to further German growth and aggression the Entente Powers offered a plan for a European peace that should make the whole Continent secure.

[Sidenote: The kind of peace America desires.]

At this juncture the President read his address to the Senate, on January 22, 1917, in which he outlined the kind of peace the United States of America could join in guaranteeing. His words were addressed not only to the Senate and this nation, but to people of all countries:

"May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent ma.s.s of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear."

[Sidenote: The peace of the people.]

The address was a rebuke to those who still cherished dreams of a world dominated by one nation. For the peace he outlined was not that of a victorious Emperor, it was not the peace of Caesar. It was in behalf of all the world, and it was a peace of the people:

"No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.

[Sidenote: Each people should determine its own polity.]

"I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

"I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into compet.i.tions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.

[Sidenote: Seas must be free.]

"I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are convinced disciples of liberty, and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

"And the paths of the sea must, alike in law and in fact, be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and co-operation.

[Sidenote: Question of limiting armaments.]

"It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armament and the co-operation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation. * * * There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained.

[Sidenote: How peace must be made secure.]

"Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind."

[Sidenote: Entente peoples welcome President Wilson's views.]

[Sidenote: The German note to Mexico.]

If there were any doubt in our minds as to which of the great alliances was the more in sympathy with these ideals, it was removed by the popular response abroad to this address of the President. For, while exception was taken to some parts of it in Britain and France, it was plain that so far as the peoples of the Entente were concerned the President had been amply justified in stating that he spoke for all forward-looking, liberal-minded men and women. It was not so in Germany.

The people there who could be reached, and whose hearts were stirred by this enunciation of the principles of a people's peace, were too few or too oppressed to make their voices heard in the councils of their nation. Already, on January 16, 1917, unknown to the people of Germany, Herr Zimmermann, their Secretary of Foreign Affairs, had secretly dispatched a note to their Minister in Mexico, informing him of the German intention to repudiate the _Suss.e.x_ pledge and instructing him to offer to the Mexican Government New Mexico and Arizona if Mexico would join with j.a.pan in attacking the United States.

[Sidenote: Sinister German intrigues in the New World.]

In the new year of 1917, as through our acceptance of world responsibilities so plainly indicated in the President's utterances in regard to a league of nations we felt ourselves now drawing nearer to a full accord with the Powers of the Entente; and, as on the other hand, we found ourselves more and more outraged at the German Government's methods of conducting warfare and their brutal treatment of people in their conquered lands; as we more and more uncovered their hostile intrigues against the peace of the New World; and, above all, as the sinister and anti-democratic ideals of their ruling cla.s.s became manifest in their manoeuvres for a peace of conquest--the Imperial German Government abruptly threw aside the mask.

[Sidenote: The new submarine war zone proclaimed.]

On the last day of January, 1917, Count Bernstorff handed to Mr. Lansing a note, in which his Government announced its purpose to intensify and render more ruthless the operations of their submarines at sea, in a manner against which our Government had protested from the beginning.

The German Chancellor also stated before the Imperial Diet that the reason this ruthless policy had not been earlier employed was simply because the Imperial Government had not then been ready to act. In brief, under the guise of friends.h.i.+p and the cloak of false promises, it had been preparing this attack.

[Sidenote: Count Bernstorff receives his pa.s.sports.]

This was the direct challenge. There was no possible answer except to hand their Amba.s.sador his pa.s.sports and so have done with a diplomatic correspondence which had been vitiated from the start by the often proved bad faith of the Imperial Government.

On the same day, February 3, 1917, the President addressed both houses of our Congress and announced the complete severance of our relations with Germany. The reluctance with which he took this step was evident in every word. But diplomacy had failed, and it would have been the hollowest pretense to maintain relations. At the same time, however, he made it plain that he did not regard this act as tantamount to a declaration of war. Here for the first time the President made his sharp distinction between government and people in undemocratic lands:

[Sidenote: American att.i.tude toward the German people.]

"We are the sincere friends of the German people," he said, "and earnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government which speaks for them. * * * G.o.d grant we may not be challenged by acts of willful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany."

[Sidenote: Submarine order must be withdrawn.]

In this address of the President, and in its indors.e.m.e.nt by the Senate, there was a solemn warning; for we still had hope that the German Government might hesitate to drive us to war. But it was soon evident that our warning had fallen on deaf ears. The tortuous ways and means of German official diplomacy were clearly shown in the negotiations opened by them through the Swiss Legation on the 10th of February. In no word of their proposals did the German Government meet the real issue between us. And our State Department replied that no minor negotiations could be entertained until the main issue had been met by the withdrawal of the submarine order.

[Sidenote: President Wilson advises armed neutrality.]

By the 1st of March it had become plain that the Imperial Government, unrestrained by the warning in the President's address to Congress on February 3, was determined to make good its threat. The President then again appeared before Congress to report the development of the crisis and to ask the approval of the representatives of the nation for the course of armed neutrality upon which, under his const.i.tutional authority, he had now determined. More than 500 of the 531 members of the two houses of Congress showed themselves ready and anxious to act; and the armed neutrality declaration would have been accepted if it had not been for the legal death of the Sixty-fourth Congress on March 4.

No "overt" act, however, was ordered by our Government until Count Bernstorff had reached Berlin and Mr. Gerard was in Was.h.i.+ngton. For the German Amba.s.sador on his departure had begged that no irrevocable decision should be taken until he had had the chance to make one final plea for peace to his sovereign. We do not know the nature of his report to the Kaiser; we know only that, even if he kept his pledge and urged an eleventh-hour revocation of the submarine order, he was unable to sway the policy of the Imperial Government.

[Sidenote: Armed guards on American merchant s.h.i.+ps.]

And so, having exhausted every resource of patience, our Government on the 12th of March finally issued orders to place armed guards on our merchant s.h.i.+ps.

With the definite break in diplomatic relations there vanished the last vestige of cordiality toward the Government of Germany. Our att.i.tude was now to change. So long as we had maintained a strict neutrality in the war, for the reason that circ.u.mstances might arise in which Europe would have need of an impartial mediator, for us to have given official heed to the accusations of either party would have been to prejudge the case before all the evidence was in.

[Sidenote: Germany is forcing the United States into war.]

But now at last, with the breaking of friendly relations with the German Government, we were relieved of the oppressive duty of endeavoring to maintain a judicial detachment from the rights and wrongs involved in the war. We were no longer the outside observers striving to hold an even balance of judgment between disputants. One party by direct attack upon our rights and liberties was forcing us into the conflict. And, much as we had hoped to keep out of the fray, it was no little relief to be free at last from that reserve which is expected of a judge.

[Sidenote: Perfidy of the German Government.]