The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 20

The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 20

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type of bureaucratic government which is as much out of date in a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.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER X

 

OBSTACLES TO AN ENDURING PEACE

 

 

By an enduring peace I mean a peace that shall last as long as we can

see into the future. It is such a peace as has in it, so far as we can

see, no fact that would seem to make for its ruin. If we adopt a peace

that has the seed of destruction in its very nature, we cannot hope for

relief from the evils of war. We must, under such a condition, take

account of war as one of the permanent burdens of civilization, with

the full consciousness that it will become increasingly expensive in

life and property, and with the result that at recurring periods an

intelligent world will drop its peaceful tasks to try to reduce its

population to a nullity. From the possibility of such a strife we turn

to ask the question: “Can nothing be done to save humanity from such

madness?”

 

The answer is very simple: All people are unreasonable to some extent.

In connection with the question now under consideration, each of the

great states of the world, our own included, has its own special

form of unreasonableness, which acts as an obstacle to the formation