Chapter III: Part 3

Count Hertling asks resentfully: “Who dares to suggest that I am not on the side of justice?” Count Hertling is undoubtedly sincere. Until this war began the world had almost forgotten the record for duplicity and inhumanity of the military tyrants of Prussia,--the treachery and barbarity of the race of which he and they are the offspring. They are running true to type, but for the time we had forgotten what the type was; yet it was known well enough to Julius Cæsar and to the others who ruled the Roman world. For him the Germans were “that treacherous race which is bred up from the cradle to war and rapine,” who “practise the base deception which first asks for peace and then openly begins war,” who are “outside the pale of negotiations”--yet Cæsar had not heard of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk! History is repeating itself after two thousand years, yet two thousand years ago it was then only repeating itself. The Prussian has always been the same. His instincts are today as they were when he roamed the swamp lands, naked and with a stone club in his fist, pig-eyed and bull-necked, like the mastodon of his native forests. Raemaekers has done well to symbolize him in his treatment of helpless Russia, as a hairy prehistoric beast crushing out the life of a bleeding nation beneath his ponderous feet. Count Hertling says he is on the side of justice. He is--of German justice, the justice of which the butchered civilians and outraged girls of Belgium, the crucified Canadians, the murdered Edith Cavell, and the martyred babies and their mothers of the _Lusitania_, are examples. It is the justice of the mammoth and the cave-man, the sabre-toothed tiger and the woolly rhinoceros,--all of whom would agree that Count Hertling in his dealings with Russia was actuated by the only recognized Prussian ideal--the right of the strongest brute to ravish and destroy.

ARTHUR TRAIN.

_The Better Fighter_

CANADA’S PART IN THE WAR

“Bound by no constitution, bound by no law, equity or obligation, Canada has decided as a nation to make war. We have levied an army; we have sent the greatest army to England that has ever crossed the Atlantic, to take part in the battles of England. We have placed ourselves in opposition to great world powers. We are now training and equipping an army greater than the combined forces of Wellington and Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.”

_Speech of Sir Clifford Sifton at Montreal._

_The Dungeon of Autocracy_

There is a part of Germany that longs for freedom; but that is not the Prussian part. The soul of Germany is not entirely killed by her mortal sins of money and land-lust; and Raemaekers here paints the remorseful soul, crowned with the blurred cross. Germany turns her back to the sky; she prefers to look at the dark ground of her dungeon rather than to face that light. She is chained by her own will, and yet her inmost soul revolts.

Let us not imagine that there are two Germanys. Before the war the Social Democrat was the official hater of the despotism of the Hohenzollerns. The war came, he ceased to be a Social Democrat when he became a Prussian. Before the war, the Centrum defended the rights of conscience against the Hegelian dogma of the absolute supremacy of the State. The Kaiser rushed from Norway, war was declared, and the recalcitrant Centrum,--the creature of the indomitable Windhorst, whom even Bismarck could not terrify,--becomes subservient! The Emperor does not say, “The State is I.” He says,--“Germany over all, and the German God must rule.”

Germany has chained herself. For more than ten years, I have lived geographically in Germany,--for Denmark, though one of the freest nations of the world, is a few miles from Berlin,--and I have seen the Old Germany growing into the New, materialized Germany. Bismarck helped this process with blood and iron. The New Germany has a soul, but she has chained it to avarice and pride and power.

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN,
_American Minister to Denmark_.

_May 28, 1918._

“_Hurrah for Peace, Lads!_”

Early in the war the great writers and poets of the Allied nations joined in combating, with all the inspiration of the cause of liberty, the campaigns launched in varied guise by seditionists here and abroad. In this effort literature has made a worthy contribution to the battle for civilization. It remained, however, for the art and genius of Raemaekers to rout the propagandists of the enemy by delineating the great basic truths of war as waged by the Huns. It has been his work, more than that of any other person, to delineate the righteousness of the Allied cause.

His portraiture is a protest, an indictment, and an inspiration. He destroys the foe’s misrepresentation and exposes his mendacity while constructively informing the mind and awakening the imagination. He enables us to grasp all the details of sorrow, of devotion, together with all the splendor of modern battle behind his story. He horrifies us with the brutality of uncivilized warfare, and at the same time arouses within us the determination to right the wrongs of an outraged world. His very shock is a stimulus, for in telling us of the horror of war, Raemaekers makes us understand that to stop it forever by victory is the only thing worthy of thinking and feeling human beings. By speaking the universal language which art alone possesses, he has made the war clear to those who cannot read. Because of this genius for arousing our emotions, he is the premier recruiting agent of the armies of civilization for and behind the battle-line. He is truly a mainspring of our armed forces.

S. STANWOOD MENKEN,
_President of the National Security League_.

_January, 1918._

_Ecce Homo!_

An’ Thou art God, and be not one
With the god of the hun--Behold Thy Son!
Only belov’d begotten Son
And see with Thine eyes what the hun hath done.

See how His tender temples bleed!
How they have mocked Him in their scorn--
Thrust in his hands a withered reed
To hail Him King--Thine only born--
And crowned His shrinking brow with thorn!

Where must He pass--Lord Christ--Thy Son?
Calvary looms in the West again:--
We thought the sad world lost and won
When He died on the Cross for the sins of men.
Must He die again? And where? And when?

Where, in their hell, the heathen rage,
The hun’s imperial priest appears
Smeared with the blood of youth and age
Dragging his god that nods and leers
Dripping with murdered children’s tears.

God of the bright, swift sword, how long?
Moloch rides with the swinish hun:--
The boche is boasting with shout and song
That Thou and his bestial god are one,--
Thou and Moloch and Christ, Thy Son!

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
_New York, April 30, 1918._

“_We Must so Destroy France That She can Never Again Resist Us_”

Heine, when he warned the world that the real God of Germany was Thor and that when the Christian veneer wore off the old pagan god would with his hammer break in pieces the Gothic Cathedrals, especially warned France, whom above all the Beast hated. The warning has been justified by history. Before the war I have heard Germans speak gloatingly of what they did to France in 1870, and of what they meant to do next time. The phrase “bleed France white” had become a commonplace of German speech.

This hatred is rather mysterious. England fought France many times during five hundred years, but whenever peace was declared Paris would be full of Englishmen to celebrate, to shake hands and be friends. There never was this ferocious hate, and France has always been generous and chivalrous and human. Germany hates Great Britain and America with her head, but she hates France with her soul.

It must be that the modern Hun feels that there is something in his hated enemy which he does not possess and never can possess. And because the rest of the world loves France, he hates her all the more, with a cold and cruel and scientific hatred, as our artist depicts it in his terrible cartoon.

Perhaps some light is thrown on the problem by a typical piece of Gallic wit. A French writer commenting on the wanton destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims declared it to be the greatest single calamity to art that was conceivable, and then added that there could be another greater calamity--to allow the Germans to restore it! It adds fuel to the flame to know that the only great period of German literature--the period of Heine himself--was when it was under the complete influence and inspiration of France.

In a true sense the whole civilized world is fighting for France, to decide whether it is to lose all that France stands for, or whether the future is to be dominated by the ugly bestial force, without conscience and without heart, which Germany represents. The world knows that if it is a case of alternatives, civilization can do without Germany, but would be eternally poor without _la belle France._

HUGH BLACK.

_The Japanese Mouse_

“_Can the Japanese mouse free the Russian bear from the German netting?_”

“Japan must act on the broad principle that she is the guardian of peace in the Far East, and I am sure that to fulfil her duty she will utilize every resource at her disposal. Her part, instead of attempting the impossible, will be to stand on safe and reasonable ground. Through her control of the Southern Manchuria Railroad she is in a position to cut off communication between Harbin and Vladivostok now afforded by the trans-Siberian line. Harbin is the military, economic, and political base of Russia in the Far East. That means that the Russian possessions in East Siberia would be protected by Japan from German domination or aggression. Let me say, however, that any suggestion that Japan intends to seize these Russian possessions is monstrous. Japan would offer protection and assistance, but that is all.”

--_Dr. T. Iyenaga, in the New York “Tribune.”_

_“Ueber Alles” and Underneath_

_Expostulation and Reply_

“We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting.”

--_From President Wilson’s Reply to the Pope, August 27, 1917._

_The Second Election_

_Bernstorff: “We have defeated Wilson!”_

_Wilson: “Wait a moment!”_

_The Mad Shepherd_

THE GERMAN SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM

The Kaiser’s our shepherd, we shall not rest.

He maketh us to desecrate green pastures; he forceth us to kill in still waters.

He claimeth our soul, he leadeth us in the paths of frightfulness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though he plunge us into the valley of death, we must call him not evil, for he is our master, his rod and his staff they drive us.

Surely horror and evil shall follow us all the days of our life till we flee from his rule forever.

ALICE HEGAN RICE.

_March 16, 1918._

“_Sink Without a Trace_”

To his dark minions undersea
Flashed the Imperial decree:
Sink Everything!
Spare naught! Sink everything that floats:
Merchantmen, liners, fishing boats;
Sink ships on Mercy’s errand sped,
Dye Christ’s red cross a deeper red:
Sink Everything!

Sink honor, faith, forbearance, ruth;
Sink virtue, chivalry, and truth,
Sink Everything!
Sink everything that men hold dear,
That devils hate, that cowards fear,
All that lifts Man above the ape,
That marks him cast in God’s own shape:
Sink Everything!

OLIVER HERFORD.

_Changing the Guard_

With the entrance of the United States into the Great War, we Americans laid aside forever our spiritual isolation. We accepted our share of responsibility for the assaulted civilization of the world, and our share of danger at the hands of its great assailant. A free people, we willingly chose the path of uttermost pain, and we chose it for the sake of our nation’s honor, our nation’s ultimate safety, and the salvation of our nation’s soul.

When Germany denied us the waterways of the world, she struck hard at our commerce, at our just rights, and at our decent pride. What were the Hohenzollerns to us that we should have taken our orders from the Kaiser, tied up our ships in harbor at his behest, and, cowering by our own firesides, have waited for his permission to carry our flag across the sea? Was it for this that our forefathers had bought our freedom with their lives? Had we revolted when we were colonists, weak, poor, and without resources, from the tyranny of Great Britain (a stupid but never a brutal tyranny), only to bow the strength of our manhood before Germany’s shameful threats? Had we preached the sacredness of human rights for over a hundred years, only to acquiesce in Germany’s campaign of murder; and, by consenting to her crimes, become a partner of her guilt? We had suffered cruel injury at her hands. Were we also to lose our souls through ignoble submission to wrong-doing?

Our answer was given when President Wilson asked Congress to declare a state of war. We had then, and we have now, no choice but to fight for our liberty, or to lose it. Our ships had been sunk, our seamen drowned. Treacherous officials had plotted to embroil us with friendly nations. Treacherous hands had fired our factories and murdered our citizens. The careless lie or the insolent taunt which were Germany’s alternate answers to our remonstrances, and which she seemed to think would keep us quiet until she had leisure to turn her arms upon us, are silenced now. We are upholding the safety and decency of the world, which has been as deeply degraded by vandalism as when Attila swept his hordes across the ravaged face of Europe. Our young soldiers are changing guard with the war-worn veterans of France and Great Britain. Valiant and gay, they face the oppressor. “He that loveth his life shall lose it”; and these men stand ready to lay down their lives for all they hold sacred and dear. Faithful to their country, faithful to their allies, faithful to the freedom in which they were reared, they strike their blow in the great name of America, and for the peace of God.

AGNES REPPLIER.

_The Penitent Artist_

“_I will never make drawings against the Yellow Peril again!_”

The Kaiser has a good many things in his past to live down, but he certainly never foresaw that some day his inept activities as an artist would stand across his path. Raemaekers, who was not likely to forget anything that Wilhelm had done in this particular line, shows him on his knees to Japan (and incidentally to Mexico), as the infamous Zimmermann note to the German minister at Mexico City revealed him, full of remorse for those drawings he once made against the Yellow Peril. And what is Japan’s reply? The expression which Raemaekers has caught certainly agrees very well with the following statement of Count Terauchi, Japanese Prime Minister: “Nothing is more repugnant to our sense of honor and to the lasting welfare of this country than to betray our friends and allies in time of trial and to become a party to a combination directed against the United States, to whom we are bound not only by the sentiments of true friendship but also by material interests of vast and far-reaching importance.”

_Peace Angels of Doubtful Purity_

_William: “Go, my doves; your charms may prove more fatal than my armies.”_

_The Black Flag_

_Germany Sinks British Hospital Ships_

The British Admiralty issued a statement on April 23 [1917], announcing the sinking of the two hospital steamships _Donegal_ and _Lanfranc_ without warning by submarines; nineteen British and fifteen wounded German officers were drowned. In their statement the British authorities denied the German charge that hospital ships were employed to transport troops and military supplies.... Germany was notified that, if her course was persisted in, reprisals would follow, yet the British hospital ship _Asturias_ was torpedoed without warning on the night of March 20. The ship was steaming with all navigation lights burning and the proper Red Cross signs brilliantly illuminated.... On the night of March 30-31 the hospital ship _Gloucester Castle_ met with a similar fate. On this occasion the Berlin official wireless message again published a notification that she was torpedoed by a U-boat, thus removing any possible doubt in the matter.

--_The New York Times Current History._

_The Annexation of America_

“_I think, All Highest, we had better not insist upon the annexation of America._”

In the inscription “Ten Million Men Between 21 and 30” on the Statue of Liberty, Raemaekers has as usual gone to the heart of things. Ten million trained citizen soldiers!!! What an insurance of peace and security against attack or insult. Universal Citizen Military Education and Training.

From the beginning the first article in our International Creed has been the Monroe Doctrine--America for Americans. If the result of the present war shall be to add two additional items to that creed, namely, Universal Military Education and Training, and the United States, the First Air Power in the world, it will be worth all that it costs, and this great nation can go on in peace and security to work out the mighty destiny awaiting it.

Raemaekers’ placing “All Highest” and his aide upon the conning tower of a submarine, suggests another most vital matter at this present time.

The submarine has held the world’s spotlight for the last two years. Its deadly efficiency is universally conceded. That deadly efficiency is the direct result of Admiral von Tirpitz’s unyielding insistence on a centralized, independent, untrammeled Department for the submarine.

_We must adopt the same methods if we expect to attain equally deadly efficiency in the air._

But the possibilities of the aeroplane are greater than those of the submarine. The aeroplane is capable of offensive in the air against aeroplanes or dirigibles, on the surface of the sea against ships, and under the sea against submarines. The offensive capabilities of the submarine can and soon will be restricted to under-surface activities.

Again, the submarine is limited to the oceans. The aeroplane is limited by nothing. It can go wherever there is air, and that means everywhere. In other words, the aeroplane is the master of the submarine.

If we today had a thousand swift, heavily armed seaplanes continuously patrolling the water within a radius of three hundred miles of Sandy Hook (from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia), we should have our five Atlantic sea gateways well guarded, and could feel secure against any further serious damage from these pests.

Thus equipped, submarine raids upon our coast would be an impossibility; and even the imagination of a Raemaekers would not dare to conceive of a hostile submarine within sight of the Statue of Liberty.

PEARY.

“_Welcome, Mate; You’re Just in Time!_”

“I am in the happy position of being, I think, the first British Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of the people of this country, can salute the American Nation as comrades in arms. I am glad; I am proud. I am glad not merely because of the stupendous resources which this great nation will bring to the succor of the alliance, but I rejoice as a democrat that the advent of the United States into this war gives the final stamp and seal to the character of the conflict as a struggle against military autocracy throughout the world.”

--_From the Speech of the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd-George at
the American Club in London, April 12, 1917._

_The Editor:_

“_Use always the American flag and commit as much high treason as you like._”

“Woe to the German-American, so-called, who, in this sacred war for a cause as high as any for which ever people took up arms, does not feel a solemn urge, does not show an eager determination to be in the very fore-front of the struggle; does not prove a patriotic jealousy, in thought, in action and in speech to rival and to outdo his native-born fellow citizen in devotion and in willing sacrifice for the country of his choice and adoption and sworn allegiance, and of their common affection and pride. As Washington led Americans of British blood to fight against Great Britain, as Lincoln called upon Americans of the North to fight their very brothers of the South, so Americans of German descent are now summoned to join in our country’s righteous struggle against a people of their own blood, which, under the evil spell of a dreadful obsession, and, Heaven knows! through no fault of ours, has made itself the enemy of peace and right and freedom throughout the world.”

--_From Otto H. Kahn’s “Right Above Race.”_

_German Intrigues in Mexico_

Many things in the present war have aroused and enraged the people of the United States against Germany. The defilement of Belgium, the ravage of Serbia, the assassination of Armenia, all crimes against human nature in which we Americans share. Besides that, some revelations apply especially to us,--grievances, injuries and outrages, things that seem so far removed from the secret thoughts of decent and self-respecting nations that we hesitated to believe them. We must believe them now for we know at last that Germany has for not less than twenty years been working against the influence and good name of the United States. It was not for nothing that one of our best-known public men, when he visited Germany as far back as 1911, said that it was a country where he felt that “every man, woman and child looked upon him with hatred,” because he was conspicuous in this country which had become rich and powerful and prosperous by the road of democracy instead of by the German path of militarism.

Every day reveals some new evidence that the German mole was working in South America, in Central America, in almost every American state and city, to prepare the minds of those who were to take part in the infamous conspiracy. Before the war broke out in Europe, Germans were trying to organize an active cohort within our boundary. The effort to arouse Mexico against us while we were still neutral, is no worse than other German diplomacy such as the “spurlos versenkt” radiograms of the scoundrel Luxburg, directed against the Argentine; but the appeal to Mexico to “reconquer” Texas and the Southwest was worse than a crime, it was a blunder, especially resented by the people of that part of the country. Nothing but an absolute breach with Germany has made possible the revelation of the cynical violation of diplomatic privileges by German and Austrian officials in this country from titled Ambassadors down through consuls-general and consuls-particular and military aides and secretaries and clerks and hangers-on and spies and jackals, all uniting to stab the land which gave them hospitality. Whatever else may happen, a hundred years will not efface from the minds of the people of the United States the belief that “Germany cannot be a Gentleman.”

ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.

_German “Militarist” Socialism_

Does not the cartoonist Raemaekers fail in this cartoon? The artist Raemaekers is inspired--here as always. But does the cartoonist succeed this time in burning the right idea, his idea, into the reader’s brain?

Here is the real Kaiser and here are real German workingmen. It is they who are carrying the burden of Kaiserism. All this is convincing. But do not other workingmen in other countries carry burdens?

The failure is only at first glance. Raemaekers is not concerned to reproduce the conventional cartoon of workingmen carrying a burden of other classes on their shoulders. The point lies not in the burden, but in the nature of the burden, the contrast, so perfectly portrayed, between the character of the Kaiser and the characters of his proud and willing slaves. The Kaiser, crafty and contemptuous, but neither so ignorant nor so stupid as to be wholly unconscious of the foolish and contemptible position he occupies! The workingmen evidently once strong, intelligent and enthusiastic, though now blinded and crippled, are utterly unconscious of what they are doing. Carrying the heavy burden of Kaiserism seems no more to them than their day’s work.

You see Raemaekers _knows_ both Kaiser and workingmen, and so will have nothing to do with the conventional portraits of either. The Kaiser is neither a beast nor a fool--however foolish his position may be. The workingmen are neither labor heroes ready to revolt, nor conscious and beaten serfs.

So much for the picture--at second glance. It leads to an endless chain of reflections. But the first and most obvious is on the sort of burden these men are carrying. Here is an accepted ruler who is allowed to monopolize the _force_ of the nation, as the cartoon clearly indicates. This of itself gives him an absolute and unlimited power over his workers. The only possible alternative use of that force is to make slaves of the workers of other nations. The German workingmen, it is suggested, lend themselves blindly to this work of enslavement also--naturally, for it is no different for their Kaiser to rule by force and lies over non-Germans than to rule by force and lies over Germans. The face of the Kaiser shows a subconscious realization of these lies. The workers show utter unconsciousness. The rule of autocracy over themselves and the extension of that autocracy over others by means of their blood is to them as much a part of nature as the motions of sun and moon or the rise and fall of the tides!

Indeed, the workingmen are clearly proud of their burden and his successes and undoubtedly feel that any people is blest to be brought under his benign rule. And here is the moral of the tale. It is the Kaiser’s successes that have so utterly blinded his serfs. Then there is one remedy and only one. We need hardly say what that remedy is.

WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING.

_The Old Hammer and the New_

_President Wilson elected for a second term._

_The Spirit of Washington_

_President Wilson’s answer to Hertling._

“Woodrow Wilson is in no sense a herald. The revolution of betrayed idealism has been in progress for more than a century, and in the last decade particularly there has been steady assault upon evil and outworn institutions. These passionate gropings of the spirit in the direction of ideals professed and not practised have merely lacked great leadership and authoritative expression. This is what Woodrow Wilson gives. He comes as a leader, as a nucleating force, as a clear, rallying cry to the almost mystic passions that are peculiarly the dominant note of the day. He fits the need of the bloodless revolution as skin fits the hand, bringing purpose and courage to the struggle for nobler fulfilment of the hopes and aspirations that thrilled those who first sought refuge in the New World from the oppressions of the Old--the struggle for real democracy.”

--_From George Creel’s “Wilson and the Issues.”_

_The Massacre of the Innocents_

[The following lines are dated July, 1916. “As it stands,” writes Mr. Howells, “the poem ignores the glorious retrieval of our former sufferance. It might better now be called A Shame Lived Down.”--ED.]

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

What was it kept you so long, brave German submersible?
We have been very anxious lest matters had not gone well
With you and the precious cargo of your country’s drugs and dyes.
But here you are at last, and the sight is good for our eyes,
Glad to welcome you up and out of the caves of the sea,
And ready for sale or barter, whatever your will may be.

THE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMERSIBLE

Oh, do not be impatient, good friends of this neutral land,
That we have been so tardy in reaching your eager strand.
We were stopped by a curious chance just off the Irish coast,
Where the mightiest wreck ever was lay crowded with a host
Of the dead that went down with her; and some prayed us to bring them
here
That they might be at home with their brothers and sisters dear.
We Germans have tender hearts, and it grieved us sore to say
We were not a passenger ship, and to most we must answer nay,
But if from among their hundreds they could somehow a half-score
choose
We thought we could manage to bring them, and we would not refuse.
They chose, and the women and children that are greeting you here are
those
Ghosts of the women and children that the rest of the hundred chose.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

What guff are you giving us, Captain? We are able to tell, we hope,
A dozen ghosts, when we see them, apart from a periscope.
Come, come, get down to business! For time is money, you know.
And you must make up in both to us for having been so slow.
Better tell this story of yours to the submarines, for we
Know there was no such wreck, and none of your spookery.

THE GHOSTS OF THE _Lusitania_ WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Oh, kind kin of our murderers, take us back when you sail away;
Our own kin have forgotten us. O, Captain, do not stay!
But hasten, Captain, hasten! The wreck that lies under the sea
Shall be ever the home for us this land can never be.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
_July, 1916._

_In the Ring to Stay_

It is Ambassador Gerard’s opinion that when the German government issued its final insult to the United States, all the Kaiser’s advisers were convinced that no provocation would make the American people fight. President Wilson, they argued, had just been re-elected on a peace platform. They counted, it was evident, upon the influence of the millions of German-Americans to frustrate hostilities, and Herr Zimmermann of the Foreign Office openly threatened the revolt of 500,000 German reservists in America if the United States dared “to do anything against Germany.” The Western States were reported to be indifferent to the technicalities of the submarine dispute. The East was described as interested in the submarine sinkings only because they interfered with the traffic in munitions and the profits therefrom. The whole country was supposedly averse to war, unwilling to enter into European entanglements, and devoted solely to peaceful industry and money-grubbing.

Yet within a year afterwards, America had accepted conscription and raised an armed force of two million men. It had contributed billions of dollars to the war through government loans that were more popularly subscribed than even the German or the English loans. Government control had been accepted without question in every sort of private activity. Food regulations, fuel regulations, the regulation of industry, shipping, labor and transportation, voluntary censorship of the press, military censorship of the cables and the telegraph and the mails, prohibition of distilling, the enforcement of price-fixing, the curtailment of profits and the levying of confiscatory taxes had all been submitted to without a murmur. It had come to be a byword in Washington that “the people could not be asked to do enough”; that the fund of patriotism was so great it was difficult to find channels for it; that no war in the history of the nation had ever been supported so unanimously.

What explanation is there for the miracle of that change? Washington believes that it is chiefly due to one man. It believes that President Wilson, by his patient efforts to maintain peace, convinced the whole nation of the impossibility of avoiding war before he gave voice to that conviction. It realizes that, even then, a great mass of the people were loyal but unenthusiastic, until he outlined the country’s war aims in his famous messages, and at once lifted the conflict to a higher level of purpose and gathered to his fervent support every sentiment and hope of democracy in the land.

Washington is now convinced that the war can have but one issue. There is no question of the outcome. The leaders of the nation are aware that the United States is “in the ring to stay.” As the Secretary of War has said: “The American people were slow to rouse to this war. They will be as slow to cool. They wished peace. They still wish it. But they have learned that there is but one way to obtain peace, and they propose to obtain it that way. They know what they are fighting for, and they will fight till they achieve it.”

HARVEY O’HIGGINS.

“_We Attacked the ‘Fortress of London’_”

_Not a Bad Start!_

Can a Republic fight a successful war? Can a people with a century and a quarter of free thought, free speech and free press change suddenly from words to deeds? Can custom and tradition yield gracefully to necessity? Is the heart and brain of the Republic so impressed with the magnitude and importance of this war as to induce it to forget the things which are past and to press forward to the things which are needful?

The Imperial German Staff thought not. It imagined that a people, whose daily sport was carping criticism of their public officials, whose army was hardly as large as a policeman’s squad, whose sentiments were all for peace and arbitration, whose ordnance was archaic and whose only gas-bombs were perfervid oratory could never right-about-face and set themselves to engage in the horrific warfare desolating the fields of Europe.

The mistake in this German opinion sprang from a misconception of what liberty really means and of the things for which freedom really stands. Its assumption was that there could be no courage with kindliness nor strength with flexibility. To the slow-going mind of the methodical German his mistaken view is beginning to appear. His first jolt came when the traditions of a century and a quarter with reference to military service were, without riot, tumult or disorder, set aside and 10,000,000 young men of America, without murmur, submitted themselves to conscription. He was further prodded when he learned that, as each successive liberty loan was presented to the people of America it was promptly taken, and what is more important, taken by larger and larger numbers of citizens.

No wonder Uncle Sam and the world think it no bad start that we have made. Like all reforms, it has been accompanied by lapses, by weaknesses, by mistakes of judgment, but through it all there has run the golden thread of a cohesive, coherent and indomitable American public opinion that this country, having set itself to the task of assisting the Allies in forever freeing the world from the menace of German military power, will never turn back in the breaking of a single furrow until the blood-guiltiness of the German race shall be put underneath the sod and the world shall be planted with the asphodels of a permanent peace.

Uncle Sam still smiles confidently, knowing full well that every day is rectifying mistakes and that every day is adding to the bull-dog tenacity of a people, who are willing to defend to the uttermost the principles for which they stand against invasion from without and sedition from within.

THOS. R. MARSHALL,
_Vice-President of the United States_.

_An Echo of the Luxberg Case_

The Junkers: “These Lansing disclosures are bad. We don’t know how to counteract them because we don’t know how much more evidence he has got.”

_German Chivalry to Wounded Officers_

They do these things differently in France. While in France in May and June, I saw many squads of German prisoners working at the railroad stations, on the roads and in the factories. Of the several thousands I saw, not one looked underfed, ill clothed or abused. While their barracks did not have steam heat, electricity and all the comforts of home, the board and lodging they received compared favorably with that of the average French soldiers, and the franc a day thrown in as wages could all go for extras if desired. I was told that they all preferred to be prisoners in France rather than to return to the “freedom” of Germany while the war lasts.

Once I obtained permission to question a gang of Prussians working in France on an American road under a British guard. This is what they said to me: “We believe America intends to conquer France. Certainly you will never leave this country after having spent so much money on docks and wharves and warehouses and railroads.”

Evidently the common German mind cannot conceive of a people going to another’s territory and spending money there unless with some sinister, ulterior, selfish, political motive behind it.

As Irving Cobb says, we must extract the mania from Germania.

HAMILTON HOLT.

_Socialism in Germany_

It is one of the tragedies of history that the great Social Democracy of Germany, in which liberal thinkers of all lands reposed so much faith, proved, when the testing time came, to be utterly devoid of intellectual and moral integrity, a base betrayer of international Socialist ideals and a subservient tool of Prussian autocracy.

The great majority of the German Socialists, led by such men as Scheidemann, Sudekum, David and Legien, upheld the Imperial German Government and thus became the accomplices of the assassins of Potsdam. These so-called “Socialists” even stooped so low as to attempt to bribe the Socialists of other countries in the interests of the Kaiser and his cowardly crew. In Italy and in Russia in particular, and in other countries less effectively, they used their Socialist connections to assist the military schemes of Germany, notwithstanding the fact that these were designed to destroy every essential Socialist principle.

Herr David, perhaps the ablest of the leaders of the Majority Socialists, declared in the Reichstag that “The German armies must continue to fight vigorously _whilst the German Socialists encourage and stimulate pacifism among Germany’s enemies_.” The whole policy of the Majority Socialists has been based upon that sinister principle.

The small and uninfluential but heroic minority, led by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and George Ledebour alone have exemplified the ideals of Socialism. They deserve our lasting honor as fully as the others deserve our lasting contempt.

Socialism is not dead in Germany: only the great political party of Socialism is shattered. In the hearts of the brave men and women of the Minority Socialists the sacred flame still burns. In that lies the only hope for German Socialism.

History will record this bitter judgment of the German Social Democracy: It was an active partner in the crimes of the Hohenzollern dynasty against civilization; it infamously betrayed the Russian Revolution and prostituted itself to the most malefic despotism of a thousand years.

JOHN SPARGO.

_The Spirit of German Science_

The moral revulsion of the world against the Germans is justified by their use of science.

It is not a question of the excellence, amount, or character of science--all subjects of legitimate debate--but of the use the Germans make of science. While science has been used in war at all times and has been a formidable arm in the hands of those who have known how to use it, still the limits of its use have been fixed with more or less rigor. Even before the conventions of The Hague were formulated, there was the general recognition of the natural distinction between civilized and barbarous warfare. The savage’s poisoned arrow has been the symbol of what, though scientific, was barbarous. The murder of the wounded soldier or of the disarmed prisoner has always been condemned as the crime of the _apache_, not the method of the gentleman. Pity for the innocent--women, children, even the animals--and merciful treatment of the helpless--the drowning, the famished--seem to mark man, even in the profession of intentional killing of his fellow-man, as moved by a certain sentiment, a certain sense of human superiority to the brute which takes blood simply from the love of it.

Even against the legitimate foe there are certain means of offense so base--the use of poison in wells, the diffusion of microbes of disease--or so treacherous--the dynamite-loaded cigar--that the chivalrous man redresses himself at the thought of them with a shudder of mingled moral contempt and physical nausea.

This has been the use made of science by the Germans. They have abolished the distinction between the knight and the brute, between the man and the snake, between pure science and foul practice. This damns the German race.

Our grandchildren will say to their grandchildren: “You murdered people in open boats, you bombarded audiences kneeling in churches, you torpedoed hospital ships in plain ocean, you sent young girls into immoral slavery, you tortured prisoners, you poisoned the wells used by civilian populations, you did a hundred treacherous things that our fathers and mothers shuddered to recall. _You Germans did it._”

To future generations this will damn the German race. No theory of the super-man, of the chosen state, of the alliance with God will ever gloss it over.

Their science may have honored the Germans, but the Germans have dishonored science.

German science has always had the credit of making happy application and practical use of abstract laws and formulas, chemical, physical, biological. In applying science in war, however, it has disallowed the moral laws which underlie all sound science and healthy life. Here German “applied science” will remain, let us hope, for all time unrivalled.

J. MARK BALDWIN.

_Humanity and Her German Lovers_

It is not possible to judge Louis Raemaekers as an artist. He is a voice, a sword, a flame. His cartoons are the tears of women, the battle-shout of indomitable defenders, the indignation of humanity, the sob of civilization. They will go down into history. They are history. To take them, to turn page after page, is to _know_ the European War, to see it face to face, as a child sees, and not through a glass darkly.

It is one of the great works of the world which he has done. Perhaps genius was only dormant, waiting for the cry of general catastrophe to bring it forth into vivid, terrific life. And yet--for who shall say that all things in heaven and earth are understood?--it may be that those same voices that called through the orchard of Domremy called to the cartoonist in the office of the Amsterdam “Telegraaf,” that into his simple soul, recommended to God by its love of flowers, there fell a tear from on high.

_George Creel in “The Century Magazine,” June, 1917._

_The Strikers_

_Striker to Agitator: “You speak very well, but when I see these fellows I’m ashamed I ever listened to you.”_

Raemaekers’ cartoons will prove an immortal comment on the great world war. He makes the world see that war does not create atrocities but that war itself is the supremest of all atrocities. When the names of battles have been forgotten the name of Raemaekers will be spoken with gratitude and reverence by coming generations.

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT.

_1776-1917_

Men, nations, and movements are symbolized by their moments of crisis. The long, tedious, humdrum years of life never get into picture, never fire human imagination; even though those years are the necessary foundations upon which great events rise. So America for nearly a century and a half has been symbolized--at least in European eyes--by that great moment when she rose in the world and asserted her independent status “among the nations of the earth.” The men of ’76 have stood for American valor, American military skill, American statesmanship. Now has come a time when “a decent respect for the nations of mankind requires” that Americans shall again stand for their portrait in history. This time we are standing among the civilized nations not for independence, but for interdependence! Where once we stood for a nation consecrated to freedom, now we stand for a community of nations consecrated to justice. Perhaps when the new portraits are painted in this great hour of crisis all the nations of the world will appear in history with new faces. The soldier of the revolution of ’76; the red-capped liberty girl of France, the conventional John Bull, the German war lord--all will “suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.” And the old portraits that glimpsed the old truth about the old world shall in the new world have but an archaic interest!

WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE.

“_Now, Hindenburg, Bring on the Rest of My People_”

All of us who love the Old Germany we knew, who have dear friends there, and who have rejoiced in the happiness honest industrialism and widespread commerce were bringing to a great people before this terrible slaughter began feel a deep pang of sorrow as we look upon Raemaekers’ terrible picture of what the war has brought to Germania.

The dreadful pity of it is that Germania should have brought this upon herself by appealing to the Sword when the Temple of Peace stood open and all her present enemies were pleading that there should be no shedding of blood.

DAVID JAYNE HILL.

_The Master of the Hounds_

“_Remember, Michaelis, every dog has his day!_”

_Processional_

Not for a flaunted flag, O God,
Not for affronted power,
Not for a scurrile hope of gain,
Not for the pride of an hour,
Not for vengeance, hot in the heart,
Now have we swung to war!
Not for a weak mistrust lest peace
Is a shame strong men abhor.
Not for glory--for oh, to kill
Should be a sacred wrath:
Not for these! but to war on war
And sweep it from earth’s path!

Patient has been our creed, till now,
Patient, too, our hope,
Patient for long our loathful deed,
For the just in doubt must grope.
But with a foe at last arrayed
Against the whole world’s right,
You, O soul of the universe,
Your very self must fight.
You yourself; so but one prayer
Need we to lift--but one,
That by our battle shall all war
Be utterly undone.

CALE YOUNG RICE.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Due to space constraints some lines of the poem ‘THE CAPTAIN OF THE
SUBMERSIBLE’ on page 180 have been split.

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Small capitals have been capitalised.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
An exception is ‘Raemaekers’ for ‘Raemakers’ on page 174.

Punctuation has been retained as published.