_ I
From the outset of this war two things have been clear to me.
First, if the war continued it was absolutely inevitable that the United States would be either drawn into it by the impulse of democratic sympathies or forced into it by the instinct of self-preservation.
Second, the most adequate person in the world to decide when and how the United States should accept the great responsibility of fighting beside France and Great Britain for peace and for the American ideal of freedom was President Wilson.
His sagacity, his patience, his knowledge of the varied elements that are blended in our nationality, his sincere devotion to pacific conceptions of progress, his unwavering loyalty to the cause of liberty secured by law, national and international, made him the one man of all others to whom this great decision could most safely be confided.
The people of the United States believed this in the election of 1916. They trusted him sincerely then because "he kept us out of the war" until the inevitable hour. No less sincerely do they trust him now when he declares that the hour has come when we must "dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have" (President's Message to Congress, April 2, 1917), to defend ourselves and the world from the Imperial German Government, which is waging "a warfare against mankind."
In the quiet, but never idle, American Legation at The Hague there was an excellent opportunity to observe and study the incredible blunders by which Germany led us, and the unspeakable insults and injuries by which she compelled us, to enter the war.
Our adherence to the Monroe Doctrine was, at first, an obstacle to that entrance. Believing that European governments ought not to interfere in domestic affairs on the American continents, we admitted the converse of that proposition, and held that America should not meddle with European controversies or conflicts. But we soon came to a realizing sense of the ominous fact that Germany was the one nation of Europe which openly despised and flouted the Monroe Doctrine as an outworn superstition. Her learned professors (followed by a few servile American imitators) had poured ridicule and scorn upon it in unreadable books. Her actions in the West Indies and South America showed her contempt for it as a "bit of American bluff." Gradually it dawned upon us that if France were crushed and England crippled our dear old Monroe Doctrine would stand a poor chance against a victorious and supercilious Imperial German Government. As I wrote to Washington in August, 1914, their idea was to "lunch in Paris, dine in London, and spend the night somewhere in America."
Another real barrier to our taking any part in the war was our sincere, profound, traditional love of peace. This does not mean, of course, that America is a country of pacifists. Our history proves the contrary. Our conscientious objections to certain shameful things, like injustice, and dishonor, and tyranny, and systematic cruelty, are stronger than our conscientious objection to fighting. But our national policy is averse to war, and our national institutions are not favorable to its sudden declaration or swift prosecution.
In effect, the United States is a pacific nation of fighting men.
What was it, then, that forced such a nation into a conflict of arms?
It was the growing sense that the very existence of this war was a crime against humanity, that it need not and ought not to have been begun, and that the only way to put a stop to it was to join the Allies, who had tried to prevent its beginning, and who are still trying to bring it to the only end that will be a finality.
It was also the conviction that the Monroe Doctrine, so far from being an obstacle, was an incentive to our entrance. The real basis of that doctrine is the right of free peoples, however small and weak, to maintain by common consent their own forms of government. This Germany and Austria denied. The issue at stake was no longer merely European. It was worldwide.
The Monroe Doctrine could not be saved in one continent if its foundation was destroyed in another. The only way to save it was to broaden it.
The United States, having grown to be a World Power, must either uphold everywhere the principles by which it had been begotten and made great or sink into the state of an obese, helpless parasite. Its sister republics would share its fate.
But more than this: it was the flagrant and contemptuous disregard of all the principles of international law and common humanity by the Imperial German Government that alarmed and incensed us. The list of crimes and atrocities ordered in this war by the mysterious and awful power that rules the German people--which I prefer to call, for the sake of brevity and impersonality, the Potsdam gang--is too long to be repeated here. The levying of unlawful tribute from captured cities and villages; the use of old men, women, and children as a screen for advancing troops; the extortion of military information from civilians by cruel and barbarous methods; the burning and destruction of entire towns as a punishment for the actual or suspected hostile deeds of individuals, and the brutal avowal that in this punishment it was necessary that "the innocent shall suffer with the guilty" (see the letter of General von Nieber to the burgomaster of Wavre, August 27, and the proclamation of Governor-General von der Goltz, September 2, 1914); the introduction of the use of asphyxiating gas as a weapon of war (at Ypres, April 22, 1915); the poisoning of wells; the reckless and needless destruction of priceless monuments of art like the Cathedral of Reims; the deliberate and treacherous violation of the Red Cross, which is the sign of mercy and compassion for all Christendom; the bombardment of hospitals and the cold-blooded slaughter of nurses and wounded men; the sinking of hospital ships with their helpless and suffering company--all these, and many other infamies committed by order of the Potsdam gang made the heart of America hot and angry against the power which devised and commanded such brutality. True, they were not, technically speaking, crimes directed against the United States. They did not injure our material interests. They injured only our souls and the world in which we have to live. They were vivid illustrations of the inward nature of that German Kultur whose superiority, the German professors say, "is rooted in the unfathomable depths of its moral constitution." (Deutsche Reden in Schwerer Zeit, II, p. 23.)
But there were two criminal blunders--or perhaps it would be more accurate to call them two series of obstinate and stupid offenses against international law--by which the Potsdam gang directly assailed the sovereignty and neutrality of the United States and forced us to choose between the surrender of our national integrity and a frank acceptance of the war which Germany was waging, not only against our principles and interests, but against the things which in our judgment were essential to the welfare of mankind and to the existence of honorable and decent relations among the peoples of the world.
The first of these offenses was the cynical and persistent attempt to take advantage of the good nature and unsuspiciousness of the United States for the establishment of an impudent system of German espionage; to use our territory as a base of conspiracy and treacherous hostilities against countries with which we were at peace; and to lose no opportunity of mobilizing the privileges granted by "these idiotic Yankees" (quotation from the military attache of the Imperial German Embassy at Washington)--including, of course, the diplomatic privilege--to make America unconsciously help in playing the game of the Potsdam gang.
The second of these offenses was the illegal, piratical submarine warfare which the Potsdam gang ordered and waged against the merchant shipping of the world, thereby destroying the lives and the property of American citizens and violating the most vital principle of our steadfast contention for the freedom of the sea.
The message of the President to Congress on April 2, 1917, marked these two offenses as the main causes which made it impossible for the United States to maintain longer an official attitude of neutrality toward the German Government, which "did what it pleased and told its people nothing." The President generously declared that the source of these offenses "lay not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us." That was a magnanimous declaration, and we sincerely hope it may prove true.
But practically the difficulty lies in the fact that at the present hour several millions of the German people stand in arms, on land that does not belong to them, to maintain the purpose and continue the practices of the Potsdam gang. It is a pity, but it is true. The only way to get at the gang which chose and forced this atrocious war is to go through the armed people who still defend that choice and the atrocities which have emphasized it.
Forgiveness must wait upon repentance. Repentance must be proved by restitution and reparation. Any other settlement of this world conflict would be a world calamity. For America and for all the Allies who are fighting for a peace worth having and keeping, the watchword must be: Stand fast, ye free!
II
The offenses against the neutrality of the United States which were instigated and financed by the Potsdam gang were enumerated by the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives in the first week of April, 1917, and amounted to at least twenty-one distinct crimes or unfriendly acts, including the furnishing of bogus passports to German reservists and spies, the incitement of rebellion in India and in Mexico, the preparation of dynamite outrages against Canada, the placing of bombs in ships sailing from American ports, and many other ill-judged pleasantries of a similar character.
The crown was put on this series of blundering misdeeds by the note of January 19, 1917, sent from the German Foreign Office (under cover of our diplomatic privilege, of course) to the German Minister in Mexico, directing him to prepare an alliance with that country against the United States in the event of war, urging him to use Mexico as an agent to draw Japan into that alliance, and offering as a bribe to the Mexicans the possession of American territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. (See War Message and Facts Behind It, p. 13. Published by the Committee on Public Information, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1917.)
The fact is, we have only just begun to understand the real nature of the German secret service, which works with, and either under or over, the diplomatic service.
It is certainly the most highly organized, systematic, and expensive, and at the same time probably the most bone-headed and unscrupulous, secret service in the world.
Its powers of falsification and evasion are only exceeded by its capacity for making those mistakes which spring from a congenital contempt for other people.
At The Hague I had numerous opportunities of observing and noting the workings of this peculiar system. The story of many of them cannot be publicly told without violating that reserve which I prefer to maintain in regard to confidential communications and private affairs in which the personal reputation of individuals is involved. But there are two or three experiences of which I may write freely without incurring either self-reproach or a just reproach from others. They are not at all sensational. But they seemed at the time, and they seem still, to have a certain significance as indications of the psychology of the people with whom we were then in nominal friendship.
Three requests were made to me for the forwarding of important communications to Brussels under cover of the diplomatic privilege of the American Legation. The memoranda of the dates and so on are in the Chancellery at The Hague, so I cannot refer to them. But it is certain that the requests came shortly after the beginning of the war, in the first or second week of August, 1914, and the content and purport of them are absolutely clear in my memory.
The first request was from Berlin for the transmission of a note to the Belgian Government, renewing the proposition which the Potsdam gang had made on August 2: namely, that Belgium should permit the free passage of German troops through her neutral ground on condition that Germany would pay for all damage done and that Belgian territory would not be annexed. (Off. Dip. Doc., p. 402.) King Albert had already replied, on August 3, to this proposition, saying that to permit such a passage of hostile troops against France would be "a flagrant violation of international law" and would "sacrifice the honor of the nation." (Off. Dip. Doc., p. 421.) After such an answer it did not seem to me that the renewal of the dishonorable proposal was likely to have a good effect. Yet the Berlin note was entirely correct in form. It merely offered a chance for Belgium to choose again between peace with the friendship of Germany and dishonor attached, and war in defense of the neutrality to which she was bound by the very treaties (1831, 1839) which brought her into being. I had no right to interpose an obstacle to the repetition of Belgium's first heroic choice. I pointed out that, not being accredited to the Belgian Government, I was not in a position to transmit any communication to it. But I was willing to forward the note to my colleague the American Minister in Brussels, absolutely without recommendation, but simply for such disposal as he thought fit. Accordingly the note was transmitted to him. [Footnote 7]
[Footnote 7: My colleague, Honorable James W. Gerard, Ex-Ambassador to Germany, has referred to this in his very interesting book, "My Four Years in Germany," p. 136.]
What Whitlock did with it I do not know. What answer, if any, Belgium made I do not know. But I do know that she stood to her guns and kept her honor intact and immortal.
The second request was of a different quality. It came to me from the Imperial German Legation at The Hague. It was a note for transmission to the Belgian Government, beginning with a reference to the fall of Liege and the hopeless folly of attempting to resist the German invasion, and continuing with an intimation of the terrible consequences which would follow Belgium's persistence in her mad idea of keeping her word of honor. In effect the note was a curious combination of an insult and a threat. I promptly and positively refused to transmit it or to have anything to do with it.
"But why," said the German counsellor, sitting by my study fire---a Prussian of the Prussians--"why do you refuse? You are a neutral, a friend of both parties. Why not simply transmit the note to your colleague in Brussels as you did before? You are not in any way responsible for its contents."
"Quite so," I answered, "and thank God for that! But suppose you had a quarrel with a neighbor in the Rheinland, who had positively declined a proposition which you had made to him. And suppose, the ordinary post-boy services being interrupted, you asked me to convey to your neighbor a note which began by addressing him as a 'silly s-- of a b----,' and ended by telling him that if he did not agree you would certainly grind him to powder. Would you expect me to play the post-boy for such a billet-doux on the ground that I was not responsible for its contents and was a friend of both parties?"
"Well," replied the counsellor, laughing at the North American directness of my language, "probably not." So he folded up the note and took it away. What became of it I do not know nor care.
The third request was of still another quality. It came from the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Legation, which very politely asked me to transmit a message in the American diplomatic code to my colleague in Brussels for delivery to the Austro-Hungarian Legation, which still lingered in that city. The first and last parts of the message were in plain language, good English, quite innocent and proper. But the kernel of the despatch was written in the numerical secret cipher of Vienna, which of course I was unable to read. I drew attention to this, and asked mildly how I could be expected to put this passage into our code without knowing what the words were. The answer was that it would not be necessary to code this passage; it could be transmitted in numbers just as it stood; the Austro-Hungarian charge d'affaires at Brussels would understand it.
"Quite so," I answered, "but you see the point is that I do not understand it. My dear count, you are my very good friend, and it grieves me deeply to decline any requests of yours. But the simple fact is that our instructions explicitly forbid us to send any message in two codes."
The count--who, by the way, was an excellent and most amiable man-- blushed and stammered that he was only carrying out the instructions of his chief, but that my point was perfectly clear and indisputable. I was glad that he saw it in that light, and we parted on the most friendly terms. What became of the message I do not know nor care.
It was about the 1st of September, 1915, that I came into brief contact with the case of Mr. J. F. J. Archibald. This gentleman was an American journalist, and a very clever and agreeable man. We had met some months before, when he was on his way back to America from his professional work in Germany, and he had been a welcome guest at my table. But the second meeting was different.
This time Mr. Archibald was returning toward Germany on the Holland-America steamship Rotterdam. When the boat touched at Falmouth, on August 30, the British authorities examined his luggage and found that he was carrying private letters and official despatches from Doctor Dumba the Austrian Ambassador at Washington, from Count Bernstorff the German Ambassador, and from Captain von Papen his military attache. Not only was the carrying of these letters by a private person on a regular mail route a recognized offense against the law, but the documents themselves contained matter of an incriminating and seditious nature, most unfriendly to the United States. The egregious Doctor Dumba, for example, described how it would be possible to "disorganize and hold up for months if not entirely prevent," the work of American factories; and the colossal Captain von Papen, in a letter referring to the activities of German secret agents in America, gave birth to his eloquent and unforgettable phrase, "these idiotic Yankees." The papers, of course, were taken from Mr. Archibald at Falmouth, but he was allowed to continue his voyage to Rotterdam en route for Berlin.
Before his arrival, however, a cablegram came from the Department of State at Washington instructing me to take up his regular passport which was made out to cover travel in Germany; to give him an emergency passport valid for one month and good only for the return to the United States; and to use all proper means to get him back to New York at the earliest possible date.
Having found out that he was lodged at a certain hotel I sent him a courteous invitation to call at the Legation on business of importance. He came promptly and we sat down in the library for a conversation which you will admit had its delicate points.
He began by saying that he supposed I had seen the newspaper accounts of what happened to him at Falmouth; that he was greatly surprised and chagrined about the matter; that he had been entirely ignorant of the contents of the documents found in his possession; that he had imagined--indeed he had been distinctly told--that they were innocent private letters relating to personal and domestic affairs; that he did not know there was any impropriety in conveying such letters; that if he had suspected their nature or known that they included official despatches he would never have taken them.
I replied that his personal statement was enough for me on that point, but that it seemed to throw rather a dark shadow on the character and conduct of his friends in the German and Austrian Embassies who had knowingly exposed his innocence to such a risk. I added that it was probably with a view to obtaining his help in clearing up the matter that the Department of State had instructed me to take up his passport.
"But have you the legal right to do that?"
"Under American law, yes, unquestionably."
"But under Dutch law?"
"Probably not. But I hope it will not be necessary to invoke that law. Simply to inform the Dutch Foreign Minister of the presence of an American whose passport had been revoked but who refused to give it up, would be sufficient for my purpose."
He reflected for a moment, and then said, smiling:
"I don't refuse to give it up. Here it is. Now tell me what I shall do without a passport.
"Thank you. Fortunately I have authority to give you an emergency passport, good for a month, and covering the return voyage to America."
"But I don't want to go there. I want to go on to Berlin."
"Unfortunately I fear that will be impossible. Your old passport is invalid and will not carry you over the Dutch border. Your new passport cannot be made out for Germany. Your best course is to return home."
"I see. But have you any right to arrest me and send me to America?"
"None whatever, my dear sir. Please don't misunderstand me. This is just a bit of friendly advice. 'Your country needs you.' You naturally want an early chance to tell Washington what you have told me. The Rotterdam is a very comfortable ship, and she sails for New York the day after to-morrow. I have already bespoken an excellent room for you. Do you accept?"
"Yes, and thank you for the way you have put the matter. But do you think they will arrest me when I get to New York?"
"Probably not. But to help in forestalling that unpleasant possibility I will cable Washington that you are coming at once, of your own free will, and anxious to tell the whole story."
So he went, and I saw him off on the Rotterdam, a pallid and downcast figure. I pitied him. It seemed strange that any one should ever trust that unscrupulous, callous, thick-pated diplomatic-secret-service machine which is always ready to expose a too confiding and admiring friend to danger or disgrace in order to serve its imperious necessities.
Holland, of course, owing to its geographical situation, was a regular nest of German espionage. Other spies were there, too, but they were much less in evidence than the Germans. Of the tricks and the manners of the latter I had some picturesque experiences which I do not feel at liberty to narrate. The Department of State has been informed of them, and has no doubt put the information safely away with a lot of other things which it knows but does not think it expedient or necessary to tell until the proper time.
But there is no reason why the simple little tale of the futile attempt to plant two German spies in my household at The Hague should not be told. One of the men in our domestic service, a Hollander, had been obliged to leave and we wanted to fill his place. This was difficult because the requirements of the Dutch army service claimed such a large number of the younger men.
The first who applied for the vacant place professed to be a Belgian. Perhaps he was. On demand he produced his "papers"--birth-certificate, baptismal registry, several Passier-scheine, and so forth. But down in a corner on the back of one of the papers was a dim blue stamp--"Imperial German Marine." What was the meaning of this? What had the Potsdam High-Sea Fleet to do with this peaceable overland traveller from Belgium? Voluble excuses, but no satisfactory explanation. I told him that I feared he was too experienced for the place.
The second who applied was an unquestionable Dutchman, young, good- looking, intelligent. Papers in perfect order. Present service with a well-known pro-German family. Previous service of one year with a lady who was one of my best friends--the wife of a high government official. I rang her up on the telephone and asked if she could tell me anything about A. B., who had been in service with her for a year. A second of silence, then the answer: "Yes, a good deal, but not on the telephone, please. Come around to tea this afternoon." Madame L. then told me that while the young man was clean, sober, and industrious, he had been found rummaging among her husband's official papers, in a room which he was forbidden to enter, and had been caught several times listening at the keyhole of doors while private conferences were going on.
It seemed to me that a young man with such an uncontrollable thirst for knowledge would not be suited for the very simple service which would be required of him in our household.
Afterward, traces of both of these men were found which led unmistakably to the lair of the chief spider of the German secret service at The Hague. The incident was a very small one. But, after all, life is made up of small incidents with a connected meaning.
At the time when I am writing this (September 24, 1917) the moral character of the tools of the Potsdam gang has again been stripped naked by the disclosure of the treachery by which the German Legation in Argentina has utilized the Swedish Legation in that country to transmit, under diplomatic privilege, messages inciting to murder on the high seas. Argentina has already taken the action to be expected from an American Republic by dismissing the German Minister. What Sweden will do to vindicate her honor remains to be seen. Her attitude may affect our opinion of her as a victim or a vassal of Potsdam.
There are two points in the disclosures made on September 23 by the Department of State which bear directly upon this simple narrative of experiences at The Hague.
The fetching female comic-opera star, Ray Beveridge, discreetly alluded to in the third chapter (p. 71), was secretly paid three thousand dollars by the Imperial German Embassy in Washington to finance her artistic activities. So, you see, I was not far wrong in forwarding her divorce papers to Germany and refusing to transmit her newspaper correspondence to America. She was a paid soubrette in the Potsdam troupe.
The affable and intelligent Mr. Archibald, alluded to in this chapter (p. 169), received on April 21, 1915, according to these disclosures, five thousand dollars from the Imperial German Embassy in Washington for "propaganda" services. If I had known this when he came to me in September, it is possible that I should have been less careful to spare his feelings.
III
The record of the German submarine warfare on merchant shipping is one of the most extraordinary chapters in history. Americans have read it with appropriate indignation, but not always with clear understanding of the precise issues involved. Let me try to make those issues plain, since the submarine campaign was one of the causes which forced this war upon the United States. (President's Message to Congress, April 2, 1917, paragraphs 2-10.)
In war all naval vessels, including of course submarines, have the right to attack and destroy, by any means in their power, any war-ship of the enemy. In regard to merchant-ships the case is different, according to international law. (See G. G. Wilson, International Law, paragraphs 1l4, 136, New York, 1901-1909.)
The war-vessel has the right of "visit and search" on all merchant-ships, enemy or neutral. It has also the right, in case the cargo of the merchant-ship appears to include more than a certain percentage of contraband, to capture it and take it into a port for adjudication as a prize. The war-vessel has also the right to sink a presumptive prize under conditions (such as distance, stress of weather, and so forth) which make it impossible to take it into port.
But here the right of the war-vessel stops. It has absolutely no right to sink the merchant-ship without warning and without making efficient provision for the safety of the passengers and crew. That is the common law of civilized nations. To break it is to put one's self beyond the pale.
Some Germanophile critics have faulted me for calling the Teutonic submarines "Potsdam pirates." A commissioned vessel, these critics say, which merely executes the orders of its government, cannot properly be called a pirate.
Why not? Take the definition of piracy given in the New Oxford Dictionary: "The crime of robbery or depredation on the sea by persons not holding a commission from an established civilized state."
There's the point! Is a nation which orders its servants to commit deeds forbidden by international law, a nation which commands its naval officers to commit deliberate, wanton, dastardly murder on the high seas (case of Belgian Prince, July 31, 1917, and others), is such a nation to be regarded as "an established civilized state"?
Were Algiers and Tunis and Tripoli "civilized states" when they sent out the Barbary pirates in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? We thought not, and we sent our war-ships to whip the barbarism out of them.
Commodore Stephen Decatur, in 1815, forced the cruel and cowardly Dey of Algiers to sign a deed of renunciation and a promise of good conduct, on the deck of an American frigate, under the Stars and Stripes.
A hundred years ago the glory of the American navy was made clear to the world in the suppression of the pirates of North Africa. To-day that glory must be maintained by firm, fearless, unrelenting war against the pirates of North Germany.
A commission to do a certain thing which is in itself unlawful does not change the nature of the misdeed. No nation has a right to commission its officers to violate the law of nations.
But the Germans say their submarines are such wonderful, delicate, scientific machines that it is impossible for them to give warning of an attack, or to do anything to save the helpless people whose peaceful vessel has been sunk beneath their feet. The precious, fragile submarine cannot be expected to observe any law of humanity which would imperil its further usefulness as an instrument of destruction.
Marvellous argument--worthy of the Potsdam mind in its highest state of Kultur! By the same reasoning any assassin might claim the right to kill without resistance because he proposed to commit the crime with a dagger so delicately wrought, so frail, so slender, that the slightest struggle on the part of his victim would break the costly, beautiful, murderous weapon.
Again, these extraordinary Germans say that merchant-ships ought not to carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat; every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying of defensive armament by merchant-ships, and precisely because they might need it to protect themselves against pirates.
Shall the United States be asked to rewrite this article of international law, in the midst of a great war on sea and land? Shall the government at Washington be seduced by cajolery, or compelled by threats, to rob the merchantmen of the poor protection of a single gun in order that they may fall absolutely helpless into the black hands of the prowling Potsdam pirates? That would be neutrality with a vengeance! Yet that is just what the Imperial German Government tried to persuade or force the United States to do. Thank God the effort was vain.
These were the matters under discussion when I was called to Washington in February, 1916, for consultation with the President. The long and wearing controversy had been going on for months. Every month notes were coming from Berlin, each more evasive and unsatisfactory than the last. Every week Count Bernstorff and his aides were coming to the State Department with new excuses, new subterfuges, and the same old lies. The President and Secretary Lansing, both of whom are excellent international lawyers, found their patience tried to the uttermost by the absurdity of the arguments presented to them and by the veiled contempt in the manner of the presentation. But they kept their tempers and did their best to keep the peace.
On two points they were firm as adamant. First, the law of nations should not and could not be changed in the midst of a war to suit the need of one of the parties. Second, "the use of submarines for the destruction of commerce is of necessity, because of the very character of the vessels employed and the very methods of attack which their employment of course involves, incompatible with the principles of humanity, the long-established and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacred immunities of non-combatants." (President Wilson's Address to Congress, April 19, 1916.)
It was on my return from this visit to Washington that I had an opportunity of observing at close range the crooked methods of the Potsdam gang in regard to the U-boat warfare. Arriving at The Hague on March 24, 1916, I found Holland aflame with helpless rage over the recent sinking of the S.S. Tubantia, the newest and best boat of the Netherlands-Lloyd merchant-fleet. She was torpedoed by an unseen submarine on March 15.
An explanation was promptly demanded from the German Government, which denied any knowledge of the affair. Holland, lacking evidence as to the perpetrator of the crime, would have had to swallow this denial but for an accident which furnished her with the missing proof. One of the Tubantia's small boats drifted ashore. In the boat was a fragment of a Schwarzkopf torpedo--a type manufactured and used only by Germany. This fragment was forwarded to Berlin, with another and more urgent demand for explanation, apology, and reparation.
The German newspapers coolly replied with the astounding statement that there had been two or three Schwarzkopf torpedoes in naval museums in England, and that this particular specimen had probably been given to a British submarine and used by her to destroy the good ship Tubantia.
Again Holland would have been left helpless, choking with indignation, but for a second accident. Another of the lost steamship's boats was found, and in it there was another fragment of the torpedo. This fragment bore the mark of the German navy, telling just when the torpedo was made and to which of the U-boats it had been issued.
With this bit of damning evidence in his bag a Dutch naval expert was sent to Berlin to get to the bottom of the crime and to demand justice. He got there, but he found no justice in that shop.
The German navy is very systematic, keeps accurate books, makes no accidental mistake. The pedigree and record of the Schwarzkopf were found. It was issued to a certain U-boat on a certain date. Undoubtedly it was the missile which unfortunately sank the Tubantia. All this was admitted and deeply regretted. But Germany was free from all responsibility for the sad occurrence. The following amazing reason was given by the Imperial German Government.
This certain U-boat had fired this certain torpedo at a British war-vessel somewhere in the North Sea ten days before the Tubantia was sunk. The shot missed its mark. But the naughty, undisciplined little torpedo went cruising around in the sea on its own hook for ten days waiting for a chance to kill somebody. Then the Tubantia came along, and the wandering-Willy torpedo promptly, stupidly, ran into the ship and sank her. This was the explanation. Germany was not to blame. (See the official report in the Orange Books of the Netherlands Government, July, 1916, December, 1916.)
This stupendous fairy-tale Holland was expected to believe and to accept as the end of the affair. She did not believe it. She had to accept it. What else could she do? Fight? She did not want to share Belgium's dreadful fate. The Dutch Government proposed that the whole Tubantia incident be submitted to an international commission. The German Government accepted this proposal en principe, but said it must be deferred until after the war.
I wonder why some of the Americans who blame Holland for not being in arms against Germany never think of that stern and awful deterrent which stands under her eyes and presses upon her very bosom. She is still independent, still neutral, still unravaged. Five-sixths of her people, I believe, have no sympathy with the German Government in its choice and conduct of this war. At least this was the case while I was at The Hague. But the one thing that Holland is, above all else, is pro-Dutch. She wants to keep her liberty, her sovereignty, her land untouched. To defend these treasures she will fight, and for no other reason. I have heard Queen Wilhelmina say this a score of times. She means it, and her people are with her.
Seven Dutch ships were sunk in a bunch in the English Channel by the Potsdam pirates on February 22, 1917. Holland was furious. She stated her grievance, protested, remonstrated--and there she stopped. If she had tried to do anything more she stood to lose a third of her territory in a few days and the whole in a few weeks--lose it, mark you, to the gang that ruined Belgium.
But the position, and therefore the case, of America in regard to the German submarine warfare was quite different. She was one of the eight "Big Powers" of the world. She was the mightiest of the neutrals.
Her rights at sea were no greater than theirs. But her duties were greater, just because she was larger, more powerful, better able to champion those rights not only for herself but also for others.
She would not have to pay such an instant, awful, crushing penalty for armed resistance to the brutalities of the Potsdam gang as would certainly be inflicted upon the little northern neutrals if they attempted to defend themselves against injustice and aggression.
Their part was to make protest, and record it, and wait for justice until the war was ended. America's part was to make protest, and then--her protest being mocked, scorned, disregarded--to stand up in arms with France and Great Britain and help to end the war by a victory of righteous peace.
But did we not also have objections to some of the measures and actions of the British blockade--as, for instance, the seizure and search of the mails? Certainly we did, and Secretary Lansing stated them clearly and maintained them firmly. But here is the difference. These objections concerned only the rights of neutral property on the high seas. We knew by positive assurance from England, and by our experience with her in the Alabama Claims Arbitration, that she was ready to refer all such questions to an impartial tribunal and abide by its decision. Our objections to the conduct of the German navy concerned the far more sacred rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The murder of one American child at sea meant more to us than the seizure of a thousand cargoes of alleged contraband.
No one has ever accused the British or French or Italian sailors in this war of sinking merchant-ships without warning, leaving their crews and passengers to drown. On the contrary, British seamen have risked and lost their lives in a chivalrous attempt to save the lives even of their enemies after the fair sinking of a German war-ship.
But the hands of the Potsdam pirates are red with innocent blood. The bottom of the sea is strewn with the wrecks they have made. "The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean" hide the bones of their helpless victims, who shall arise at the judgment-day to testify against them.
On May 7, 1915, the passenger liner Lusitania, unarmed, was sunk without warning by a German U-boat off the Irish coast. One hundred and fourteen Americans--men, women, and little children, lawful and peaceful travellers--were drowned--
"Butchered to make a [German] holiday."
The holiday was celebrated in Germany. The schools were let out. The soldiers in the reserve camps had leave to join in the festivities. The towns and cities were filled with fluttering flags and singing folks. A German pastor preached: "Whoever cannot bring himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking of the Lusitania--him we judge to be no true German." (Deutsche Reden in Schwerer Zeit, No. 24, p. 7.) A medal was struck to commemorate the great achievement. It is a very ugly medal. I keep a copy of it in order that I may never forget the character of a nation which was not content with rejoicing over such a crime but desired to immortalize it in bronze.
The three strong and eloquent notes of President Wilson in regard to the Lusitania are too well known to be quoted here. The practical answer from Potsdam (passing over the usual subterfuges and falsehoods) was the sinking of the Arabic August 19 and the murder of three more Americans. Then the correspondence languished until the torpedoing (March 24, 1916) of the Sussex, a Channel ferry-boat, crowded with passengers, among whom were many Americans. Then the President sent a flat message calling down the Potsdam pirates and declaring that unless they abandoned their nefarious practices "the United States had no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether" (April 18, 1916).
This brought a grudging promise from Germany that she would henceforth refrain from sinking merchant-vessels "without warning and without saving human lives, unless the ship attempted to escape or offer resistance." How this promise was kept may be judged from the sinking of the Marina (October 28), with the loss of eight American lives, and of the Russian (December 14), with the loss of seventeen American lives, and other similar sinkings.
During all this time Germany had been building new and larger submarines with wonderful industry. She had filled up her pack of sea-wolves. On January 31, 1917, she revoked her flimsy pledge, let loose her wolf-pack, and sent word to all the neutral nations that she would sink at sight all ships found in the zones which she had marked "around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean." (Why We Are at War, p. 23, New York, 1917.) The President promptly broke off diplomatic relations (February 3), and said that we should refrain from hostilities until the commission of "actual overt acts" by Germany forced us to the conviction that she meant to carry out her base threat.
The overt acts came quickly. Between February 3 and April 1 eight American merchant-ships were sunk, and more than forty American lives were destroyed by the Potsdam pirates.
The die was cast. On April 2, 1917, the President advised Congress that the United States could no longer delay the formal acceptance of "the status of belligerent which had been thrust upon it." On April 6 Congress took the necessary action. On the same day the President proclaimed that "a state of war exists between the United States and the Imperial German Government."
Back of this momentous and noble decision, in which the hearts of the immense majority of Americans are with the President, there are undoubtedly many strong and righteous reasons. Some of these I have tried to set forth in the first part of this article. But we must never forget that the specific reason given by the President, the definite cause which forced us into the war, is the German method of submarine warfare, which he has repeatedly denounced as illegal, immoral, inhuman--a direct and brutal attack upon us and upon all mankind. These words cannot be forgotten, nor is it likely that the President will retract them.
They set up at least one steadfast mark in the midst of the present flood of peace talk. There can be no parley with a criminal who is in full and exultant practice of his crime. Unless the U-boat warfare is renounced, repented of, and abandoned by the Potsdam pirates, an honorable peace is unattainable except by fighting for it and winning it. [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Belgian Relief ships sunk: S.S. Camilla, Trevier, Feistein, Storstad, Lars Kruse, Euphrates. Haelen, and Tunis (the last two shelled but not sunk).
Hospital ships sunk: Britannic (probably but not certainly torpedoed); Asturias, March 24. 1917; Gloucester Castle, March 30; Donegal, April 17; Lanfranc, April 17 (with British wounded and German wounded prisoners).
Among the neutral nations Norway alone has lost more than six hundred ships by mines and torpedoes of German origin. The dance of death still goes on.]
IV
Only a little space is left for writing of my retirement from the post at The Hague and my experiences thereafter in England and France.
The reader may have gathered from the tenor of these chapters that the work at the legation was hard and that the situation was trying to a man with strong convictions and the habit of expressing them frankly. My resignation was tendered in September, 1916, with the request that it should not be made public until after the re-election of President Wilson, which I earnestly desired and expected. My reasons for resigning were partly of a domestic nature. But the main reason was a personal wish to get back to my work as a writer, "with full freedom to say what I thought and felt about the war."
The German-American press has tried to start a rumor that I was recalled to Washington to explain my action on a certain point. That is absolutely and entirely false. The government never asked for an explanation of anything in my conduct while in office, or afterward. On the contrary, the President has been kind enough to express his approval of my services in terms too friendly to be quoted here.
In November, after President Wilson had been triumphantly chosen for a second term, I ventured to recall his attention to my letter of September. He answered that he would "reluctantly yield" to my wishes, but would appreciate my remaining at The Hague until a successor could be found for the post. Of course I willingly agreed to this.
In December the name of this successor was cabled to me with instructions to find out whether he would be acceptable to the Queen and the Government of Holland. Her Majesty said that this gentleman would certainly be persona grata, and I cabled to Washington to this effect.
Early in January a message came from the Secretary of State saying that, as all was arranged except the final confirmation of the appointment, I might feel free to leave at my convenience. Having cleaned up my work and left everything in order for my successor (including the lease of my house), I took ship from Flushing for England on January 15, 1917.
The voyage through the danger zone was uneventful. The visit to England was unforgettable.
Everywhere I saw the evidences that Great Britain was at war, in earnest, and resolved to "carry on" with her Allies until the victory of a real peace was won.
Women and girls were at work in the railway stations, on the trams and omnibuses, in the munition factories, in postal and telegraph service, doing the tasks of men. We shall have to revise that phrase which speaks of "the weaker sex."
By night London was
"Dark, dark, dark, irrecoverably dark."
But it was not still, nor terrified by the instant danger of Zeppelin raids. Every time a German vulture passed over England dropping bolts of indiscriminate death, it woke the heart of the people to a new impulse, not of fear but of hot indignation.
By day the great city swarmed with eager life. Business was going on at full swing, though not "as usual." Women were driving trucks, carrying packages, running ticket-offices. Men in khaki outnumbered those in civilian dress. Wounded soldiers hobbled cheerfully along the streets. The parks were adorned with hospitals. Mrs. Pankhurst spoke from a soap-box near the Marble Arch; not now for woman-suffrage--"That will come," she said, "but the great thing to-day is to carry on the war to a victory for freedom!"
Oxford--gray city of the golden dream, Learning's fairest and most lovely seat in all the world--Oxford was transformed into a hospital for the wounded, a training-camp for new soldiers, a nursery of noble manhood equipped for the stern duties of war.
Every family that I knew was in grief for a dear one lost on the field of glorious strife. But not one was in mourning. The great sacrifice was bravely accepted as a part of the greater duty.
The friends with whom I talked most--men like Lord Bryce, Sir Sydney Lee, Sir Herbert Warren, Sir Robertson Nicoll, Sir William Osler--were lovers of peace, tried and well-known. All were of one mind in holding that Britain's faith and honor bound her to accept the war when Germany violated Belgium, and that it must be fought through until the Prussian military autocracy which began it was broken.
There were restricted rations in England; but no starvation and no sign of it. There were partisan criticisms and plenty of "grousing." The Britisher is never contented unless he can grumble--especially at his own government. But there was no lack of a real unity of purpose, nor of a solid, cheerful, bull-dog determination to hang on to the enemy until he came down. It is this spirit that has enabled a nation, which was almost ignorant of what military preparedness meant, to put between three and four million troops into the field in defense of justice and liberty.
At the end of January I went to France, eager to see with my own eyes the great things that were doing there and to taste with my own lips the cup of danger. That at least I was bound to do before I could come home and urge my countrymen to face the duty and brave the peril of a part in this war.
Paris was not so dark as London but more tragic. After Belgium and Servia the heaviest brunt of this dreadful conflict has fallen upon France. She has suffered most. Yet on the faces of her women I saw no tears and in the eyes of her men no fear nor regret.
If Britain was magnificent, France was miraculous! Loving and desiring peace she accepted the cross of war without a murmur. Her women were no less brave than her men. She wears the hero-star of Roland and the saintly halo of Joan of Arc.
After meeting many men in Paris--statesmen, men of letters, generals--and after visiting the splendid American Ambulance at Neuilly and other institutions in which our boys and girls were giving their help to France in the chivalric spirit of Lafayette, I went out toward the front.
The first visit was under the escort of Captain Francois Monod to a chateau beyond Compiegne, where Rudyard Kipling with his family and I with my family had passed the Christmas week of 1913 together, as joyous guests of the American chatelaine Mrs. Julia Park. She has given the spacious, lovely house for a military hospital. And there, while the German guns thundered a few kilometres away from us and a German sausage balloon floated in the sky, I watched the skilful ministrations of French and American doctors and nurses to the wounded.
One thought haunted me--the memory of Kipling's only son, nineteen years old, who was with us in that happy Christmastide. The lad was reported "missing" after one of the battles between Loos and Hulluch. For six months I sought, with the help of Herr von Kuhlmann, German Minister at The Hague, to find a trace of the brave boy. But never a word could we get.
The second visit was to the battle-field of the Marne under the escort of Captain the Count de Ganay. We motored slowly through the ruined towns and villages. Those which had been wrecked by shellfire were like mouthfuls of broken teeth--chimneys and fragments of walls still standing. Those which had been vengefully burned by the retreating Germans were mere heaps of ashes. Most of our time was spent around the Marais de St. Gond, where the French General Foch held the Thermopylae of Europe.
Four times he advanced across that marsh and was driven back, but not beaten. The fifth time he advanced and stayed, and Paris was forever lost to the Germans. Think of the men who made that last advance and saved Europe from the Potsdam gang. Their graves, carefully marked and tended, lie thickly strewn along the lonely ridges of all that region--humble but immortal reminders of glorious heroism.
The third visit was with the same escort to the fighting front at Verdun.
The long, bare, rolling ridges between Bar-le-Duc and the Meuse; the high-shouldered hills along the river and around the ruined little city; the open fields, the narrow valleys, the wrecked villages, the shattered woodlands--all were covered with dazzling snow. The sun was bright in a cloudless sky. A bitter, biting wind poured fiercely, steadily out of the north, driving the glittering snow-dust before it. Every man had put on all the clothes he possessed, and more; pads of sheepskin over back and breast; gunny sacks tied around the shoulders. The troops of cavalry, the teams of mules and horses dragging munition-wagons or travelling kitchens or long "75" guns, clattered along the iron surface of the Via Sacra--that blessed road which made the salvation of Verdun possible after the only railway was destroyed. Endless trains of motor-lorries lumbered by. The narrow trenches were coated with ice. The hillside trails were slippery as glass. In the deep dugouts small sheet-iron stoves were burning, giving out a little heat and a great deal of choking smoke. The soldiers sat around them playing cards or telling stories.
But there! What I saw in that shell-pitted, snow-covered, hard-frozen amphitheatre of heroism cannot be described in these brief paragraphs. The serenity, cheerfulness, courtesy, and indomitable courage of the French poilus defending their own land; the scenes in the trenches with the German shells breaking around us and the wounded men being carried past us; the luncheon in the citadel with the commandant and officers in a subterranean room where the motto on the wall, above the world-renowned escutcheon of Verdun, was "On ne passe pas"--"They don't get by"; the dinner with the general and staff of the Verdun army, in a little village "somewhere in France," and their last words to me, "On les aura! Ca peut etre long, mais on les aura!"--"It may take long, but we shall get them!"--all these and a thousand more things are vivid in my memory but cannot be told now.
One scene sticks in my mind and asks to be recorded.
The hospital was just back of the Verdun lines. Its roofs were marked with the Red Cross. Twenty-four hundred beds, all clean and quiet. Wards full of German wounded, cared for as tenderly as the French. "Will you see an operation?" said the proud little commandant who was showing me through his domain. "Certainly." A big, husky fellow was on the operating-table, unconscious, under ether. One of the best surgeons in France was performing the operation of trepanning. I could see the patient's brain, bare and beating, while the surgeon did his skilful work. Other doctors stood around, and three nurses, one an American girl, Miss Cowen, of Pittsburgh. "Will the man get well?" I asked the surgeon. "I hope so," he answered. "At all events, we shall do our best for him. You know, he is a German--c'est un Boche!"
On August 20, 1917, that very hospital, marked with the Red Cross, was bombed by German aeroplanes. One wing was set on fire. While the nurses and helpers were trying to rescue the patients, the bloody Potsdam vultures flew back and forth three times over the place, raking it with machine guns. More than thirty persons were killed, including doctors, German wounded, and one woman nurse. God grant it was not the American girl! Yet why would not the killing of a French sister under the Red Cross be just as wicked?
Here I break off--uncompleted--my narration of the evil choice of war and the crimes in the conduct of war which have made the name of Germany abhorred.
The Allies, from the beginning, have pleaded for peace and fought for peace. America, obeying her conscience, has joined them in the conflict.
But what do we mean now by peace? We mean more than a mere cessation of hostilities. We mean that the burglar shall give back all that he has grabbed. We mean that the marauder shall make good all the damage that he has done. We mean that there shall be an open league of free democratic states, great and small, to guard against the recurrence of such a bloody calamity as the autocratic, militaristic Potsdam gang precipitated upon the world in 1914.
In the next chapter I shall discuss briefly the practical significance of this kind of peace and the absolute preconditions which must be realized before any conference on the subject will be profitable or even safe.
The duty of the present is to fight on beside France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, Servia, Roumania, and, we hope, Russia, "to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war."
To talk of any other course is treason, not only to our country but to the cause of true Peace. _