America's day; studies in light and shade

Front matter

COPYRIGHT DEPOSiX:

STUDIES IN LIGHT AND SHADE

BY IGNATIUS PHAYRE

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

The Foreword vii

I "Keep Out" and "Keep Off" 1

CHAPTER I *'keep out" and "keep off"

The apostle of Preparedness was early abroad in the United States preaching the god of war to Stoics and Epicureans of capricious hearing. For these, their President feared — with relucting mind, you understand, forced to it by the press of fact — had been too long aloof "in provincial isolation." It was a revolutionary saying. The many Americas debated it back and forth — here with assent, there with dissent or discord, dying away to complete indifference in the great food-acres of the Middle West.

In the United States we have the hugest assembly under any civilized flag. They muster well over a hundred million souls scattered through sixty degrees of longitude, and they include every race upon earth. "We are to play a leading part in the world-drama," Dr. Wilson announced, "whether we wish it or not." But the last election showed no crusading zeal among the masses. America, her Chief Executive told us, was vitally interested to secure universal peace and save the smaller nations from violence and wrong. But there are many Americas : who knew this better than Woodrow Wilson? Knightly champions there might be along the Atlantic fringe ; there were none at all in the intermountain States east of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi Valley. Here Freedom's pibroch had a soothing sound ; the price of beef on the hoof was more than all the tortured Armenians.

When you mentioned war down in Texas or Arizona, it was Mexico that became the fluent theme. On the Pacific Slope the Japanese bogey brooded as an abiding menace. So that each America was immersed in matters of its owri ; it was the Federal Government's affair to unite them all, and call a country's pride out of the continental immensity. The prime purpose of the United States, as Dr. Wilson reminds us, was to crystallize — *'at an}^ rate in one government, the fundamental rights of man." . . . ** America," he said again, *'must be ready hereafter as a member of the family of nations to exert her whole moral and physical force for the assertion of those rights throughout the earth."

So did the President prepare his people for that "leap in the dark" which Senator Lodge and many others condemned. Certainly Wilson was throwing to the winds of war the great principles of his predecessors, above all, the "Keep Out" counsel enshrined in Washington's Farewell Address, and handed down as America's gospel! "Europe," the Liberator explained, "has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation." Again and again the First President warned the infant State against foreign wiles. "Our detached and distant situation," he was glad to say, "enables us to pursue a different course." America might extend her commerce, but she would do well to have "as little political connection as possible" with the older Powers, their devious unions, quarrels and intrigues.

Such was the advice of the greatest American. To the "Keep Out" of Washington, James Monroe added his famous "Keep Off" in 1823, thus completing America's aloofness. It was with vague unrest that Monroe heard the pious vows of Prussia, Russia, and the Holy Alliance. Those precepts of Christ, those principles of justice, charity, and peace were thought to hide the devil's own designs upon Spanish America.

**We owe it to candour," Congress was told in Monroe's famous message, "to declare that any attempt on the part of the Allies to extend their system to this hemisphere will be considered dangerous to our peace and safety." With existing Colonies in the New World the United States had no concern. But any fresh adventure would be viewed as an unfriendly act.

**Keep Out" and ''Keep Off" were the guiding polities of the United States down to the fateful year of 1914. The Great War put an end to this isolation, though the masses would not admit as much. America was so secure in the old days, so free to develop herself in ways of her own choosing. For nearly a century each Administration sang the praise of this policy. On the 4th of July silver tongues (like Bryan's) blessed the care-free hugeness over which Old Glory waved. What happiness was here, what lofty theories of life and man's duty to his brother! American envoys abroad were set apart from their colleagues. They were glad to be mere crows amid the paradise-birds around a throne; black-coated democrats in a gorgeous rout, decked with the gold lace and jewelled orders of a guileful and secret service.

The election of 1916 altered the political map of the United States, to the confusion of the Old Guard. For the first time something like a nation's voice was heard, but not even a Quixote would construe it as that of a champion of the world's woe. ''He kept us out of war," men said of Wilson. There were wonderful times ahead, with America thrust into leadership and Europe a chaos of mourning and spilt blood. The election revealed the strength of the "Keep Out" tradition. Wilson's first term was full of it — though he veered and changed with every beat of the storm. His Message to Congress in 1914 opposed preparation for war. That of 1915 called upon the people for whole-hearted efforts "to care for their own security and that of the Government they have set up to serve them." Twitted with inconsistency, Wilson owned to a receptive mind, ever alive to fresh streams of thought. He was serene as Lincoln under these anxious digs. * ' Yes, ' ' said the Emancipator calmly, *'IVe another opinion now. I don't think much of a man who isn't wiser today than he was yesterday."

''Always learning" was Wilson's motto, as it was Michelangelo's. But could he impart his knowledge to the devotees of Prosperity and Peace? Would his people accept his prompting before it was too late? "We can no longer indulge our parochialism," the President told them plainly, with no hint of his own regret for the old American way. They must pile up ships, he urged. They must patrol their coasts with aircraft, and not play the foolish virgin, caught unprovided in the stormy dark. So said the cautious Wilson to the States of the Union — those easy-going sovereignties which to the average Briton are "something like our own counties." America's vastness is seldom grasped, though most of her problems spring from it. California alone is bigger than Great Britain and Ireland. So is Montana — though its population is not much more than Bristol's.

In Texas — the Lone Star State — you could stow all the kingdoms, principalities, and Grand Duchies of the German Empire, leaving room for Holland and Belgium in the semi-arid Panhandle, which is now a field of corn. Unless this immensity is borne in mind, with its range of climates, crops, and races — European, Asiatic, and African — no attempt to reveal America is of any avail.

Isolation was over. The "Keep Out" counsel of Washington was well enough for three million settlers strung out along the Atlantic coast. But now — ! And even Washington had something to say about Young America's risks and liabilities. These, it seems, grew with "our rising

''KEEP OUT" AND 'VKEEP OFF" 5

prosperity. " " There is a rank due to the United States, ' * her first President declared, "which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by a reputation for weakness." So the pursuit of peace might become an abject aim — far worse, indeed, than any lust of war for its own sake on Clausewitz lines.

Slowly, then, conviction crept through the United States that God was on the side of big battalions, and that Justice, in the last resort, spoke with giant guns and bombs. I say the conviction "crept," for it was not a welcome thought. The "Keep Out" advice died very hard in spite of urgent warnings. It survived the Lusitania shock and many another, bobbing up serenely with all the toughness of a timber-laden derelict. A word from the State Department, and "that easier feeling" supervened, as it did after the Nebraskan, the Arabic, Hesperian, Persia, Silius, Sussex, and Marina.

Beyond question the desire to Keep Out delayed the "strict accountability" of President Wilson's First Note to Berlin. Two minor tragedies — the Falaba and Gulflight — came before the Lusitania and involved American lives. As the list grew longer, fury rose in the Eastern States — only to die away in vast spaces west of the Alleghanies. On the other hand, New York and Washington laughed at the prairie politics of Hickory Creek, where the cowboystatesman started a war-withering simoon in his local paper, comparing the American soldier to a watchmaker on the Congo — a man who should change his job at once lest society turn upon him as a useless drone.

We are all familiar with Roosevelt 's f ulminations against Wilson, the man of peace.

"Nothing permanent," he told the people in one of his early moods, "is ever accomplished by force." Then how were the British exi)elled, the dissentients asked. How was this continent won from the Indians ? How was Secession crushed, and the Union saved in the Civil War ? . . . Wilson was hedging at last, and changing his tune: *'The United States can never be the same again." Here was the new note. ''From across the Atlantic, from across the Pacific, we feel in our heart new calls and currents that touch our very life.*'

No wonder the professional soldier increased his demands. Here was the Federal Chief of Staff, General Hugh L. Scott, proposing a standing army of 250,000, expanding to three millions in war-time and drawn from the whole manhood of the continent. General Leonard Wood, Commander-in-Chief of the American Armj', was equally blunt in answering Mr. Bryan. **No wolf was ever frightened by the size of a flock of sheep. ... If you have ideals worth defending, then words alone will not avail you. . . . We have far too many orators — too many Fourth of July flowers about a million citizens leaping to arms between dawn and dark. We of the War College sat up all night for three weeks in 1916 hoping to see thirty thousand volunteers take that leap for service on the Mexican border at the President's call. Take my word for it, it was a heavy jump they made with seventy-five per cent, of failure among the athletes we had counted on."

The President's party was well provided with answers to all reproach. Elihu Root accused them of not making timely provision ''to back American diplomacy by actual or assured naval and military force." But I\lr. Root and his colleagues, the Democrats said, had had twelve years of control in which to make this very provision. Not even Roosevelt, the most forceful of Presidents, could rouse enthusiasm for his Big Stick, which America was to carry and speak softly if she were to win her way and command the world's respect.

"Is our nation one, or a discordant multitude?" Mr. Root flung at the State Convention in New York. "Have selfish living, factional jars, and love of ease obscured our spiritual vision? Has the patriotism of a people never summoned to sacrifice become lifeless ? ' ' Here were searching questions from a great American. They went to the very source of a continental apathy which has long been the despair of statesmen in a loose federation of sovereignties. ''Here's a hoop to the barrell" was the bitter toast of General Washington's officers long ago. It was a caustic allusion to the disruptive tendencies of the thirteen original States. This lack of cohesion persisted until 1916, baffling and obstructing the national government.

It is no easy matter to make a nation with three thousand miles between two of its capitals. The ideals of Ireland and Albania are no further apart than those of New York and Nevada. Far more than distance divides subtropic Florida, its orange-groves and palms, from bleak Montana, where the very wolves perish in their winter lairs. As for social contrast, let me set on one hand the Babylonian splendour of Newport, and on the other hand negro squalor in the ''Black Belt" of Mississippi, where the white man is in a minority, and racial hatred is for ever smouldering.

I hope I convey some idea of the problems confronting the Federal Administration in 1916. President Wilson's appeal for unity to the League of the Foreign-Born had high significance. "A man or a woman," he said, "who becomes a citizen of the United States is not expected to give up his or her love for the land in which they were born. But we do exi)ect them to put their new allegiance above all others." Nor should the foreign-born (Dr. Wilson hinted) continue to live by themselves — using their own language, having their own newspapers, and passively refusing to merge with America, where the "good mixer" has the best chance in opportunity's arena. It was the foreign-born who warred upon their adopted country in a season of strange malignance. Infernal machines wrecked American docks and Allied ships. About the factories were set barbed wire; armed sentries protected the plant from citizens whom the President, in a famous Message to Congress, ''blushed to admit'* as Americans. They ** poured poison into the very arteries of the United States," the National Assembly was told. It was an onslaught of which America had never dreamed: "And we are without adequate Federal laws to deal with it." Here was a frank confession of impotence. The judgment of crime is a matter of States' Rights. A fugitive murderer must needs be extradited, as from a foreign land. It was so with the notorious Harry Thaw, whom New York could only arrest after long and costly litigation with the States of Vermont and Maine.

There are, indeed, myriads of American laws, most of them easily evaded because framed by amateurs and inoperative beyond the State line. Thus the bachelor in Reno (Nevada) fresh from the "nisi-mills" of the Desert State, may find himself a bigamist in Spartanburg — for South Carolina has no divorce law at all. A girl child of twelve can be a wife in Kansas and Kentucky. She must be eighteen in Idaho and New York. It is hard to imagine the chaos made in this way by forty-eight Parliaments electing over four thousand members, all of them anxious to please local supporters in a novel field. At the last legislative session in Sacramento (Cal.), 2877 new Bills were introduced, and 771 were added to the Statute Book. The Sessions Laws of Arkansas for 1915 fill a volume of 1046 pages, those of Massachusetts one of 1100 pages. I write of a New World isled in its own immensity, and impossible to grasp in a single coup d'oeil It is a politico-social experiment on the hugest scale, preferring its own mistakes to our experience. America is a noisy paltestra of sleepless wit and unresting hands. Its strenuous aura is best felt in the personal formula of George W. Perkins, the insurance magnate, who retired at fifty to devote himself and his wealth to public welfare, education, and art. "My own method," Mr. Perkins says, ''has been to live every day as though it was the only day I had to live, and to crowd everything possible into that day. I gave no heed to the clock, nor to what I was paid. I worked and lived for all there was in it."

Here is business efficiency defined by a master, with the speed-up focussed into a burning spot of corrosive power. For many years this was America's gospel, but today it is questioned for the first time. The colossal waste of life in Europe set up waves of constructive sympathy in the United States. "Over here," says Mr. Darwin P. Kingsley, of the New York Life Insurance Company, "the human machine begins to go to pieces at fifty-five. It is the price of our peace, and nobody counts the cost. So marked is the death-rate increase that all the companies have revised their rules for accepting lives at fifty -five and over."

Physical unpreparedness was hailed by professional soldiers as a factor in their favour. They argued that a stiffish course of training in early manhood would fit the American for every emergency of modern life, whether in peace or war. Governor Whitman of New York declared that compulsory service was in no way inconsistent with American tradition and aims. The revered head of Harvard University, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, also defended this step, since "the oceans are no longer barriers but highways inviting the passage of fleets." Besides, a citizen army on the continental scale was America's duty towards the peace of the world. Force was still supreme. And, reviewing the Great War, the old scholar reminded his people that: "Neither religion nor popular education has shown any power to prevent this lapse to savagery. ' ^

The American masses not only loathed warj they mistrusted the panoply and ritual of it. Congress has always suspected soldiers and placed them under a ban. The General Staff — a recent creation — was not loved in "Washington, where the War Department has thus far been in civilian hands. ''Keep away from Congress, '^ General Wotherspoon warned his colleagues on his retirement. For he also was an alarmist; a man of conscience and plain professional speaking about a small and dwindling army, and a system of State militias worthy of the comic stage, and all the anathema heaped upon them in the report of Generals Wood and Barry.

There was something unmartial in this New World atmosphere. American history shows an inveterate reliance upon citizen levies, from Bunker's Hill to the Mexican Border of 1916. The army was abolished — re-established, reduced to 6000 men, and throughout regarded as a nuisance. One result of this was a war of seven years against the Seminole Indians, who, with 2000 braves in the field, called for over 60,000 American troops to put them down, at a cost of $70,000,000. The larger war in Mexico, the Rebellion of the South, and the clash with Spain — these taught America little in the way of armed preparation suited to the needs of a growing Power. ' * It is unhappily true," says Major-General W. H. Carter, U. S. A., ''that in none of our wars has the Government been able to count upon the active support, or even of the good-will, of all the nation . . . even when the very life of the Union was at stake. ' '

It was ignorance of these facts which made our own newspapers ask "What will America do?" after each new affront put upon President Wilson by Germany. "What else could he do but "Keep Out" if that were the wish of his people? When he pictured them as champions of the weaker nations — quick and ardent custodians of the world 's peace, "with every influence and resource at their com-

t mand" — Dr. Wilson was careful to add: "But the war must first be concluded." He showed marvellous insight into the many-sided Republic. No doubt he hoped to educate the masses in preparedness, with wasted Europe before them, and a growing power in, Asia fast closing the once "Open Door" in China, and heaping up fighting forces by sea and land and air. But in the flush time of 1916 Wilson admitted frankly that America had no worldpolicy at all. "To carry out such a program we need unity of spirit and purpose. ' ' And the ' ' unified strength ' * upon which the President harped was not as yet in sight.

The New World was wholly misunderstood in Europe. Why, it was asked, had not the Big Neutral given a moral lead to the rest? Why had she fussed over her cotton and grain; why had she taken up Prussia's catchword about "the freedom of the seas"? It was because (one heard) of that trade neutrality which made Sweden protest so sharply over her mail-bags, Holland over her herrings, Spain over her oranges and cork — bulky cargoes in a time of tight tonnage and ruthless submarines. If America had only thrown her aegis over Belgium when the scrap of paper was torn, and the German hordes began to martyr the most innocent of all nations! So ran the reproaches on this side, whether expressed or implied.

European poets and scholars scathed neutrality of every shade, from the Pope 's to that of American people. ' ' The world is watching," Maeterlinck called across the sea, "to judge if the strength of your fathers is also yours." But America was not aroused; she was not in fighting trim at all. She would feed the hungry and care for the fatherless and prisoners of war. Beyond this she was powerless. "What can America do?" asked the German papers, with an easy contempt that was almost incredible, addressed as it was to a continent of a hundred millions— the richest on earth and the most insistent upon moral claims and covenants. America must needs win her masses to whole-hearted preparation if she were to be among the guarantors of universal peace. *'It is inconceivable," President Wilson told the Senate, "'that we should play no part in that great enterprise." For if peace were to endure, it must be secured by "the organized major force of mankind." And in the same address Dr. Wilson dwelt upon the limitation of armaments by sea and land as **the most intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and mankind."

It is plain that America has strong views upon this subject. It was the piling up of weapons which menaced "the sense of equality among the nations." Therefore the President favoured a reduction, advising the world 's rulers to "plan for peace and adjust their policy to it." But he could not be consistent in this matter. He was plainly in a strait between the ideal of disarmament and the defence of the United States, which was an urgent affair upon all grounds.

Wilson, indeed, went further than Roosevelt in his naval aims. He declared himself in favour of "incomparably the greatest Navy," since America's coast-line is so extensive. The Cabinet's new five-year program called for an outlay on ships of $661,000,000, with twenty per cent, above specified prices for speed in building and general efficiency of all craft. Professional advisers of the Government insisted upon these measures; the masses either resisted or were listless and unconcerned. It was the interplay of these active and passive forces which gave rise to so much confusion. Official Washington had to walk very warily, doling sympathy and blame to all belligerents with the apathy of the larger Americas ever in view.

Britain was aghast at the detachment shown in the President's early speeches. So was France, where Freedom blazed in the very heart of desolation. And she signalled mute reproach to her sister Republic across the seas :

"I am she that was thy sign and standard-bearer, Thy voice and cry; She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer. The same am I!"

Still there was no sign, and the amazement of Paris broke into open reproaches. **When England tried to oppress you with the help of hired Hessians, the peasants of France came to your aid. They fought by your side, they died for you. And yet, today in our agony. ..." It roused nothing but vexation, as the memory of a debt so often does.

As a well-wisher, the New York Tribune was sorry to record this sentiment. However, there it was, faintly moving America in the mass. It would be well for the Allies, the Tribune said, *'to renounce all thought that America is a sympathetic country, or one in which community of ideas exists with regard to the present clash." It was true that both France and Britain had warm friends in the United States. *'But they are in the minoritj^; they have not been able to mould American feeling." The old French alliance, ties of British race and of language — these were but frail exhalations from history 's page. * ' The sooner the Allies think of America as a foreign country — not necessarily friendly, and certainly not of their way of thought — the better for all concerned."

It was "reparation for the American lives lost," that Dr. Wilson demanded in his first Lusitania Note. And if in his next he warned the sea assassin **with solemn emphasis," it is well to remind British readers of hot American protest against the ''vexatious and illegal practices" of our own blockade. All nations were foreign when viewed from neutral Washington, whose outlook may be expressed in the mild phrase of Lincoln, ''With malice towards none, with charity for all. ' '

Chapter II

A QUAINT episode in American history is the offer of a crown to General Washington by the officers of the Revolutionary Army. It was almost a mutinous army, ill-clad and ill-fed; dismissed at last and scantily paid in paper worth two per cent, of its face value. Only Washington's influence prevented an open revolt. It is curious to survey America's dislike of the * 'standing army," and later on of a navy — that added evil due to crescent power and the new duties that came with it. It has always been a point of honour with Congress to lop and prune these noisome growths of the State; it was at one time a moot point whether they were necessary at all.

In 1810, when Europe flamed with the Napoleonic wars, John Randolph of Virginia rose in the Lower House with the familiar motion "to reduce our naval and military establishments." "With respect to war," cooed that Bryan of his day — poet, orator, and wit — "we have in the Atlantic a force wide and deep enough to ward off peril from the land." Two years later that moat was crossed by a hostile army ; before the war was over the very chamber in which Randolph had spoken was burned by British soldiers. But nothing altered the traditional mistrust of Congress for an armed host; the consequence is seen in America's unreadiness for all her wars.

What alarmed her advisers in 1916 was that the first onset of a modern enemy might be a lightning stroke, like the German swe^p towards Paris. Leisurely war was a thing of the past ; so was the raising of levies by bounties or reluctant drafts, as in the long-drawn Civil War. ' ' The

EEVELATION FROM THE HILL OP MARS 15

records show conclusively," says Major-General W. H. Carter, the military historian, ''that the theory of citizen volunteers ready to march in our defence is wholly fallacious." When the nation's fate hung in the balance, only 46,626 men over twenty-four years of age could be found for the Union Army; the vast majority were boys of sixteen or less. It took two years to train these troops and develop a Gettysburg from the dangerous rout of Bull Run, where disaster was only averted by eight hundred regulars who fought a rearguard action. In the war with Spain the volunteers, with few exceptions, were unfit to embark. Their lack of discipline, the failure of supplies ; the disease and chaos at Chickamauga and Key West Camps — these are today as ghastly as they are fresh in the memory of professional soldiers.

The Commander-in-Chief, General Leonard Wood, warned the House Committee on Military Affairs in the usual way. "To send our troops into war as they are, without guns or ammunition, would be absolute slaughter." It was the Federal Army to which the speaker referred. Of the National Guard, or forces of the several States, called out on the Mexican Border, General Wood reported to the War Department that ''only 25 per cent, of these can be reckoned as reasonably instructed soldiers." The Kentucky and Georgia Guards showed 50 per cent, of physical rejections. Of the 8th Ohio Infantry, 500 men were unfit. It was no wonder, therefore, that on the march Virginia lay down in companies; New York shed 90 men in 6 miles of the open road. Thousands had no uniform ; thousands more had never fired a service rifle in their lives.

But why were such troops employed in a national emergency? In order to give the Regular Army a chance to recruit and make ready; it was at that time 34,307 men below its peace strength under the new law. On the other hand, the Navy was 2000 officers and 60,000 men short, so that when the Arizona went into commission she retired three older battleships, absorbing their crews and putting to sea short-handed herself. Such is the monotonous story of both Services.

The Washington Bureaux are full of secret reports pigeon-holed by a genial sin of habit. Here is one such warning from Secretary of War Dickinson and his Chief of Staff: ''A foreign country," the House Committee was informed, ** could land 200,000 veterans on our Western Coast in thirty days. To meet this invasion the three States west of the Rockies (California, Oregon, and AVashington) could only muster 3000 Regulars and 5000 Militia; these last of little use, and all lacking transport and munitions." Still more alarming were reports upon the coast-defence artillery. The whole continent was more or less defenceless, although millions of money were spent, and the Washington Bureaux issued rosy reports to the papers.