The Spirit of Lafayette Part 2

Upon a return visit to America in 1784, speaking to a deputation from the Pennsylvania Legislature, he said: "Now that the great work is accomplished let us mutually congratulate ourselves on the federal union which this peace has cemented, and upon which the importance, the power, and the riches of this beautiful country rest; that union is the bond which will continue to preserve brotherly love and reciprocal friends.h.i.+p among the citizens of the states. I shall be happy to receive the command of this Republic at every period of my existence and in whatever part of the world I may be; my zeal for its prosperity is only equalled by my grat.i.tude and respect." A statement from his reply to a special committee appointed by Congress to wait upon him shows the same feeling: "May this immense temple of freedom ever stand a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, and a sanctuary for the rights of mankind."

The confederation in 1776 of the thirteen separate colonies of the western world was a union of all the then existing democracies of a hemisphere, to insure mutual protection and peace. Since then, democracy has been born in the Old World. In its common cause it knows no nationality. Lafayette is the symbol of its internationalism. In the time of our greatest stress he crossed the ocean to us, saying: "Now is precisely the moment to serve your cause." To-day democracy in France is bleeding to death. Throughout Europe, a.s.sailed in front by the giant of Prussian militarism and stabbed in the back by a.s.sa.s.sins conducting an insidious and treacherous peace propaganda, it is staggering under the combined attack. The spirit of Lafayette, the democrat, calls to us across that same ocean. The bugles of the heavens ring out. The days of '76 are born again. Once more is heard the battle-cry of the Republic.

Where his spirit calls, our armies go. And when the great work is accomplished, we shall cement the union which he began.

X

But is democracy worth preserving? How fares that intangible something which was the inspiration of this man's living? Democracy, the right of people to govern themselves, as opposed to their control by a self-appointed few--is it a failure or a success? Has it proved itself worth the dedication of this soldier spirit?

The French, for themselves, have answered the question at the Battle of the Marne and at Verdun. But how about America? Has the great American democracy proved a success, as compared with government by autocracy--for example, as compared with the government of Germany by the Prussian military autocracy, headed by the House of Hohenzollern?

More than a century has pa.s.sed since the surrender of Cornwallis. Since then in physical growth and material success the democracy of the United States has more than fulfilled the highest hopes. At that time these United States were only a strip along the eastern seaboard, bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the west by an unexplored wilderness; thirteen spa.r.s.ely settled states, the settlements widely separated from each other, with a population of less than four million persons. Now the wilderness is overcome. By the Louisiana Purchase we acquired the Great Southwest. For a pittance we bought the wastes of Alaska and then found them to be the gold fields of the world. The Philippines, with an area of one hundred and fifteen thousand square miles, and the Hawaiian Islands mark the extension of our western boundaries. Cuba is under our immediate protection. Porto Rico is part of us, and likewise the Danish West Indies. In Central America we have built the Panama Ca.n.a.l. By the Monroe Doctrine we are the protectors from foreign interference of all of Central and South America. Our population has grown to more than one hundred million souls. Our material wealth is the greatest of any single nation in the world.

Does this const.i.tute success? Look on the other side of the picture. Our form of national government has been notoriously inefficient--taking Germany as the standard. Our state governments at their best are mediocre, while at their worst they stand pitifully paralyzed before mob law. Our unpunished lynchings of coloured people, innocent as well as guilty, make us contemptible in the eyes of the civilized world. No other government on earth remains silent and helpless while its citizens a.s.semble as for a holiday and burn a criminal at the stake. Our munic.i.p.alities are largely rotten with graft, and the graft is accompanied by its inevitable handmaids, extravagance and inefficiency.

Enormous wealth, in the hands of a few, dwells side by side with extreme poverty. Our cities are overcrowded, and the country of Whittier, where

"Shut in from all the world without We sat the clean-winged hearth about,"

is handed over to the huts and shanties of immigrants. Capital fights labour and labour fights capital. Politics are such that most men avoid them. The standard of work is not how well you can do your job, but how much you can make out of it. Is this democracy a success?

In answer to this, however, does not an inner consciousness in each of us, perhaps the spirit of Lafayette and perhaps our own, perhaps the whispering of an unseen, great, and infinite power, tell us that the really relevant question is not whether we have yet achieved success, but whether a successful democracy is worth striving for? If, however, I should be obliged to answer the question by "Yes" or "No" I would say, "Yes, it is a success!"

The best route for the development of any man lies along the hard and th.o.r.n.y road of self-development. In the end, self-development, by dint of hard work and mistakes, produces the best man, provided he has the courage to "see it through." Nations are merely big collections of individuals. In the end this self-development produces the best nation.

The road is filled with difficulties, but so are most roads to goals that are worth reaching.

Our national government may have been inefficient in its details, but taken as a whole it has created a country which for generations has been a haven for the oppressed of the world. How many hundred thousand Germans have immigrated to America? How many Americans have ever emigrated to Germany? We have lynchings in the South, but no other country was ever left a more hideous problem of slavery, and in 1861 when the supreme test came the government rose to it; no one but a visionary can expect an immediate Utopian readjustment. Our munic.i.p.alities abound in graft, but what country before ours ever faced the problem of absorbing annually the enormous flood of unlettered immigrants that is unceasingly poured upon us by the Old World. The wonder is not that we have graft, but that we have not more graft. We have great wealth and extreme poverty, but they are due to unusual economic causes, namely: great national resources on the one hand, and ceaseless immigration on the other. Our cities are overcrowded and our standards of work are superficial, but would this be cured by a despotism?

And always we have the hope that goes with liberty, the undying strength that accompanies the knowledge that you are master of your own soul. A good despot at the head of a military autocracy may for the time being make the most efficient government in the world; certainly a bad despot at the head of a military autocracy makes the worst government. But I will never believe that the total surrender of the individual to the guiding hand of a despotic autocracy makes in the end for the progress of the whole. History shows it to be untrue; the never-ceasing efforts of democracy, as endless as the waves of the sea, show that despotic autocracy cannot last; and the h.e.l.l let loose upon earth by Prussian autocracy, its modern exponent, clinches the falsity of its creed for all but the intoxicated or maniacs.

XI

Now has arisen the Menace, the eternal foe of a free people, the Prussian Creed. The following is a composite statement of Prussianism: "compiled sentence by sentence from the utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his generals, professors, editors, and Nietzsche, part of it said in cold blood, years before this war, and all of it a declaration of faith now being ratified by action." It is taken word for word from the eleventh chapter of Owen Wister's remarkable work "The Pentecost of Calamity,"[A] and is the most concise statement of the Menace that I have seen.

[A] "The Pentecost of Calamity," by Owen Wister. The Macmillan Company.

"We Hohenzollerns take our crown from G.o.d alone. On me the Spirit of G.o.d has descended. I regard my whole ... task as appointed by heaven. Who opposes me I shall crush to pieces. Nothing must be settled in this world without the intervention ... of ... the German Emperor. He who listens to public opinion runs a danger of inflicting immense harm on ... the State. When one occupies certain positions in the world one ought to make dupes rather than friends. Christian morality cannot be political. Treaties are only a disguise to conceal other political aims.

Remember that the German people are the chosen of G.o.d.

"Might is right and ... is decided by war. Every youth who enters a beer-drinking and duelling club will receive the true direction of his life. War in itself is a good thing. G.o.d will see to it that war always recurs. The efforts directed toward the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe is only a secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one good; the infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must be conducted as ruthlessly as possible.

"The Belgians should not be shot _dead_. They should be ... so left as to make impossible all hope of recovery. The troops are to treat the Belgian civil population with unrelenting severity and frightfulness.

Weak nations have not the same right to live as powerful ... nations.

The world has no longer need of little nationalities. We Germans have little esteem and less respect ... for Holland. We need to enlarge our colonial possessions; such territorial acquisitions we can only realize at the cost of other states.

"Russia must no longer be our frontier. The Polish press should be annihilated ... likewise the French and Danish.... The Poles should be allowed ... three privileges: to pay taxes, serve in the army, and shut their jaws. France must be so completely crushed that she will never again cross our path. You must remember that we have not come to make war on the French people, but to bring them the higher Civilization. The French have shown themselves decadent and without respect for the Divine law. Against England we fight for booty. Our real enemy is England. We have to ... crush absolutely perfidious Albion ... subdue her to such an extent that her influence all over the world is broken forever.

"German should replace English as the world language. English, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d tongue ... must be swept into the remotest corners ... until it has returned to its original elements of an insignificant pirate dialect. The German language acts as a blessing which, coming direct from the hand of G.o.d, sinks into the heart like a precious balm. To us, more than any other nation, is intrusted the true structure of human existence. Our own country, by employing military power, has attained a degree of Culture which it could never have reached by peaceful means.

"The civilization of mankind suffers every time a German becomes an American. Let us drop our miserable attempts to excuse Germany's action.

We willed it. Our might shall create a new law in Europe. It is Germany that strikes. We are morally and intellectually superior beyond all comparison.... We must ... fight with Russian beasts, English mercenaries, and Belgian fanatics. We have nothing to apologize for. It is no consequence whatever if all the monuments ever created, all the pictures ever painted, all the buildings ever erected by the great architects of the world, be destroyed.... The ugliest stone placed to mark the burial of a German grenadier is a more glorious monument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together. No respect for the tombs of Shakespeare, Newton, and Faraday.

"They call us barbarians. What of it? The German claim must be: ...

Education to hate ... Organization of hatred ... Education to the desire for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and false shame.... To us is given faith, hope, and hatred; but hatred is the greatest among them."

The German war code, introduction, paragraph three, reads as follows: "A war conducted with energy cannot be directed merely against the combatants of the enemy state, and the positions which they occupy, but will in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material resources of the latter."

XII

We are at war. On April 6, 1917, the democracy of the United States of America formally declared war against the autocracy of Germany. What are we fighting for?

Two brutes in the shape of men engage in a savage, drunken brawl.

b.l.o.o.d.y, cursing, dishevelled, with swollen and distorted features, and screaming their anathemas of drunken hate, they fight with the ferocity of beasts. Beasts they are.

A bully, a degenerate, a thug of the city, a brigand of the country, a horse thief of the western plains, attacks a weaker and unprepared victim. A man with red blood in his veins sees the a.s.sault, and attacks the attacker with strength enough to save the victim, arrest the disturber of the peace, and prevent a repet.i.tion of the offense. He has been engaged in a fight, but he is not a beast.

The spirit of Lafayette brought him to America to fight for democracy; he was a hard fighter but he was not a beast. And now, against that calculating and brutal power which with the treachery of a tiger of the jungle and all the devilish ingenuity of the highest Kultur has a.s.saulted the peace of the world, the armies of America are led by the spirit of Lafayette.

For years the Prussian military autocracy has been preparing for the leap upon its victim. The power to declare war has been kept solely and exclusively in the hands of the military autocracy. It is responsible to no one. The great ma.s.s of people must do as they are commanded; obeying, not laws made by themselves acting through their duly-elected representatives, but orders promulgated by a self-appointed few, the military autocracy of Prussia. Woe to the unfortunate victim who refuses to obey! With cold-blooded deliberation this military autocracy which controls the German people has for years been preparing its huge fighting machine. When the time to strike came, when the neighbouring countries were least prepared to resist, Germany was deluged with the lie that the German nation was attacked, the sc.r.a.p of paper otherwise called a treaty was torn up, and the tiger sprang. The world knows the result.

We enter the war for two motives, one to preserve the democracies of Europe, the other for our own preservation. The sinking of our s.h.i.+ps by submarines was merely the immediate cause, the match that lit the fire, just as the firing on Fort Sumter was the proximate but not the real cause of our Civil War. The real cause of our Civil War was, as Lincoln said, because this nation "could not endure half slave and half free."

The real cause of the present World War is because civilization cannot endure half military autocracy and half free democracy. "The world must be made safe for democracy." We fight to save the intended victims of Prussianism, to arrest the disturber of the peace, and prevent a repet.i.tion of the offense.

The President of the United States in his great message, delivered in the Congress of the United States on the second day of April, 1917, in which he advised the Congress to accept the status of belligerent thrust upon us by the acts of the Imperial Government of Germany in unlawfully sinking our s.h.i.+ps and killing our citizens, said: "Let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are.... Our object ... is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people....

"We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power.... The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them."

XIII

We are at war with the Menace. It is the same Menace--now grown to a monster with four heads dominated by one brain--that over a hundred years ago invited Lafayette to its palace at Potsdam to review the Prussian army, and then cynically suggested to him an end upon the scaffold. It is the same Menace, now from its four mouths spitting its spume of hate upon a chaotic world, that thrust the body of the champion of democracy into a dungeon, but could not kill his soul. Our present war against this creature of evil is but one more act in the drama begun by the spirit of Lafayette.

How shall this act end? Listen to this. I quote largely from Andre Cheradame, a man who deals not in plat.i.tudes and conceits to tickle the vanity of a nation, but in cold, hard facts.

In 1914, when the war began, Prussian militarism controlled Germany, with a population of sixty-eight millions; and Germany had one ally, Austria-Hungary, of whose thirty million people a majority were directly antagonistic to Berlin. By the spring of 1915 it had extended and organized its power among these thirty million Austro-Hungarians, who until that time had taken orders from their own independent military chiefs. In the fall of 1915 it joined hands with Bulgaria and Turkey over the corpse of Serbia. Thus, since the beginning of the war, has been formed the Quadruple Alliance, dominated by Prussian militarism.