« i i a a - *, 
 
 ill
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE WAR 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NEW AGE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIS MASON WEST 
 
 SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND HEAD OF THE 
 
 DEPARTMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF MINNESOTA 
 
 o>Kc 
 
 ALLYN and BACON 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1919. 
 BY WILLIS MASON WEST 
 
 Xortoooti }{Jrcaa 
 
 J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 fill 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 A record of the World War as early as this must be incom- 
 plete and more or less marked by positive errors. Still I think 
 it worth while to put a brief survey at once into the hands of 
 American students, without waiting for the fuller light that 
 future years will bring. The war has aroused in high-school 
 boys and girls a splendid fervor for freedom and democracy. 
 The magnificent story of America's part in that war, however 
 imperfectly told, should give food to nourish and harden that 
 impulsive fervor into intelligent and lasting resolve. 
 
 I acknowledge here my very great debt to my friend and 
 former colleague, William Stearns Davis. Through his kind- 
 ness I have been enabled to read in manuscript, and to make 
 free use of, the admirable chapter on the campaigns of the war 
 that is to appear in the new edition of his Roots of the War. 
 
 Willis Mason West. 
 
 Windago Farm, 
 August 1, 1919. 
 
 Ill 
 
 1 598084
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction — Yesterday and To-day . 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I Prussian Autocracy and Militarism 
 
 II Making "Alliances" for Peace 
 
 III The Balkans 
 
 IV Germany Wills the War 
 V The First Year, 1914 
 
 VI The Second Year, 1915 
 
 VII The Third Year, 1916 
 
 VIII The Fourth Year, 1917 
 
 IX The Last Year, 1918 
 
 X War Efficiency of a Democracy 
 
 XI The World League and New Europe 
 
 XII Healing Forces .... 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 13 
 
 22 
 37 
 43 
 55 
 59 
 71 
 82 
 92 
 106
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 YESTEEDAY AND TO-DAY 
 
 The transition from one era to another is not seen clearly as 
 a rule until long after. We talk glibly now of the beginning 
 of Modern history, or of the Renaissance ; but the men who 
 lived in the year 400 a.d., or 1300, were not many of them 
 at that time aware of unusual change. To-day, however, as 
 never before in human history, old institutions and customs and 
 ideas are visibly tottering and sliding into ruin, and new 
 arrangements in society and government are springing into 
 life. Before our eyes, the world is passing into a new age. 
 
 The event that especially marks the end of the old era is the 
 World War of 1911^-1918. That war discredited the old balance- 
 of-power theory, the age-long system of military preparedness 
 by hostile groups of allied nations, as the best safeguard of 
 world peace ; and, indirectly, it overthrew autocracy in govern- 
 ment and infinitely weakened autocracy in industry. It proved 
 a war for democracy and for peace. And the event that es- 
 pecially marks the opening of the new era is the adoption of the 
 plan for a League of Nations by the Peace Congress of 1919. 
 These two mighty events, with closely related movements, are 
 the theme of this small volume.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 How 
 Prussia 
 found profit 
 
 German 
 Liberals, 
 too, accept 
 militarism 
 for its profits 
 
 The German 
 Empire an 
 autocracy 
 
 PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM — THE 
 TWIN MONSTERS THAT THREATENED THE WORLD 
 
 The national industry of Prussia is war. — Mirabeau. 
 
 Every student knows how Bismarck, supported by the 
 divine-right monarch, William I of Prussia, forged and re- 
 fashioned the Prussian army in 1861-1864. Bismarck did this 
 by overriding the Prussian constitution for four years, against 
 the valiant opposition of the Prussian parliament. At any 
 moment, if the King had weakened, or if revolution had begun, 
 the Liberals would have sent Bismarck to the scaffold — as 
 they constantly threatened. Bismarck knew that he must 
 show his new tool profitable quickly ; and ruthlessly and trickily 
 he forced war against Denmark in 1864 and against Austria 
 in 1866. 
 
 These wars doubled Prussia in size and wealth, and made 
 her mistress of Germany. To their shame, the old Prussian 
 Liberals accepted this dazzling bribe : since militarism and 
 autocracy had proven profitable, they ceased to oppose and be- 
 gan to applaud. Then in 1870-1871, Bismarck crushed France, 
 and made Germany, so long weak and despised, the mightiest 
 force in European politics. And, to their shame, German 
 Liberals accepted Prussianism greedily for the sake of these 
 profits. 
 
 The German Empire, which lasted from 1871 to 1918, was 
 Bismarck's work as the product of these wars. It was a federal 
 state, but not a " free " state. Its substates were mostly 
 monarchies, and the greatest of them, Prussia, equal to three 
 fifths of all, was virtually a divine-right autocracy. The King 
 of Prussia was ex-officio Emperor; and his autocratic power 
 
 2
 
 PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 3 
 
 in Prussia went far of itself toward making him an autocrat in 
 the Empire. There was a federal parliament, chosen by man- 
 hood suffrage, but that body was little more than a debating 
 society. 
 
 The imperial autocracy was frugal, and claimed to be paternal. 
 It made justice easy to secure ; it guarded against food adultera- 
 tion — before most other countries awoke to this need ; and 
 in other ways it cared for the public health and material com- 
 fort. 
 
 But alongside this watchful paternalism, there were grievous 
 faults. Germany had been jnade by violence and fraud, and 
 the result showed in a spirit of brutal militarism, in police rule, 
 and in the predominance of the methods of the drill-sergeant 
 in private life. There was little security for personal rights. 
 Trial by jury, freedom of the press, freedom of public meetings, 
 and free speech existed in only a limited degree. 
 
 The Kaiser (Emperor), head of the government and of the Kaiser Wil- 
 army, claimed obedience as of divine right. This was pre- helm II( 
 
 1888—1918 
 
 eminently true of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to the throne 
 in 1888. As a youth he had been a great admirer of Bismarck, 
 who, as Chancellor, was still guiding German policy ; but it 
 soon became plain that the two men were each too masterful 
 to work together. In 1890, the Kaiser curtly dismissed the old 
 Chancellor from office, and from that time to the end he himself 
 was supposed to control the policy of the Empire. William 
 repeatedly stated the divine-right theory in as striking a form as 
 ever did James I of England or Louis XIV of France two or three 
 centuries ago. " On me, as German Emperor," he told his 
 soldiers, " the spirit of God has descended, I am His sword and 
 His vice-regent." " All-Highest " was a recognized form of 
 address for the Emperor. And the phrase ironically attributed 
 to him, — " Me and Gott," — is no great exaggeration of the 
 patronizing tone in which he often referred to the Almighty as 
 a partner — as in an address at Berlin in 1901 : " We shall 
 conquer, even though we be surrounded by enemies ; for there 
 lives a powerful ally, the old, good God in heaven, who, ever
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 since the time of the Great Elector, has always been on our 
 side." 
 The junkers This autocracy was upheld most of all by the landed squires, 
 or junkers. Says Dr. Davis (Roots of the War, 188), — "A 
 typical junker was the owner of a large landed property with a 
 picturesque and uncomfortable ancient schloss (castle) dominat- 
 ing a village or town, where peasant children scrambled with 
 pigs and chickens in the great dungheaps before the houses. 
 He might come to enjoy city life. . . . He might reform his 
 agricultural methods. . . . None the less he remained heart 
 and soul a country aristocrat . . . accustomed to curse his 
 inferiors, to cane his servants, and to despise all who lived by 
 trade." 
 
 This class furnished the officers of the army. For most of 
 them, indeed, the army was the only possible career. Pay was 
 pitifully small, and the nobles were poor. But the officer's 
 social standing made it easy for him to find a wife among the 
 daughters of wealthy merchants. No officer, however, could 
 make such a marriage until a committee of higher officers had 
 approved the bride — and the dower which was to atone for her 
 ignoble blood. 
 
 The autocracy had one other pillar. The junkers were 
 largely Prussian and rural. But after 1870 Germany began 
 to grow into a city Germany. The " industrial revolution," 
 the factory system, which had grown up in England before 1800 
 and in France by 1825, did not begin to make headway in Ger- 
 many until nearly 1870. Then, indeed, manufactures and 
 trade grew by leaps — aided by the coal and iron of Alsace- 
 Lorraine and by subsidies from the huge war indemnity just 
 then robbed of France. Science became the servant of manu- 
 factures as it had not before been in any country. Especially 
 was chemistry applied successfully to industries like the 
 manufacture of dyes — which became practically a German 
 monopoly. The whole artisan class, too, were trained to 
 " efficiency " in trade schools, — which were distinctly class 
 schools, suited on this German plan to an undemocratic land
 
 PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 5 
 
 only, in which the son of an artisan must look for no " higher " 
 station than his father. 
 
 All this meant a tremendous growth of cities. Hamburg 
 grew from 350,000 people in 1870 to 1,000,000 in 1910; Berlin 
 from 820,000 to 2,000,000 ; Essen from 50,000 to 300,000 ; while 
 many wholly new centers of trade appeared where had been 
 only farming hamlets. The population of the Empire doubled 
 in these forty years, and all this increase was a city increase — 
 which meant that the old city population was multiplied four- 
 fold. Along with this change, there appeared a new figure in 
 German life, the princely manufacturing capitalist. After 1880, 
 the thousands of this class took their place — alongside the 
 junker nobility — as a chief support of German autocracy with 
 a vivid expectation of favor to be received in form of special 
 privileges. 1 
 
 The junker and the capitalist made public opinion ; but the The Prus- 
 autocracy had also its physical arm. After 1866, the Prussian sia °^ m y 
 army system was extended over all Germany. The funda- 
 mental principle was the universal obligation of all males to 
 serve. The army was the armed nation. At twenty each man 
 was supposed to enter the ranks for two years' active service. 
 For five years more he was a member of the " active reserves," 
 with two months in camp each year. These reserves were to 
 be called out for regular service in case of war. For twelve 
 years more he was listed in the territorial reserve — liable for 
 garrison duty in time of war, and even for front rank service 
 in special need. Exemption from training was usually allowed 
 to the only son of a dependent widow, to students of theology, 
 and to those unfit because of physical defects. 
 
 The Prussian victories of 1866 and 1870 convinced all Europe 
 of the superiority of this system over the old professional armies, 
 
 1 The war revealed this class as gross exploiters, fattening on their coun- 
 try's need. In no other land did war-profiteering prosper on so large a 
 scale as in Germany, where the general misery was so terrible. This growth 
 of huge war-fortunes was shown plainly by the government's income-tax 
 reports in 1918, as published in German papers.
 
 6 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Europe and nearly every state in Europe soon adopted it, with slight 
 
 German * variations as to age and exemptions. Europe became a group 
 army system of armed camps. Along with this went ever-increasing atten- 
 tion to improved rifles, larger cannon, and other costly arma- 
 ment. The burden was enormous, and the direct cost was 
 far less than the indirect cost involved in withdrawing so 
 large a part of each man's best years from productive work. 
 England, trusting to her navy, and the United States, trusting 
 to her position, were the only large countries that dared refuse 
 the crushing burden — and for England the cost of her navy 
 was almost as serious. Certain good results, no doubt, as 
 well as many evil ones, came from the military discipline ; but 
 on the whole that army system was the most woeful waste of 
 human energy the world ever saw. 
 
 Worse still, this militarism was a constant temptation to 
 war ; and, in Germany, the worst result was the way in which it 
 helped to make the masses servile in private life under the rule 
 of king, junker, and policeman. Flogging and other brutal 
 punishment for slight offenses was the rule in the Prussian army ; 
 and there are reliably reported numerous cases of suicide by 
 soldiers who were so mistreated by officers that they could no 
 longer live in decent self-respect. Those who submitted to 
 such " discipline " became slaves. 
 
 Militarism was one phase of the Prussian danger to the 
 world, as autocracy was the other phase. Militarism is 
 not the same thing as having a large army, though it is 
 likely to grow out of having one. Militarism is a state of 
 mind regarding the army : a habit of thinking that the army 
 is the most important matter, and of exalting it above the 
 civil powers at home, and of trusting to force in relations 
 with other nations rather than to justice and good will and 
 reason. In the long run, too, militarism leads to a servile 
 attitude on the part of the people toward army officers, 
 wholly incompatible with democracy. 1 
 
 ■War Encyclopedia, under "Militarism" and " Prussianism " ; and C. 
 Altschul's German Militarism and Its German Critics, esp. pp. 20-21.
 
 PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 7 
 
 Two results of the new commercial and industrial forces 
 in German life must be noted before we are ready to understand 
 Germany in the war and after. 
 
 1. The new manufacturers clamored for sole markets. So Germany's 
 
 Germany wished a colonial empire. In 1884 Bismarck yielded effort . for 
 
 J c ^ colonial em- 
 
 to this demand, and after 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm supported it pire 
 even more ardently. In 1883 Germany had no foot of terri- 
 tory outside Europe. Thirty years later she had more than a 
 million square miles — located in East Africa, Southwest Africa, 
 Central Africa, in China about the city of Kiau Chow in the 
 Shantung peninsula, and in many rich islands in the Pacific. 
 These non-European possessions contained in 1910 some 14 
 million inhabitants (besides over 40 millions more in districts 
 like Shantung, which were recognized as German " spheres 
 of influence ") ; but only some 20,000 of all these were whites. 
 And Germany proved herself absolutely unfit to rule subject 
 races, turning them into slaves, to secure ivory, rubber, and 
 copra, and putting down native risings with medieval cruelty 
 reinforced by modern efficiency. 
 
 2. Kaiser Wilhelm II adopted another new policy. He Growth of 
 determined to make Germany a great naval power. He en- nav^po^er 
 larged and fortified the Kiel Canal, near the base of the Danish 
 peninsula, from the North Sea to the Baltic, so that his navy 
 
 might have perfect protection and so that it might instantly 
 concentrate in either sea. And year by year, against the violent 
 resistance of the Socialists in the Reichstag, he forced through 
 huge appropriations to construct more superdreadnaughts. 
 
 The pretext for this naval policy was the need to protect the 
 new trade and new colonies. The real motive, often frankly 
 confessed, was, at the first chance, to destroy England and 
 weaken the United States. Indeed the Kaiser and his advisers 
 said openly that, had their fleet been ready, they would have 
 attacked the United States during our Spanish War, to destroy 
 the Monroe Doctrine with its check upon German plans in South 
 America (cf. West's American People, §§ 762, 771). In 1902 
 Germany had a difficulty with Venezuela, and showed plain
 
 8 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 intention to seize at least a port there. President Roosevelt 
 sent the American fleet, under Dewey, into Venezuelan waters 
 and gave the Germans forty-eight hours to withdraw. His 
 somewhat peremptory method was successful. But from that 
 time, we are told, 1 German naval officers were keenly interested 
 in New York's military defenses. 
 
 Germany Some survey like the foregoing is needful to guard us against 
 
 an ng an ^ e „ t vrannv f names." England and Germany in 1914 were 
 both " constitutional monarchies " ; but that does not mean 
 that they were in any way alike, in government or society. Eng- 
 land had a democratic government, in which the monarchic and 
 aristocratic survivals were practically powerless — mere matters 
 of form : the German Empire was practically an absolutism. 
 England's ideals were based upon industry and world-peace : 
 Germany's ideals were based upon militarism and conquest. 
 Englishmen thought of the " state " as a condition for the full 
 development of the individual man : Germans thought of 
 individual men as existing primarily for the sake of the ab- 
 solutist state. German capitalism was perhaps in itself no 
 more grasping and greedy than like forces in other countries. 
 But in England, America, or France, those forces must cease 
 to work evil whenever the majority of the people are wise enough 
 and good enough to will it so — and vote so : in Germany that 
 capitalistic greed was backed by an irresistible military despotism 
 against which the masses were powerless, either by ballots or 
 bullets. 
 
 For Further Readings. — References on the spirit of German 
 autocracy are given at the close of chapter iv. On the imperial 
 German government, details are given in West's Modern World, 
 pp. 654-661. 
 
 1 Davis, Roots of the War, 360.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MAKING "ALLIANCES" FOR PEACE 
 
 By 1900, Europe had fallen into two hostile camps, the Triple 
 Alliance and the Triple Entente. 
 
 1. Before Bismarck fell from power, he had built the Triple The Triple 
 Alliance. After 1871 he sought to isolate France, so as to keep ^ i&nce 
 her from finding any ally in a possible " war of revenge." To 
 this end he cultivated friendship with all other European powers, 
 but especially with Russia and Austria. Austria he had beaten 
 in war only a few years earlier (1866) ; but he had treated her 
 with marked gentleness in the peace treaty, and the ruling 
 German element in Austria was quite ready now to find backing 
 in the powerful and successful German Empire. 
 
 Soon, however, Bismarck found that he must choose between Bismarck 
 
 Austria and Russia. These two were bitter rivals for control ? ref f5 s , 
 
 Austria to 
 
 in the Balkans. The Slav peoples there, recently freed from Russia 
 the Turks, looked naturally to Russia, who had won their 
 freedom for them, as the " Big Brother " of all Slavs and all 
 Greek religionists. But Austria, shut out now from control 
 in Central Europe, was bent upon aggrandizement to the South. 
 In particular her statesmen meant to win a strip of territory 
 through to Salonika, on the Aegean, so that, with a railroad 
 thither, they might control the rich Aegean trade. If Serbia 
 were able to fulfill her dream of a South Slav state reaching to 
 the Adriatic, she would interpose an inseparable Slav barrier 
 to this plan, right across the path of Austria's ambition. Ac- 
 cordingly Austria sought always to keep Serbia weak and small ; 
 while Russia, hating Austria even more than she loved the 
 Balkan Slavs, backed Serbia. 
 
 9
 
 10 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Italy drawn 
 into Bis- 
 marck's 
 league 
 
 The Dual 
 Alliance of 
 1884 
 
 England's 
 " splendid 
 isolation " 
 
 This rivalry between Austria and Russia became so acute 
 by 1879 that there was always danger of war; and in that 
 year Bismarck chose to side with Austria as the surer ally. 
 Accordingly he formed a definite written alliance with Austria 
 to the effect that Germany would help Austria in case of war 
 with Russia, and Austria would help Germany in case she were 
 attacked by France and any other Power. 
 
 Three years later, Bismarck drew Italy into the league, 
 making it the Triple Alliance. Italy was so bitterly enraged at 
 the French seizure of Tunis in that year, in flat disregard of 
 Italian imperialistic ambitions there, that she laid aside her 
 ancient differences with Austria for a time and agreed to aid 
 the central empires in any war in which they should be attacked 
 by two or more powers — in return for backing in her colonial 
 ambitions. 
 
 2. Then Russia and France, each isolated in Europe, drew 
 together for mutual protection into a " Dual Alliance " (1884). 
 But Bismarck hoped to draw England into his " triple " 
 league ; and his hope was not unreasonable. In the eighties 
 and nineties, England and France were bitter rivals in Africa, 
 and England and Russia, in Asia. England, however, clung 
 to a proud policy of " splendid isolation." Then, after Bis- 
 marck's fall, she began to see in the German Emperor's colonial 
 ambitions a more threatening rival than France ; and Russia's 
 defeat by Japan made Russia less dangerous. German mili- 
 tarism was deeply hateful to English democracy, and Germany's 
 new commercial activity threatened England's trade, while the 
 new navy that the Kaiser was building could be meant only to 
 work England's destruction. Moreover, England and France 
 were daily coming to a better understanding, and in 1903 a 
 sweeping arbitration treaty put any war between them almost 
 out of the question. Soon afterward, England and Russia 
 succeeded in agreeing upon a line in Persia which should sepa- 
 rate the "influence" of one power in that country from the " in- 
 fluence " of the other, so removing all immediate prospect of 
 trouble between the two (1910).
 
 "ALLIANCES" FOR PEACE 11 
 
 From this time the Dual Alliance became the Triple Entente The Triple 
 — England, France, and Russia. England was not bound by Entente 
 definite treaty to give either country aid in war; but it was 
 plain that France and Russia were her friends, and that she 
 could not look on quietly and see her friends crushed by 
 Germany — which was showing marked hostility to her. 
 
 Each of the two huge armed leagues always protested that The al- 
 its aim was peace. No doubt many men in both — and nearly liances and 
 all in one — did shrink from precipitating a conflict between 
 such enormous forces under the new conditions of army or- 
 ganization, quick transportation, and deadly explosives. For 
 half a century (1871-1914), except for the minor struggles in 
 the half-savage Balkans, Europe rested in an " armed peace." 
 
 But this " peace " was based upon fear, and it was costly. Mild efforts 
 
 Year by vear, each alliance strove to make its armies and navies for world 
 
 peace 
 mightier than the other's. Huge and huger cannon were in- 
 vented, only to be cast into the scrap heap for still huger ones. 
 A dreadnaught costing millions was scrapped in a few months 
 by some costlier design. The burden upon the workers and 
 the evil moral influences of such armaments were only less 
 than the burden and evil of war. In every land voices began 
 to cry out that it was all needless : that the world was too 
 Christian and too wise ever again to let itself be desolated by a 
 great war. And then came some interesting efforts to find new 
 machinery by which to guard against war — in standing arbi- 
 tration treaties, permanent international tribunals like the 
 Hague Court, and occasional World Congresses. 
 
 Too soon, however, it was made plain, that, noble as these Germany 
 
 efforts were, they were insufficient, in the absence of a more defeats 
 
 proposals 
 organized world opinion and organized world force and of radical for disarma- 
 
 measures of disarmament. And at the Hague Congresses in ment 
 
 1899 and in 1907, the earnest proposals for disarmament made 
 
 by England and the United States failed of result because of 
 
 the implacable opposition of Germany and Austria. It is 
 
 significant, too, that Germany repeatedly refused to enter into 
 
 standing arbitration treaties with the United States, though
 
 12 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 such treaties had been concluded between us and every other 
 important country. 
 Army in- The year 1913, after some local wars in the Balkans, saw a 
 
 Europe in new outburst of militarism. Germany adopted a new army 
 1913 bill planning an increase of the army in peace from 650,000 to 
 
 870,000, with an immense money appropriation. 1 Three weeks 
 later (July 20), France, in terror, raised her term of active 
 service from two years to three, adding fifty per cent to her 
 forces under arms. Austria and Russia adopted plans for 
 similar reorganization of their armies. Even little Belgium, 
 alarmed at the building of German railways to her border — at 
 vast expense and with no apparent purpose except for invasion 
 — adopted universal military service. Each country of course 
 found excuse and incitement to further efforts in the like 
 efforts by its rivals. In particular, German and Austrian 
 papers published frenzied articles on the danger with which 
 their countries were threatened by the proposed enormous in- 
 crease of Russia's army and by new Russian railways that ap- 
 parently looked to an invasion of Germany, just as German 
 roads looked to an invasion of Belgium and France. The 
 " balance " of power was a matter of unstable equilibrium. A 
 touch would tip it into universal war. 
 
 Within a year that war was precipitated by a trivial event in 
 the Balkans. 
 
 1 The Socialists in the Reichstag voted against the army bill, but im- 
 mediately afterward most of them voted for the appropriation. This in- 
 consistency has a partial explanation not wholly to their discredit. The new 
 taxes, for the first time in the history of the Empire, bore heavily upon large 
 incomes and upon the landlords. The Socialists had long advocated this 
 sort of taxation in vain.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BALKANS: THE SEED GROUND OP WAR 
 
 A century ago, all southeast Europe, beyond Austria and The Balkan 
 Russia, was part of Turkey. But the Turks were mere in- races 
 vaders. They were rulers, but not numerous in Europe except 
 near Constantinople, and they had no part in European civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 In no other part of the earth of so small extent was there The Greeks 
 such a mingling of distinct peoples — even apart from the 
 Turkish conquest. The land is puckered and crumpled into 
 a quaint network of interlacing mountains and valleys ; and 
 the inhabitants themselves were almost as much intermixed. 
 
 Besides the ruling Turk there were five distinct subject races. Roumanians 
 In the old Hellenic peninsula dwelt the Greeks, with the mem- 
 ories of their ancient greatness. Xorth of the Danube lay the 
 Roumanians, proud of their legendary descent from Roman 
 colonists in Dacia. Their language to-day is closer to the old 
 Latin than is any other living European language, although in 
 blood the people are no doubt now mainly Slav. Only half 
 their race lived in " Roumania." One fourth dwelt in Bessa- 
 rabia, which Russia had seized from the Turks in 1812 ; and 
 another fourth were in Transylvania, which Hungary had held 
 ever since she conquered it from the Turks in the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 Between these Greek and " Roman " peoples lay the Bul- 
 garians, the Serbs, and along the Adriatic just north of Greece, 
 the Albanians. These last were wild herdsmen, descendants Albanians 
 of the ancient Illyrians. For the most part they had adopted 
 Mohammedanism and they willingly supplied excellent troops 
 for the Turkish army ; but in other respects their poverty and 
 
 13
 
 14 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The Serbs 
 and their 
 divisions 
 
 Monte- 
 negrins 
 
 The Bul- 
 garians 
 
 their mountains made it possible for them to keep a rude sort 
 of self-rule, without much interference from Constantinople. 
 Serbs and Bulgars need a longer explanation. 
 
 The Serbs were the leading survivors of the conquering South 
 Slavs who settled in the Balkan regions in the sixth century. 
 They have long been imbued with a natural ambition to restore 
 their ancient empire as it stood when the Turk overthrew it in 
 the fatal battle of Kossova (1389). But even more than the 
 Roumanians, the South Slavs had been broken up by accidents 
 of war. The northwestern part, the Bosnians, had remained 
 independent longer than Serbia proper ; and then, when they 
 were conquered, their nobles became Mohammedans, to secure 
 Turkish favor, though the peasants remained Greek Christians 
 — like most of the subject peoples outside Albania. Other 
 northern parts of Serbia, lands of the Croats and Slovenes, 
 were reconquered from Turkey by Hungary in the eighteenth 
 century, and so were no longer part of the home land, to which 
 by race and language they belonged. Moreover, in the fast- 
 nesses of Montenegro (" Black Mountain ") dwelt some 200,000 
 half-savage Serbs who had never yielded to the Turks but had 
 kept their freedom at the cost of " five hundred years of 
 ferocious heroism." In Serbia itself, the Turks had for the 
 most part killed off the nobles. The village life was left, how- 
 ever, much as it had been of old. The people managed their 
 local matters in small democracies, and earned their living as 
 farmers and herdsmen of droves of pigs — for which, however, 
 they had no proper sale after Austrian jealousy shut them from 
 her markets. As in all Christian lands ruled by the Turk, 
 oppression and cruelty dwarfed their civilization. 
 
 East of Serbia, beyond a dividing mountain range, lay the 
 Bulgarians. The " Bulgars " came into the peninsula as 
 conquerors from central Asia some two centuries later than the 
 Slav Serbs. Originally they were baggy-trousered Asiatic 
 nomads, akin to Tartars and Turks, and to-day they have in- 
 tense pride in that ancient history as a race of conquerors. 
 But in blood they have 'been so absorbed by the Slavs among
 
 THE BALKANS 15 
 
 whom they settled that there is little real difference in race be- 
 tween them and Roumanian on the one side or Serb on the 
 other. 
 
 Still a long history of rivalry, warfare, and mutual cruelty Race ha- 
 has left an intense " race " hatred between Bulgars, Serbs, dairies 
 and Greeks ; and this hatred has been made hotter by the fact 
 that each one of the three has hoped to win for itself the 
 northern Aegean coast, as the Turkish power has decayed. 
 Turkish misrule has still further confused this perplexing 
 picture. During her centuries of control, to keep Bulgarians 
 and Serbs, either one, from rising unitedly against her, Turkey 
 has transplanted whole groups of Bulgarian villages into Serbia, 
 quite in the fashion of ancient Oriental despotisms, replacing 
 them with villages of transplanted Serbs — so that each sub- 
 ject race should always have enemies in its midst. 
 
 This is a proper place to survey the distinctive marks of 
 the four great divisions of European Slavs : (I) the Russians, 
 influenced by long Tartar domination in the middle ages, by 
 admixture with various border peoples, and by the Greek 
 Church; (2) the Poles, set off from the Russians by the 
 adoption of Latin Christianity and by German instead of 
 Tartar influence ; (3) the Bohemian and neighboring Slavic 
 peoples now known as Czecho-Slovaks, resembling the Poles 
 in their history but dominated in recent centuries by Aus- 
 trian Germans ; and (4) these South Slavs of the Balkans, 
 with a promising Greek influence in the early middle ages, 
 followed by a long and crushing subjection to the Turk 
 which has lasted in part to our day. 
 
 It is impossible to tell here the long agony of the century The subject 
 struggle by which the subject Balkan peoples finally threw off \*™l™ 
 the Turkish yoke, but some parts of the story are necessary. 
 The first successful revolt was the Greek rising in 1821-1828. 
 The intervention of England, Russia, and France compelled 
 Turkey to grant Greek independence ; and at the same time 
 Roumania and Serbia advanced to the position of merely tribu-
 
 16 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 " Bulgarian 
 Atrocities " 
 of 1876 
 
 Russia's at- 
 tempt to 
 free the 
 Balkans 
 
 Interference 
 by the Con- 
 gress of 
 Berlin, 1878 
 
 tary states, dependent upon Turkey but ruled by their own 
 princes. 
 
 The Crimean War (1850), in which France and England 
 attacked Russia, bolstered up the tottering Ottoman Empire 
 for a time, but a great collapse came twenty years later. The 
 Sultan had promised many reforms for his Christian subjects, 
 but these promises bore no fruit ; and in 1875-1876, the Serbs 
 in Bosnia and the Bulgarians rose for independence. There 
 followed the horrible events long known as the " Bulgarian 
 Atrocities." Turkish soldiers destroyed a hundred Bulgarian 
 villages with every form of devilish torture imaginable, and mas- 
 sacred 30,000 people, carrying off also thousands of Christian 
 girls into terrible slavery. 
 
 Then Serbia sprang to arms ; and Tsar Alexander II of 
 Russia declared war on Turkey (1877) — in full accord with the 
 demand of his people. The universal horror in Western Europe 
 at the crimes of the Turk prevented for a time any interfer- 
 ence ; and in ten months the Russian armies held the Turks at 
 their mercy. The Peace of San Stefano (1878) arranged for a 
 group of free Slav states in the peninsula and for the exclusion 
 of Turkey from Europe except for the city of Constantinople. 
 
 Alexander would probably have kept on to secure Con- 
 stantinople, had he not seen a growing danger of European 
 interference. And even now Europe did intervene. Austria 
 wanted a share of Balkan plunder ; England feared the advance 
 of Russia toward her communications with India ; and so the 
 Peace of San Stefano was torn up. The Congress of Berlin (1878), 
 dominated by Disraeli, the English Conservative, restored half 
 the freed Christian populations to their old slavery under the 
 Turk; handed over Bosnia to Austria to "administer" for 
 Turkey, with a solemn provision that Austria should never 
 annex the territory to her own realms ; and left the whole 
 Balkan district for the next third of a century in its old 
 anarchy, with only slight gains for Serbia and Bulgaria. In 
 fixing responsibility for the World War of 1914, this crime of 
 1878 cannot be wholly overlooked.
 
 THE BALKANS 17 
 
 It is only fair to note that while the English government Germany 
 under Disraeli was chiefly responsible for that crime, the Eng- succeeds to 
 lish people promptly repudiated it at the polls. Gladstone came place as the 
 forth from retirement to stump England against the " shameful I 1 e ° 
 alliance with Abdul the Assassin " ; and at the next elections 
 (1880), Disraeli was overthrown by Gladstone with huge ma- 
 jorities. The wrong to the Balkans could not then be undone, 1 
 but from this time England drew away from her old policy of 
 courting Turkish friendship — wherein her place was quickly 
 taken by Germany. 
 
 No part of her non-European empire interested German In order to 
 
 ambition so deeply as her advance into Asia Minor. This be- ™ in contro1 
 r *> in Asia 
 
 gan in earnest about 1900. Germany did not acquire actual Minor 
 title to territory there ; but she did secure from Turkey various 
 rich " concessions," guaranteeing her for long periods the sole 
 right to build and operate great railroads and to develop valuable 
 mining and oil properties. This " economic penetration " she 
 expected confidently to turn into political sovereignty. 
 
 To secure such concessions, Germany had sought the Turk's 
 favor in shameful ways. She loaned to the Sultan German 
 officers to reorganize and drill the Turkish armies, and sup- 
 plied them with the most modern arms to keep down the rising 
 Christian natives under his yoke — as in the Turkish war with 
 Greece for Crete in 1897. And in 1895 when new Armenian 
 massacres had roused England so that great public meetings 
 were calling for war upon Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm sent to the 
 Sultan his photograph and that of his wife, to show German 
 friendship and support. Germany knew that if she could keep 
 this position of defender of the tottering Ottoman Empire, she 
 could before long make that Empire into a vassal state. 
 
 The prospect of German dominance in Asia Minor brought Germany 
 
 Germany and Austria into closer sympathy in their Balkan 3 i? in L in . 
 
 policies. Austria's interference in those regions had been policy 
 
 purely bad. She aimed to keep the little Balkan states weak a ^f*" st . 
 r J m ^ a Greater 
 
 and mutually hostile to one another, and especially to prevent Serbia " 
 the growth of a " Greater Serbia," which might attract to itself
 
 18 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The 
 
 " Mittel- 
 Europa " 
 dream 
 
 Austria an- 
 nexes 
 Bosnia 
 
 Austria's dissatisfied Slav subjects. Now (1898, 1899), Ger- 
 many obtained concessions from Turkey for a railway from 
 " Berlin to Bagdad," to open up the fabulously rich Oriental 
 trade. A powerful Serbia, through which that line must pass, 
 might have checked that project. Thenceforward Germany 
 was ready to back Austria unreservedly in Balkan aggression, 
 or to use her as a cat's paw there. And in return for support 
 in the Balkans, Austria permitted herself to sink virtually into 
 a vassal state of Germany, following blindly her lead in all 
 other foreign relations. 
 
 Such was the origin of the German dream of a " Mittel- 
 Europa " empire, reaching across Europe from the North Sea 
 to the Aegean and the Black Seas, and on through Asia Minor 
 to the Euphrates. This meant German leadership over Austria 
 and Turkey and some sort of control by some of these states 
 over the Balkans. If this dream could be established upon a 
 solid basis — and it very nearly was done — there would be 
 created a supreme world power, before which states like France 
 would sink into utter insignificance. 
 
 In 1908 came a step toward fulfilling the plan. Taking ad- 
 vantage of internal dissensions in Turkey, Austria formally 
 annexed Bosnia, in flat contradiction to her solemn pledges. 
 This was not only a brutal stroke at the sanctity of treaties, 
 but also it seemed a fatal blow to any hope for a reunion of that 
 Slav district with Serbia. Serbia protested earnestly, and was 
 supported by Russia. But the Kaiser " took his stand in shin- 
 ing armor by the side of his ally," as he himself put it; and 
 Russia, still weak from her defeat by Japan and from her revo- 
 lution of 1906, had to back down. Serbia was then forced by 
 Austria's rough threats to make humiliating apologies. It is 
 not strange that secret societies at once grew up in Serbia 
 pledged to hostility to the " odious and greedy northern neighbor 
 who holds millions of Serb brothers in chains." 
 
 Then came two events less favorable to the Teutonic designs. 
 
 1. The first came from Italy. That state was eager to use 
 the army and navy it had been maintaining at crushing cost,
 
 THE BALKANS 19 
 
 and it had long seen its ambitions for colonial empire balked. The Italian 
 In 1911, seeking excuse in the ill treatment of some Italian Turkey 
 traders in Tripoli, Italy declared war on Turkey and wrested 1911 
 from her that African province along with various Aegean 
 islands. This act followed so closely the precedents by which 
 France and Germany had been building up colonial empires 
 that " Europe " was constrained to permit the deed with only 
 mild protests. Italy's easy success inflamed her imperialists, 
 however, into putting forward programs for further expansion 
 in the Aegean, in Asia Minor, and especially in Albania just 
 across the Adriatic ; and all of these designs were exceedingly 
 distasteful to her two allies in the Triple Alliance. 
 
 2. And Italy's victory encouraged another attack upon The Balkan 
 Turkey. United action by the mutually hostile Balkan states ar ° 
 had seemed impossible. But in 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia, Mon- 
 tenegro, and Greece suddenly joined in a war to drive the Turk 
 out of Europe — and to divide his possessions there among 
 themselves. Serbia was to have northern Albania, with its 
 seaports ; Montenegro, the port of Scutari ; Greece, southern 
 Albania and a small strip of Macedonian coast ; and Bulgaria 
 the bulk of Macedonia. 
 
 The allies won swift victories and in a few months were almost 
 at the gates of Constantinople. " Europe " intervened to 
 arrange the peace terms. Italy, like Austria, was hostile to a 
 Greater Serbia; and at the insistence of these powers backed 
 by Germany, a new Kingdom of Albania was created, shutting 
 off Serbia once more from the sea she had reached, while Mon- 
 tenegro was forced, by threat of war, to give up to Albania 
 Scutari, which she had conquered. Turkey was to surrender, 
 mostly to Bulgaria, her remaining territory in Europe except 
 for Constantinople. Germany had carried her points in this 
 settlement ; but her ally, Turkey, had collapsed, and events 
 were at once to show that in siding with Bulgaria she had " put 
 her money on the wrong horse." 
 
 The treaty left Bulgaria almost the only gainer. The cheated 
 allies demanded that she now share her gains with them. She
 
 20 
 
 THE WAR AND THE XEW AGE 
 
 1913 
 
 The Second refused ; and at once (June, 1913) followed " the Second Balkan 
 iqi* an ar ' War." Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Roumania attacked 
 Bulgaria. The Turks seized the chance to reoccupy Adrianople, 
 and were permitted to keep it. In a month Bulgaria was 
 crushed, and a new division of booty was arranged. Greece 
 
 The Balkans 
 in 1913 
 
 1912 
 
 1913 
 
 The Balkan States. 
 
 won the richest prize, including the city of Saloniki ; but each 
 of the other allies secured gains in the " -July War." 
 
 This contest left Roumania the largest Balkan state, with 
 about seven and a half million people. Then came Serbia, 
 Greece, and Bulgaria, each with about four and a half million. 
 Montenegro had risen to nearly a half million. Albania counted 
 800,000; and remaining "Turkey in Europe," nearly two 
 million. All these nations have a frightful amount of il- 
 literacy, and none has much wealth. All had a legislature 
 elected by manhood suffrage, and Greece and Roumania had
 
 THE BALKANS 21 
 
 considerable real political freedom. In the other lands, the 
 monarchs were almost absolute. 
 
 The Balkan nations came out of the two wars not only 
 terribly exhausted, but hating one another with ferocious in- 
 tensity. Especially did Bulgar now hate Serb and Greek ; 
 and each side, with too much truth, accused the other of wanton 
 butcheries and outrages during the war quite as bad as had ever 
 been suffered from the Turk. Serbia, too, was still cheated of 
 her proper desire for an outlet on the Adriatic — her only 
 natural gateway to the outside world — and she resented fiercely 
 the Austrian and Italian policy which had so balked her. More 
 openly than ever before, in the months that followed, enthusi- 
 astic Serb patriots talked of recovering from Austria the Slav 
 provinces of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Bosnia, for a South Slav 
 state ; and this talk was encouraged by hope of Russian aid, — 
 a hope long fostered by secret Russian intrigue. 
 
 To this pass the unhappy Balkan lands had been brought 
 by the evil-starred Congress of Berlin, thirty-five years before, 
 and by the greed and rivalries of the Great Powers since that 
 time. The Balkans had been made a seed ground for war, and 
 in many ways the wars of 1912-1913 prepared the occasion for 
 the world struggle that began in the next year. Austria felt 
 deeply humiliated by the outcome of the Second Balkan War, 
 and was planning to redress her loss of prestige by striking 
 Serbia savagely on the first occasion. Prince Lichnowsky, Ger- 
 man ambassador at London, tells us now that only England's 
 honest desire for peace, and her coaxing Montenegro and Serbia 
 into submission in 1913 at the close of the First Balkan War, 
 prevented a world war then. A year later, England's efforts 
 to a like end failed.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 
 
 German 
 war propa- 
 ganda at 
 home 
 
 The occasion of the war, it has just been said, was found in 
 the Balkan situation ; but for the cause we must turn back 
 to Germany. For nearly half a century that country had been 
 ruled by a Prussian despotism resting upon a bigoted, arrogant 
 oligarchy of birth, and a greedy, scheming oligarchy of money. 
 That rule had conferred on Germany many benefits. It had 
 cared for the people as zealously as the herdsman cares for the 
 flocks he expects to shear. But in doing so it had amazingly 
 transformed the old peace-loving, gentle German people. 
 
 It had taught that docile race (1) to bow to Authority, rather 
 than to Right ; 1 (2) to believe Germany stronger, wiser, better 
 than " decaying " England, " decadent and licentious " France, 
 " uncouth and anarchic " Russia, or " money-serving " America ; 
 (3) to be ready to accept a program, at the word of command, 
 for imposing German Kultur upon the rest of the world by 
 force; (4) to regard war, even aggressive war, not as horrible 
 and sinful, but as beautiful, noble, desirable, and right, — the 
 final measure of a nation's worth, and the divinely appointed 
 means for saving the world by German conquest ; and finally 
 (5) to disregard ordinary morality, national or individual, when- 
 ever it might interfere with the victory of the " Fatherland." 
 
 Insensibly to most of the rest of the world, this rabid and 
 diseased patriotism of the Germans had become a menace to 
 freedom and civilization. It was the strangest doctrine of 
 national pride the world ever heard. There were not wanting 
 German writers to claim that Joan of Arc, Dante, and Jesus 
 
 1 Observers have often confounded this trait "with respect for law," — 
 its precise opposite. 
 
 22
 
 mouths 
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 23 
 
 himself owed their merits to German blood — along with like 
 astounding assumptions of German descent to explain Voltaire, 
 Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar. Napoleon even, it was 
 urged by some enthusiastic German patriots, must have been 
 descended from the German Vandals. 
 
 The viciousness of these German teachings about war must 
 be shown briefly " out of their own mouths " : 
 
 " War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. " Out of 
 For us, too, the glad, great hour of battle will strike. Still and deep their own 
 in the German heart must live the joy of battle and the longing for 
 it. Let us ridicule to the utmost the old women in breeches who 
 fear war and deplore it as cruel and revolting. No ; war is beautiful. 
 Its august sublimity elevates the human heart beyond the earthly 
 and the common. In the cloud palace above sit the heroes Frederick 
 the Great and Bliicher ; and all the men of action — the great 
 Emperor, Moltke, Roon, Bismarck — are there as well, but not 
 the old women who would take away our joy in war. . . . That is 
 the heaven of young Germany." — Jung Deutschland, October, 1913 
 (the official organ of the " Young German League," an organization 
 corresponding in a way to our Boy Scouts). 
 
 " Germany's mission is to rejuvenate exhausted Europe by a 
 diffusion of Germanic blood." — School and Fatherland, 1913 (a 
 school manual). 
 
 " Our fathers have left us much to do. . . . To-day it is for Ger- 
 many to arise from a European to a world power. . . . Humani- 
 tarian dreams are imbecility. . . . Right and wrong are notions 
 indispensable in private life. The German people are always right, 
 because they number 87,000,000 souls." — Tannenberg, Gross- 
 Deutschland, 1913. 
 
 " We are the salt of the earth. . . . God has called us to 
 civilize the world. . . . We are the missionaries of human prog- 
 ress." — Wilhelm II, speech at Bremen, March 22, 1900. 
 
 " Even in the distance, and on the farther side of the ocean, with- 
 out Germany and the German Emperor, no great decision dare 
 henceforth be taken." — Wilhelm II, at Kiel, July 3, 1900. 
 
 " It is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires." 
 
 — Wilhelm II, address, June 20, 1902. 
 " The world owes its civilization to Germany alone. . . . The 
 
 time is near when the earth must be conquered by the Germans." 
 
 — Wirth, Weltmacht in der Geschichte (1901).
 
 24 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 " Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace 
 better than the long. . . . You say, a good cause hallows even 
 war ; but I tell you, a good war hallows every cause." — Nietz- 
 sche, Of Wars and Warriors. (Nietzsche is a leader of German 
 thought.) 
 
 " War is part of the divinely appointed order. . . . War is both 
 justifiable and moral, and the idea of perpetual peace is not only 
 impossible but also immoral." — Treitschke, Politics, 1916, II, 
 597, 599. (Treitschke for many years had been a leader among 
 German historians.) 
 
 " We must strenuously combat the peace propaganda. . . . 
 War is a political necessity. . . . Without war there could be 
 neither racial nor cultural progress. 
 
 " Might is the supreme right, and what is right is decided by war. 
 
 " It is presumptuous to think a weak nation is to have the same 
 right to live as a powerful and vigorous nation. 
 
 " The inevitableness and . . . the blessedness of war, as the in- 
 dispensable law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized." 
 — Bernhardi, a Prussian general, in his book, The Next War, in 
 1912. 
 
 " It is only by trust in our good sword that we shall be able to 
 maintain that place in the sun which belongs to us, and which the 
 world does not seem very willing to allow us." — Crown Prince, in 
 Deutschland in Waffen, 1913. 
 
 " Do not forget the civilizing task which Providence assigns us. 
 Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of Germany, so the 
 new Germany shall be the nucleus of a future Empire of the 
 West. . . . We will successively annex Denmark, Holland, Bel- 
 gium, . . . and finally northern France. . . . No coalition in the 
 world can stop us." — Schellendorf, Prussian War-Minister, in 
 1872. 
 
 " The salvation of Germany can be attained only by the annihila- 
 tion of the smaller states." — Treitschke, Politics. 
 
 And so on almost without end. Says Guy Stanton Ford in 
 his Foreword to Conquest and Kultur, 1 a notable collection of 
 these evil teachings : 
 
 1 A volume of 171 pages that should be in every school library. Issued 
 by the United States Committee on Public Information, and printed at 
 Washington by the Government Printing Office.
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 25 
 
 " It is a motley throng who are here heard in praise of war and 
 international suspicion and conquest and intrigue and devastation 
 
 — emperors, kings, princes, poets, philosophers, educators, journal- 
 ists, legislators, manufacturers, militarists, statesmen. Line upon 
 line, precept upon precept, they have written this ritual of envy 
 and broken faith and rapine. Before them is the war god to whom 
 they have offered up their reason and their humanity ; behind them, 
 the misshapen image they have made of the German people, leering 
 with bloodstained visage over the ruins of civilization." 
 
 True, in other lands, even in America, lonely voices are 
 heard speaking this same doctrine of insolent and ruthless 
 Might. But in these other lands any such occasional voice is 
 smothered at once by storms of indignant rebuke. In Ger- 
 many, for fifty years, this war-worship encountered almost 
 no protest — except a feeble one from the Socialists. True, 
 again, no great country not England or France or America 
 
 — has been wholly free from greed for territory and for trade, 
 
 — just such greed as lies at the root of most wars. But in 
 these lands the time is past when public opinion will support 
 an aggressive war, especially with a civilized people, waged 
 openly and avoivedly to satisfy such low ambitions. Meanwhile, 
 Germany, led by her war-besotted prophets, had been zealously 
 making ready for just such wars of greed. 
 
 No one must think that this teaching was mere talk. Said 
 a member of the American Embassy in Belgium : " They 
 [the Germans] fight, not because they are forced to, but be- 
 cause, curiously enough, they believe much of their talk. That 
 is one of the dangers of the Germans to which the world is ex- 
 posed : they really believe much of what they say." (Vernon 
 Kellogg in the Atlantic Monthly, August, 1917.) 
 
 Ottfried Nippold, a Liberal professor in one of the German Testimony 
 universities, shocked by the prevalence of this evil teaching, German 
 published a book against it in 1913. Said he, " A systematic Liberal 
 stimulation of the war spirit is going on. . . . War is repre- 
 sented to us not merely as a possibility that might arise, 
 but as a necessity that must come, and the sooner the 
 better. . . . To them [the war party] war is quite a normal
 
 26 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 And from a 
 French 
 secret 
 agent 
 
 German 
 hatred for 
 England 
 
 institution, not a means to be resorted to only in case of great 
 necessity." 
 
 And a French secret agent who had spent much time in study- 
 ing opinion in Germany made an exhaustive report to his own 
 government in a secret document in 1913. In a summary, he 
 listed among the forces making for war : 
 
 (1) The junkers, " who wish to escape the (new) taxes " 
 that must be extended to their class if peace continues, and 
 who " realize with dread the growing power of democracy 
 and of the Socialists, and consider their own class rule 
 doomed " without war. 
 
 (2) The capitalist class — the manufacturers of big guns 
 and armor plate ; the merchants who demand bigger 
 markets ; "all who regard war as good business," including 
 those manufacturers who declare that the difficulties be- 
 tween them and their workmen originate in France, " the 
 home of revolutionary ideas of freedom." 
 
 (3) The universities which teach war philosophy. 
 
 The same report declared : " There are forces making for 
 peace, but they are unorganized, and have no popular leaders. 
 They comprise the bulk of the artisans and peasants; but they 
 have almost no influence. They are silent social forces, passive 
 and defenseless against the infection of a wave of warlike feeling." 
 
 And even those parts of the population not easily converted 
 to the doctrine of aggressive war — the peasants and the 
 Socialist city workers — were at least taught, by constant 
 iteration, to hate England because of her leadership in trade, 
 and to fear Russia's growing numbers, and so to accept the 
 idea that war was unavoidable. 
 
 True, wherever the English flag floated, German traders 
 and German ships were given freely every chance open to Eng- 
 lish traders, in honest accord with England's advanced doc- 
 trine of free trade and free seas. But English enterprise still 
 led in world commerce. German conceit could explain this 
 only by belief in some secret, gigantic trickery by their rivals.
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 27 
 
 Moreover the molders of German opinion taught that England 
 hated and feared Germany, and would welcome a chance to 
 destroy her. Between 1912 and 1914, to be sure, the German 
 ambassador to England, Prince Lichnowsky, 1 repeatedly as- 
 sured his government of England's friendly and pacific feeling. 
 English manufacturers and merchants, he said, felt no bitter 
 envy of the swift advance of German prosperity, but saw in- 
 stead that such advance made Germany a better customer for 
 English products. In 1912 English statesmen suggested that 
 the two countries should cease their ruinous race in building 
 warships. Lichnowsky wrote to Berlin that the proposal was 
 made in perfect good faith. England, he said, would un- 
 doubtedly try to keep her lead in naval power, so absolutely 
 necessary to her safety as an island state, but she had no de- 
 sire to use her navy except to preserve peace. But these 
 communications, so out of tune with the purpose of the Ger- 
 man government, never reached the German people. 
 
 In 1912 there were other long negotiations between German English at- 
 and English governments, of which the people at that time knew !* mpt t s h t0 
 nothing. The English statesman offered to sign a declaration peace 
 that England would not be a party to any attack upon 
 Germany. This did not satisfy the Germans. They insisted 
 that England should promise neutrality in a European war, 
 no matter how it might come. To have done this would 
 have been to desert France, and to make it more likely 
 that Germany would attack. Very properly, and in the inter- 
 ests of peace, the English government refused such a shameful 
 compact. 
 
 1 This remarkable German, a cultivated and able Liberal, wholly free 
 from the spirit of German jingoism, had been selected for the position ap- 
 parently in order to blind English opinion as to Germany's warlike aims. 
 When the war came, he found himself in disgrace with the Kaiser and the 
 German court ; and at the opening of the second year of the war (August, 
 1916) he wrote an account of his London mission for private circulation 
 among his friends, to justify himself in their eyes. A copy fell into the 
 hands of the Allies during the next year, and became at once one of the most 
 valuable proofs of the German guilt in forcing on the war.
 
 28 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Germany's 
 prepared- 
 ness 
 
 Why Ger- 
 many did 
 not fight 
 sooner 
 
 As Bismarck prepared his " Trilogy of Wars," of which he 
 boasted so insolently, in order to make Prussia mistress of 
 Germany, so after 1890, even more deliberately, Kaiser Wilhelm 
 and his advisers prepared vaster war to make Germany mistress 
 of the world. They hoarded gold in the war chest ; heaped up 
 arms and munitions, and huge stocks of raw materials, to 
 manufacture more ; secretly tried out new military inventions 
 on a vast scale, — submarines, zeppelins, poison gases, new 
 explosives ; created a navy in a race to best England's ; bound 
 other ruling houses to their own by marriage or by placing 
 Hohenzollerns directly on the throne — in Russia, Greece, 
 Bulgaria, Roumania; reorganized the Turkish Empire and 
 filled offices in the army and navy there with Germans ; per- 
 meated every great country, in the Old World and the New, 
 with an insidious and treacherous system of spies in the guise 
 of friendly business shielded by innocent hospitality ; and 
 secured control of banking syndicates and of newspapers in 
 foreign lands, especially in Italy and America, so as to influence 
 public opinion. 
 
 In June, 1914, the Kiel Canal was finally opened to the 
 passage of the largest ships of war. Now Germany was ready, 
 and her war lords were growing anxious to use their preparation 
 before it grew stale — and before France and Russia, some- 
 what alarmed now, should have time to put into effect their 
 new army laws (above). Moreover war, better than any- 
 thing else, would quiet the rising feeling in Germany, especially 
 among the Socialists, against militarism. 1 
 
 Germany, we know now, had seriously considered precipitating 
 war on several recent occasions connected with colonial ques- 
 tions 2 in Africa; but her leaders prudently preferred a first 
 
 1 See C. Altschul's German Militarism and Its German Critics, No. 13 in 
 the War Information Series. 
 
 2 The two Morocco crises, 1905-190(> and 1911, were each caused by a 
 brutal German show of force. War was averted the first time only by 
 studious French moderation, and, the second time, by England's plain 
 declaration that she would side with France. Sop War Encyclopedia under 
 "Morocco," and Harding's Great War, Ch. ii, III.
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 29 
 
 war in which England would not be likely to join, so that the 
 Teutonic empires might have only France and Russia to deal 
 with at one time. Almost any colonial problem would concern 
 England, who had been a chief party in the many European con- 
 ferences that had adjusted colonial disputes. In the Balkans, 
 however, England had shown no selfish interest for many years, 
 and it was easy to believe that she would not fight upon a Balkan 
 question. 
 
 And now came just the kind of occasion the German war The Sera- 
 lords wished. Ever since its unjust seizure by Austria, Bosnia J evo mur ~ 
 had been seething with conspiracies against Austrian rule. June 28, 
 June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke 1914 
 Francis, and his wife, were assassinated while in Bosnia by some 
 of these conspirators. The Serbian government had warned 
 the Archduke not to visit Bosnia, fearing an attack upon him; 
 but the Austrian government, strangely, had permitted him to 
 go without any special precautions. 
 
 Europe was aghast. Horror at the dastardly murder was 
 mingled with fear of a great European war. Austria, it was 
 known, was greedy for Serb territory. But if she used this 
 murder as an excuse to attack Serbia, Russia was bound, by 
 honor and by her interests, to defend that little Slav country. 
 And a conflict between Austria and Russia could not but draw 
 in at once Germany and France, and perhaps others. 
 
 Austrian papers loudly declared Serbia responsible for the The month 
 murder, inasmuch as she had not suppressed societies of con- of quiet 
 spirators within her borders agitating for Bosnian liberation. 
 But a month passed quietly before the Austrian government 
 made any formal demand upon Serbia, and European fears died 
 down. That month, we know now on German evidence, 1 was 
 
 1 July 5 there was held at Potsdam a secret conference of military au- 
 thorities, bankers, and manufacturers of munitions, and so on ; and a war 
 program was decided upon. When the story leaked out, German papers 
 denied it vehemently ; but before the war closed, the truth of the meeting 
 was well established by German evidence. The money kings asked a 
 month's delay that they might "mobilize" their finances, turning foreign 
 bonds into cash.
 
 30 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The Aus- 
 trian ulti- 
 matum, 
 July 23 
 
 Serbia's 
 
 conciliatory 
 
 reply 
 
 used in ceaseless but secret preparation to strike. Then, ab- 
 solutely without warning, Austria sent to little Serbia an 
 " ultimatum " harsh almost beyond belief, and in the next 
 twelve days a world war was launched. 
 
 Austria made ten demands, which may be summed up under 
 three heads : 
 
 1. That Serbia suppress all agitation against Austria 
 in newspapers, schools, and organizations of any sort. 
 
 2. That she agree to dismiss from her schools, from her 
 army, and from her administration any teacher or official 
 to whom Austria might object. 
 
 3. That she permit Austrian officials to become part of 
 the Serbian government so far as necessary to attend to these 
 foregoing provisions, and that she allow such officials to sit 
 in Serbian courts to judge Serbians accused of connection 
 with the murders of June 28. 
 
 The Austrian ambassador at Belgrade told the Serbian govern- 
 ment that it must accept these terms without reservations 
 within 48 hours. The German Socialist, Karl Liebknecht, at 
 once said bravely that the demands " were more brutal than 
 any ever made upon any civilized state in all human history " 
 and that they were "intended to provoke war" (Vorivarts, 
 July 25) ; but the German government stoutly supported 
 Austria. Serbia, after trying vainly to get the time limit ex- 
 tended, made a humble and conciliatory reply, accepting the 
 harsh Austrian terms except those under 3 above. These 
 plainly would have reduced her to a mere vassal of Austria. 
 But even these she offered to refer to longer negotiation or to 
 arbitration. This reply the Austrian ambassador declared 
 " dishonest and evasive," and he at once left Serbia. 
 
 The Austrian demands had been sent to the Serbian gov- 
 ernment in the evening of July 23, too late to allow any 
 consideration until the next day — especially as the Serbian 
 ministers were scattered over the country in a political cam- 
 paign. The Serbian reply was handed to the Austrian am-
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 
 
 31 
 
 bassador July 25, at 5 : 58 p.m. He and his whole staff left 
 Belgrade from the railroad station at 6 : 30. Plainly, he knew 
 that his terms could not be accepted. He and his staff must 
 have been packed and ready, hat in hand. 
 
 England, France, and Russia had been making every effort 
 to get these extreme concessions from Serbia, in the interest of 
 peace. Now England repeatedly asked Germany to help 
 preserve peace by getting Austria to accept Serbia's submission 
 or by referring the matter to arbitration, or at least to an in- 
 formal discussion among representatives of the Great Powers, 
 so as to try to come to an agreement. Germany professed to 
 desire peace but found objections to each suggestion made by 
 England, while she failed to accept England's request that she 
 herself suggest some plan. 
 
 The German ambassador at London, Lichnowsky, believed 
 that if his country had wished peace, a settlement could easily 
 have been secured, and, we know now, he " strongly backed " 
 the English proposals ; but in vain. " We insisted on war," he 
 says in his account to his friends ; " the impression grew that 
 we wanted war under any circumstances. It was impossible 
 to interpret our attitude in any other way." And again, " I had 
 to support in London a policy the wickedness of which I recog- 
 nized. That brought down vengeance upon me, because it 
 was a sin against the Holy Ghost." l 
 
 So passed the first four days, while the world held its breath. 
 July 28, Austria declared war upon Serbia. Russia at once 
 began to mobilize 2 troops on the Austrian frontier, — notify- 
 
 England's 
 attempt 
 for peace 
 balked by 
 Germany 
 
 The ten 
 days, 
 July 28- 
 August 2 
 
 1 Remember that this was written when the war was only a year old. 
 See above, p. 27, note. 
 
 * In each European country "mobilization" was understood. Each of 
 the millions of men in the Active Reserves would receive notice — through 
 local authorities, who had been notified a few hours earlier by the central 
 government, to report at a given hour at a given place. At that time 
 and place the necessary officers would be present to organize the men, as 
 they arrived, into military units ; and transportation would be ready to 
 move each unit to a larger rendezvous. Arms, munitions, cannons, ma- 
 chine guns, food and clothing, and transportation for all these things must, 
 also be in readiness.
 
 32 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Austria 
 hesitates 
 
 Germany 
 forces the 
 war 
 
 ing Germany that this act was in no way hostile to her, and also 
 that no warlike action would be taken against Austria so long 
 as that country permitted Serbia to continue negotiations for 
 peace. Germany brusquely demanded that Austria be allowed 
 her will with Serbia without Russian interference. 
 
 July 30 and 31, Russia offered, twice, to stop her slow prepara- 
 tions if Austria would promise to exact only a moderate punish- 
 ment from Serbia and not to destroy that little country's inde- 
 pendence. Now for the first time Austria seemed ready to 
 yield somewhat. And so Germany, which all along had willed 
 the war, had to come into the open to force it on. For some 
 days (ever since July 21) she had secretly been concentrating 
 troops on her western frontier, ready to strike France ; and 
 on the evening of July 29 a secret war council at Potsdam over- 
 ruled the Kaiser's last eleventh-hour hesitation. August 1, 
 Germany declared war upon Russia, 1 after an insulting twelve- 
 hour ultimatum demanding instant demobilization. 
 
 At the same time Germany gave France 18 hours in which 
 to promise to abandon Russia to her fate, and was ready further 
 to demand that France surrender certain fortresses during the 
 war as a guarantee of good faith. The next day (August 2) 
 German troops occupied neutral Luxemburg and began to mass 
 upon the Belgian frontier; and the German government gave 
 Belgium 12 hours (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) to decide whether she would 
 permit German troops to cross her territory so as to find an un- 
 guarded road into France. August 3, receiving no reply from 
 France to her dishonorable proposals, Germany declared war 
 upon that country and invaded Belgium, charging falsely that 
 
 1 See Davis' Roots of the War, 510-512, for the story of a trick by which 
 Germany had frightened the Tsar into a more warlike attitude. See also 
 Harding, Great War, Ch. III. Liebknccht at the time declared the fact: 
 "The decision rests with William II. . . . But the war-lords are at work 
 . . . without a qualm of conscience ... to bring about a monstrous world 
 war, the devastation of Europe" (Vorwarts, July 30, 1914). A few months 
 later, Liebknccht tried to distribute leaflets among the German people to 
 tell them how the government had suppressed knowledge of the peaceful 
 aims of Russia and England.
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 33 
 
 France had violated German territory — in face of the fact 
 that, to avoid any clash through hothead edness, France had 
 withdrawn her troops everywhere six miles within her borders. 
 
 Reckless falsehood and hypocritical charges against others Hypocrisy 
 were the method used by Germany throughout to justify her- ° f the 
 self. Says Brand Whitlock, American Ambassador to Belgium, counter- 
 recounting a long list of such pretended excuses in those days : — charges 
 " When he (the German) wished to invade Belgium, he said 
 (falsely) that French aviators had thrown bombs on Nurem- 
 berg [meaning that they had flown over Belgium to do so]. 
 When he wished to sack and destroy Louvain, he said (falsely) 
 that civilians had fired on him. When he wished to use as- 
 phyxiating gas, he said (falsely) the French were using it. The 
 thing that vitiated the whole character of modern Germany . . . 
 was the lie." Upright Germans themselves saw this. As 
 early as 1909 the Socialist Scheidemann dared to say in the 
 Reichstag that lying was " the most characteristic trait of the 
 Hohenzollerns." And all will remember how Bismarck boasted 
 of the forgery by which he tricked France into war in his day. 
 
 Germany had promised, in case Belgium consented to the Belgium re- 
 passage of her troops, to make good all damage, but had threat- sists 
 ened the most savage consequences if her demand were refused. 
 Belgium had replied with heroic dignity. Her neutrality 
 had been solemnly and repeatedly guaranteed by the Great 
 Powers, including Prussia, 1 and now she herself was ready to 
 suffer martyrdom to defend that neutrality, as she was in honor 
 bound to do. 
 
 Belgium also at once appealed to England ; and England 
 (August 3) let Germany know that the invasion of Belgium 
 must stop or England would declare war, as bound by the most 
 solemn obligations. The German Chancellor, Bethmann- 
 
 1 Prussia was a party to the original treaty of 1839, guaranteeing Belgium 
 from invasion by any country, and also to its renewal in 1870 ; and the 
 German Empire in 1871 accepted for itself all Prussia's international obliga- 
 tions.
 
 34 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 England 
 " goes in 
 
 Holweg, was grievously chagrined. He had believed that 
 " shop-keeping England " would refuse to fight ; and now he 
 expressed bitterly to the departing English Ambassador his 
 amazement that England should enter the war " just for a scrap 
 of paper." 
 
 The next day (August 4) in his address to the Reichstag, the 
 Chancellor himself admitted Germany's guilt. " Necessity 
 knows no law. Gentlemen, this [invasion of Belgium] is a 
 breach of international law. . . . We knew France stood ready 
 for an invasion [a false statement]. The wrong — I speak 
 openly — the wrong we thereby commit, we will try to make 
 good as soon as our military ends have been attained." 
 
 The same day England " went in." England, it is to be 
 hoped, would not in any case have looked on, to see France 
 crushed, but she might have held off too long except for 
 the German crime against Belgium. This was Germany's 
 fatal blunder. And the consciousness that she had blundered 
 called out among almost all classes a frenzy of hate for Eng- 
 land — whose overthrow in a later war, it was now openly 
 avowed, had been the real goal all along. France was to have 
 been crushed first, to leave England alone and to enable Ger- 
 many to launch her attack upon England from near-by French 
 ports like Calais. From this time, too, the credulous German 
 masses were taught zealously that England had willed the war 
 from the first and had tricked a peace-loving Germany into it ! 
 " May God blast England " became the almost universal form 
 of daily greeting. 
 
 Germany had indeed been tricked, but only by her own greed 
 and conceit and her own silly contempt for others. After all, 
 however, Germany was prepared " to the last shoe lace," and 
 her opponents, with all the warning they had had, were not 
 prepared. Least of all, was England ready for war. She had 
 no army worth mentioning — only a few scattered and distant 
 garrisons ; and, what was worse, she had no arms for her eager 
 volunteers, and no factories worth mention to make munitions. 
 
 Soon both parties claimed to be fighting for peace. But
 
 GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 
 
 35 
 
 parties 
 
 German leaders made it plain that they looked only to a sort War aims 
 of peace won by making Germany so supreme in the world that 
 no other power could possibly dream of withstanding or dis- 
 obeying her. The old balance of power theory was bad enough ; 
 but infinitely worse was this German theory of peace through 
 slavery. Said Chancellor Bethmann-Holweg (May 28, 1915) : 
 "We must endure till we have gained every possible guarantee, 
 so that none of our enemies — not alone, not united — will 
 again dare a trial of strength with us." 
 
 Opposed to this ideal of a peace by force, English statesmen — 
 like President Wilson later — set up at once the ideal of a peace 
 of righteousness. Said Premier Asquith, November 9, 1914 : 
 
 " We shall never sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly 
 drawn, until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than 
 all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequately secured against 
 the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities 
 of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until 
 military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed." 
 
 And said Sir Edward Grey, the English Foreign Minister, 
 January 26, 1916, in the House of Commons : 
 
 " The great object to be attained ... is that there shall not 
 again be this sort of militarism in Europe, which in time of peace 
 causes the whole of the continent discomfort by its continual menace, 
 and then, when it thinks the moment has come that suits itself, 
 plunges the continent into war." 
 
 And again, six months later to an American newspaper- 
 man : 
 
 " What we and our allies are fighting for is a free Europe. We 
 want a Europe free, not only from the domination of one nationality 
 by another, but from hectoring diplomacy and the peril of war, free 
 from the constant rattling of the sword in the scabbard, from per- 
 petual talk of shining armor and war lords. We are fighting for 
 equal rights ; for law, justice, peace ; for civilization throughout 
 the world as against brute force." 
 
 For Further Reading. — In the flood of printed matter re- 
 garding the background of the war, the difficulty is to select. The
 
 36 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 following suggestions are made with particular view to their per- 
 manent value and at the same time to their suitability for the general 
 reader: — / Accuse (by an anonymous German), esp. 26-141; J. E. 
 Barker's Modern Germany, 297-317, 798-829 ; W. S. Davis' Roots 
 of the War, Chs. xvii, xviii, xxiv ; J. W. Gerard's My Four Years 
 in Germany, Chs. iv, v ; Prince Lichnowsky's Memoirs; Gibbons' 
 New Map of Europe, esp. pp. 1-367. For evidence that the German 
 government was preparing for immediate war even before June 28, 
 see S. B. Harding's Great War, Ch. iii, V, VI, and on Belgium's 
 neutrality, the same, Ch. vi, III.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FIRST YEAR, 1914 
 
 The Germans had planned a short war. They expected The Ger- 
 (1) to go through Belgium swiftly with little opposition, and man P lan 
 to take Paris within four weeks ; (2) then to swing their strength 
 against Russia before that unwieldy power could get into the 
 war effectively, and crush her; and (3), with the Channel forts 
 at command, to bring England easily to her knees, if she should 
 really enter the war. 
 
 Thanks to Belgium, the first of their expectations fell through Foiled by 
 — and the others fell with it. The Germans had allowed six e gium 
 days to march through Belgium. But for sixteen days little 
 Belgium, alone in her agony, under the command of her hero 
 king, Albert, held back mighty Germany. When the French 
 began mobilization, after August 2, they began it to meet an 
 honest attack through Lorraine ; but before the Belgians were 
 quite crushed, the French managed to shift enough force to 
 the north, along with a hurried and poorly equipped " Ex- 
 peditionary Army " of 100,000 from England, to delay the 
 German advance through northern France for three weeks 
 more — ground that the German plan had allowed eight days 
 to win. Tremendously outnumbered, outflanked, trampled 
 into the dust in a ceaseless series of desperate battles, the thin 
 lines of Allied survivors fell back doggedly toward the Marne. 
 There Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, was collecting 
 all resources for his final stand. 
 
 The Germans drove on furiously, outrunning even their The battle 
 supply trains. September 3, the French government withdrew ^*® e 
 to Bordeaux. But September 6, when the boastful invaders 
 were in sight of the towers of Paris, only 20 miles away, their 
 
 37
 
 38 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 guns thundering almost in the suburbs, the French and English 
 
 turned at bay in a colossal battle along a two-hundred-mile 
 
 front. JofTre issued to all corps commanders his famous order, 
 
 " The hour has come to let yourselves be killed rather than to 
 
 yield ground. Troops must let themselves be shot down where 
 
 they stand rather than retreat." The crisis came on the fourth 
 
 day when the Germans, anxious to use their superior numbers 
 
 in an enveloping movement around both the Allied wings, had 
 
 perilously weakened their center. With true military genius, 
 
 General Foch, a trusted lieutenant of Joffre's, divined the 
 
 situation, and hurled his exhausted troops desperately at that 
 
 key-position. Even then only splendid resolution won the day. 
 
 Joffre had sent an anxious inquiry to ask Foch's situation. 
 
 The dogged Foch telegraphed back hastily : " My right is 
 
 beaten back ; my center is crushed ; my left has been repulsed. 
 
 Situation excellent. I am attacking again with my left." And 
 
 when a subordinate reported, " My men are exhausted," Foch 
 
 replied curtly, " So are the enemy. Attack ! " And this 
 
 time, the attack broke the invader's line. 
 
 To save themselves from destruction, the Germans retreated 
 
 hastily to the line of the Aisne. Later attempts by them to 
 
 resume the offensive failed ; but the Allies were too exhausted 
 
 to dislodge them. Both sides " dug in " along a 360-mile front, 
 
 from Switzerland to the North Sea. Then began a " trench 
 
 warfare," new in history. The positions stabilized, and, on 
 
 the whole, in spite of repeated and horrible slaughter, were not 
 
 materially altered on this Western front until the final months 
 
 of the war four years later. 
 
 New New and ever more terrible ways of fighting marked this 
 
 methods of warfare, with increasing ferocity and horror from month to 
 warfare , , , , 
 
 month. Ordinary cannon were replaced by huge new guns 
 
 whose high explosives blasted the whole landscape into in- 
 describable and irretrievable ruin — burying whole battalions 
 alive, and forming great craters where snipers found the best 
 shelter in future advances. Ordinary defense works were 
 elaborated into many lines of connected trenches beneath the
 
 THE FIRST YEAR, 1914 39 
 
 earth, protected by mazy entanglements of barbed wire and 
 strengthened at intervals by bomb-proof " dugouts " and 
 underground chambers of heavy timbers and cement. To 
 plow through these intrenchments, cavalry gave way to mon- 
 strous, heavily armored motor-tanks. New guns belched 
 deadly poison gases, slaying whole regiments in horrible stran- 
 gling torture when the Germans first used this devilish device, 
 in April, 1915, — until English and French chemists invented 
 gas masks that afforded fair protection if donned in time — 
 and infernal " flame-throwers " wrapped whole ranks in liquid 
 fire. Scouting was done, and gunfire directed, by airplanes 
 equipped with new apparatus for wireless telegraphy and for 
 photography ; and daily these aerial scouts, singly or in fleets, 
 met in deadly combat ten thousand feet above the ground, — 
 combat that ended only when one or both went hurtling down 
 in flames to crashing destruction. Worse than these terrors 
 even, the soldiers dreaded the beastly filthiness of trench war ; 
 the never absent smell of rotting human flesh; the torture of 
 vermin ; the dreary monotony. 
 
 The original German plan had been wrecked at the Marne, The East 
 
 and that name now ranks with Marathon. The Russians had *""** in 
 
 1914 
 
 mobilized more swiftly than friend or foe had believed possible, 
 and were swarming into East Prussia threatening Austria. 
 August 26 they were defeated ruinously at Tannenberg by 
 Hindenburg, a Prussian veteran of 1870, with the most fearful 
 slaughter ever known in one battle in all history; but against 
 the Austrians they fared better. After winning a great battle 
 on the frontier, they forced their way into Austrian Galicia 
 and captured Lemberg. Germany was forced to divert troops 
 from France to succor her Austrian ally during the rest of the 
 campaign, and when the year 1914 closed, the Russians were 
 holding their own in Poland, with good prospects of renewing 
 the invasion of the Austrian realms. 
 
 Austria had another pressing job. The story of the hatching 
 of the war makes clear why she felt it necessary promptly to
 
 40 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Turkey 
 joins the 
 Teutonic 
 empires 
 
 Germany 
 turns back 
 to the West 
 front 
 
 crush Serbia. That little country of fighters, however, sup- 
 plied with necessary munitions by the other Allies through 
 Salonika, had repulsed two Austrian invasions, and now all 
 Austrian soldiers were needed to meet the peril in Galicia. 
 
 Meantime Turkey had joined the Central Powers. We 
 know now that Turkey made a formal war alliance with Ger- 
 many at the opening of the struggle (August 4) ; but it was 
 thought best to keep this secret for a time. In October, how- 
 ever, two German warships, fleeing from an English squadron, 
 received shelter within the Dardanelles. The German am- 
 bassador then carried through a fictitious sale of these ships 
 to " neutral " Turkey ; and, flying the Turkish flag but manned 
 by their old crew and officers, the two vessels raided Russian 
 Odessa. Accordingly, in November, England, France, and 
 Russia declared war on Turkey. At this time, the Ottoman 
 state was still shut off from its Teutonic allies by a broad belt 
 of neutral or hostile Balkan territory, and, isolated as it was, 
 England and Russia hoped soon to crush it. 
 
 In the West, after it became plain that a deadlock had de- 
 veloped, the German government realized the need of attacking 
 England directly without waiting to annihilate France. In 
 August and September, British sea-power had swept German 
 shipping from the seas. If the war was to be a long one, this 
 strangling of German commerce would be decisive. Hence 
 the attack upon England must be tried at once if any possible 
 base could be won. As a necessary step, the Germans turned 
 to complete their conquest of the Belgian coast. King Albert 
 of Belgium and the bulk of his heroic little army were still 
 holding Antwerp. The huge German siege guns now beat to 
 powder the protecting forts, and the invaders captured that 
 city on October 9, — though in their exulting parade they 
 foolishly permitted the Belgian army to escape towards France. 
 Immediately after, they secured the port of Ostend and most of 
 the rest of the Belgian coast. 
 
 To attack England successfully, however, against her un- 
 conquerable fleet, Germany needed better and nearer ports for
 
 THE FIRST YEAR, 1914 41 
 
 a base, — at least Dunkirk and Calais ; and October 16 they 
 began the four weeks' Battle of the Yser in order to force the 
 last natural barrier protecting those Channel ports. Checked 
 by the cutting of the dykes, they next brought their force 
 against the thin English lines near Ypres. The gallant resist- 
 ance offered the magnificent " Prussian Guards " in the First 
 Battle of Ypres by the outnumbered and ill-armed English But fails at 
 
 makes one of the most heroic stories in all history. In vain, th ® Yserand 
 
 " at Ypres 
 
 day after day for a long month, with slight intervals for prepara- 
 tion, did the overwhelming German forces deliver their reck- 
 less mass attacks upon the opponents whom they had styled 
 " a contemptible little army." They wore themselves down 
 upon that dying but unconquered line without ever becoming 
 able to deliver a knock-out blow, losing more men than the 
 total English force ; and winter conditions set in, November 17, 
 with the desired ports still in the hands of the Allies. 
 
 Thus closed the first war-season. On the west front, Ger- Close of the 
 many had failed. The French government had come back season 
 
 to Paris, and the French army was in perfect condition. Eng- 
 land's gallant first army had died devotedly to gain her time ; 
 but the time had been fairly well used. England reorganized 
 herself for war — built new munition factories — though not 
 enough, time was to prove ; poured forth gold lavishly for 
 Russia and France ; saved and suffered and toiled and drilled 
 at home, and put into the field eventually a splendid fighting 
 force of six million men, — a million ready for the second year. 
 England had looked upon the war as a " beastly " interruption ; 
 but she was rapidly reorganizing her life on a war basis. True, 
 deceived by a stupid censorship, she had not yet grasped the 
 full danger, and was sadly behind, especially in the output 
 of high explosives. From the first, her superb navy swept The English 
 the seas, keeping the boastful German navy bottled up in navy 
 harbor or in the South Baltic, and gradually running down 
 the few German raiders that at first escaped to prey on British 
 commerce. This service of England to the world, if there had 
 been no more, ought forever to win her the world's gratitude.
 
 42 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 England's 
 daughter- 
 common- 
 wealths 
 join 
 
 The blockade of Germany was not enforced rigidly, for fear of 
 offending American opinion, but already it was creating a 
 serious food problem for Germany. And on the other hand, 
 America's resources in food and munitions, closed to Germany 
 by the English navy, were all available to the Allies. Except 
 for the English navy, Germany would have won the war in 
 the second year. 
 
 Further, England's distant and peaceful daughter-common- 
 wealths, — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and 
 even her Indian Empire, — were rousing themselves splendidly 
 to the defense of their common civilization. And Japan, 
 England's ally in the Orient, had entered the war, seizing Ger- 
 many's holdings in China and many of her islands in the Pacific.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 
 
 At the opening of 1915, the chief danger to England and The danger 
 France was their too great trust in Russia, — their belief that ° oUa pgg an 
 the Russian " steam-roller," fully prepared, would now crush 
 its way to Berlin or at least into Hungary. As a matter of 
 fact, there was no ground for this expectation. Russia was 
 near the end of its supply of munitions, and its industries were 
 too primitive to cope with longer war. The minister of war, too, 
 had secretly sold himself to Germany and was doing his best 
 to hinder military movements and to waste and misdirect the 
 scanty supplies. 1 Similar treason permeated a large part of 
 the official classes and the court circle, centering around the 
 Hohenzollern wife of the Tsar. 
 
 The Germans understood this Russian situation — though the 
 Allies did not — and accordingly they planned only to hold 
 their trenches in the West and to concentrate their energies in 
 putting Russia quickly out of the war. 
 
 Russia was almost isolated from the other Allies. Germany 
 
 closed the Baltic ; Turkey closed the Black Sea ; Archangel 
 
 was ice-closed during most of the year ; and Vladivostok was 
 
 so distant as to be almost negligible for the coming year. If 
 
 Russia were to receive badly needed supplies, the Allies must Necessity 
 
 force the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople. Success ~f* the 
 
 r r Allies se- 
 
 in this project in 1915 would have ended the war. The waver- cure the 
 ing Balkan states would have joined Russia. Turkey would Dar danelles 
 have been crushed. The conglomerate, ill-cemented Austrian 
 
 1 Two years later this man was executed for high treason. Of Russia's 
 four important munition factories, the largest was directly controlled, 
 secretly, by Germany. 
 
 43
 
 44 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 empire would have been open to invasion on the south ; and the 
 Allies must have won. 
 The attempt Thus both parties planned now to transfer the decisive 
 an a ure struggle to the East front. The Allies were able to strike first. 
 In February, the Allied navy attacked the Dardanelles. The 
 outer forts were taken or battered down, but the inner fortresses 
 resisted successfully. In March a more formidable attack all 
 but succeeded. Had the Allies known how exhausted the 
 Turkish ammunition was, they might have opened the straits. 
 Not informed of this, however, and discouraged by heavy losses 
 in ships, the navy now waited nearly two months for the arrival 
 of land forces to cooperate in storming the Turkish defenses. 
 When the British transports arrived, late in April, the Turks 
 were perfectly prepared. British and Australian troops were 
 landed, with horrible loss, under destructive fire ; but the 
 heroic attempts of the Anzacs * to storm the fortresses of the 
 Gallipoli Peninsula failed deplorably. In August the attempt 
 was renewed, and came once more just short of decisive success. 
 After this, there was no chance against the greatly strengthened 
 Turkish positions. 
 The Ger- Meantime, in May, the Germans opened their drive against 
 
 agains" 76 Russia in Galicia with the first enormous concentration of 
 Russia artillery in the war. The Russians were admirably com- 
 
 manded in the field, and they fought, as always, with reckless 
 valor. But their cannon were useless from want of ammuni- 
 tion, and even with the infantry many a soldier had to wait 
 until a comrade had fallen before he could get a gun to fight 
 with. With amazing success, under the circumstances, their 
 retreat was saved from becoming a rout. But the Austrians 
 recaptured Lemberg in June, and the Germans took Warsaw 
 early in August. The Teutonic armies then cleared most of 
 eastern Poland of Russian garrisons before they halted their 
 drive late in September, in order to attempt a more important' 
 drive on the southeast (below). Russia had lost an enormous 
 
 1 Australian A r ew Zealand Auxiliary Corps.
 
 THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 45 
 
 number of lives, with a million and a half of prisoners ; she had 
 been driven out of a huge territory ; and her offensive power 
 had been destroyed for months to come. 
 
 On the West front, there was continuous trench fighting, with Trench war 
 much loss of life, but the only important event of the year was on the West 
 the German offensive at Ypres (Second Battle of Ypres, April 17- 
 May 17) when the English line was almost broken by the Ger- 
 man asphyxiating gas, then first used in war. That the line 
 held against this devilish attack was due largely to the splendid 
 gallantry of the new Canadian divisions. Lack of high ex- 
 plosives kept the Allies from attempting a serious offensive 
 until just before the season closed — in September — and the 
 event proved that the supplies even then were insufficient to 
 prepare the way for successful infantry attack, so that the only 
 result was one more terrible lesson with pitiful sacrifice of lives. 
 
 The Germans had stopped their triumphant progress into Bulgaria 
 
 Russia onlv to avail themselves of a more attractive program. i° ms ^ e 
 
 Central 
 
 In October, Bulgaria finally joined the Central powers (fear Empires 
 of Russia gone), hoping to wreak vengeance on Serbia for 
 1913 and to make herself the ruling state in the Balkans. Her 
 secretly prepared army invaded Serbia from the east while a 
 huge Teutonic force attacked from the north. Serbia had 
 counted upon her treaty of 1913 with Greece for protection 
 against possible Bulgarian attack. But King Constantine of 
 Greece, brother-in-law of the German Kaiser, now repudiated 
 that treaty and dismissed his prime minister Venizelos for 
 desiring to keep Greece faithful to her ally. A Franco-British 
 army had been sent to Salonika, but, after the defection of 
 Greece, it could accomplish nothing. In spite of their gallant 
 resistance, the Serbs were overwhelmed. The survivors of Serbia is 
 their army made their way over the mountains of Albania to crushed 
 the coast, and were ferried across to Corfu by British ships. 
 All of Serbia and Montenegro and much of Albania was occupied 
 by the Bulgars and Teutons ; and the Bulgarian atrocities 
 toward the conquered populations during the next years ex- 
 ceeded anything those unhappy peoples had ever suffered from
 
 46 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 the Turk. The military gain by Germany in this campaign 
 was immense. She now dominated a solid broad belt of terri- 
 tory from Berlin and Brussels and Warsaw to Bagdad and 
 Persia. 
 Italy joins This gloomy second year of the war brought to the Allies 
 
 the Allies on jy one g am# From the outset of the struggle, Italy had 
 repudiated the Triple Alliance. The Teutonic powers, who 
 had forced on the war without consulting her in the least par- 
 ticular, had not expected help from her, but they did hope that 
 she would remain neutral. The sympathies of the liberty- 
 loving Italian people, however, were overwhelmingly with the 
 Allies ; and the government saw its opportunity to recover the 
 " unredeemed " Italian territory about Triest and Trent. It 
 drove a hard bargain with the Allied governments, securing 
 in a secret treaty (since known as the Secret Pact of London, 
 April, 1915) promises for not only those districts but also for 
 Dalmatia — at the expense of martyred Serbia. Then May 23, 
 just when the Russian retreat was beginning, Italy declared 
 war on Austria, and launched her armies in a drive across the 
 Isonzo for Triest. But the Austrians had fortified the Alpine 
 passes with every modern device, and for two years the Italians 
 made little advance, in spite of much gallant fighting. The 
 threat of their advance, however, kept large Austrian forces 
 busy, and so lessened the pressure upon the Allies elsewhere 
 at critical moments. 
 
 Germany's This same year, 1915, saw also a serious extension of Ger- 
 " Frightful- many's barbarous submarine warfare, with the invasion of 
 neutral rights and the murder of neutral lives. This was to 
 bring America into the war two years later, and so hasten the 
 close ; but it was only one more phase of the deliberately 
 adopted German policy of " Frightfulness " which from the 
 first had compelled the attention of the world outside Europe. 
 
 For centuries, international law had been building up rules 
 of "civilized" war, so as to protect non-combatants and to 
 preserve some shreds of humanity among even the fighters. 
 
 ness
 
 THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 47 
 
 But German military rulers, for some years, had referred 
 slurringly to such " moderation " as a deceitful attempt on 
 the part of the weak to protect themselves against the strong. 
 Humane considerations the official German War Manual re- 
 ferred to as flabby sentimentality. 1 
 
 The first practical application of this German doctrine of 
 
 Frightfulness had been given to the world in 1900. In that 
 
 year a force of German soldiers set out to join forces from other 
 
 European countries and from the United States in restoring 
 
 order in China, after the massacre of Europeans there in the 
 
 Boxer Rebellion. July 27 the Kaiser bade his troops farewell 
 
 at Bremerhaven in a set address. In the course of that brutal 
 
 speech he commanded them : " Show no mercy ! Take no The 
 
 prisoners ! As the Huns made a name for themselves which is Kaisers 
 
 •ii v • i i /• t command to 
 
 still mighty in tradition, so may you by your deeds so fix the emulate the 
 
 name of German in China that no Chinese shall ever again dare Huns 
 to look at a German askance. . . . Open the way for Kultur." 2 
 At the opening of the World War, this " Hun " policy was 
 put into effect in Western Europe. Never since the ancient 
 blood-spattered Assyrian monarchs stood exultingly on pyra- 
 mids of mangled corpses had the world seen so huge a crime. 
 Belgium and northeastern France were devastated. Whole 
 villages of innocent non-combatants were wiped out, — men, 
 women, children, — burned in their houses or shot and bayoneted 
 if they crept forth. All this by deliberate order of the " high 
 
 1 Extracts in Harding, Ch. vii, IV. 
 
 2 The troops reached China too late to be of use. American, Japanese, 
 French, and Italian troops had already restored order. But the Germans 
 made a number of savage "punitive expeditions" for booty and rapine. In 
 these they indulged not merely in indiscriminate murder of innocent non- 
 combatants, but even in many indescribable outrages upon women. General 
 Chaffee, the commander of the United States troops, and the senior officer 
 among the Western forces, called together the commanders of the other allies, 
 and then as their spokesman interviewed Von Waldersee, the German com- 
 mander. Von Waldersee declared haughtily that there would be no change 
 in his policy. His soldiers "must have some chance to indulge themselves." 
 Said Chaffee: "We have not come to make requests, but to tell you that 
 this sort of thing must stop." It stopped.
 
 48 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 command," like the frightfulness of the old Assyrians, to break 
 the morale of the enemy, to make it easy to hold the conquered 
 territory with a few soldiers, and to terrify neighboring small 
 peoples — Dutch, Danes, Swiss — so that they might not 
 dare risk a like fate. 
 
 War always develops brutes ; and the terrible nerve strain 
 of this war undoubtedly tended, more than ordinary war, to 
 paralyze the moral sense and the will. The German soldiers, 
 too, more than the soldiers of the Allies, had been brutalized 
 by bestial treatment from their officers, and, without orders, 
 they committed thousands of nameless outrages upon girls, 
 and Sioux-Indian mutilations upon captives. But this, horrible 
 as it was, leaves less stain upon Germany than the calm de- 
 cision for this policy in cold blood by the polished and easy- 
 living German rulers. 
 
 In like fashion, Zeppelins raided England, not mainly to 
 destroy military depots, but to drop bombs upon resident parts 
 of London and upon peaceful villages, murdering women and 
 children. In the years 1915-1917, their aircraft raids murdered 
 nearly 4000 non-combatants without accomplishing any military 
 purpose. 1 So, too, German airplanes bombed hospitals and 
 Red Cross trains, assassinating doctors and nurses along with 
 the wounded soldiers ; and soon the submarines began to torpedo 
 hospital ships, clearly marked as such. Nor is it easy to find 
 any imaginable crime against the war customs of all civilized 
 nations that was not committed and boasted of by Germany 
 within a few months after this war began. No wonder that 
 even neutral lands began to know Germans no longer by the 
 kindly " Fritz " but only by " Hun " or " Boche." 2 
 
 1 England long refused to adopt this barbarous policy, even for retaliation. 
 She finally did so, somewhat later than France ; but more efficient results 
 were found in developing anti-aircraft guns and in the use of protecting 
 airplanes, so that in the last years of the war a Zeppelin raid was too danger- 
 ous to be tried often. 
 
 4 On all this, see (Icrman War Practices and German Treatment of Conquered 
 Territory, volumes edited by Dana C. Munro and other well-known American 
 historians, under the auspices of the Committee on Public Information.
 
 THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 49 
 
 With German approval, and under the eyes of German officers, 
 the Turks massacred a majority of the Armenians, and the Bul- 
 garians massacred in wholesale fashion the non-combatant Serbian 
 population. A word from Germany would have stopped these 
 needless and revolting excesses against humanity, which were upon 
 a scale even huger than Germany's own crimes in the West, but 
 which were committed by races from whom we do not expect 
 " civilized " warfare. 
 
 To the United States, even more than to France or England, America's 
 the war came as a surprise ; and for some time its purposes and a^neut^L 
 its origin were obscured by a skillful German propaganda in 
 our press and on the platform. President Wilson issued the 
 usual proclamation of neutrality, and followed this with un- 
 usual and solemn appeals to the American people for a real 
 neutrality of feeling. For two years the administration clung 
 to this policy. Any other course was made difficult for 
 the President by the fact that many Democratic leaders in 
 Congress were either pro-German or extreme pacifists. More- 
 over the President seems to have hoped nobly that if the United 
 States could keep apart from the struggle, it might, at the close, 
 render mighty service to the world in a world-council to estab- 
 lish lasting world peace. 
 
 True, our best informed men and women saw at once that 
 France and England were waging our war, battling and dying 
 to save our ideals of free industrial civilization, and of common 
 decency, from a militaristic despotism. Tens of thousands of 
 young Americans, largely college men, made their way to the Forces for 
 
 fighting line, as volunteers in the Canadian regiments, in the and against 
 
 . . . . neutrality 
 
 French Foreign Legion, or in the air service ; and hun- 
 dreds of thousands more among us blushed with shame daily 
 that other and weaker peoples should struggle and suffer in 
 our cause while we stood idly by. 
 
 But to other millions — long a majority — the dominant 
 feeling was a deep thankfulness that our sons were safe from 
 slaughter, our homes free from the horror of war. Nor was 
 this attitude as strange or as grossly selfish then as it seems 
 now. Vast portions of our people had neither cared nor known
 
 50 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 about the facts back of the war : to such, that mighty struggle 
 between Wrong and Right was merely " a bloody European 
 squabble." And even the better informed of our people found 
 it not altogether easy to break with our century-long tradition 
 of a happy aloofness from all Old-World quarrels. 
 
 Such indifference or apathy, however, needed a moral force 
 to give it positive strength. And this moral force for neutrality 
 was not wholly lacking. Many ardent workers, and some 
 leaders, in all the great reform movements believed that in 
 any war the attention of the nation must be diverted from 
 the pressing need of progress at home. To them the first 
 American gun would sound the knell, for their day, of all the 
 reforms that they had long battled for. Still breathless from 
 their lifelong wrestlings with Vested Wrongs, they failed to 
 see that German militarism and despotism had suddenly 
 towered into the one supreme peril to American life. And 
 so many noble men, and some honored names, cast their weight 
 for neutrality. And then, cheek by jowl with this misled but 
 honorable idealism, there flaunted itself a coarse pro-German 
 sentiment wholly un-American. Sons and grandsons of men 
 who had fled from Germany to escape despotism were heard 
 now as apologists for the most dangerous despotism and the 
 most barbarous war methods the modern world had ever seen. 
 Organized and obedient to the word of command, this element 
 made many weak politicians truckle to the fear of "the German 
 vote." 
 
 These forces for neutrality were strengthened by one other 
 selfish motive. The country had begun to feel a vast business 
 prosperity. Some forms of business were demoralized for a 
 time ; but soon the European belligerents were all clamoring 
 to buy all our spare products at our own prices — munitions 
 of war, food, clothing, raw materials. To be sure, the English 
 navy soon shut out Germany from direct trade, though she 
 long continued an eager customer, indirectly, through Holland 
 and Denmark ; but in any case the Allies called ceaselessly 
 for more than we could produce. Non-employment vanished;
 
 THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 51 
 
 wages rose by bounds ; new fortunes piled up as by Aladdin's 
 magic. A busy people, growing richer and busier day by day, 
 ill-informed about the real causes of the war, needed some 
 mighty incentive to turn it from the easy, peaceful road of 
 prosperous industry into the stern, rugged paths of self-denial 
 and war. A little wisdom, and Germany might readily have 
 held us bound to neutrality in acts at least, if not always in 
 feeling. 
 
 But more and more Germany made neutrality impossible for Germany 
 us. From the first the German government actively stirred ^^^ -^^ 
 up bad feeling toward us among its own people because our possible 
 people used the usual and legal rights of citizens of a neutral 
 power to sell munitions of war to the belligerents. Germany 
 had securely supplied herself in advance, and England's navy 
 now shut her out from the trade in any case. So she tried, 
 first by cajolery and then by threats, to keep us from selling 
 to her enemies — which would have left them at her mercy, 
 taken by surprise and unprepared as they were. 
 
 Our legal right to sell munitions she could not question Quarrel 
 seriously. Only two years before, she herself had been selling 
 just such munitions freely to the warring Balkan nations. She 
 demanded of us not that we comply with international law, but 
 that we change it in such a way as to insure her victory — in 
 such a way as would really have made us her ally. For our 
 government to have yielded to her demands, and forbidden 
 trade in munitions during the war, would have been not neu- 
 trality, but a plain breach of neutrality — and a direct and 
 deadly act of war against the Allies. 
 
 Our government firmly refused to notice these arrogant 
 German demands. And, says an authorized statement (in 
 How the War Came to America) : 
 
 " Upon the moral issue involved the stand taken by the United 
 States was consistent with its traditional policy and with obvious 
 common sense. For if, with all other neutrals, we refused to sell 
 munitions to belligerents, we could never in time of a war of our 
 own obtain munitions from neutrals, and the nation which had 
 
 over muni- 
 tions
 
 52 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The sub- 
 marine con- 
 troversy in 
 its early 
 
 stages 
 
 The new 
 phase in 
 1915 
 
 The Lusi- 
 tania 
 
 accumulated the largest reserves of war supplies in time of peace 
 would be assured of victory. The militarist state that invested 
 its money in arsenals would be at a fatal advantage over the free 
 people who invested their wealth in schools. To write into inter- 
 national law that neutrals should not trade in munitions would be 
 to hand over the world to the rule of the nation with the largest 
 armament factories. Such a policy the United States of America 
 could not accept." 
 
 The submarine gave rise to a special controversy. The 
 U-craft were not very dangerous to warships when such vessels 
 were on their guard. Unarmed merchantmen they could 
 destroy almost at will. But if a U-boat summoned a merchant- 
 man to surrender, the merchantman might possibly sink the 
 submarine by one shot from a concealed gun, and in any case 
 the U-boat had little room for prisoners. Thus it soon became 
 plain that submarine warfare upon merchant ships was neces- 
 sarily barbarous and in conflict with all the principles of inter- 
 national law. If it were to be efficient, the U-boat must sink 
 without warning. In the American Civil War, a Confederate 
 privateer, the Alabama, destroyed hundreds of Northern mer- 
 chant ships, but scrupulously cared for the safety of the crews 
 and passengers. But from the first the German submarines tor- 
 pedoed English and French peaceful merchant ships without 
 notice. Little chance was given even for women and children 
 to get into the lifeboats, and of course many neutral passengers 
 were murdered. 
 
 And now, in February, 1915, Germany proclaimed a " sub- 
 marine blockade " of the British Isles. She drew a broad zone 
 in the high seas about Britain, declaring that any merchant 
 ship, even of neutral nations, within those waters was liable 
 to be sunk without warning. 
 
 The world could not believe that Germany would really 
 practice the crime she threatened. But May 7, 1915, the great 
 English liner Lusitania was torpedoed without any attempt 
 to save life. Nearly twelve hundred non-combatants were 
 drowned, many of them women and children ! The Germans 
 hailed this dastardly deed as heroic, celebrating it with holidays
 
 Wilson's 
 notes " 
 
 THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 53 
 
 and a commemorative medal. With characteristic mendacity, 
 too, their government asserted, falsely, that the Lusitania was 
 really a war vessel, loaded with munitions. 
 
 One hundred and fourteen of the murdered Lusitania passengers 
 were American citizens; and there at once went up from much 
 of America a fierce cry for war ; but large parts of the country, 
 remote from the seaboard, were still indifferent to a " European 
 struggle," and there were not lacking some shameless apologists 
 for even this massacre. President Wilson, zealous to preserve President 
 peace, used every resource of diplomacy to induce Germany to 
 give up its horrible submarine policy. At the same time he 
 distinctly pointed out, in note after note, that a continuance in 
 that policy would force America to fight. 
 
 The " First Lusitania Note " (after declaring that the use of 
 submarines against merchant ships must necessarily endanger the 
 lives of passengers and of neutrals, and after urging Germany to 
 give up a practice so contrary to civilized warfare and to the law 
 of nations) closed : 
 
 " The Imperial German Government will not expect the govern- 
 ment of the United. States to omit any word or any act necessary to 
 the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the 
 United States and its citizens, and of safeguarding their free exer- 
 cise " (June 13, 1915). 
 
 The " Third Lusitania Note " (July 21) refused to consider the 
 tissue of evasions put forward by Germany as in any way " relevant " 
 to a discussion of " the grave and unjustifiable violations of the 
 rights of American citizens," and uttered solemn warning, that if 
 these " illegal and inhuman " acts were persisted in, " they would 
 constitute an unpardonable offense "... 
 
 " Repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts 
 in contravention of these rights must be regarded by the Government 
 of the United States . . . as deliberately unfriendly." 
 
 These well-meant efforts of the President were answered by 
 the German government with quibbles, cynical falsehoods, and 
 contemptuous neglect. Other merchant vessels were sunk, 
 and finally (March, 1916) the sinking of the Sussex, an English 
 passenger ship, again involved the murder of American citizens. 
 President Wilson's note to Germany took a still sterner tone
 
 54 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Wilson's 
 seeming 
 victory 
 
 and specifically declared that one more such act would cause 
 him to break off diplomatic relations. Germany now seemed 
 to give way. She promised, grudgingly and with loopholes 
 for future use, to sink no more passenger or merchant ships — 
 unless they should attempt to escape capture — without pro- 
 viding for the safety of passengers and crews (May 4). 
 
 This episode, running over into the third year, closed the 
 first stage of this controversy. President Wilson's year of 
 negotiation seemed to have won a victory for civilization. As 
 he afterward complained, the precautions taken by the Ger- 
 mans to save neutral or non-combatants proved distressingly 
 meager, but for some time " a certain degree of restraint was 
 observed."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE THIRD YEAR, 1916 
 
 The year 1916 brought the struggle back to the Western England 
 
 front. England had awakened from her complacency and fuUy , 
 . . aroused 
 
 was at last putting forth her full strength. The splendid vol- 
 unteer army was now supplemented by conscription, wholly 
 new to England, and the " work or fight " rule was applied to 
 every able-bodied man between 18 and 45. The commander- 
 in-chief, General French, a veteran of the Boer War, had been 
 succeeded (October, 1915) at his own request by a younger man, 
 Sir Douglas Haig. Haig would be ready to strike by mid- 
 summer. 
 
 Accordingly Germany planned to strike first and put France The German 
 
 out before Britain was quite ready. February 21, weeks before Crown 
 
 ,, • i . i i Pnnce at- 
 
 campaigns would usually open in that region, she made a tacks 
 
 gigantic effort to deal a mortal blow by an attack on Verdun. Verdun 
 The capture of that famous fortress, it was felt, would open the 
 road to Paris. Certainly it would have been a terrific shock 
 to the French morale. 
 
 For four days the Germans gained ground swiftly. A vast 
 concentration of artillery prepared the way for each assault, 
 and then huge masses of trained soldiery carried their ob- 
 jectives each day, — though with almost incredible losses. 
 But France rushed in her reserves by thousands in motor busses, 1 
 and after February 25 her defense steadily tightened, meeting 
 the haughty German boasts with the tight-lipped defiance — 
 " They shall not pass." For two months more the Germans 
 
 1 This method of transportation saved France. There was no time to 
 construct military railroads, and human legs could not do the job. The 
 motor bus won a new importance. 
 
 55
 
 56 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The British 
 advance on 
 the Somme 
 
 Brief Rus- 
 sian re- 
 vival 
 
 kept up the attack with some expectation of final success ; and 
 then for still two months more they renewed the assault from 
 week to week, at a staggering cost of life, because the High 
 Command dreaded the blow to its military prestige involved 
 in a confession of failure. 
 
 France was saved. The German failure was generally as- 
 cribed to the Crown Prince, who had directed the campaign. 
 Germany now put Hindenburg, the victor in the East, in su- 
 preme command of all her armies. 
 
 July 1 the new British armies began their carefully prepared 
 drive along the Somme. Lloyd-George himself had taken over 
 the ministry of munitions some months before ; and this time — 
 for the first time during the war — the English had a superiority 
 in guns and high explosives, while their tanks, now used first, 
 wrought terrible havoc in the German lines. But the in- 
 tended French drive, further south, did not come to a head — 
 partly because of the exhaustion of the Verdun campaign, 
 partly, it was whispered, because at this moment the French 
 legislative chamber, having already driven Joffre into retire- 
 ment, saw fit again to interfere disastrously with the plans of 
 the military staff. The English struggled on magnificently 
 for four months, winning back a considerable extent of French 
 soil, with many villages, and driving a deep dent into the Ger- 
 man line. But that line was still unbroken when the unusually 
 severe weather of November brought the campaign to a close. 
 Two hundred thousand young Englishmen had given their 
 lives and six hundred thousand more lay mangled in hospitals. 
 But they had proved that industrial England in two years had 
 created and trained an army more than a match, unit for unit, 
 for the veteran army of militaristic Germany. 
 
 The war on the East front during this season furnished two 
 surprises on the side of the Allies, but neither was of lasting 
 value. (1) Russia showed a remarkable recovery. Early in 
 June her armies took the offensive against the Austrians. For 
 a month they won swift success — in great part because their 
 * opponents were largely subject Slavo-Czechs, who welcomed
 
 THE THIRD YEAR, 1916 57 
 
 chances to surrender to a possible deliverer of their provinces 
 from Austrian oppression. By July, however, the new supplies 
 of Russian ammunition had again given out, and Germany had 
 rushed to Austria's rescue a number of veteran divisions from 
 the West front. Russia had been saved from complete collapse, 
 the year before, by the desire of the Teutonic powers to 
 crush Serbia and to consolidate their hold upon the Ottoman 
 world. Now she was saved again for the moment by sacrificing 
 Roumania. 
 
 (2) For now Roumania had entered the war. This story is Roumania 
 
 still obscure. Roumania wished of course to recover from war and 
 
 Austria the great Roumanian province of Transylvania, and is betrayed 
 apparently the Tsar had induced her to go in too soon by y ussia 
 promises of support that was never given. The German 
 traitorous court party at Petrograd, now in control over the 
 weak Tsar, planned a separate peace with Germany, and seems 
 to have intended deliberately to buy easy terms for Russia by 
 betraying Roumania to the Central Powers. Bulgarians and 
 Teutons entered doomed Roumania from south and west. 
 December 16 the capital fell, and only the rigors of winter 
 enabled the Roumanian army to keep a hold upon a narrow 
 strip of its country. The large Allied army at Salonika did 
 not stir: why is not yet fully explained. No doubt if it left 
 its base, it was in peril of being stabbed in the back by Con- 
 stantine of Greece ; and the Tsar vetoed all proposals of effective 
 measures against that petty despot — from tenderness for a 
 fellow monarch. 
 
 Thus the year 1916, too, ended gloomily. Germany had Conditions 
 tremendously strengthened her position in the East, and had a * ,*$!?- ose 
 lost nothing in the West. Her supply of man-power, it was 
 suspected, was running low, along with stocks of fats, rubber, 
 cotton, and copper, and other metals. Her poorer classes were 
 suffering bitterly from undernourishment — especially the 
 children, whose death-rate had tremendously increased. But 
 her ruling classes felt no pinch and showed no discouragement ; 
 and the world was uncertain how far her domination in the
 
 58 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 East might retrieve her markets. Moreover, Russia was 
 crumbling: transportation was broken down; the industrial 
 system — always crude — was practically gone ; hunger and 
 despair ruled the peasantry ; and only the stubborn resistance 
 of the Duma and of a few great generals seemed to prevent a 
 separate Russian peace, with complete victory for Germany 
 on the East. On the other hand, England, France, and Italy 
 were vastly better prepared for the struggle than ever before, 
 and were about ready for their maximum effort. If they could 
 make that effort before Russia collapsed, they still hoped for 
 success. 
 
 And there were not wanting signs that the Allies were soon 
 to receive long-delayed help from another quarter.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 
 
 America Enters and the War Spreads 
 
 In America, Woodrow Wilson had been reelected President Woodrow 
 in November, 1916, after a peculiar campaign. Many of his ^^^ m 
 followers, especially in the West and among the workingmen, 1916 
 shouted the slogan, " He kept us out of war." On the other 
 hand, Mr. Wilson's firmness in defending American rights, and 
 his plain drift toward the Allies, drew upon him the hatred 
 of large organized pro-German elements. Neither party made 
 the war a clear issue. 
 
 But no sooner had the dust of this political campaign cleared German 
 away than the American people began to find indisputable n e ° u t r af amS 
 proofs of new treacheries and new attacks upon us by Ger- America 
 many, even within our oivn borders. The official representatives 
 of Germany in the United States, protected by their diplomatic 
 position (and bound by every sort of international law and 
 common decency not to interfere in any manner with our 
 domestic affairs), had placed their hirelings as spies and plotters 
 throughout our land. They had used German money, with 
 the approval of the German government, to bribe our officials 
 and even to " influence " our Congress. They had paid public 
 speakers to foment distrust and hatred toward the Allies. 
 They had hired agitators to stir up strikes and riots in order 
 to paralyze our industries. They incited to insurrection in 
 San Domingo, Haiti, and Cuba, so as to disturb our peace. 
 They paid wretches to blow up our railway bridges, our ships, 
 our munition plants, with the loss of millions of dollars of 
 property and with the murder of hundreds of peaceful American 
 workers. Each week brought fresh proof of such outrage — 
 
 59
 
 60 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 German 
 threats and 
 hostility 
 
 America 
 forced to 
 choose be- 
 tween tem- 
 porary war 
 and per- 
 manent 
 militarism 
 
 more and more frequently, formal proof in the courts. The 
 governments of the Central Powers paid no attention to our 
 complaints, or to the evidence we placed before them regard- 
 ing these crimes ; and so finally President Wilson dismissed 
 the Austrian ambassador (who had been directly implicated) 
 and various guilty officers connected with the German embassy. 1 
 All this turned our attention more and more to the hostility 
 to our country plainly avowed for years by German leaders. 
 Said the Kaiser himself to our ambassador (October 22, 1915) 
 at a time when our government was showing extreme gentleness 
 in calling Germany to account for her murder of peaceful 
 American citizens on the high seas, — "America had better 
 look out. ... / shall stand no nonsense from America after 
 this war." Other representative Germans threatened more 
 specifically that when England had been conquered, Germany, 
 unable to indemnify herself in exhausted Europe for her terrible 
 expenses, would take that indemnity from the rich and un- 
 warlike United States. Our writers began to call our attention 
 to the fact that this plan had been cynically avowed in Germany 
 for years before the war began {Conquest and Kultur, 102-112). 
 Slowly we opened our eyes to the plain fact that just as the 
 conquest of France had been intended mainly as a step to the 
 conquest of England, so now the conquest of England was to 
 be a step to the subjugation of America. It came home to us 
 that our fancied security — unprepared for war as we were — 
 was due only to the protecting shield of England's fleet. If 
 Germany came out victor from the European struggle, we must 
 give up forever our unmilitaristic life, and turn our country 
 permanently into a huge camp, on a European model, as our 
 only chance for safety from invasion and rapine — and there was 
 much doubt whether time would be given us to form such a 
 camp. To live in peace, as we wished to live, we must help 
 crush the militaristic power that hated and despised and at- 
 tacked peace. German despotism and peace for free peoples 
 
 1 For proven guilt, see the notes to President Wilson's Flag Day Address, 
 as published by the Committee of Public Information, Washington, D.C.
 
 THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 61 
 
 could not exist in the same world. We had long hoped to 
 
 keep the peace by being peaceful. But now peace had gone. 
 
 We could win peace back only by fighting for it. 
 
 President Wilson strove still to avoid war. Even the com- Wilson's 
 
 plete breaking off of diplomatic relations, should that come, P 1 f t_ r 
 , . tempts for 
 
 he pointed out, would not necessarily mean war. At the same peace 
 time he had begun to speak solemn warning to our own people 
 that we could not keep out of the struggle, or out of some like 
 struggle, unless peace could be secured soon and upon a just 
 basis. December 22, he sent to all the warring governments 
 a note asking them to state their aims. The Allies demanded 
 " restoration and reparation," with an adjustment of disputed 
 territories according to the will of the inhabitants, and " guar- 
 antees " for future safety against German aggression. Germany 
 replied evasively, making it plain that her own suggestion at 
 this same time for a peace conference was merely sparring for 
 time. 
 
 Then January 22, 1917, the President read to Congress a 
 notable address proposing a League of Nations to enforce Peace, 
 and outlining the kind of peace which, he thought, the United 
 States would join in guaranteeing, — not a Caesar's peace, 
 not a peace of despotic and irresponsible governments, but a 
 peace made by free peoples (among whom the small nations 
 should have their full and equal voice) and " made secure by 
 the organized major force of mankind." 
 
 Germany had ready a new fleet of enlarged submarines, and Germany 
 
 she was about to resume her barbarous warfare upon neutrals. f esumes 
 
 unre- 
 
 She thought this might join the United States to her foes ; but stricted " 
 
 she held us impotent in war, and believed she could keep us submarine 
 , . , warfare 
 
 busied at home. To this last end, through her ambassador at 
 
 Washington — while he was still enjoying our hospitality — 
 
 she had secretly been trying, as we learned a little later, to get 
 
 Mexico and Japan to join in an attack upon us, promising them 
 
 aid and huge portions of our western territory. 
 
 January 31, the German government gave a two-weeks 
 
 notice that it was to renew its " unrestricted " submarine
 
 62 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The United 
 States 
 breaks off 
 diplomatic 
 relations 
 
 "Armed" 
 neutrality 
 
 policy, explaining to its own people, with moral callousness, 
 why it had for a time appeared to yield to American pressure — 
 and offering to America an insulting privilege of sending one 
 ship a week to England provided it were painted in stripes of 
 certain colors and width, and provided it followed a certain 
 narrow ocean lane marked out by Germany. President Wilson 
 at once dismissed the German ambassador, according to his 
 promise of the preceding March, recalled our ambassador, 
 Gerard, from Berlin, and appeared before Congress to announce, 
 in a solemn address, the complete severance of diplomatic 
 relations — expressing, however, a faint hope that the German 
 government might still refrain from compelling us, by some 
 " overt act," to repel force by force. By March 1, Germany 
 had begun again actually to sink passenger ships and murder 
 more Americans ; and on March 3, the President asked Congress 
 to approve his plan of placing armed guards from the nation's 
 forces on our merchant ships. More than 500 of the 531 mem- 
 bers of the two Houses were eager to vote their approval ; but 
 a filibustering minority prevented a vote in the Senate until 
 the expiration of the session on the next day. 
 
 March 12, in exercise of his constitutional powers, the Presi- 
 dent did put guards on our merchant vessels. Germany 
 announced that such guards if captured would be treated as 
 pirates. Meantime, many more Americans had been murdered 
 at sea by the sinking of neutral vessels. 1 The temper of the 
 nation was changing swiftly. Apathy vanished. Direct and 
 open opposition to war there still was from extreme pacifists 
 and from pro-Germans, including the organization of the 
 
 1 Besides the eight American vessels sunk before March, 1916, eight had 
 been sunk in the one month from February 3 to March 2, 1917. During the 
 two months, February and March, 105 Norwegian vessels were sunk, with the 
 loss of 328 lives. By April 3, 1917, according to figures compiled by the 
 United States government, 686 neutral vessels had been sunk by Germany 
 without counting American ships. When we turn to the still more important 
 question of lives, we count up 226 American citizens slain by the action of 
 German submarines before April, 1917. For details, see The War Message 
 and the Facts Bt hind It. Published by the Committee on Public Information, 
 Washington, D. C.
 
 THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 63 
 
 Socialist party : but the great majority of the nation roused 
 itself to defend the rights of mankind against a dangerous 
 government running amuck, and turned its eyes confidently 
 to the President for a signal. And April 2 President Wilson 
 appeared before the new Congress, met in special session, to Declaration 
 ask it to declare that we were now at war with Germany. April" 1917 
 April 6, by overwhelming votes, that declaration was adopted. 
 
 America went to war not to avenge slights to its " honor," 
 or merely to protect the property of its citizens, or even merely 
 to protect their lives at sea. America went to war not merely 
 in self-defense. We did war for this, but more in defense of 
 free government, in defense of civilization, in defense of hu- 
 manity. Said President Wilson in his War Message : 
 
 " The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a American 
 war against all mankind. . . . The challenge is to all. . . . Neu- war a * ms 
 trality is no longer feasible or desirable, when the peace of the world 
 is involved, and the freedom of its peoples, and when the menace to 
 that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic govern- 
 ments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by 
 their will, not the will of their people. . . . We have no quarrel 
 with the German people. ... A steadfast concert for peace can 
 never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. 
 No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it. 
 Only free peoples . . . can prefer the interests of mankind to any 
 narrow interests of their own. . . . 
 
 " We are now about to accept the gage of battle with the natural 
 foe to liberty. . . . We are glad ... to fight for the ultimate peace 
 of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people 
 included. . . . 
 
 " The world must be made safe for democracy. . . . We have 
 no selfish ends. We desire no conquests, no dominion. We seek 
 no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensations for the 
 sacrifices we shall freely make. 
 
 " It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful country into war, 
 into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself 
 seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than 
 peace ; and we shall fight for the things which we have always 
 carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those 
 who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments,
 
 64 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion 
 of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and 
 safety to all nations. . . . 
 
 " To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
 everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride 
 of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged 
 to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her 
 birth and happiness and for the peace which she has treasured. 
 God helping her, she can do no other." 
 
 American Splendid was the awakening of America, following quickly 
 
 on the President's call. True, some misled pacifists and the 
 positive pro-German forces still did their utmost to give aid 
 and comfort to the Kaiser. Patriotic pacifists, however, like 
 Mr. Bryan, recognized that to oppose our entering the war 
 was a matter of judgment, but that now to hinder the success 
 of America in the war was treason. Mr. Bryan had resigned 
 from the Cabinet, in June of 1915, as a protest against the 
 President's firmness in pressing the Lusitania matter : but now 
 he promptly declared, " The quickest road to peace is through 
 the war to victory " ; and he telegraphed the President an 
 offer of his services in any capacity. Henry Ford, who had led 
 a shipload of peace enthusiasts to Europe the year before, to 
 plead with the warring governments there, now placed his great 
 automobile factories absolutely at the disposal of the govern- 
 ment, and soon became a valued worker in one of the govern- 
 ment's new War Boards. Charles Edward Russell, choosing 
 to be an American rather than a Socialist if he could not be 
 both, became one of a great Commission to Russia, and on his 
 return supported and explained the war with voice and pen. 
 Like action was taken by other leading Socialists, as by John 
 Spargo and Upton Sinclair. And the oldest Socialist paper 
 in America, The Appeal to Reason, soon declared itself con- 
 vinced by President Wilson's statements, and came out as The 
 New Appeal in support of the war. The great majority of 
 Americans of German birth or descent also rallied promptly to 
 the flag of the land they had chosen. Most important of all, 
 the organized wage-earners spoke with emphasis and unity for
 
 THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 65 
 
 America and democracy. Led by their patriotic president, 
 Samuel Gompers, the delegates of the American Federation 
 in November, by a vote of 21,579 local unions as against 402, 
 organized the Alliance for Labor and Democracy to support the 
 war and to combat a pacifist " People's Council " which had 
 been claiming to speak for labor. 
 
 And now the war spread more widely still. Cuba at once The war 
 followed the example of the United States in declaring war sprea s 
 against Germany, and most of the countries of South and 
 Central America either took the same action within a few months 
 or at least broke off diplomatic relations with the Central 
 European Powers. 1 Portugal had entered the war in 1916, 
 because of her close alliances with England. Siam and China 
 came in a little later. 
 
 This lining up of the world had mighty moral value, and no 
 small bearing upon the matter of supplies. In particular, the 
 German ships which, since the beginning of the war, had been 
 seeking refuge in the harbors of these new belligerents were 
 now seized for the Allies, and helped to make good the losses 
 due to submarines. Few of these powers except America, 
 however, had much direct effect upon military operations. 
 
 And in spite of the entry of America, Germany continued German 
 to win great success in 1917. As the Germans had hoped, 
 Russia dropped out. The Tsar's reactionary or incompetent 
 ministers had maddened the Petrograd populace by permitting 
 
 1 A characteristic act of German perfidy toward Argentine is worth noting 
 for the sidelight it throws upon the conduct of German agents in the United 
 States before we entered the war. 
 
 Argentine was neutral, and its government indeed was rather pro-German ; 
 but the people were growing restive because of the repeated sinking of Argen- 
 tine ships by German submarines. Finally the German ambassador to that 
 country sent a secret dispatch to his government, advising it earnestly not to 
 give up its practice, but thereafter when it sank an Argentine vessel to make 
 sure that no trace survived of ship or crew ("spurlos versenkt"). This docu- 
 ment was secured by an American secret agent. The German government 
 never showed regret for its representative's vile suggestion of wholesale 
 murder of citizens of a power to which he was daily professing friendship 
 and whose guest he was. 
 
 success in 
 1917
 
 66 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 or preparing breakdown in the distribution of food. March 11, 
 
 the populace rose. The troops joined the rioters, and the rising 
 
 quickly became a political revolution. Absolutely deserted by 
 
 The Russian all classes, Nicholas abdicated on March 15. The Liberal 
 
 5JJJ^ : leaders of the Duma (Constitutional Democrats led by Miliukof ) 
 
 visional proclaimed a provisional government, which was promptly 
 
 govern- anf j p eace f u n v accepted by the army and by the nation. Op- 
 
 Constitu- timists among the Allies believed that Russia had merely passed 
 
 D° n rats f rom an inefficient autocracy to a sane and efficient republic. 
 
 Keener-eyed thinkers warned (1) that, in the complete collapse 
 
 of her industrial system, Russia would almost inevitably be 
 
 forced into the hands of extremists ; and (2) that the huge 
 
 empire would probably break up into separate and possibly 
 
 warring states — which in the past had had no real bond of 
 
 union except the perished autocracy. 
 
 The Keren- These gloomy surmises proved correct. The provisional gov- 
 
 sky govern- ernmen |- f Miliukof could not stand the strain of foreign war 
 ment _ _ ° 
 
 and of internal dissolution, and in a few weeks (June, 1917) it 
 
 was replaced by a Socialist-democratic government led by 
 Kerensky. This interesting man was an emotional, well-mean- 
 ing enthusiast, — a talker rather than a doer, altogether unfit 
 to grapple with the tremendous difficulties before Russia. 
 Finland, the Ukrainian districts, and Siberia were showing signs 
 of breaking away from central Russia. Everywhere the 
 peasants had begun to appropriate the lands of the great es- 
 tates, sometimes quietly, sometimes with violence and outrage. 
 The army was completely demoralized. The peasant soldiers, 
 so often betrayed by their officers, were eager for peace, that 
 they might go home to get their share of the land. In all large 
 cities, extreme Socialists began to win support for a further 
 revolution, and in some places anarchists were taking the lead. 
 Kerensky battled against these conditions faithfully, and for 
 a while with some show of success. He tried zealously to con- 
 tinue the war, and, in July, he did induce part of the demoralized 
 army to take up the offensive once more. But after slight 
 successes, the military machine collapsed. Whole regiments
 
 THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 67 
 
 and brigades mutinied, murdered their despotic officers, broke 
 up, and went to their homes. The remaining army was in- 
 toxicated with the new political " liberty," and fraternized with 
 the few German regiments left to watch it. Russia was really 
 " out of the war." After a six-months rule, Kerensky fled The Bol- 
 from the extremists, and (November 7, 1917) these extreme Revolution: 
 Socialists (the Bolsheviki) seized the government and an- Russia out 
 nounced their determination to make peace. 
 
 During the chaos under Kerensky, the real power had 
 fallen over nearly all Russia to new councils of workmen's 
 delegates (with representatives also from the army and the 
 peasantry). The Bolsheviki had seen that these " Soviets," 
 rather than the old agencies, had become the real govern- 
 ment, and by shrewd political campaigning they captured 
 these bodies, so securing control over the country. 
 
 It should be clearly recognized, however, that no Russian 
 government could have continued the war. The Russian 
 people had borne greater sacrifice than any other; they 
 were absolutely without resources ; and they were un- 
 speakably weary of war. 
 
 In the West, the Allies had begun the spring campaigns in The cam- 
 high hopes. The French had borne the heaviest burden so far, ^^J in 
 but they were ready for one more supreme blow. Their new 
 commander, Nivelle, however, though a brilliant general, Nivelle's 
 proved erratic and unsafe, and his great offensive on the Aisne j^e Aisne 
 was heavily repulsed. He was superseded by Petain, the hero 
 of Verdun ; but the army was so demoralized and discouraged 
 that it could undertake no further important operations during 
 the season. 
 
 Very early in the season the Germans had executed an ex- The Ger- 
 
 tended withdrawal in front of the British lines from their !?*£„♦«,*;,. 
 
 strategic 
 
 trenches of two years' warfare to a new " Hindenburg Line," retreat " to 
 
 which, they boasted, had been prepared so as to be absolutely * e . in ~ 
 
 impregnable to any assault. This maneuver confessed a su- Line " 
 periority in the English fighting machine — which the Germans
 
 68 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 had hitherto professed to despise — but it delayed Haig's 
 attack for some weeks. His heavy guns had to be brought up 
 to the new positions over territory rendered almost impassable 
 by the Germans in their retreat, and new lines of communica- 
 tion had to be established. These things were accomplished, 
 The great however, with a rapidity and efficiency wholly surprising to 
 
 Bntish ^ e German High Command ; and in the subsequent British 
 
 offensive ° l 
 
 attack the Germans were saved only by the fact that now they 
 
 were able to transfer all their best divisions from the Russian 
 
 front to reinforce their troops pressed by the British. Even so, 
 
 Haig continued to win important successes in Picardy and 
 
 Flanders from April to November ; but the blunder by Nivelle 
 
 and the collapse of Russia made it impossible for him to " break 
 
 through " to stay. 
 
 German The Russian military collapse had been caused in part 
 
 " propa- l^y an exceedingly skillful German propaganda. Russian 
 
 successful soldiers had been taught persistently by German emissaries 
 
 m Russia, t j ia £ ^.j ie war wag t ] ie Tsar's war, or at least a capitalist war ; 
 
 now tried in ... 
 
 Italy and that their German brothers were quite ready to give the 
 
 new Russia a fair peace. A little later the same tactics were 
 repeated successfully against Italy. In August of 1917 the 
 Italian armies seemed for a while to have overcome the tre- 
 mendous natural difficulties confronting them. They had 
 won important battles and had taken key positions command- 
 ing Trieste, when suddenly their military machine, too, went 
 almost to pieces. The Germans had been using with the 
 Italian rank and file a skillful propaganda. England and 
 France, the Italian soldiers were told, were looking only to 
 their own selfish ambitions, and were leaving Italy an unfair 
 share of the burden of the war. Peace could be secured at any 
 moment if only Italy would cease to attack Austrian territory. 
 Meanwhile the wives and children of Italian soldiers were in 
 truth famishing for bread, and information to this effect — 
 both reliable and exaggerated — was creeping through to the 
 ranks.
 
 THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 69 
 
 While the Italian morale was so honey-combed, the Austrians The Italian 
 suddenly took the offensive. They met at first with almost colla P se 
 no resistance. They tore a huge gap in the Italian lines, took 
 200,000 prisoners and a great part of Italy's heavy artillery, 
 and advanced into Venetia, driving the remnants of the Italian 
 army before them in the rout. French and British reinforce- 
 ments were hurried in ; and the Italians rallied when they saw 
 how they had been tricked and how their country had been 
 opened to invaders. The Teutons proved unable to force the 
 line of the Piave River ; and Venice and the rich Lombard plain 
 were saved. Italy had not been put out of the war as Russia 
 had been ; but for the next six months, until well into the 
 next year, the most that she could do, even with the help of 
 Allied forces sadly needed elsewhere, was to hold her new line 
 while she built up again her broken military machine. 
 
 The brightest phase of the year's struggle for the Allies was The U-boat 
 at the point where there had seemed the greatest peril. Ger- c^P^s 11 
 many's new submarine warfare had indeed destroyed an enor- 
 mous shipping tonnage, and for a few months had really promised 
 to make good the threat of starving England into surrender. 
 But the English navy made a supreme effort. An admirable 
 convoy system was organized to protect important merchant 
 fleets ; shipbuilding was speeded up, to supply the place of 
 tonnage sunk ; submarine chasers and patrol boats waged 
 relentless, daring, and successful war against the treacherous 
 and barbarous craft of the enemy. America sent five battle- 
 ships to reinforce the British Grand Fleet, and — more to the 
 purpose — a much more considerable addition to the anti- 
 submarine fleet; and newly created American shipyards had 
 begun to launch new cargo ships in ever increasing numbers, 
 upon a scale never before known to the world. The Allies 
 were kept supplied with food and other necessaries enough to 
 avert any supreme calamity. Before September, 1917, the 
 menace — in its darkest form — had passed. Submarines 
 remained a source of loss and serious annoyance ; but it had
 
 70 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 America's 
 man-power 
 begins to 
 count 
 
 become plain that they were not to be the decisive factor in 
 the war. 
 
 Moreover, America was slowly getting into the struggle — 
 slowly, and yet more swiftly than either friend or foe had 
 dreamed possible. The general expectation had been that, 
 totally unprepared as the United States was for war, her chief 
 contribution would be in money, ships, and supplies. These 
 she gave in generous measure (Chapter IX, below). But 
 also, from the first the government wisely planned for military 
 participation on a huge scale. Congress was induced to pass 
 a "selective conscription " act; and as early as June a small 
 contingent of excellent fighters was sent to France — mainly 
 from the old regular army. In the early fall, new regiments 
 were transported (some 300,000 before Christmas), and per- 
 haps half a million more were in training. By 1920, it was 
 then thought by the hopeful, America could place three million 
 men in the field in Europe, or even five million, and so decide 
 the war. But events were to make a supreme exertion neces- 
 sary even sooner ; and America was to meet the need.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LAST YEAR, 1918 
 
 France could stand one more year of war, but she was very French dis- 
 
 nearly " bled white," as Germany had boasted. Her working content a . nd 
 
 ^ ^ ° war-wean- 
 
 classes were war-weary and discouraged, and the Germans had ness 
 
 infected all classes in that country more or less successfully 
 with their poisonous and baseless propaganda to the effect 
 that England was using France to fight her battles, and that 
 she herself was bearing far less than her proper share of the 
 burden. French morale was in danger of giving way somewhat Peace feel- 
 as Russian and Italian had given way. It was saved by two }?f i n ng ~ 
 things : by the tremendous energy of the aged Clemenceau — 
 " The Tiger " — whom the crisis had called from his retire- 
 ment to the premiership ; and by the encouraging appearance 
 in France, none too soon, of American soldiers in large numbers. 
 
 Even in England, peace talk began to be heard, not merely 
 among the workers but here and there in all ranks of society. 
 And among the laborers this dangerous leaning was fearfully 
 augmented when the Russian Bolsheviki published the copies 
 of the " Secret Treaties " between England, France, Italy, and 
 the Tsar's government, revealing the Allied governments as 
 purchasing one another's aid by promises of territorial and 
 commercial spoils. For the first time the charge against the 
 Allies that on their side too the war was " a capitalist war " 
 was given some color of presumption. 
 
 In Germany, too, the masses of the people were war-weary. Conditions 
 The entire generation of their young men was threatened with in ermany 
 extinction, and their children were being pitifully stunted from 
 lack of food. The Reichstag actually adopted resolutions in 
 favor of peace without annexations or indemnities — which 
 from the German viewpoint was extremely conciliatory. But 
 
 71
 
 72 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 A race be- 
 tween Ger- 
 many and 
 America 
 
 Wilson's 
 " diplomatic 
 offensive " 
 
 the junkers and great capitalists were still bent upon complete 
 military victory, which they seemed to see within their grasp ; 
 and the German war lords at once made it plain that they recog- 
 nized no binding force in the Reichstag resolutions. They 
 had knocked out Russia, put out Italy temporarily at least, and 
 might now turn all their strength as never before upon France 
 and England. They were confident that they could win the 
 war before American armies could become an important factor. 
 The Allies, they insisted, had not shipping enough to bring the 
 Americans in any numbers ; still less to bring the supplies 
 needful for them ; and then the Americans " couldn't fight " 
 anyway without years of training. 
 
 Thus in 1918 the war became a race between Germany and 
 America. Could America put decisive numbers in action on 
 the West front before Germany could deliver a knock-out blow ? 
 While winter held the German armies inactive, the British and 
 American navies carried each week thousands of American 
 soldiers toward the front, English ships carrying much the 
 greater number. 
 
 And during these same months America and England won a 
 supremely important victory in the moral field. In the sum- 
 mer of 1917 the Pope had suggested peace negotiation on the 
 basis of July, 1914 — before the war began. Woodrow Wilson 
 at once answered, for America and for the Allies, that there 
 could be no safe peace with the faithless Hohenzollern govern- 
 ment. This cleared the air, and made plain at least one of 
 the " guarantees " the Allies must secure. Then Germany 
 tried another maneuver : she put forward Austria to suggest 
 peace negotiations — in hope, no doubt, of weakening the 
 Allied morale. Instead, in two great speeches, Lloyd-George 
 and President Wilson stated the war aims of the Allies with a 
 studious moderation which conciliated wavering elements in 
 their own countries, and at the same time with a keen logic 
 that put Germany in the wrong even more clearly than before 
 in the eyes of the world. Lloyd-George (January 6) demanded 
 complete reparation for Belgium, but disclaimed intention to
 
 THE LAST YEAR, 1918 73 
 
 exact indemnities other than payment for injuries done by 
 Germany in defiance of international law. President Wilson's 
 address contained his famous Fourteen Points, of which fuller 
 mention will be made later. These statements of America and 
 England began effectively to drive a wedge between the Ger- 
 man government and the German people, by convincing the 
 masses that the Allies were warring only for freedom and for 
 peace, and not for the destruction of Germany. 
 
 And now Germany herself made plain how absolutely right The Brest- 
 the Allies were in their contention that the Hohenzollerns could ^^L 
 be trusted to keep no promises. March 3, 1918, the German 
 militarists, with the grossest of bad faith, shamelessly broke 
 their many pledges to the helpless Bolsheviki and forced upon 
 Russia the "Peace of Brest-Li to vsk." By that dictated treaty, 
 Germany virtually became overlord to a broad belt of vassal 
 states taken from Russia — Finland, the Baltic Provinces, 
 Lithuania, Poland, Ukrainia — and even the remaining " Great 
 Russia " had to agree to German control of her industrial re- 
 organization. When the German perfidy had revealed itself 
 suddenly, after long and deceitful negotiations, the angered 
 and betrayed Bolsheviki wished to break off, and renew the 
 war. They were absolutely helpless, however, without prompt 
 Allied aid upon a large scale. This aid they asked for, but 
 urgent cablegrams brought no answer. The Allies apparently 
 had been so repelled by the Bolshevist industrial and political 
 policy that they were unwilling to deal with that government, 
 and preferred to leave Russia to its fate — and to the Germans. 
 
 At that moment the result was disastrous. Murmurs in 
 Germany against the war were stilled by the immediate prospect 
 of an empire stretching from the North Sea to the Pacific, and 
 of large accumulated stores of Russian wheat — as soon as 
 transportation systems could be restored to efficiency. 
 
 In all the Allied countries tremendous popular feeling was 
 aroused against the Bolsheviki government. In part this 
 was because the people — ignorant of the facts just men-
 
 74 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 tioned — believed that government a mere tool of Germany. 
 In part it was due to hatred and fear among propertied classes 
 toward any Socialist regime. But more than all else, it 
 was due to a false position adopted by the Bolsheviki in 
 government. They excluded all people living on their 
 capital from political life. 
 
 This of course was not a democracy : it was a class 
 rule. True, in Russia it was the rule of more than ninety 
 per cent of the whole population ; but the example of a 
 "proletarian dictatorship" was dreaded by the " upper " and 
 "middle" classes everywhere. Moreover, the Bolsheviki 
 announced a repudiation of the Russian national debt. 1 The 
 Russian bonds were owned mainly in France; and that 
 country persuaded the Allies to treat the Russian govern- 
 ment as an enemy. Soon, too, various reactionary and 
 middle-class movements against the Bolsheviki tyranny 
 found leaders for a vigorous civil war. 
 
 The great 
 German 
 offensive 
 in Picardy 
 in March 
 
 Naturally the Germans opened the campaign in the West at 
 the earliest moment possible. They had now a vast superiority 
 both in men and in heavy guns there. March 21 they attacked 
 the British lines in Picardy with overwhelming forces. After 
 five days of terrific fighting the British were hurled out of their 
 trench lines and driven back with frightful losses nearly to 
 Amiens, leaving a broad and dangerous gap between them and 
 the French. It looked as though the Germans might drive 
 the British into the sea, or the French back upon Paris, or both. 
 But, as so often in their great offensives in this war, the Ger- 
 mans had exhausted themselves in their mass attack ; and 
 while they paused a French force threw itself into the gap, and 
 British reserves reinforced the shattered front lines. For the 
 first time since the First Battle of the Marne, the Germans had 
 forced the fighting into the open, where they had always claimed 
 
 1 The Bolsheviki afterward offered to give up this policy if accorded recog- 
 nition. Read William Hard's articles on " Bolshevist Russia " in the Metro- 
 politan (June-October, 1919) — based on the account by Raymond Robins.
 
 THE LAST YEAR, 1918 75 
 
 marked superiority ; but they were unable to follow up their 
 success decisively. 
 
 In April they struck again farther north, in Flanders, and The offen- 
 again they seemed almost to have overwhelmed the British ; Fj an( j ers 
 but fighting desperately, " with our backs to the wall " as Haig in April 
 phrased it in his solemn order to his dying army, and rein- 
 forced by some French divisions, the British kept their front 
 unbroken, bent and thinned though it was. 
 
 The Germans took another month for preparation, and then The offen- 
 struck fiercely in a general attack on the French lines north of Ahmg -^ th ! 
 the Aisne. Apparently the French were taken by surprise, last of May 
 The Germans broke through, for the moment, on an eighteen- 
 mile front, and once more reached the Marne. Here, however, 
 they were halted, largely by American troops, at Chateau- 
 Thierry. Then, while the Americans made splendid counter- 
 attacks, as at Belleau Wood (renamed, for them, " Wood of Checked by 
 the Marines "), the French lines were reformed, so that still at chateau- 
 the Allies presented a continuous front, irregular though it Thierry 
 was with dangerous salients and wedges. At almost the same 
 time, Austria, forced into action again in Italy by German 
 insistence, was repulsed in a general attack on the Piave. 
 
 Time was fighting for the Allies. The disasters of the early Time given 
 spring, the suggestion of the American commander, General Americans 
 Pershing, and the imperative demand of Clemenceau, at last in- to arrive 
 duced them to take the wise step of appointing a generalissimo. 
 This position was given to Ferdinand Foch, mentioned above 
 in the story of the First Marne. For the rest of the struggle, 
 the Allied forces were directed with a unity and skill that had 
 been impossible under divided commands, even with the heartiest 
 desire to cooperate. 
 
 And now, too, America really had an army in France. Before 
 the end of June, her effective soldiers there numbered 1,250,000. 
 Each month afterward brought at least 300,000 more. By 
 September the number exceeded two million. 
 
 The Germans could not again take up the offensive for five 
 weeks (June 11-July 15), and in this interval the balance of
 
 76 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The last 
 German 
 offensive 
 
 available man-power seems to have turned against them. 
 Hindenburg and Ludendorf (chief of staff, supreme for long 
 past in German military councils) believed only in mass attacks 
 over wide fronts. When one of these gigantic onsets had once 
 
 Arrtiens Peronne fVt.Quentin 
 x rtMontdidior / 
 
 NNoyun > 
 
 ^J^^p^K Mars la Touri /••;>. f etz % 
 
 Line of July 15 191S 
 
 " " iVov. 10 " 
 
 The Gehman Lines on July 15 and on November 10. 
 
 been stopped, with its tremendous losses and demoralization, 
 a considerable interval had to elapse before another could begin. 
 July 15, preparations were complete, and the Germans attacked 
 again in great force along the Marne, expecting this time to 
 reach positions that would command Paris. But the onset
 
 THE LAST YEAR, 1918 77 
 
 broke against a stone-wall resistance of French and American 
 troops. For the first time in the war, a carefully prepared offen- 
 sive failed to gain ground. 
 
 The German failure was plain by the 17th. On the 18th, Foch's con- 
 before the Germans could withdraw or reorganize, Foch beqan * inu ? us of ~ 
 
 ° " tensive 
 
 his great offensive, by counter-attacking upon the exposed western 
 flank of the invaders. This move took the Germans completely 
 by surprise. Their front all but collapsed along a critical line 
 of twenty-eight miles. Foch allowed them no hour of rest. Un- 
 like his opponents, he did not attempt gigantic attacks, to 
 break through at some one point. Instead, he kept up a con- 
 tinuous offensive, threatening every part of the enemy's front, 
 but striking now here, now there, on one exposed flank and then 
 on another, always ready at a moment to take advantage of a 
 new opening, and giving the Germans no chance to withdraw 
 their forces without imperiling key positions. That is, he kept 
 the ball in his own hands ; and though his forces perhaps were 
 still inferior in numbers to the Germans, he took no intervals 
 for rest — which would have allowed the enemy to attempt a 
 new offensive. 
 
 By the end of July the invaders had been pushed out of the The German 
 ground they had gained in May and June, between the Aisne retreat 
 and the Marne. Then the British, reorganized now, were 
 brought again into action in Picardy, taking the burden of the 
 offensive, while the French kept up activity enough to prevent 
 any transfer of reinforcements to that district from the sector 
 opposite them. For some weeks, the Americans, steadily grow- 
 ing in numbers and equipment, were held in reserve for the most 
 part — after their gallant fighting in stopping the last German 
 offensive — but before the end of August the British and French 
 had won back all the ground lost in the German offensives of 
 the spring. 
 
 The Germans had made their last throw — and lost. Foch's The Ameri- 
 pressure never relaxed. In September American divisions ^ s ** 
 began an offensive on a third part of the front, culminating in a 
 drive toward Sedan, to cut one of the two main railways that
 
 78 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Germany 
 asks for an 
 armistice 
 
 supplied the German front, and at the same time the British 
 were wrenching great sections of the " Hindenburg Line " from 
 the foe. In the opening days of October the German commanders 
 reported to Berlin that the war was lost, and that it was necessary 
 to try to get peace by negotiation. For the next month, while 
 there went on an exchange of notes regarding an armistice, the 
 German military situation grew steadily more critical. 
 
 Bulgaria 
 had already 
 fallen 
 
 And Turkey 
 
 At the same time, it is true that Germany lasted longer than 
 any of her allies and that her collapse was determined largely 
 by events in the East. In September, the Allied force, so long 
 held inactive at Salonika, suddenly took the offensive, crushing 
 the Bulgarians in a great battle on the Vardar. Political 
 changes had made this move possible. In 1917, now that the 
 Tsar could no longer interfere, the English and French had 
 deposed and banished King Constantine of Greece ; and Veni- 
 zelos, the new head of the Greek state, was warmly committed 
 to the Allied cause. Moreover, the Bulgarians were war- 
 weary and demoralized. They had failed to get from Germany 
 and Austria the spoils they hoped at the fall of Roumania ; 
 and now after their one great defeat they had neither spirit 
 nor forces to continue the struggle. Foch's pressure made it 
 impossible for the Germans to transfer reinforcements to them 
 from the West. The Salonika forces advanced swiftly into 
 Bulgaria. Tsar Ferdinand abdicated, and (September 30) the 
 Provisional Bulgarian government signed an armistice amount- 
 ing to unconditional surrender and opening also the way for an 
 attack upon Austria from the south. 
 
 And while these events were happening, a wholly independent 
 series of movements were putting Turkey out of the war. In 
 the spring of 1917 an English force from India worked its way 
 up the Tigris and took Bagdad — after a romantic campaign 
 that recalls the wars and marches of Alexander the Great in the 
 Orient — and in the fall of the same year, another British force 
 from Egypt took Jerusalem. But the Russian collapse en- 
 dangered both these promising movements, and the pressure
 
 THE LAST YEAR, 1918 79 
 
 of the Germans on the West front made it unsafe for England 
 then to send more men to either of these important Eastern 
 districts. But by midsummer of 1918, reinforcements were 
 sent at last to Palestine ; and September 19, the British re- 
 sumed a remarkable campaign north of Jerusalem. The Turks 
 were utterly routed in a decisive battle, and the pursuit was so 
 hot and so continuous that they never rallied in any force. 
 Aleppo, the key to Northern Syria, surrendered October 26, 
 without a blow, — and with it fell the Ottoman Empire outside 
 Asia Minor. The Turks saw that the collapse of Bulgaria had 
 isolated them from any possible German succor — and in any 
 case Germany was no more able to spare troops now for them 
 than a month before for Bulgaria. The Turkish government 
 at Constantinople fled. A new one was hastily constituted; 
 and, October 30, Turkey surrendered as abjectly as Bulgaria. 
 The Dardanelles were opened, and Constantinople admitted 
 an Allied garrison. 
 
 Austria too had dissolved. After the June repulse on the And Austria 
 Piave, the Austrian army was never fit for another offensive. 
 At home the conglomerate state was going to pieces. Bohemia 
 on one side, and Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians on the other, 
 were organizing independent governments — with encourage- 
 ment from America and the Allies. Then, October 24, Italy 
 struck on the Piave. The Austrian army broke in rout. Austria 
 called frantically for an armistice, and when one was granted 
 (November 4) the ancient Hapsburg Empire had vanished. 
 The Emperor Karl (recent successor to the old Francis Joseph) 
 abdicated. Fugitive archdukes and duchesses crowded Swiss 
 hotels. And each day or two saw a new revolutionary republic 
 set up in some part of the former Hapsburg realms. 
 
 Germany had begun to treat for surrender a month earlier, The Allies 
 
 but held out a week longer. October 5, the German Chan- refuse *° 
 
 treat with 
 celor (now Prince Max of Baden) had asked President Wilson the German 
 
 to arrange an armistice, offering to accept his " fourteen points " autocrac y 
 
 as a basis for peace. Wilson's replies to this and to a following 
 
 communication made it plain that America and the Allies would
 
 80 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 German 
 revolution 
 
 The ar- 
 mistice, 
 Novem- 
 ber 11 
 
 not treat with the old despotic government, and that no ar- 
 mistice would be granted at that late moment which did not 
 secure to the Allies fully the fruits of their military advantages 
 in the field. Meantime the fighting went on, with terrific losses 
 on both sides, but with daily increase in the military superiority 
 of the Allies. The Americans, pushing north in the Argonne 
 and across the Meuse, were threatening the trunk railway at 
 Sedan, the only road open for German retreat except the one 
 through Belgium. The British and Belgians pushed the dis- 
 couraged invaders out of northern France and out of a large 
 part of Belgium. The pursuit at every point was so hot that 
 retreat had to be foot by foot, or in complete rout ; and it was 
 not clear that even that choice would long remain. More- 
 over, the fleet at Kiel was in mutiny, and the Extreme Social- 
 ists — all along opposed to the war — were openly preparing 
 revolution. 
 
 Not till late in October did the War Council of the Allies 
 make known to Germany the terms upon which she could have 
 an armistice preliminary to the drafting of a peace treaty. By 
 those terms Germany could save her army from destruction, 
 and her territory would not suffer hostile conquest. But she 
 was to surrender at once Alsace-Lorraine, and to withdraw her 
 troops everywhere across the Rhine, leaving the Allies in pos- 
 session of a broad belt of German territory. She was also to 
 surrender practically all her fleet, most of her heavy artillery, 
 her aircraft, and her railway engines. Likewise she was at 
 once to release all prisoners, though her own were to remain in 
 the hands of the Allies. In March, Germany had treacherously 
 and arrogantly set her foot upon the neck of prostrate Russia 
 in the Brest-Litovsk treaty: November 11, she made this un- 
 conditional surrender to whatever further conditions the Allies 
 might impose in the final settlement — though the Allies did 
 pledge themselves to base their terms, with certain reservations, 
 upon Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points. 
 
 Germany had already collapsed internally. November 7, 
 Bavaria deposed her king and proclaimed herself a republic.
 
 THE LAST YEAR, 1918 81 
 
 State after state followed. In Berlin the moderate Socialists German 
 seized the government — with the support of the aristocracy completed 
 — against the efforts of a more radical Socialist element, 
 who were striving to accomplish a further revolution. No- 
 vember 9, deserted by the army, the Kaiser had fled to 
 Holland, whence he soon sent back to Germany his formal 
 abdication. German autocracy and Prussian militarism had 
 fallen forever.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 
 
 No other war was ever so enormously destructive, but neither 
 did any other war ever give birth to so many healing and con- 
 structive forces. These forces we can most easily notice in our 
 own land, but it should be kept in mind that they were found 
 also in other countries, especially in England and France — 
 in some respects, too, in more advanced forms even than in 
 America. 
 
 For this study there are two phases, more or less inter- 
 twined : (1) that phase which had to do mainly with greater 
 efficiency in the war itself; and (2) that other phase winch 
 looked to a better and finer world after the war. The first 
 phase is the theme of this chapter. 
 America's To our own surprise, and to that of the world, we proved that 
 
 American democracy, utterly unready for war as it was, could 
 organize for war, by voluntary cooperation, more efficiently and 
 swiftly than any autocracy had ever done. Said President 
 Wilson at the beginning — " It is not an army we must shape 
 and train ; it is a nation. . . . The whole nation must be a 
 team in which each man shall play the part for which he is best 
 fitted." The task was not merely to select and train three 
 million soldiers, but to mobilize one hundred million people, so 
 that every ability and every resource could be utilized with the 
 utmost intelligence and harmony. After all, battles in modern 
 war are won mainly behind the lines. The most important 
 mobilization was mobilizing our civilian population to produce 
 and transport munitions and supplies, to raise food, supply fuel, 
 and furnish abundant funds. 
 
 At once the government put skilled brains at work: (1) to 
 find out just what was needed in all these respects, and in what 
 
 82 
 
 task
 
 WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 83 
 
 order, so as to be able to distribute effort wisely ; (2) to find Fitting each 
 which men were best fitted for each job — - often by systems of ™£ n ° s 
 tests in the hands of educational experts ; (3) to teach the 
 nation, careless and wasteful by previous training, that to save 
 food, clothing, and other supplies was just as useful and just as 
 patriotic as to produce them ; and (4) first of all, to educate the 
 whole people as to what the war really meant and as to the best 
 ways of cooperating in all these ways to win it. 
 
 The great Committee on Public Information at Washington, The Com- 
 created by President Wilson, was a new thing in human history. Sr|^ °°_ 
 If a democracy was to turn away from all its ordinary ways of formation: 
 living in order to fight, it must be thoroughly posted on the ™T C anda 
 danger that threatened it, and on the needs of the hour. Within 
 a few months this Committee, at small expense, had published 
 and circulated in every village in America more than a hundred 
 different pamphlets, brief, readable, forceful, written by lead- 
 ing American scholars, and distributed literally by the million. 
 These publications did a marvelous work in spreading informa- 
 tion and arousing will power among the people, demonstrating 
 that in war itself "the pen is mightier than the sword." Most 
 of these studies are of permanent scholarly value, and some of 
 them are referred to in footnotes and book lists in this volume. 
 
 With this Committee originated also the admirable organ- The Four- 
 ization of Four-Minute Men, — some 5000 volunteer speakers ^ l ° ute 
 to explain the causes and needs of the war in their respective 
 communities to audiences gathered at the movies and at other 
 entertainments. Speakers and occasions were matters of local 
 arrangement ; but the central Committee put the plan in opera- 
 tion and made it effective by sending to all the thousands of 
 local centers at frequent intervals suggestions and information 
 on which to base the speeches. 
 
 The same Committee secured the chief of America's illus- War posters 
 trators, with a strong staff of volunteer assistants, to design 
 posters and placards, — which were plentifully distributed in 
 every city and village in the land to arouse more determination 
 to save food and to save money to be loaned to the government.
 
 84 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 It is impossible to explain here the many other activities 
 of the Committee — such as the cultivation of friendly feeling 
 in South American lands, the uncovering of German plots, the 
 driving of a wedge between the German people and its govern- 
 ment by shooting propaganda into Germany. And this Com- 
 mittee is only one instance out of many of the work of eminent 
 American chemists, historians, engineers, heads of great business 
 enterprises, who served at Washington during the war as vol- 
 unteers with at best only a nominal money compensation, and 
 often as " one dollar a year " men. 
 
 Raising 
 funds for 
 war 
 
 Liberty 
 Bonds 
 
 The United States formed no " alliance " by treaty with any 
 of the Allies, but it recognized that they and we were " as- 
 sociated " as co-workers, and that we must give them every 
 possible aid. At first, as has been said (p. 70), the Allies looked 
 to us mainly for money, raw materials, and food. 
 
 Money we furnished freely. To England, France, Italy, and 
 Belgium (and to Russia before her collapse) we loaned nearly 
 ten billions of dollars, most of which, it is true, was used by those 
 governments in purchasing supplies in America. W 7 ithin a few 
 months after the war began, the special session of Congress in 
 the spring and summer of 1917 appropriated the unparalleled sum 
 of twenty-two billions of dollars for war purposes. Five billions 
 of this was loaned to the government at once by citizens of all 
 classes in the purchase of the first and second issue of Liberty 
 Bonds (August and October, 1917). These bonds were sold 
 mostly in small denominations, down to $50, and were taken 
 largely by people of small means. During this first season one 
 out of every ten people in the United States (children and all) 
 became a bond-holder by so loaning to the government. During 
 the next year and a half, by three more bond issues, the govern- 
 ment borrowed of our people, including the earlier issues, seven- 
 teen billions. (For the fourth issue alone, the largest loan, there 
 were twenty-one million subscribers, or one of every five inhab- 
 itants.) Besides all this, vast sums were loaned to the govern- 
 ment in even smaller amounts, by the purchase of Thrift Stamps
 
 WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 85 
 
 (25 cents each) and War Savings Stamps ($5), — an effective 
 way of encouraging small savings. 
 
 The amazing success of these loans — which for the most 
 part were heavily oversubscribed — is the more marked be- 
 cause the interest was low and because money at that time could 
 earn much higher return in many other ways. 
 
 But we had to raise money also by taxation. The first War War taxes 
 Revenue bill provided for direct taxes to raise two and a half 
 billions a year, and a subsequent bill increased the amount to 
 more than four billions a year. Half of this came from a 
 graduated income tax and allied taxes (an inheritance tax, and 
 an " excess profits " tax). The income tax took 2 per cent of 
 a small income x and rose by steep degrees to 65 per cent of very 
 large incomes. Moreover, large amounts were raised by a 
 " luxury tax," payable on a great variety of articles of clothing 
 costing more than a certain price. In general, a serious effort 
 was made by America to arrange the system of taxes so that 
 for the first time in the world, the cost of war should not fall 
 mainly on the working classes. 
 
 England needed our cotton and wheat, and France and saving food 
 Italy could not fight longer without our iron and coal as well. a ° d " d °j n s 
 These things we strove to send. But all the Allies, stripped of f ee d our 
 their own farm workers, needed American food ; and our poor Allies 
 harvest in 1917 left us no surplus above our ordinary consumption. 
 
 This was an alarming condition. To meet it, Congress gave 
 the President extraordinary powers over the nation's resources. 
 The President created a Food Commission, headed by Herbert C. 
 Hoover, an American business man and engineer, who for the 
 three years preceding had shown signal administrative ability 
 and devotion to humanity as head of the American Relief Com- 
 mission in starving Belgium. (When we entered the war, 
 Mr. Hoover and his American associates in Belgium had been 
 obliged to return to the United States.) 
 
 ■Each taxpayer was allowed $1000 income exempt from taxation; 
 husband and wife, $2000 ; and $200 more was exempt for each minor child.
 
 86 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 War prof- 
 iteering 
 largely held 
 in check 
 
 This Commission, by spreading information broadcast and 
 by skillful appeals kept everywhere before the eye, induced the 
 American people voluntarily and cheerfully to limit its con- 
 sumption, and especially to " save the waste." Wheatless and 
 meatless days each week, agreed upon according to the Com- 
 mission's " request " and enforced by public opinion, and a 
 rigid limit on the amount of sugar allowed to any locality, made 
 it possible for our government to export huge amounts of these 
 three most essential foods for the peoples whose armies were 
 righting our battles in Europe. 
 
 By saving waste, and by using substitutes, we cut down our 
 use of wheat for one year almost half ; and the half so saved 
 gave to every person in England, France, and Italy almost as 
 much as we used at home. We had less than 20 millions of 
 bushels to export in 1917, if we used as much as usual at home ; 
 but, by doing without, we did export 141 million bushels. 
 
 To prevent this European demand from raising prices 
 exorbitantly, and to check speculation in foodstuffs, the Com- 
 mission took important steps in fixing fair prices and in regulat- 
 ing profits. This last, it must be said, was not wholly success- 
 ful. Congress had not given the President power enough, 
 vast as was his power. The price of wheat flour was fixed ; 
 but many millers took advantage of the patriotic determination 
 of the country to use cheaper grain, like rye flour and oatmeal, 
 by raising the prices of these flours exorbitantly. This was one 
 instance of disgraceful "profiteering." There were others; 
 and the government did not prove strong enough successfully 
 to prosecute and punish any big profiteer. Still, on the whole, 
 the record of the " big-money " interests in the war was ex- 
 tremely creditable (although we did have 17,000 more million- 
 aires when the war closed than when we began). 
 
 War saving The above statement regarding the savings brought about 
 
 a demo- among the people by voluntary consent is by no means com- 
 
 untary plcte. The woman's committees of the Defense Councils 
 
 movement issued cook books to show the housewife how to save and how
 
 WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 87 
 
 to use what had previously gone to the garbage can. In 1918, 
 on the advice of the National Commercial Economy Board, 
 manufacturers of clothing put forth fewer and simpler styles, 
 omitting all needless buttons, frills, belts, collars, and so on. 
 This alone saved millions of yards of cloth — fifteen per cent, 
 it is estimated, of the cloth usually needed for men's clothing, 
 and twenty-five per cent for women's. 
 
 Along with this saving, went also, of course, work for in- 
 creased production. Farmers increased their acreage for the 
 most needed crops, receiving from State or Nation necessary 
 advances in money for seed or machinery. Needed farm labor 
 was furnished by volunteer school boys — who were allowed 
 school credits for the time so spent. And a vast amount of 
 food was raised in new " war gardens " on small private grounds 
 which before had been devoted, very rightfully, to beauty and 
 pleasure. 
 
 To carry these supplies to Europe in spite of the ravages of Shipbuilding 
 submarines a new Shipping Board built ships on a scale beyond 
 all precedent. First of all, new shipyards had to be built, 
 and whole new cities to house the tens of thousands of new 
 shipbuilders — who in turn had to be trained for their new work. 
 Like much else in our haste, all this was not done without some 
 sad blunders and much extravagance. But it was done, and done 
 swiftly. In less than a year, America's new plants were turning 
 out ships much faster than England's centuries-old yards had 
 ever launched them. The new shipyards beat the submarine — 
 and America could afford some extravagance in that work in 
 return for speed. 
 
 Transportation at home had its own problems. The rail- The rail- 
 roads began to break down almost at once under the increased 
 business imposed upon them by the war; and the nation felt 
 keenly the waste of so many non-cooperating systems. In 
 December of the first year, Congress passed a law turning the 
 railroads over to the government (guaranteeing profits to the 
 owners), which began to operate them as one system for the 
 
 road
 
 88 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 period of the war. Telegraph and express companies also 
 
 passed into government hands. 
 Saving coal The mines were not ready on short notice to supply coal as 
 and gasoline f ag £ ag war neec ] s ca ll e( J f or jt. Hard coal for ship and railroads 
 
 and for many war industries we had to have. Accordingly the 
 government regulated its private use. People learned to save 
 fuel, to heat their houses and offices only to 65° instead of to 
 70° or 72°, and many changed their heating plants so as to use 
 soft coal or wood. For many weeks in 1918, at the request of 
 the government, churches were closed, and stores, amusement 
 halls, and most industries were closed on certain days of the 
 week, to save coal. People grumbled a little, but joked and 
 assented. A little later, to save gasoline needed in France for 
 tanks and auto-trucks and aeroplanes, " gasless Sunday " took 
 its recognized place alongside " heatless," " wheatless," and 
 " meatless " days, — all essentially on government recommen- 
 dation only. 
 
 Labor In zeal to secure more rapid output of war supplies, some 
 
 standards States began to repeal existing laws limiting hours of labor for 
 women and children. Organized labor protested wisely, and 
 the government stepped in to check this disastrous tendency — 
 which had already been tried and abandoned in England. The 
 important thing was, not to " speed up " production for a few 
 weeks, at cost of a long let down afterward, but rather to " keep 
 fit," to keep labor at the top notch of vitality, to gear our in- 
 dustry for a long hard pull, not for a short spurt. Said President 
 Wilson, in a telgram to one State governor : 
 
 " It would be most unfortunate for any of the States to relax 
 the laws by which safeguards have been thrown about labor. 
 I feel that there is no necessity for such action. It would lead 
 to a slackening of the energy of the nation, rather than to an 
 increase, besides being unfair to the workers." 
 
 The selec- It was necessary that America should give of her manhood as 
 
 tive draft, we j| as Q f ner wea i t h g f ar as resu lts go, that story has been 
 
 and its ° v 
 
 success told in preceding pages. Here we may briefly note the method.
 
 WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 89 
 
 At the declaration of war, eager volunteers pressed forward 
 for army and navy; but what was needed was more than 
 individual volunteers. America needed a wise use of the whole 
 nation's resources, each man being assigned the job he could do 
 best. And so, May 18, 1917, the " selective draft " became 
 law. Every man and youth from 18 to 45 (by the first law only 
 from 21 to 31) was required to register in his county seat, giving, 
 in answer to a questionnaire, full information about his character, 
 training, health, and ability. All were liable for service : the 
 President was to lay down principles upon which to select for 
 service in the ranks those best fitted, or most easily spared from 
 other service. 
 
 Before the end of the year, half a million soldiers were train- 
 ing in fifty swiftly built camps — each camp a new city — largely 
 under officers who had been trained earlier in the year in new 
 officers' training camps ; and some 300,000 were already in 
 France, receiving the finishing touches to their training just 
 behind the trenches. When the armistice came, a year later, 
 we had three million men under arms, of whom more than two 
 million were doing splendid work in France. It is hard to say 
 whether the Kaiser or we ourselves were the more astounded 
 at the swift making of an American army. 
 
 Along with this national activity, there was a vast volunteer Local ac- 
 activity by local democracies, always looking gladly to Washing- tlvlties 
 ton for advice and direction, but also quite ready to trust to 
 their own initiative if needful. Each State had its Council of 
 Defense (modeled on the Council of National Defense). Most 
 of these were well supplied with State funds ; and many of them 
 did exceedingly useful work in promoting unity, arousing 
 interest, and suppressing possible treason within their States. 
 Below each State Council, and in constant touch with it, were 
 county and village councils of like character. In rural dis- 
 tricts, the schoolhouse was usually the center for such bodies 
 to meet, as well as for local chapters of the Red Cross and for 
 war lectures.
 
 90 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Other or- 
 ganizations 
 
 Even more significant than these public organizations, were 
 the thousands of canvassing boards that served in the draft 
 without pay ; the examining boards of busy physicians, who 
 gave their time freely to secure the physical fitness of the soldiers ; 
 the volunteer bodies of village teachers, working Saturdays, 
 Sundays, and nights, to classify the results of draft ques- 
 tionnaires ; the Red Cross societies in every neighborhood ; 
 and the volunteer canvassers for Liberty Bond sales, wherein 
 the Boy Scouts had a fine share. Democracy proved that, 
 when attacked, it could put aside its ordinary life of work and 
 play, to take on war activities with resolution, efficiency, and 
 unanimity unexcelled. 
 
 The work 
 of the 
 women 
 
 True, there were some blots on this splendid record. Here 
 and there, selfish or stupid politicians sought personal popu- 
 larity by wrapping their country's flag about them, or tried to 
 discredit or destroy rivals by false accusations of lack of patriot- 
 ism. In the heat of war passion, some grave injustices were 
 committed ; and some foolish offenders were punished too 
 severely. Mob violence, even, was permitted, and in some 
 cases against thoroughly patriotic men falsely accused by 
 personal enemies. The method by which poor people were 
 sometimes intimidated into taking more bonds than they could 
 afford did not suit well the name Liberty for those bonds. These 
 things America will regret; but, spite of such blemishes, the 
 history is a proud one. 
 
 It will not do to omit mention of woman's share in the war. 
 In all the good work described above, she had a part. But 
 we must remember further that, in America as elsewhere, behind 
 each man who took up a rifle there stood a woman to take up 
 the work he laid down. Even in America, women ran elevators, 
 street cars, and motor busses, and took up new and heavy work 
 in factories, — especially in munition factories and in air-craft 
 building. In England, as her men were drained away, five 
 million women took up men's work, — an Earl's daughter 
 sometimes toiling in a munition factory at the same bench with
 
 WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 91 
 
 a working girl from the streets. And in America, in twenty 
 states, college girls enlisted in the " Woman's Land Army," 
 for outdoor farm work. 
 
 Nor was it only in manual toil that these new workers played 
 a new part. Many kinds of office work and business manage- 
 ment were taken over by women with marked success — as 
 well as much of the organization and most of the work of the 
 Red Cross both in America and with the American army in 
 France. 
 
 In all countries this war efficiency of women gave the final 
 impetus to the movement for equal suffrage. The last " argu- 
 ment " against suffrage — the silly plea that a woman ought 
 not to vote because she could not fight — was proved false.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 
 
 January 18, 1871, the first German Emperor placed the new 
 imperial crown upon his own head at Versailles, while his 
 victorious armies were still besieging Paris. January 18, 1919, 
 the Peace Congress opened its meetings in the same room of 
 the Versailles Palace, to reconstruct Europe after the fall of 
 the German Empire. 
 Attempts at There was supreme need of reconstruction. Central Europe 
 class rule in naa - broken into fragments, and each fragment was tossing 
 Central helplessly on waves of revolution. In Germany an extreme 
 
 urope wing of the Socialists, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxem- 
 
 burg, were planning a second revolution to take power from 
 the "Conservative Socialists" of the Provisional Government 
 into the hands of the working class. Those two leaders, 
 splendidly fearless, had been foremost in all Germany in oppos- 
 ing Prussian militarism before the war ; ' and Liebknecht had 
 spent most of the war years in prison as a traitor to German 
 autocracy, because he had dared to oppose the war even after it 
 began. Freed by the fall of autocracy, he now taught that 
 selfish capitalist and imperialist forces would try to make a 
 peace of plunder. Only a workingman's government in Ger- 
 many, he preached, and the spread of such a government into 
 France and England, could secure a lasting peace based on 
 justice and righteousness. 
 
 This mistaken rloetrine, however honest in the leaders, was 
 suited for use by selfishness, ignorance, and passion. Accord- 
 ingly in several large German cities, especially in Berlin, 
 
 1 See C. Altschul's German Militarism and its German Critics, War Infor- 
 mation Scries, Xo. 13. 
 
 92
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 93 
 
 "Soldiers and Workingmen's Councils" seized the government 
 in the interest, not of democracy, but of "class" rule. These 
 bodies were attacked promptly by the regular troops, which for 
 the most part remained true to the Provisional Government. 
 Thousands fell in bloody street fights, marked by the use of 
 poison gas, machine guns, and liquid fire. The superior equip- 
 ment of the government forces in all such respects triumphed ; 
 and Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were taken prisoners — 
 and brutally murdered by their guards. 1 
 
 Then in January, 1919, Germany held an election for a German 
 National Assembly. By a new franchise law promulgated by A^l^biv 
 the Provisional Government, all men and women over 19 years of 1919 
 of age had been given the vote, and an excellent system of 
 "proportional representation" secured due weight to minority 
 parties. The result was a clear victory for a union of Moderate 
 Socialists ("Majority Socialists") and "German Democrats" 
 (the old Liberals). 
 
 To avoid revolutionary dangers, the Assembly met at Weimar 
 instead of at Berlin. By a 3 to 1 vote, it chose Ebert (once a 
 saddler) president of the German Republic (February 11), 
 organized under a coalition cabinet led by Philip Scheidemann, 
 and discussed a new permanent constitution while waiting 
 for peace terms from the Allies. 
 
 Through the winter and spring, this government was con- 
 stantly threatened by further revolution. Factories could 
 not open for lack of cotton, or rubber, or iron, or capital, or 
 markets in which to sell goods. Germany's ships had been 
 taken by the Allies, to help replace those her submarines had 
 sunk, and the Allied blockade had been lifted only far enough 
 to permit the introduction of some foods, — not enough to 
 restore any real trade with the world. Under these conditions, 
 new proletarian revolutions took place in some of the states, — rian Revo ~ 
 especially in Bavaria, where a workingman's government main- lution 
 
 1 Some of the assassins were obliged to go through the form of a trial. 
 Two were sentenced to two years' imprisonme?it : but the next day one of 
 these "escaped," — a fitting conclusion to the farce of the trial.
 
 94 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 tained itself ably for several weeks, until crushed, after the assas- 
 sination of its leader, Kurt Eisner, by the union of all other forces. 1 
 
 An American newspaper correspondent and editor describes 
 for his paper the session of the Bavarian legislature February 
 22, 1919. He had just entered the newspaper gallery for the 
 first time. "The correspondent of the Frankfurter Zcitung 
 kindly pointed out the various dignitaries. That Minister 
 on the right was a locksmith's apprentice a little while ago. 
 Timm, Minister of Education, on the left, is a tailor's son 
 and was long a public school teacher ; Suer, there, about whose 
 head the storm is raging, is the son of a sewing woman. He 
 left school at eleven to be a herd boy for eleven years. . . . 
 Several women delegates came in. Now they are all here 
 except the President, Kurt Eisner (who had been a poor news- 
 paper man). Then a young man rushes in, pale as a sheet, 
 and a voice calls ' Kurt Eisner has been shot.' " 
 
 The old German Austria became a republic, and the govern- 
 ment voted repeatedly in favor of joining Germany ; but France 
 was unwilling to see Germany so strengthened ; and, as a result, 
 Austria, too, has been threatened with a proletarian revolution. 
 Hungary Hungary had become a republic under enlightened middle- 
 
 and Austria c j ass con t ro l. The President, the liberal-minded Count Karolyi, 
 voluntarily gave up his princely domain for common use, and 
 plead with the Allies for terms that might make the new govern- 
 ment secure. The delay of the Allies in relieving the country, 
 so that it might get food and work, led after a few weeks to 
 a further revolution, — perfectly bloodless this time, — which 
 put in power a proletarian dictatorship under Bela Kun, similar 
 to the Bolshevist rule in Russia. This has just given way 
 (August, 1919), under Allied pressure, to a more moderate 
 Socialist rule. Moreover Roumania had taken advantage of 
 
 1 The German Republic will he a federal state. Of course each state had 
 already put off the old monarchic government. In Prussia, for instance, 
 the Upper House of the legislature had been abolished, and the Lower House 
 was now elected by universal franchise — which included women.
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 
 
 95 
 
 the woes of Hungary to declare war upon that country, and 
 continued her invasion even after the Hungarian government 
 declared its willingness to cede all its Roumanian lands — until 
 the Peace Congress called a halt. 
 
 All the other lands of the old "Central Empire" had already 
 fallen away, but not into peace. An enlarged and free Bohemia 
 
 (the Czecho-Slav Republic) was practically at war not merely 
 with Germany and Austria, but also with the new Polish Repub- 
 lic, over conflicting boundary claims ; and this new Poland, 
 under the leadership of Paderewski, the famous pianist, had 
 other contests with Russian Bolsheviki on one side and with 
 Germany on the remaining land frontier, besides being torn by
 
 96 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 internal factions and busied in massacring its Jews. To the 
 south of old Austria, there had appeared a Jugo-Slav republic 
 by the long sought union of Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, and 
 Slovenes ; but this enlarged Serbia and Italy were in battle 
 array, daily in peril of war, over the Adriatic coast ; while Italy 
 and Greece were at daggers' points regarding South Albania, 
 the islands of the JEge&n, and the shores of Asia Minor. 
 
 No one of these countries felt any trust in the honor of any 
 other. Each believed that every one would hold what he could 
 lay hands on, and so sought to lay his own hands on as much 
 as possible before the day of settlement. The Peace Congress 
 had its work cut out for it. 
 The Peace That famous gathering contained the leading statesmen of 
 
 Congress the wor j ( j. The United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, 
 and Japan each sent five delegates. England's colonies, too, 
 were represented, — two each from Canada, Australia, South 
 Africa, and India, and one from New Zealand. Eighteen other 
 governments, which had taken part in the war upon the side of 
 the Allies, were allowed from one to three delegates each. Each 
 delegation voted as a unit. Countries that had been neutral 
 were also invited to send representatives to be called in when- 
 ever matters arose that specially concerned them. The four 
 "enemy countries" and Russia were allowed no part. A strik- 
 ing feature of the gathering was the great number of expert 
 assistants accompanying their representatives. The United 
 States delegation alone was aided by more than a hundred 
 prominent men, most of them eminent authorities on the his- 
 tory or geography or economic resources of European lands. 
 Woodrow President Wilson himself headed the American delegation, — 
 
 Wilson at m S p}t e f vehement opposition to his leaving his own country 
 for so long a time. In like manner, Lloyd George and Orlando, 
 the English and Italian premiers, represented their lands ; and 
 Clemenceau, head of the French delegation, was naturally 
 chosen president of the Assembly. These men made up "the 
 Big Four." Part of the time this inner circle became the "Big 
 Five" by the inclusion of the Japanese representative.
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 97 
 
 From the first it was plain that even within the Big Four 
 there were critical differences. Mr. Wilson had promised the 
 world, Germany included, "a permanent peace based on un- 
 selfish, unbiased justice," and "a new international order based 
 upon broad universal principles of right." To such ends he in- 
 sisted, (1) that the first step must be the organization of a 
 League of Nations, a World federation ; and (2) that all nego- 
 tiations should be public — " open covenants, openly arrived at." 
 
 At times, Lloyd George seemed heartily to adopt this same Lloyd 
 program; but he was seriously hampered by the fact that ^(fi 6 
 in the campaign for parliamentary elections, in December, he menceau 
 had won by appeals to the worst war passions of the English 
 people, even promising preposterously that Germany should 
 pay "the whole cost of the war." The other leaders never had 
 any real faith in the Wilson program. In Clemenceau's words, 
 they looked upon President Wilson as a benevolent dreamer 
 of Utopias, and they preferred to rest all rearrangements upon 
 the old European methods of rival alliances to maintain a balance 
 of power — a plan which had been tried, only to prove through 
 bloody centuries a seed bed of war. 
 
 Moreover France was dissatisfied and panicky. Germany, Govern- 
 prostrate for the moment, still bordered upon her, with a popu- ments a ° d 
 lation and resources a half greater than her own. So it is easy Europe 
 to understand that many French statesmen should have wished 
 above all things to deal with Germany by German methods 
 — to make her helpless by dismembering her and by plundering 
 her through indemnities, and to build up the new Poland and 
 Bohemia by giving them enough German territory so that they 
 might always be fearful of Germany and therefore hostile to her. 
 Such states on the east, with France on the west, could then 
 hold Germany in a vise between them. 
 
 Such a program meant the perpetuation of the old European 
 system of alliances, armed camps, and, sooner or later, of war. 
 But by the war-weary peoples, if not by the governments of 
 Europe, the Wilson program of a just peace and a world-league 
 was at first hailed with joy. Mr. Wilson had arrived in Europe
 
 98 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Mr. Wilson 
 weakened 
 by events 
 at home 
 
 several weeks before the opening of the Congress, for conferences 
 with European statesmen ; and everywhere in his journey — in 
 England, France, Italy — he was welcomed by the working 
 classes with remarkable demonstrations of respect and affec- 
 tion, as " the president of all of us," as the Italians put it, — as 
 the apostle of world peace and of human brotherhood. For 
 a time it looked possible for him, at a crisis, to override the hostile 
 attitude of the governments by appealing over their heads to 
 the people themselves : and indeed in a great speech at Milan 
 — just after some slurring attacks upon him by French states- 
 men — he hinted pointedly at such a possible program. 
 
 But as months passed in wearisome negotiations, this popular 
 fervor wasted away, and in each nation bitter animosities began 
 to show toward neighboring and allied peoples. Moreover 
 Mr. Wilson had been fatally weakened in Europe by events at 
 home. Late in the campaign for the new Congressional elec- 
 tions in the preceding November, he had made a special and 
 ill-judged appeal to the country for indorsement of his policies 
 by a Democratic victory. But the elections instead gave both 
 Houses to the Republicans; and the jubilant victors, charging 
 vengefully that the President had set an example of political 
 partisanship, entered upon a bitter course of criticism and 
 obstruction. Mr. Wilson's European opponents made the most 
 of this — if indeed they did not, as many thought, have a 
 positive part in starting it. 
 
 Mr. W 7 ilson's first defeat at Paris was in the matter of secret 
 negotiations negotiation. To save time, it was necessary no doubt for the 
 Peace Congress to do most of its work in small committees. 
 But it would have been possible to lessen bargaining and in- 
 trigue by having such meetings open, or at least by having sten- 
 ographic reports of each meeting. Mr. Wilson, however, 
 allowed the Old World diplomats — with their tradition of 
 backstair intrigue — to outgeneral him into consenting to 
 only one public and general meeting each week. The result 
 was that, from the first, the real work was done by the inner 
 circle of four or five in secret conclave (with the addition of 
 
 Secret
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 99 
 
 several advisory secret committees on special matters) ; and 
 instead of even the promised open meeting once a week there 
 were during the entire five months (January 18 — June 28) 
 only four such meetings — and these not really for discussion 
 but merely to ratify conclusions arrived at by the Big Four. 
 
 The next point Mr. Wilson won. It was agreed that the Agreement 
 first business of the Congress should be to provide a League L ° e r a a u f 
 of Nations. With such a league to guarantee peace, to secure Nations 
 disarmament, and to punish any bully or robber state, it was 
 hoped that France and Italy might trust to a just and merciful 
 peace, instead of insisting upon a peace of vengeance and booty. 
 Many voices, in France and in the United States Senate, had 
 been raised in protest, urging instead, as German statesmen had 
 urged while they felt themselves victorious, that such a league 
 should come only after a treaty of peace. But Mr. Wilson 
 argued that the League would expedite, not hinder, the peace 
 treaty, since it was a necessary prelude to any right sort of 
 peace. This view prevailed. 
 
 While a committee of fourteen nations, headed by Mr. Spoils or 
 Wilson, was preparing the covenant, or constitution, of the ^ us ice 
 League, the American President won what seemed for a time 
 another great victory. The first discussions regarding terri- 
 torial changes showed the usual disposition on the part of the 
 victors to grab spoils. France talked of the necessity that she 
 acquire all German territory west of the Rhine, "her natural 
 frontier," so that in future wars that great river might serve 
 as a protective ditch. Marshal Foch supported this plea for 
 military reasons. This of course would have transferred several 
 millions of unwilling Germans to French rule. 
 
 Italy, too, advanced new claims on the Adriatic at the ex- 
 pense of the new South Slav state. And it became plain that the 
 imperfectly known "secret treaties," under which Italy and 
 Japan had entered the war, had provided for a far-reaching 
 division of spoils not only at the expense of Germany but also 
 to the danger of future wars. Enough news leaked out from the 
 secret conclaves to make it certain that President Wilson at
 
 100 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 The Cov- 
 enant of the 
 League of 
 Nations 
 
 once denounced these projects, and declared he would have 
 no part in a "Congress for booty." At one time, indeed, when 
 the Italian delegates insisted strenuously upon Croatian Finnic 
 (the natural door of the South Slavs to the Adriatic), he cabled 
 to America for his ship — a plain threat that he would leave 
 Paris rather than assent. England and France then gave him 
 their support, and this particular act of plunder was avoided — 
 even though Orlando did for a while leave the Congress in pro- 
 test. Unhappily in other cases Mr. Wilson was not always so 
 resolute. Victory over Fiume was followed by defeat over 
 Shantung (p. 103). 
 
 For a moment England seemed to hold the key to the 
 situation. The secret treaties had assumed that she would 
 retain the great bulk of the German colonies. For this there 
 would have been much excuse. She had proved her eminent 
 fitness for control of tropical colonies ; and some of the con- 
 quered districts — if a state of war was to be looked upon as 
 probable in the future — were essential to the safety of her other 
 dominions. Indeed the South African and Australian repre- 
 sentatives at Paris faced political death if they returned home 
 without German Southwest Africa and German New Guinea 
 in their pockets. But Lloyd George came loyally to Wilson's 
 side. Unless England renounced her conquests for the general 
 good, there was no escape from an old-fashioned peace of plun- 
 der ; if she did renounce them, there seemed good hope that 
 England and the United States together might persuade the 
 other Allies to yield their selfish and injurious claims under the 
 secret treaties. And renounce the colonies England did — 
 though the renunciation was accompanied by the suggestion of 
 mandatories, responsible to the coming League of Nations. 
 
 In March, while other negotiations dragged along, the commit- 
 tee on the League of Nations made its report, and the Congress 
 enthusiastically adopted the proposed constitution. The chief 
 opposition to the proposal appeared in the United States Senate, 
 where leading Republicans tried to make it a party question. 
 This was rendered difficult, happily, by the splendid work of ex-
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 101 
 
 President Taft, head of the American League to Enforce Peace, 
 who, with a group of leading Republicans, toured the country 
 to secure support for the covenant. The opposition was suffi- 
 cient, however, so that after a few weeks, the Peace Congress 
 revised the document in a few details. 
 
 The revised covenant is clear and brief. The union is very 
 loose, and its managing bodies are not really a government. 
 The forty-five "charter members" include all organized govern- 
 ments except Russia, the four "enemy countries," Costa Rica, 
 San Domingo, and Mexico ; and there is a way provided for 
 admitting these in time. Amendments require the unanimous 
 consent of the five big states with a majority of all states ; and 
 the unanimous consent of all nations in the League is demanded 
 for any other action of consequence, except that no party to a 
 dispute has a voice in its settlement. Among the most valuable 
 provisions of the "Covenant" are the prohibition of all secret 
 treaties in future and the clauses providing for disarmament, 
 for regulation of the manufacture of munitions of war, for 
 compulsory arbitration, and for delay in recourse to war even if 
 an arbitration is unsatisfactory. A reservation of the Monroe 
 Doctrine, inserted in the second draft as a sop to American 
 opposition, suggests, by its unfortunate phrasing, a continuation 
 of the pernicious doctrine of "spheres of influence," and satisfies 
 neither advocates nor opponents of the League. Much debated, 
 too, is Article X, which guarantees to each state its territorial 
 integrity against external attack. Mr. Wilson wrote the origi- 
 nal of this Article, — but in a very different form, suggesting 
 especially the desirability of future peaceful correction of terri- 
 torial boundaries by the League of Nations. In the present 
 form, many critics fear, the Article may be a serious barrier to 
 needed readjustments. 
 
 The value of the League will depend upon how it is worked. The Ger- 
 Meanwhile, to secure a League, Mr. Wilson "traded" many of man rea ^ 
 his principles in the making of the peace treaties. Early in May 
 the treaty of peace with Germany was handed to the German
 
 102 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 delegates, who had been summoned to Paris to sign for their 
 country. The treaty makes a good-sized book. Only a few 
 points can be stated here. A typical one relates to the Saar 
 Valley, a small strip of German territory just east of Alsace. 
 
 Germany is to cede the rich coal mines of this region to France, 
 in rightful reparation of her wanton destruction of French 
 coal mines. Unhappily France insisted long upon political 
 sovereignty over the territory and people, along with this 
 property. This claim was not granted ; but an unsatisfactory 
 compromise places the valley for fifteen years under an Inter- 
 national Commission. At the end of that time the inhabitants 
 are to vote whether they will return to Germany or join France. 
 If they decide for their own country, Germany must at once 
 buy up France's claim to the coal mines. This may be difficult 
 for her to do ; but if she fails to do it, the territory passes at 
 once and permanently to France. 
 
 This " veiled annexation" of half a million Germans to a 
 foreign power, against their will, is in sharp defiance of the prin- 
 ciple of "self-determination," — and it was wholly unnecessary. 
 France ought to have the coal ; but title to that could have been 
 guaranteed safely, under the League of Nations, without this 
 transfer of political allegiance. And the Saar Valley arrange- 
 ment is merely one of several like or worse arrangements. The 
 new Poland gets not merely the Polish territory long held by 
 Prussia, to which she is entitled, but also large strips of German 
 territory, like Upper Silesia (with its two million people), which 
 she wants solely because of its mines. Moreover, in order to give 
 Poland easy access to the sea, by the route of the Vistula, Ger- 
 man Dantzig is made a "free" city, against its will. Besides 
 these displeasing provisions, Germany very properly not only 
 returns Alsace-Lorraine to France and (with a favorable vote 
 of the inhabitants) Danish Sleswig to Denmark, but also cedes 
 to Belgium three small pieces of territory populated mainly 
 by people of Belgian blood. In addition to all this, if the in- 
 habitants so vote, she is to cede to Poland considerable territory 
 east of the Vistula. In all, Germany loses outright 35,000
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 103 
 
 square miles, with a probable loss (by plebiscites) of nearly 
 20,000 more — in all, a territory about the extent of Penn- 
 sylvania, and more than a fifth of the old Germany. Even 
 this is not enough to satisfy the French government. That 
 government has failed to get recognition for its claim to the 
 Rhine districts of Germany ; but attempts, which may yet 
 succeed, have been fomented by French agents to induce this 
 part of Germany to secede and form a separate state. 
 
 Besides all this, Germany has lost her vast colonial empire. The old 
 This is well. But, instead of being placed directly under the Col ° mes 
 guardianship of the League of Nations until they can walk alone, 
 the former German colonies are turned over, part to England, 
 part to Japan, according to the terms of a secret treaty of 1914 
 between those countries. True, England and Japan are " manda- 
 tories" of the League of Nations; but that arrangement is left 
 so vague and loose that it looks like little more than a scheme 
 for the division of spoils — and Japan surely has shown herself 
 (in Korea) as unfit to rule subject-peoples as ever Germany was. 
 
 In this connection Americans are especially chagrined The 
 that Japan succeeds also to all Germany's indefinite ma tter 
 "rights" in the Shantung Peninsula, against the futile 
 protest of China. True, Japan has promised vaguely that 
 her political occupation shall be "temporary"; but that 
 word has been used too often as a prelude to permanent 
 grabs of territory. To allow the one remaining despotic 
 and military power in the world so to seize the door to 
 China is not merely to betray a faithful ally, but also 
 to renounce a plain and wise American policy in the 
 Orient. 
 
 Very objectionable, too, are the economic provisions of the 
 German treaty. Germany is to pay fixed reparations amount- 
 ing to about 30 billions of dollars during the next fifteen years. 
 This is severe, but on the whole it is just. However, Germany is 
 to pay further indefinite amounts, to be determined in future 
 by a commission of her conquerors. This provision, along with
 
 104 
 
 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 accompanying rules regarding German taxation, leaves Ger- 
 many's head in a noose which English or French jealousy may 
 tighten at will. 
 
 " Liberal " 
 criticism 
 of the 
 treaty 
 
 The treaty has been denounced vehemently by many earnest 
 thinkers in all lands as breaking faith with a beaten and sub- 
 missive foe, and, still more, as fruitful of future wars. Nine 
 of the experts attached to the American Commission were so 
 disappointed that they resigned their positions in protest; 
 and General Smuts, the hero of South Africa, when signing for 
 that country, declared in a formal statement that he signed only 
 because of the absolute necessity of immediate peace for Europe 
 and because he hoped that the most objectionable provisions 
 might be modified in future by the League of Nations. Or- 
 ganized labor in England and France made earnest protests also 
 against the violations in the treaty of the principle of self- 
 determination. 
 
 This opposition has little or nothing to do with any sym- 
 pathy for Germany : it is based upon a conviction that the 
 terms are bad for the world at large, or that they are dishon- 
 orable to the Allies. But a stern peace was to be expected, 
 and in the conflict of so many claims, some unsatisfactory pro- 
 visions were sure to appear. Probably the majority of the 
 people in the Allied lands still feel that Germany is getting off 
 too easily. 
 
 The German delegates made many protests, and did secure 
 some very slight modifications in the terms. Then they re- 
 fused to sign. But a new Cabinet came into power, and, June 
 28, a new set of German delegates signed the treaty. The 
 five years' war was ended. A few days later, the German 
 assembly ratified the peace by a two-to-one vote. The English 
 Parliament approved it even more unanimously. At this writ- 
 ing (July 25) the United States Senate has not come to a vote 
 upon the matter — because of the intertwining of the League of 
 Nations with the peace — but commercial intercourse with Ger- 
 many has been restored.
 
 THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 105 
 
 Late in July, after the return of President Wilson to America, The 
 the treaty with Austria was completed at Paris. Austria her- V 6 *! 7 - Wlth 
 self is left a petty state of 7,000,000 people, grouped around 
 Vienna, shut off from the sea, with little excuse for a separate 
 political existence. The Austrians very naturally wish incor- 
 poration with Germany. Germany also desires it ; but at French 
 insistence, the Peace Congress has forbidden this application of 
 the principle of "self-determination." The other precise ter- 
 ritorial terms of the treaty are not yet made public. The most 
 delicate concern the frontier between the new South Slav state 
 and Italy. In general the treaty has the same traits as does the 
 treaty with Germany. 
 
 The treaties with Bulgaria and with Turkey are still to be Remaining 
 worked out. The latter will care for important problems such P^ le ™ s 
 
 cit x tins 
 
 as the disposition of Constantinople, of Armenia, of Palestine, 
 and of the rich valley of the Euphrates. At the conclusion of 
 peace with Germany the great statesmen left the Peace Con- 
 gress, to attend to pressing needs in their own parliaments ; but 
 the remaining delegates at Paris will probably be busied for 
 many weeks in settling these remaining matters.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HEALING FORCES 
 
 The cost of The war was a world war : Eight out of every nine men on 
 
 the war the globe belonged to the warring nations. It cost nine million 
 
 lives and 200 billion dollars. A vast portion of all the wealth 
 
 stored up laboriously through centuries is consumed, and over 
 
 wide areas all the machinery for producing wealth is gone. 
 
 The United States had relatively small sacrifices to make. 
 We entered late, and our borders were remote from the struggle. 
 Still, eighty thousand American boys lie in French soil, and thrice 
 as many were horribly maimed. As to money, aside from the 
 immense sums raised by war taxes, our war debt is nearly 
 twenty-five billions, besides some nine billions more that our 
 The cost government borrowed from our people to loan to England, 
 still to be France, Belgium, and Italy. On these loans the Allied govern- 
 ments will pay the interest, and possibly sometime they will be 
 able to repay the principal ; but on the remaining twenty-five 
 billions the interest alone will each year exceed the total yearly 
 expenditure of our government before the war. Without paying 
 a cent of the principal, we will have to tax ourselves each year 
 twice as much as ever before for our national government. 
 
 But we must also pay the principal. If we pay it in one 
 generation (as probably we will), that will mean one billion 
 more of taxes a year. As we pay the principal, the interest 
 will lessen ; but, taking into account the increased cost of living 
 for the government, it is safe to say that for the next twenty-five 
 years we must raise three billion dollars a year, — or three 
 fourths as much as in the war years themselves. We have 
 boasted that in this country the war has been paid for by the 
 wealthy classes, not by the poor. But so far (1919) we have 
 
 106
 
 HEALING FORCES 
 
 107 
 
 "hardly begun to pay that cost : if our boast is to be made good, 
 we must raise more than two thirds of our taxes during the 
 next years by income and luxury taxes. 
 
 In Europe the burden is terrifying. Words cannot express Conditions 
 the ruin there ; and the huge totals of indebtedness in France, in urope 
 England, and Germany have little meaning to us. Factories 
 are gone ; shipping is sunk ; raw materials for manufactures 
 are not available ; it seems almost impossible to start the wheels 
 of industry again. Poverty and profound discouragement per- 
 meate the masses of the people. England has suffered less than 
 the continent; but England's debt is enormous. Without pay- 
 ing a penny of it, merely to keep up the interest and her old 
 annual expenditure, she must raise more than five billions of 
 dollars a year in taxes. With her smaller population, that 
 means that each family must pay some four times as much as 
 an American family. 
 
 Still there is another side. The world is freed, we trust, 
 from the perpetual cost of vast navies and crushing military 
 establishments ; and it has learned fruitful lessons. In the 
 preceding chapters we surveyed some of the forces that made for 
 war efficiency. Many of these, and others apart from these, 
 make also for healing and reconstruction in peace. 
 
 The whole American people learned that when the rich 
 family saved its fragments for a later meal, instead of casting 
 them to the garbage can, some starving child in Europe had 
 bread. We learned to do our daily work not so much for 
 private gain as for the general good. We learned that every 
 man who did not do work useful to society was a parasite, 
 dangerous to society, whether he were a tramp or a millionaire. 
 We learned that by cooperation, in place of wasteful compe- 
 tition, we could enormously increase the productiveness of 
 our labor and machinery, and that by wise direction we could 
 find useful work for every worker. Lessons like these, after 
 growing into our life for two years of war, must leave a mighty 
 effect upon our life in peace. 
 
 Some last- 
 ing gains
 
 108 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 Lessons in And many other lessons of the war will count for peace. 
 
 uman con- rp^ e mec jj ca j examination of our drafted men revealed tens of 
 servation 
 
 thousands of cases of inefficiency and of wasted lives due to 
 
 defective eyes or teeth or feet. Our doctors, dentists, and 
 surgeons cured most of these cases, and augmented tremen- 
 dously our righting power. Surely we will now find a way to 
 use the same healing forces to augment our power for peaceful 
 industry and to remove needless unhappiness. Indeed our 
 schools in their new "health crusade" have already begun to 
 remake our nation on a sounder basis of body. 
 The Voca- Very fruitful of good was the work of our National Board 
 
 iona oar Q £ y oca tJ ona i Education. Many soldiers, by the loss of arms 
 or legs or eyes, were disabled from ever taking up again the 
 only work they had ever known. The Vocational Board of 
 skilled experts educated and trained these disabled men, at 
 government expense, for some new occupation for which they 
 showed interest and fitness, making them useful and happy 
 members of society instead of leaving them dependents and 
 beggars. Many a real genius was thus enabled to do some 
 work he had always longed to do but which he had never be- 
 fore been able to get into. The results within even a few months 
 were so incredibly beneficent that bills were introduced into 
 both Houses of Congress in the winter of 1919 to preserve this 
 Vocational organization for peace, that it might at public 
 expense do the same invaluable and merciful work for the 
 hundreds of thousands of our people who every year are maimed 
 in accidents and in industry. The press of Congressional work 
 at the end of the session prevented these bills from becoming 
 law, but the attempt will be at once renewed. 
 New inter- Still other features of this "human conservation" have 
 
 est in child p rom ; se f or the future. In Europe there had been an alarming 
 welfare l . . 
 
 loss of man power due to slaughter in battle. Along with this 
 
 was a falling off in the birth rate. These conditions threatened 
 
 depopulation. Accordingly European governments were forced 
 
 to legislate, more than ever before, for child welfare, — espe- 
 
 cially forthesaving of the lives and healthof babies and mothers,
 
 HEALING FORCES 109 
 
 with the use of public funds. Even in the stress of war, laws 
 provided for reasonable rest for working mothers before and 
 after the birth of a child, without loss of wages. Such civilized 
 legislation has long been called for by enlightened opinion, and 
 now it is sure to become universal. 
 
 Very early, certain leaders sensed a danger that the tense Housing 
 passion of war might blind us unduly to the rights of the work- movements 
 ing classes. In fighting to make the world safe for democracy it 
 was supremely necessary to keep it safe for labor. For one 
 illustration, the vast army of new workers in the shipyards 
 and munition factories found no houses fit for their families, 
 and were threatened with slum conditions of disease and squalor, 
 besides paying exorbitant rates to greedy landlords. Accord- 
 ingly a government's Housing Commission expended millions of 
 dollars in building model homes for such workers. This has 
 given an impulse, not to be wholly lost, to an old movement for 
 better housing by the nation for the workers. 
 
 More difficult to meet was another problem. Labor had to The War 
 give up its usual weapon of strikes in disputes with employers. l? bo l 
 The public good demanded this. But labor could not be left 
 to the mercy of employers. And so Congress and the President 
 created a War Labor Board. This proved one of the most 
 remarkable parts of the war government, exercising for two 
 years an influence upon American life second only to that of 
 the Supreme Court. Wages were rising rapidly ; and the pub- 
 lic, only partially informed, could not easily understand that 
 wages after all failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, 
 and that workingmen were in danger of losing the standards of 
 living that they had won in long years of effort. 
 
 The War Labor Board acted as a compulsory arbitration 
 board between Capital and Labor in those industries which 
 concerned the carrying on of the war. President Wilson ap- 
 pointed ex-President Taft and Mr. Frank Walsh as joint 
 chairmen, and the other members came in equal numbers 
 from employers and labor representatives. The Board recog- 
 nized the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively,
 
 110 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 
 
 the eight-hour day, a living wage, and the necessity of main- 
 taining safeguards against accidents and disease, and it en- 
 couraged in many industries the organization of "shop com- 
 mittees" from the workmen to confer with the employers upon 
 all shop conditions, — a great step toward democratizing 
 industry. 
 
 In its arbitrations, the Board itself had no power to enforce 
 a decision, though in nearly every case both sides submitted 
 at once to its award. But in some cases President Wilson 
 found it needful to make the decisions compulsory by seizing 
 for public use the factories whose owners refused compliance, 
 or on the other side, by threatening strikers, who had refused 
 an award, with military service, by withdrawing their exemption 
 as married men. The judicial temper of Mr. Taft and his legal 
 training and open-mindedness, made his services on this Board 
 invaluable to the nation, and he won deep and lasting gratitude 
 from organized labor for his understanding of their need. 
 The democ- English employers and workers during the war agreed upon 
 the principles of the famous Whitley Report, 1 providing for 
 the joint management of industries by Capital and Labor 
 through joint councils of many grades. In the few months 
 since the armistice, much has been done to extend and confirm 
 this principle, and to provide against unemployment, to shorten 
 the working day, and to guarantee a decent living wage to 
 every man or woman willing to work. 
 
 In the winter of 1918 the English Labor Party adopted an 
 even more comprehensive plan 2 for reconstruction after the war, 
 along the same line. This plan attracted wide and favorable 
 attention, and in Minnesota a convention of Congregational 
 churches declared it "the one great religious utterance of the 
 war." It is deeply significant that many larger religious bodies 
 have made like declarations if somewhat less emphatic ones, 
 — especially the Catholic Church through a report of its Ad- 
 
 1 Printed in full in No. 135 (February 1919) of the American Association 
 for International Conciliation. 
 
 2 Printed in the same. 
 
 ratization 
 of industry
 
 HEALING FORCES 111 
 
 visory War Council, and the Methodist Church, both in Canada 
 and the United States. 
 
 In general these plans agree on the following points : 
 
 1. Recognition that industry is designed for social service, 
 not for private profiteez'ing. 
 
 2. A decent wage (not a bare living) for each worker. 
 
 3. Insurance against unemployment, with wise provision 
 by the government for using idle labor in housing enterprises 
 and in land reclamation, and, if necessary, for shortening the 
 working day. (There is no excuse for a long working day, for 
 any laborer, say many of these recent programs, as long as 
 another willing but idle worker is standing by, asking for work.) 
 
 4. Democratizing industry, so as to give to the workers a 
 share in management and some ownership in their jobs. 
 
 5. Limitation of the profits of capital to a reasonable amount. 
 
 6. The use of the surplus (above wages and "reasonable" 
 profits) for the public good, — the surplus to be taken by 
 extension of income taxes and by other new taxes on mining 
 royalties, water power, and so on. 
 
 7. The need of greater production by Labor — for which 
 these other changes must provide powerful inducement. 
 
 Five years ago these principles would have sounded wildly 
 revolutionary : to-day society in general quietly assents to them. 
 
 Stirring times are before us — times once more to try men's 
 souls. Europe is still in desperate peril of social dissolution ; 
 even America is not wholly free from danger that social revolu- 
 tion may destroy the wholesome and progressive evolution of 
 our society ; and the world is not yet out of the peril of a 
 frightful shortage of food. But men of faith believe that the 
 outlook brightens, and that a new day is breaking. Especially 
 do these new ideas regarding Labor and the new impulses to 
 human conservation promise a world — such as our great leaders 
 have pointed us toward through the war clouds — "safe for 
 democracy " and " fit for heroes."
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS
 
 HISTORY 
 
 American Government 
 
 By Dr. Frank Abbott Magruder, of Princeton University. i2mo, 
 cloth, 487 pages. 
 
 THE practical value of the study of Civics is brought out in the 
 treatment of every topic in the new American Governme7it . 
 One of the purposes of the book is so to equip pupils that they 
 will be able to act with intelligence in the performance of their 
 duties as citizens. 
 
 While the importance to everyone of a good general govern- 
 ment is made clear, our absolute dependence on local government 
 is shown. Most excellent conditions at Washington cannot 
 make comfortable a locality where local corruption causes the 
 population to labor under disadvantages growing out of inade- 
 quate sewers and bad water supply. 
 
 Throughout the book the economic element in government is 
 emphasized. That is, it is shown that most legislation origi- 
 nates in the practical need for money in some part of the commu- 
 nity. The book has a thorough treatment, not only of theoretical 
 government, but especially of practical politics, caucuses, mark- 
 ing ballots, registration. Woman suffrage and state prohibition 
 are also discussed. 
 
 The important bearing which government has on social condi- 
 tions is emphasized by indicating its connection with good roads, 
 with schools, and with regulation of commerce. 
 
 The enormous influence of the judiciary is made clear, and it 
 is shown how, through interpretation, they often legislate. It 
 contains a frank discussion of the weaknesses of our government, 
 as well as of its strong points. 
 
 The book is beautifully illustrated with handsome half-tones, 
 and contains a large number of maps, charts, and plans. The 
 style is simple, direct, and informal, and well within the grasp of 
 young pupils in the high school. As special aids to pupils and 
 teachers, questions on the text and questions for discussion to 
 show the local application of the text have been placed at the end 
 of each chapter. 
 
 101
 
 HISTORY 
 
 History of the American People 
 
 By Professor Willis Mason West, i 2m o, cloth, 790 pages. 
 
 AN important feature of this new History is its practical 
 character. Much attention is given to the great questions of 
 to-day, and to those events in history which led up to them. The 
 problems of labor and capital, and all those other matters which 
 have to do with economic and industrial development, and with 
 political growth, have a special emphasis. The book will equip 
 the young learner with a thorough knowledge of present-day 
 conditions, the causes which brought them about, and of the best 
 means of improving them. It shows how political history is inter- 
 woven with economic and social history. 
 
 Emphasis is given to the development of the West, and it is 
 made clear that most of the great problems before the Civil 
 War grew out of conditions which arose in connection with the 
 expansion of the United States toward the west. 
 
 The History is equipped with more and better maps than will 
 be found in other school histories. The text is handsomely illus- 
 trated with many unique pictures. Few of the traditional illus- 
 trations found in most United States histories have been used. 
 
 The simple and direct language makes the book well within the 
 comprehension of the young high school pupil. The arrange- 
 ment is logical and the material is well organized. The author 
 does not hesitate to show the weaknesses of democracy. This 
 is done, however, in such a way as to leave the pupil with a robust 
 and aggressive faith in our present form of government. 
 
 This is the most up-to-date of the American histories. 
 
 A Source Book in American History 
 
 By Professor Willis Mason West. i2mo, cloth, 608 pages. 
 
 THIS is a companion volume to History of the American 
 People. It contains much material never before accessible to 
 young students. No extract has been selected unless it has some 
 definite articulation with the purpose of the main text. 
 
 103
 
 HISTORY 
 
 The Ancient World. Revised Edition 
 
 By Professor Willis Mason West, of the University of Minnesota, 
 
 Part One, Greece and the East. i2mo, cloth, 324 pages. 
 Part Two, Rome and the West. i2mo, cloth, 371 pages. 
 Complete Edition. 12010, cloth, 681 pages. 
 
 THE New Ancient World is well within the scope of the abili- 
 ties of the youngest students in high schools and academies. 
 Its style is simple, direct, vivid, and interesting, and never fails to 
 impress even the most immature reader, who carries away from a 
 study of this book a series of striking pictures of ancient life. 
 
 The author emphasizes the unity in historical development; 
 he shows that national life, like individual life, has continuous 
 growth and development, and that a knowledge of the past ex- 
 plains the present. Every experiment in government in ancient 
 times has its lesson ; and in the hands of Professor West history 
 becomes an instrument for teaching the duties of modern citizen- 
 ship. 
 
 (1) Most stress is laid on those periods and those persons, 
 who contributed most to the development of civilization. 
 
 (2) Space is found for the exciting and the picturesque when- 
 ever it is matter of historical importance. Narrative and biog- 
 raphy abound. 
 
 (3) Little weight is given to the legendary periods of Greek 
 and Roman history, and the space thus gained is devoted to the 
 wide-reaching Hellenic world after Alexander, and to the Roman 
 Empire which had so deep an influence on later history. 
 
 (4) In every paragraph the leading idea is brought out by 
 italics, and illuminating quotations introduce many chapters. 
 
 (5) The book teaches the use of a library by giving specific 
 references to topics for reports. 
 
 (6) There are forty-six maps and plans, which are made the 
 basis of study, suggested by questions given in the text. There 
 are also one hundred eighty-one illustrations taken from authentic 
 sources.
 
 HISTORY 
 
 The Modern World 
 
 By Professor W. M. WEST, i2mo, cloth, 794 pages. 
 
 THIS volume, intended as a companion to the author's Ancient 
 World, is a revision of his Modem History. 
 
 As in the Ancient World, there has been a determined effort 
 to make a simple history that can be easily understood b\ 
 pupils in the early years of the High School. Interesting phases 
 of history are given prominence, difficult ideas have been avoided, 
 the language throughout is simple. 
 
 One new feature of the Modern World is five preliminary 
 chapters, giving an outline of history from prehistoric times to 
 the accession of Charlemagne. These chapters serve as an 
 excellent review for a course in Ancient History, or even make 
 it possible to use the Modern World to cover the general history 
 of the world. 
 
 The book contains nearly two hundred handsome illustrations 
 and is provided with fifty-three maps, all but five of which are colored. 
 
 Like the Modern History the book gives especial prominence 
 to the period since the French Revolution. The author treats 
 "with comparative briefness many phases of the history of the 
 Middle Ages in order to gain adequate space for the marvellous 
 nineteenth century, and so for an intelligent introduction to the 
 twentieth. 
 
 American Government 
 
 By Dr. Frank Abbott Magruder, i2mo, cloth, 483 pages. 
 
 THE economic element in government is emphasized through- 
 out this book. It has a thorough treatment, not only of 
 theoretical government, but especially of practical politics, cau- 
 cuses, marking ballots, registration. 
 
 The enormous influence of the judiciary is made clear, and it 
 is shown how, through interpretation, they often legislate. It 
 contains a frank discussion of the weaknesses of our government, 
 as well as of its strong points. 
 
 89
 
 HISTORY 
 
 A Short History of England 
 
 By Charles M. Andrews, Farnam Professor of History in Yale 
 University. With Maps, Tables, and numerous Illustrations. i2mo, 
 cloth, 473 pages. 
 
 THIS history of England aims to present within the compass 
 of about 400 pages the main features of England's story from 
 earliest times to the present day. The book traces in rapid sur- 
 vey the development of the people and institutions of England 
 from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the year 191 1, and shows 
 by what steps the primitive organization of a semi-tribal people has 
 been transformed into the highly complicated political and social 
 structure of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. It re- 
 tains on a smaller scale the essential characteristics of the larger 
 work by the same author, with some additions, chiefly of a 
 geographical and biographical character, and many omissions 
 of details. 
 
 The author tells a clear and simple story, avoiding technical 
 expressions and yet passing over no important feature of the 
 history that is necessary for the proper understanding of the 
 subject. 
 
 The aim of the book is to be instructive as well as interesting. 
 The narrative is made as continuous as possible, that the pupil 
 may follow in unbroken sequence the thread of the story. It is 
 accompanied with a large number of newly selected illustrations 
 and an ample supply of maps and chronological tables. The 
 elaborate bibliographies contained in the larger work have been 
 omitted and only a small but selective list of the best books in 
 brief form has been retained. The history has been brought 
 down to date in matters of scholarship as well as chronology, and 
 contains many views and statements not to be found in the larger 
 work. It is designed as a text-book for half-year, or elementary 
 courses, but it might well be used by any reader desiring a 
 brief and suggestive account of the main features of England's 
 history. 
 
 92
 
 HISTORY 
 
 Readings in Ancient History : Illustrative Extracts 
 from the Sources 
 By William Stearns Davis, Professor of Ancient History in the 
 University of Minnesota; Introduction by Professor WILLIS MASON 
 West. 
 
 Volume I : Greece and the East. i2mo, 375 pages. 
 Volume II : Rome and the West. i2mo, 423 pages. 
 
 THIS book sets before the student beginning the study of 
 Ancient History a sufficient amount of source material to 
 illustrate the important or typical historical facts which will be 
 mentioned in his text-book. The volumes are not designed for 
 hard study, to be tested scrupulously by minute questioning; 
 they are meant for reading, — a daily companion to any standard 
 text-book in Ancient History, — and the boy or girl so using them 
 is sure to breathe in more of the atmosphere of the ancient 
 world, and to get more taste of the notable literary flavor per- 
 vading Greek and Roman history, than would be possible from 
 the study of a conventional text-book. 
 
 Volume I contains 125 different selections, of which the follow- 
 ing are typical : The Ethics of an Egyptian Nobleman, Inscrip- 
 tion ; An Assyrian Palace, Maspero ; The Shield of Achilles, The 
 Iliad) How Glaucus tried to tempt the Delphic Oracle, Herodo- 
 tus ; The Ring of Polycrates, Herodotus ; How Leonidas held the 
 Pass of Thermopylae, Herodotus ; The Last Fight in the Harbor 
 of Syracuse, Thucydides ; Anecdotes about Socrates, Diogenes 
 Laertius ; How Lysias escaped from the "Thirty," Lysias ; How 
 Elephants fought in Hellenistic Armies, Polybius. 
 
 Volume II contains 149 selections, including: Brutus condemns 
 his Own Sons to Death, Livy ; How the Plebeians won the Con- 
 sulship, Livy ; The Honesty of Roman Officials, Polybius ; The 
 Reign of Terror under Sulla, Plutarch ; The Wealth and Habits 
 of Crassus the Millionaire, Plutarch ; The Personal Traits of 
 Julius Caesar, Suetonius ; A Business Panic in Rome, Tacitus ; 
 The Bill of Fare of a Great Roman Banquet, Macrobius ; How a 
 Stoic met Calamity in the Days of Nero, Epictetus ; The Precepts 
 of Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 94
 
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