NEW YORK TRIBUNE.
Great Parallel. London,
Hodder & Stoughton, 191?.
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
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THE GREAT
PARALLEL
Reprinted from
"The New York Tribune
of November 2nd, 1916.
HODDER & STOUGHTON,
London. New York. Toronto.
MCMXVII.
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THE GREAT
PARALLEL
Reprinted from
The New York Tribune "
//'
of November 2nd, 1916.
HODDER & STOUGHTON,
London. New York. Toronto.
MCMXVII.
THE GREAT PARALLEL
Fifty-two years ago the American people had to
decide the question which now faces the British and
French people. In the spring of 1864 the whole
North had looked forward to Grant's campaign for
Richmond with hope and confidence. Gettysburg
and Vicksburg had been won, the campaign in
Tennessee had turned, there were obvious evidences
of the beginning of the decline of the resources of
the South. The Confederate press no longer talked
of a peace dictated at Washington ; rather it declared
the war had become a deadlock, and on the defensive
it claimed the South was invincible.
But a few months later the terrible costs and the
bitter disappointments of the campaign from the
Wilderness to Cold Harbor had brought its conse-
quences. Losses more terrible and more sustained
than the Civil War had hitherto inflicted had not
brought victory. Grant's brilliant reputation had
been dimmed by what seemed then a failure, and
before Petersburg the army of Lee stood as firmly
as the Germans now stand at the Somme.
In that hour, as in the present, there were not
lacking those who agitated for peace, men and women
moved by the horror of the slaughter, men and women
unnerved by the terrible summer and the relative
failure. To them peace at any price and under any
condition seemed better than further killing. "Erring
sisters, go in peace!" became quite as familiar as
the similar "slogans" of to-day.
4 THE GREAT PARALLEL
The question was referred to the people of the
North. There was a direct vote in the national
election of 1864. And the voice of the people of th^
North was unmistakable. All hope of any end but
a decision vanished when the votes had been counted
and the determination of the millions of the " plain
people " who were bearing the burdens, the sorrows
and the tragedies of the conflict was made manifest.
And this vote was determined by one thing.
Looking clearly and calmly, with prophetic vision,
the people of the North in that day perceived that
it would be impossible to attain enduring peace on
this continent if the Union were shattered. They
saw their future and the future of their children face
to face, and they willed that the war should go on.
They perceived that all the terrible sacrifices of the
previous years would go for nothing if there wen?
not a final decision.
There were not lacking in 1864 European states-
men and sovereigns eager to intervene. There were
not lacking humanitarians at home and abroad who
argued for peace and appealed to their governments
to proffer their good services. What is happening
here now happened in Britain and in France in 1864.
Had Abraham Lincoln been defeated, peace would
have come as a result of foreign influence, but th*
American people perceived this and Abraham Lincoln
was re-elected.
We Americans must remember our own history
to-day. With the same clarity, the same vision which
the great crisis in our history revealed half a century
ago, the people of France and of Britain, the mothers
THE GREAT PARALLEL
and the fathers of those who are dying in Flanders
and Picardy, are envisaging the future. Their spirit,
their will, their determination are what ours were ;
equal suffering has developed equal constancy,
courage, inspiration.
Let us not forget what we escaped because our
fathers and our mothers had the courage and the
vision to suffer and endure. We are one country,
with a single destiny and free from all the perils
of frontiers and quarrels, because the war was fought
to its finish and the question of secession was
abolished for all time. Let us not forget that for
democratic Europe our example is a precious example
and an inspiring parallel.
Let us not forget, also, that peace now in Europe
would be precisely the thing peace in 1864 would
have been in America. Now, as then, the war is
approaching its decision, but now, as then, the great
question is not decided. Nor should any man or
woman ever forget the great question. It was posed
the hour in which Germany invaded Belgium. It
was raised yesterday when German masters in Bel-
gium adopted the methods of the ancient Pharaohs
and drove a people before them into slavery. It was
raised by the Lusitania, it is being raised in the
plains of Rumania, where new reports of German
barbarities reveal the fact that the German idea lives
and marches still.
We have no interest in the question of frontiers:
we have no stake or concern in the matter of the
possession of Constantinople or the partition of Asia
Minor. We are as little concerned with some of
the incidental issues of the Great War as was Europe
THE GREAT PARALLEL
with some phases of the Civil War. But we are
interested in the preservation of humanity, of civiliza-
tion and of law from the assault which the Germans
have made upon them and the menace which a
survival of the German idea would have for them.
The German has elevated the German interest
and the German purpose above all that civilization
has acquired in the centuries. He has proclaimed in
advance of the present war that German necessity
was above law, and he has practised this doctrine on
all the fields of battle. Wherever German armies
have gone there have been atrocities and brutalities,
not those of war merely, but those organized, care-
fully and scientifically planned butcheries which are
the lasting expression in blood of the meaning of
Germanism in the world to-day.
The German method and the German ideal art-
old. Frederick the Great did in Silesia what William
II. is doing in Belgium. At the end of the war he
kept Silesia, and this encouraged his successors to
new acts of equal immorality. For nearly two cen-
turies the German idea, first Prussian, has marched
from one war to another to accomplish the purpose
of all Germans, the domination of Europe and the
mastery of the world.
When the German people have resumed the con-
trol of their own government, when the German
people have renounced the policies and the purposes
of their rulers, then peace may come without the
despoliation of Germany as peace came to France
in Napoleon's time and left the France of the Ancient
Regime undisturbed. But if Germany can remain
as she is, if the German rulers can bring back from
THE GREAT PARALLEL
this last terrible war of conquest a new Silesia, a
new Alsace-Lorraine, a new Schleswig, then we shall
have new wars until that time when at last the
German idea is crushed in the blood and slime of a
final defeat.
All that civilization means remains at stake.
Nothing has yet been decided as to the momentous
question raised by Germany in the first week of
August, 1914, when she sent the vanguard of hosts
into Belgium, to burn, to slay, to ruin a nation,
because it stood between Germany and a purpose and
dared to defend its honor and its independence.
Those who fired Louvain and sank the Lusitania
rule Germany ; they remain faithful to the spirit of
these crimes, and while this condition endures peace
is impossible for long and peace now would be a
crime against posterity.
Half a century cannot have completely obliterated
in the American mind the memory of the great deci-
sion, the greatest decision of our national history.
Democracy on this continent, perhaps in the world,
was saved because the simple, loyal men and women
of that brave time faced the new sacrifice and per-
formed their terrible duty without flinching. No one
who has heard the story of those days from the lips of
those who were alive then can fail to realize how great,
how crushing were their grief and sorrow, how-
hideous the war that they willed should continue.
To-day the vast mass of the men and women of
France are facing the same tragedy with the same
grim determination. Their hearts are torn as were
the hearts of American men and women, but their
wills remain unshaken, because there is in the men
THE GREAT PARALLEL
and women of all races a nobility in the presence of
the supreme hour which conquers all that is selfish,
all that is weak. By this alone nations live and
races survive from century to century.
This war was born of German determination to
crush all that came between Germany and world
domination. It was provoked after long prepara-
tion, it was prosecuted with fiendish brutality which
endures to the present moment and with each succeed-
ing month gives new proof of German spirit and
German methods. It can only end when this German
spirit is exorcised, whether it ends at the Rhine or
the Spree, whether in 1917 or 1927. It can end only
in one way, because to believe that it could end save
in German defeat would be to believe that we were
witnessing the end of all that makes for sweetness
and light, for human happiness and human aspiration
in this world.
To-day, as yesterday and all days since August,
1914, Belgium is the sign manual of German purpose.
The spirit that was revealed in Belgium is a spirit
with which there can be no compromise and no
accommodation. All this the men and women of
France and Britain see and realize. They, like our
fathers and mothers, have made the great decision.
They will endure to the end. Can we afford, with
our history and the example in our minds of those
who gave us liberty and preserved our country for
us, to contribute in the slightest measure to the burden
of suffering and grief which is the share of those
who have willed that, whatever the cost, the German
spirit shall not endure to bring new horrors and new
tragedies to the generations that are. to come?
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