The Spirit of Lafayette Part 3

This alliance, or Prussia before the alliance was completed, has since the beginning of the war seized Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, part of France, and most of Roumania. The population now controlled by Prussian militarism is about one hundred and seventy-five million people. The economic resources controlled by it show a corresponding increase. Before the war began, Prussia planned for a Pan-Germanism of this nature, and this plan has now been almost completed.

If Prussia can now, by granting pretentious but ineffective political reforms to its own people and by fighting a defensive war until the contest becomes a deadlock, hold this Pan-Germany in its present position, then after peace has been declared it can organize this vast additional strength in man power and resources which it has gained, can Prussianize this additional one hundred million, can, by the same intrigue which it has used in the past, undermine during this period of peace the internal defensive effectiveness of the democracies, and when the time comes can strike again. And if the democracies are unable to win now, what chance will they have then?

Drop the scales from our eyes and look clearly at the facts, hard as they are. The Menace has been fighting a winning fight. By merely keeping a deadlock for the rest of the war, and forcing a truce under the guise of peace, the Menace will win; provided, however, that it is not expelled by the German people themselves. This is the strength--and the weakness--of the foe against which we have declared war.

The Prussian looks a long way ahead. M. Cheradame, in his work, "Le Complot Pan-Germaniste Demasque," recites the following incident: "In 1898, before Manila, the German Rear-Admiral von Goetzen, a friend of the Kaiser, said to the American Admiral Dewey, 'In about fifteen years my country will begin a great war.... Some months after we have done our business in Europe we shall take New York and probably Was.h.i.+ngton, and we shall keep them for a time.... We shall extract one or two billions of dollars from New York and other towns.'" The months referred to by the German sailor may be turned into years, and the one or two billions may be multiplied by ten--but the Prussian looks a long way ahead.

XIV

How can our rights and the rights of mankind to which the President has alluded be made secure? What definite concrete facts must be established in order that democracy may be made safe?

In the first place, the autocratic power that now puts terror into the heart of the world must be broken beyond repair. The Hohenzollerns and the rest of the military caste which now controls Germany must be politically exterminated. No pretended or half-way internal political reforms, leaving a road for their return to power, will be sufficient.

Annihilate the Menace. The cancer must be cut out, with no roots left in the body politic to spread its hideous disease again. Make an effective job of it once for all. We want no chance, under the cloak of peace, for the return of this monster.

"The time has come to conquer or submit," wrote President Wilson shortly after our declaration of war. It is true. Can any one doubt what would have happened to the United States of America if Prussian autocracy had dictated terms of peace to vanquished Allies and as part of those terms had taken over the allied fleet and obtained territory in Canada? Or can any one doubt what will now happen to all the democracies if the present Pan-Germany, now existing by means of Prussian victories in this war, is during the next ten years consolidated, organized, Prussianized--and then, a fighting machine twice as powerful as the machine of 1914, hurled against the democracies? With an army of seven or eight million men trained to the hour, with equipped reserves of ten or twelve million more, with a complete network of military railroads capable of concentrating the units of this engine of destruction wherever military strategy shall designate, and with aeroplanes and transatlantic submarines in proportion, what chance will the democracies have?

In the second place, it ought to be very clear that future power and prosperity on the part of the plain people of Germany will be no bar to securing our rights, provided, however, that this power and prosperity is not owned and controlled by Prussian autocracy so that it can again be forced into a huge fighting machine to put the rest of the world in terror. The spirit of Lafayette, although its fight against such masters is eternal, will not lead in a war of conquest or annihilation against the German people.

"We have no quarrel with the German people," said the President of the United States in his message of April 2, 1917. "We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friends.h.i.+p. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellowmen as p.a.w.ns and tools." It was a war determined upon by the same Menace that thrust the democrat Lafayette into a dungeon, and which so hated democracy that when compelled to release him it attempted to impose terms that he should be deported to America, never again to place foot on Prussian or Austrian soil.

The corollary of this is that the best security for the rights of democracy is the establishment of a republic in Germany. A real republic, not a sham one. This is the one definite, concrete fact which would make the world safer for its peoples.

When will the German people see the light? When will there be a government of the people of Germany, for the people, and by the people?

The shades of her dead, led to the slaughter by a merciless and heartless autocracy in a needless war, cry out for it. What say you, you men of Germany? Among you are men whose souls are brave and strong and true, an unnumbered host. How long, slaves, will you bend your backs to the lash of your military masters? They lied to you and made you believe the Fatherland was attacked, and led you, dupes, into a war of conquest. Your modern Pilate, in his blasphemous pride, with the name of G.o.d upon his lips and the blood of innocents upon his hands, is now crucifying Freedom upon his cross of iron. But the day of the resurrection will come; and how will your record stand then? Awake, ye free of Germany! When shall you come into your own?

Every hour that the coming of such a republic is shortened means just so much less agony for the peoples of the world. There is no better pledge for the safety of democracy. "Self-governed nations," said the President of the United States in the message referred to above, "do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged cla.s.s. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs."

XV

What else? The union. The final act in the world-wide drama of democracy. The union of the democracies of the world to insure mutual protection and peace. I mean a union for this purpose of all those governments where the people, by their representatives, control. The union on two hemispheres of what the spirit of Lafayette foresaw, symbolized, and battled for on both.

The union ought to include the Austrian and German people themselves. It can never, however, include the Prussian military autocracy or any other military autocracy. I quote again from the President's message: "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partners.h.i.+p of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partners.h.i.+p of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.... One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries, and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States."

The union must be a union to keep the future safe against war, a league to compel every nation after the close of the present war to settle any claim it may have against its neighbour in the same way that individuals settle their disputes--by rules of right and reason instead of by the law of might. It must be "some definite concert of power that will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again." In a memorable address to the Senate of the United States on January 22, 1917, the President urged that the United States enter into such a league after the close of the present war, and on the point of effectiveness said: "Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created, as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement, so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it.

If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind."

XVI

"_Cur non?_"--"Why not?" The union of the democracies will be the culmination of the world-wide drama begun by the spirit of Lafayette.

Jesus Christ, nineteen hundred years ago in his Sermon on the Mount, said to the wondering mult.i.tude: "For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pa.s.s, one jot or one t.i.ttle shall in no wise pa.s.s from the law, till all be fulfilled." Since then, as sure and certain as the evolution of time itself, the evolution of the law has been toward such a union.

"G.o.d's ways seem dark, but soon or late They touch the s.h.i.+ning hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait.

Give ermined kings their hour of crime, Ye have the future grand and great The safe appeal of truth to time."

Year has followed year and century has followed century, and through it all, surely, slowly, often torn and twisted out of shape but always growing, evolving, moving onward, the law has followed the safe appeal of truth to time, toward this great goal. One jot or one t.i.ttle shall in no wise pa.s.s from it till all be fulfilled. It is the spirit of Lafayette that leads. It was he who saw "the glory of the coming of the Lord." He saw fulfilled in fact the union of the separate democracies on one hemisphere; his spirit sees the vision of their union on two.

Gaze for a moment on what this soldier spirit has looked down upon in the past and on the vision of what it sees for the future.

Centuries ago individual man settled all his disputes with individual man by fighting. It was the primitive method. There was no law: might made right. The spirit saw savage primeval force, unconquered, untaught, powerful and brutal in the wanton exercise of its strength.

Then, under the safe appeal of truth to time, there gradually evolved, as between man and man, the method of voluntary submission to a judicial tribunal. Twisted and gnarled was this growth however, for even under Anglo-Saxon law the right of trial by battle was jealously guarded, and lasted for many years. A n.o.ble knight charged with an offense could always demand trial by battle; and if he succeeded in running through the body or otherwise disabling the man who made the accusation, he thereby established his own innocence and was acquitted by the court.

This also the spirit saw.

Then gradually force was conquered, tamed, and used; and there evolved the modern court backed by the harnessed force of the community--backed by force sufficient to compel individual man to settle his disputes in court instead of by fighting, and if he refused and chose to fight, sufficient to compel him to desist and to punish him for his attempt.

Force, a human Niagara, wild from the beginning, now controlled and directed by a higher law. Imagine the modern courts of our cities and states without the backing of organized force--courts and judges and rules of judicial procedure with no force to support them, and each individual in the community vested with the option in case of a dispute with a neighbour to settle that dispute by attacking the neighbour! We should have anarchy within six months.

What about nations? What has the spirit seen there? For nations are merely large collections of individuals. The same law of evolution governs both.

The first and primitive method of settling disputes between nations, and for a long time the only one, was war; and this the spirit beheld. Then gradually evolved the method of voluntary submission to a judicial tribunal such as the tribunal now existing at The Hague, each nation retaining, however, its right of trial by battle. The next method, the vision of the future, the new internationalism of which the living Lafayette was the symbol, is the harnessing of the united force of the peoples of the world, the union of the democracies to enforce the peace of the world. It is a vision of the union to form a modern court backed by force trained to obey the higher law, backed by force sufficient to compel nations to settle their disputes in court instead of by fighting. It is a vision of the war ogre, who has for centuries ravaged the world, at last shackled and bound; of the monster who with b.l.o.o.d.y claws and fangs has torn, ripped, and murdered his victims by the million, at last overcome; a vision of this evil brute of war conquered, and of primeval force trained, civilized, and forging the chains to hold this devil of h.e.l.l.

XVII

Did that Indian warrior who met Lafayette in the American wilderness speak more wisely than he knew? Were the footsteps of this soldier of France directed by the Great Spirit? Who can tell!

This must be the last war. We shall not hand down to our children this heritage of calamity. Our Revolutionary War settled for all time the independence of these United States of America. The Civil War settled for all time the question of slavery in this hemisphere. This war must and shall settle for all time the question of military autocratic domination of the world. "The time has come to conquer or submit."

And if after we have checked and curbed this natural foe to liberty there shall arise a concert of the powers of the world, a world-wide union to insure and enforce future peace, a union based not merely on treaty obligations which may be avoided, or on a contract which may be broken, but on a wide understanding and realization that organized democracy must in the future act concertedly as the police of the world--then by just so much as we make posterity safe, the awful sacrifice will not have been made in vain.

We build for posterity. "_Cur non?_"--"Why not?" It is the spirit of Lafayette that calls. And with the call we hear from the heavens the chant of a mighty chorus, singing not the hymn of hate but the paean of peace on earth, good-will toward men.

Those who do not know us gibe at us and throw our sins in our teeth.

But this mightiest of democracies is at last awakening, is casting out the evil genii of opulence, is girding on its sword for the great work.

Soldier of freedom, thou camest to us in the time of our greatest need.

"Now," thou saidst, "is precisely the moment to serve your cause."

Symbol of the united democracies of the world, symbol of a union which will make the earth safe for its peoples, symbol of a union of peace, we are led by thy spirit. We fight for democracy; we build for posterity.

_And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock._