The World Decision by Robert Herrick

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No, ours has not been the _beau geste_ as a nation. Nor can the
American take comfort in the thought that Washington diplomacy does
not fairly represent the sentiment of our people. As the weeks slip
past, it is only too evident that our President has interpreted
exactly the national will. The farther west one travels the colder
is the American heart, and duller the American vision. The numerical
center of the United States is somewhere in the Mississippi Valley.
Europe gave Chicago, in her distress after the great fire, eighty
cents per person; Chicago has given Belgium and France seven cents
per Chicagoan. Not a single Chicago bank appears on the list of
subscribers to the Anglo-French loan,--very few banks anywhere west
of the Alleghanies. "It is not our quarrel; we are not concerned
except to get our money for the goods we sell them!"

* * * * *

But are we not concerned? I asked myself as the old steamer throbbed
wheezily westward. Beneath the deck in the ship's strong room there
were thick bundles of American bonds, millions of them, part of the
big American mortgage that Europe has been obliged to sell back to
us. They represent European savings, hopes of tranquil old age, girls'
_dots_, boys' education and start in life. The American mortgage is
being lifted rapidly. The stocks and bonds were going home to pay for
the heavy cargoes of foodstuffs and ammunition and clothes which we
had been shipping to Europe. The savings of the thrifty French were
going to us, who were too rich already. The French were bleeding their
thrift into our bulging pockets, selling their investments for shells
and guns and barbed wire which would not keep old age warm, marry their
girls, or start their boys in life. They were doing it freely, proudly,
for the salvation of their _patrie_, which they love as the supreme
part of themselves. And to us what did all this sacrifice mean? Oh,
that we were growing richer day by day while the war lasted; "dollar
exchange" was coming nearer; we were fast getting "rotten with money,"
as a genial young coal merchant who had the deck chair next mine
remarked affably. Yes, the war meant that to us surely,--we were fast
raking in most of the gold that Europe has been forced to throw on the
table of international finance, the savings, the _dots_, the stakes of
her next generation. The number of lean-faced American business men,
war brokers, on the steamer was plain evidence of that. Already
Prosperity was flooding into America--that prosperity upon which our
President congratulated the country in his Thanksgiving address.

But is that prosperity a good thing for the American people just
now? Aside from the speculation excited by the superabundance of gold
in our banks, there is the envy of hungry Europe to be reckoned with
a few months or years hence, after the close of the great war, an envy
that might readily be translated into predatory action under certain
circumstances, as some thoughtful Americans are beginning to perceive.
Eastern America, where the war money has largely settled, is already
fearful, desires to arm the nation to protect its prosperity. And
there is the more subtle, the more profound danger that this undigested
war bloat of ours will dull the American vision still further to the
real issue at stake--the kind of world we are willing, the kind of soul
we wish, to possess. Can we safely digest the prosperity that the happy
accident of our temporary isolation and the prudent policies of our
Government have given us? Are we not feeding a cancer that will take
another war to cut from our vitals?

* * * * *

Most of us on board were Americans going about our businesses on a
belligerent nation's ship in defiance of Mr. Bryan's advice. The man
next to me was building a new munitions plant for France, and beyond
him was the European manager for a large American corporation whose
factories have been taken over by the German Government. He was
returning to America to enter the munitions business in Pittsburg
or Connecticut. To these commercial travelers of war the European
struggle meant, naturally, first of all money, the opportunity of a
lifetime to make money quickly; it meant also less vividly helping
the Allies, who needed everything they could get from us and were
willing to pay almost any price for it. Sometimes they talked of the
long list of "accidents" that were happening daily in American factories
and genially cursed the hyphenated Germans. As for the other sort of
Germans they felt vaguely that some day America must reckon with them,
too. Evidently they put small faith in the "three thousand miles of
cool sea-water" as a nonconductor of warfare! So here was another
aspect of the war--the possible dangers to us, without a friend in
the world, as every one agreed. And we talked "preparedness" in the
usual desultory way. The munitions men seemed to think that they were
patriotically working for their own country in getting "the plant" of
war into being. "Some day we shall need guns and shells too!" Afterwards
I found in America that this vague fear of probable enemies had seized
hold of the country quite generally, and that the very Government which
had done nothing toward settling the present war rightly was planning
for "defense" with a prodigal hand. Peaceful America was getting
alarmed--of what?

There were also in our number some young doctors and nurses who were
returning from the hospitals in France for a little needed rest. They
were of those young Americans who are giving themselves so generously
for the cause, eager, courageous, sympathetic. They seemed to me to
have gotten most from the war of all us Americans, much more than the
munitions men who were making money so fast. In Belgium, in Serbia,
behind the French lines, in the great hospital at Neuilly, they had
got comprehension and all the priceless rewards of pure giving. They
had seen horror, suffering, and waste indescribable; but they had
seen heroism and devotion and chivalry. And with them should be joined
all the tender-hearted and generous Americans at home who have aided
their efforts, who are working with the energy of the American character
"for the cause." Alas, already the word was coming of a relaxation in
the generosities, the devotions, the enthusiasms of these Americans.
Other interests were coming into our rapid activities to distract us
from last year's sympathies....

* * * * *

So as we rolled on through the soft summer night while the passengers
discussed the latest Russian reverse of which news had been received
by wireless, I kept asking myself,--"What does it really mean to us?
To vast, rich, young America?" Surely not merely more money, more
power, even a loftier inspiration for the few who have given themselves
generously in sympathy and aid. After all, these were but incidental.
The threat we were beginning to feel to our own security, this campaign
for "preparedness," did not seem of prime, moving importance. Probably
in our bewildered state of mind we should wrangle politically about the
matter of how much defense we needed, then drop some more hundreds of
millions into the bottomless pit of governmental extravagance and waste.
We had already spent enough to equip another Germany! When peace was
finally made in Europe, we would forget our fears; our Congressmen and
their parasites would fatten on the new appropriations, which would be
as actually futile as all their predecessors had been. No; these were
hardly the significant aspects of the war to us as a people.

No more was that acrobatic exhibition of diplomatic tight-rope
walking we had witnessed from Washington. Mere "words, words, words,
professor!" Our dialectic President had thus far failed to establish
any one of his contentions, either with Germany or Great Britain, nor
did it seem likely that he ever could. While he was still modifying
that awkward phrase, "strict accountability," Germany obviously would
murder whomsoever it suited her purpose to murder, and England would
hold up any ship that attempted to trade with Germany. All those
neutral rights for which Washington was paying big cable tolls had
not been advanced an atom. The time had gone by when our strong voice
could compel respect from the barbarian, could hearten the soul of
other weaker neutrals. Europe had taken our exact measure. We should
have saved some dignity had we not murmured more than a formal
protest....

And yet, returning from "war-ridden Europe" I was more convinced
than of anything else in life that what was being slowly settled
in that grim trench--land over there did mean something to us--more,
much more than money or neutral rights or sympathetic charities. Not
that I was apprehensive of an immediate German raid on New York, the
crumbling of her sky-scrapers and the exaction of colossal indemnities.
For it looked to me that Germany might well have other occupation
after peace was made in Europe, whichever way the war should go. The
German peril did not lie, I thought, in her big guns, her ships, her
"Prussianized machine." It lay deeper, in herself, in her image of
the world. If Germany could win even a partial victory under that
monstrous creed of applied materialism, illuminated as it had been
with every sort of cynical crime, with its reasoned defiance of contract,
its principle of "indispensable severities," its "military reasons,"
_that_ must become inexorably the law of the world--the barbarians'
law. Germany would have made the morality of the world! And of all
the world's peoples to accept the victor's new reading of the
commandments, proud America would be the first. For we cannot resist
the fascination of success. The German aim, the German tyranny over
the individual, the German morality--one for you and me as individuals
and another utterly lawless one when we get together in a social
state--would be imitated more than the German lesson of thoroughness
in civil and military organization. Hypnotized by German success, we
should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much
as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans
would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who
apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers.
For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood,
there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion
of triumphant force. American "Big Business" can understand the Kaiser's
philosophy, can reverence his "old German god" when he brings victory,
more than any other people outside of Germany. For it, too, believes
in "putting things over" with a strong hand. There is not an argument
of the German militarist propaganda that would not find a sympathetic
echo somewhere in the headquarters of American corporations.

* * * * *

When the old fourteen-knot steamer finally dropped anchor off
quarantine in New York Harbor and the reporters came on board with
the dust of America on their shoes, the roar of America in their
voices, I was surer than ever that this greatest of world wars meant
a vast deal more to us than trade or charity or politics, which is
what we seem to be making of it for the most part. It means the form
which our national character is to take ultimately. The German peril,
which is held before the public in moving pictures and in alarmist
appeals for "preparedness," is already in our midst, not so much at
work blowing up our factories as insidiously at work in our hearts.
The German apologist--even of Anglo-Saxon blood--is suggesting the
reasonableness of a German verdict. "After all," one hears from his
lips, "there is much on the other side of the shield, which our
English prejudices have prevented us from seeing. Germany cannot be
the monster of barbarism that she has been painted. As for broken
treaties, the atrocities, the submarines, the murder of Edith Cavell,
and her rough work over here,--well, we must remember it is war, and
the Russian Cossacks have not been saints!... As to her military
autocracy, perhaps a little of it would not be a bad thing for
America. At any rate, Germany seems to have the power--it is useless
to think of putting her down.... The American public will forget all
about German crimes once Germany is victorious." "Nothing succeeds
like success." "There is always a reason for success," etc. Which
cynical acceptance proves that we have already "committed adultery in
our hearts."

There are many voices in the air, too many. Americans have not yet
found themselves in this crisis of world tragedy, and the Government
at Washington has not helped them to an understanding. We are vastly
relieved at not finding ourselves "involved" and accept shabby verbal
subterfuges as a triumph of American diplomacy. Meanwhile the Lusitania
incident has been conveniently forgotten, with the awkward phrase
"strictly accountable." Along the eastern seaboard the anxious and the
timid are clamoring for "defense"--against what? The talkative pacifists,
who would make a grotesque farce of the bloody sacrifice by a futile
peace, are bringing further ridicule and contempt on their country
with their impertinent if well-meant efforts. Meantime, the money-makers
have taken this occasion to stage a spectacular bull market, grumbling
on the fruits of war! And there is the "good-time" side to American life.
For a few brief months after the outbreak of the war Americans were
staggered by the awfulness of the tragedy and moved under its shadow.
Their hearts went out in sympathy, in feeding the dispossessed, and
sending aid to the wounded. We spent less on ourselves, partly because
of financial fear, partly because of our desire to give, partly because
our hearts were too heavy to play. But already that serious mood is
passing, and to-day as a people we are hard at it again, chasing a good
time. We feel once more the same old lustful urge to get and enjoy....
The other night as I looked out on the peopled sea of the New York
opera-house, with its women richly dressed and jeweled, its white-faced
men, leading the same life of easy prodigal expense, of sensual
gratification, I remembered another opera staged in the mysterious
twilight of Bayreuth where from the gloom emerged the hoarse bass of
Fafner's cry,--"I lie here possessing!" The voice of the great worm
proved to be the voice of Germany. Is it ours also?

* * * * *

Do we Americans desire to have our world Germanized? Not in art and
language and customs, though may Heaven preserve us from that fate
also! But Germanized in soul? Do we want the German image or the Latin
image of the world to prevail? And are we strong enough in our own
ideal to resist a "peaceful penetration" by triumphant Germany into
our minds and hearts? That is the urgent matter for us. No amount
spent on big guns, superdreadnoughts, submarines, and continental
guards--no amount of peace talk--can keep the German peril out of
America if we surrender our souls to her creed, now that Germany
seems to be imposing it successfully with her armies in Europe. Those
dirty _poilus_ in the front trenches are, indeed, fighting our battle
for us, if we did but know it!

II

_The Choice_

"We have all sinned, your people as well as mine, the English,
the French, the Germans, all, all of us,--but Germany has sinned
most." When M. Hanotaux spoke these words with a Hebraic fervor of
conviction, I did not have to be told what he meant. The people of
our time have sinned through their hot desire for material possession
of the earth and its riches--through commercialism, capitalism, call
it what you will. Each great nation has made its selfish race for
economic advancement at the expense of other peoples: commercial
rivalry has largely begotten this bloody war, which is essentially
a predatory raid by one barbarous tribe against the riches of its
neighbors. Whether England or Russia under similar circumstances
would have dared a similar attack on the liberties of the world is
open to speculation. To Germany alone, however, has been reserved the
distinction of elevating greed and the lust of power to the dignity
of a philosophic system, a creed with the religious sanction of that
"old German god" to smite the rivals of the Fatherland and take away
their wealth. It is because Germany has made a consistent monster out
of her materialistic interpretation of modern science that she is now
held up before the nations of the world as a spectacle and a warning.
"We have all sinned" in believing that the body is more than the
spirit, that food and pleasure and power are the primary ends of all
living; but Germany alone has had the effrontery to justify her
cynicism by conscious theory and to teach it systematically to all
her people. She has endowed with life a philosophical idea, given it
the personality of her people, created a national Frankenstein to be
feared and loathed. More, she is coming perilously nigh to imposing
her god upon the world!

We have all worshiped at the shrine of material achievement--in
America with the riot of young strength. England, like old King
Amfortas, is now bleeding from the sins of her youth and calling in
vain for some Parsifal to deliver her from their penalty. She has
built her rich civilization on a morass of exploited millions, and
her Nemesis is that in her hour of peril her sodden millions strike
and drink and feel no imperative urge to give their lives for an
England that sucked her prosperity from their veins. In the race for
commercial supremacy the Latin nations--Italy, Spain, and France--have
been deemed inferior to Germany, England, and the United States,
because they were less tainted with the lust of possession, less
materialistic in their reading of life, less powerful in their grasp
upon economic opportunity than their rivals. In the Latin countries
industry yet remains largely on the small scale, which is economically
wasteful, but which does not build up fabulous wealth at the expense
of the individual worker. The great corporation designed for the rapid
creation of wealth has not found that congenial home on Latin soil
which it has on ours, or on German soil. And this fact accounts for
the touch of handicraft lingering in the product of Latin industry,
for the strength and health individually of their working classes,
for their fervor of devotion to the national tradition. The Latin
has never forgotten the claims of the individual life: democracy to
him is more than the right to vote. Therefore, pure art, pure science,
pure literature--also the world of ideas--has a larger part in the life
of Latin peoples than with us in the eternal struggle with the
materialistic forces of life. To the Latin living is not solely the
gratification of the body. He reckons on the intelligence and the
spirit of man as well.

* * * * *

It may seem to some that throughout these pages I have spoken
paradoxically of the world war as primarily a struggle between the
Latin and the Germanic ideal, ignoring the significance of Russia
and of England. In spite of the heroic resistance of the French and
the pertinacious thrust of the Italians against the steel wall in
which Austria has bound them, the Latin forces engaged are obviously
less than half of the Allied Powers. On the sea England is virtually
alone. Nevertheless, I see the struggle as a Latin-German one, the
great decision as essentially a decision between these two types of
ideals. All else is relative and accidental. Apart from the
surprising vitality developed by the two Latin peoples, their
astonishing force in the brutal struggle for survival,--which has
disagreeably put wrong the calculations of their enemy,--it is the
mental and spiritual leadership of the world which is being fought
for rather than the physical. The ideas and the ideals under which
the Allies are fighting, which can be simply summed up however
divergent their manifestations, are French, are Latin ideas and
ideals, not English, not Russian. The spirit of the cause to which
England has lent her imperial supremacy and Russia her undeveloped
strength is Latin, and since the war began the English have widely
borne testimony to this fact.

The right of peoples, little as well as strong nations, to live their
own lives, to preserve their own political autonomy, to develop their
own traditions, is part of the Latin lesson learned in the throes of
the great Revolution. It is expressed passionately, wistfully in that
universal cry of the French people: "We must end this thing--it must
never happen again--we must win the right to live as we see fit, not
under the dictation of another!" To the Latin mind the world is
peopled by individuals who cannot and should not be pressed in the
same political or economic mould, who must win their individual
salvation by an individual struggle and evolution. This is the ideal
of liberty the world over, which prompted France to send us help in
our struggle with England. It is a wasteful, an uneconomic ideal, as
we Americans have proved in our slovenly administration of our great
inheritance. Yet we would not have a machine-made, autocratic
organization, no matter how clean and thrifty and efficient it might
make our cities. We prefer the slow process of conversion to the
machine process of coercion. And that is one source of our sympathy
with French civilization. Let us have all liberty to its possible
limit short of license: the Latin intelligence has known how to
preserve liberty from becoming license. The result in the human being
of the principle of liberty is individual intelligence and spiritual
power; those are the high ideals toward which democracy aims. The
cost of them is efficiency, organization--immediate results which
German discipline obtains. But the cost of the German ideal is the
humanity of life, and that is too big a price to pay. That there
should be found many among us who are willing to exchange the
spiritual flower of our civilization for the sake of a more efficient
social organization is evidence of the extent to which the cancer of
a materialistic commercialism has already eaten into our life.

* * * * *

The Latin vision of life includes chivalry, as has been abundantly
revealed by the spirit of the French, sorely tried in their struggle
with the new barbarian. Chivalry means beauty of conduct, an
uneconomic, a sentimental ideal, but without which the life of man on
this earth would be forlorn, lacking in dignity, in meaning. Take
from mankind the shadowy dream of himself implied in his desire for a
chivalrous world, and you leave him a naked animal from the jungle,
more despicable the more skillful he becomes in gratifying his lusts.
The Latin vision of life includes also beauty of art, man's radiation
of his inner spiritual world, and closely woven with the love of art
is respect for tradition--reverence for the past which has been
bequeathed to him by his ancestors, which is incorporated in his
blood.

We in America have striven for these beauties of chivalry, art, and
tradition. We have striven to put them into our lives often blindly,
crudely. We have borrowed and bought what we could not create;
instinctively we pay homage to what is beyond our industrial power
to make, confessing the inadequacy of our materialism to satisfy our
souls. We, too, demand a world in which beauty of conduct, beauty of
manners, and beauty of art shall be cultivated to give meaning to our
lives. The bombardment of Rheims, the murder of Edith Cavell are as
shameful to the American mind as to the French, and as incomprehensible.
These are not matters of reason, but of instinct--commands of the soul.

* * * * *

The Latin ideal is not predatory. Whatever they may have done in
their past, the Latin peoples to-day are not greedy of conquest. If
the Allies win, France will gain little territory. Both Italy and
France have limited their territorial ambitions to securing their
future safety by establishing frontiers on natural barriers. France
also expects indemnity for her huge losses and for outraged Belgium.
She must rebuild her home and be freed for generations to come from
the inhibiting fear of invasion. One does not feel so confident of
England: in the past she has had the pilfering hand. But from
prudence if not from shame England may content herself with a
reestablished prestige and a tranquil Europe. Russia has already
reconciled herself to relinquishing Poland, and except for her
natural ambition to enter the Mediterranean she seems without
predatory desires. Russia, it should not be forgotten, took up arms
to protect her own kin from the Austrians. The Slav and the Latin
have a spiritual sympathy that cannot exist between the Latin and the
Teuton, which gives their present union more than an accidental
significance.

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