Nations do not like each other. No plainer fact stares at us from the
pages of history since the beginning. Are we to sit down under this
forever? Why should we make no attempt to change this for the better in
the pages of history that are yet to be written? Other evils have been
made better. In this very war, the outcry against Germany has been because
she deliberately brought back into war the cruelties and the horrors of
more barbarous times, and with cold calculations of premeditated science
made these horrors worse. Our recoil from this deed of hers and what it
has brought upon the world is seen in our wish for a League of Nations.
The thought of any more battles, tenches, submarines, air-raids,
starvation, misery, is so unbearable to our bruised and stricken minds,
that we have put it into words whose import is, Let us have no more of
this! We have at least put it into words. That such words, that such a
League, can now grow into something more than words, is the hope of many,
the doubt of many, the belief of a few. It is the belief of Mr. Wilson; of
Mr. Taft; Lord Bryce; and of Lord Grey, a quiet Englishman, whose
statesmanship during those last ten murky days of July, 1914, when he
strove to avert the dreadful years that followed, will shine bright and
permanent. We must not be chilled by the doubters. Especially is the
scheme doubted in dear old Europe. Dear old Europe is so old; we are so
young; we cause her to smile. Yet it is not such a contemptible thing to
be young and innocent. Only, your innocence, while it makes you an
idealist, must not blind you to the facts. Your idea must not rest upon
sand. It must have a little rock to start with. The nearest rock in sight
is friendship between England and ourselves.
The will to friendship—or the will to hate? Which do you choose?
Which do you think is the best foundation for the League of Nations? Do
you imagine that so long as nations do not like each other, that mere
words of good intention, written on mere paper, are going to be enough?
Write down the words by all means, but see to it that behind your words
there shall exist actual good will. Discourage histories for children (and
for grown-ups too) which breed international dislike. Such exist among us
all. There is a recent one, written in England, that needs some changes.
Should an Englishman say to me:
“I have the will to friendship. Is there any particular thing which I can
do to help?” I should answer him:
“Just now, or in any days to come, should you be tempted to remind us that
we did not protest against the martyrdom of Belgium, that we were a bit
slow in coming into the war,—oh, don’t utter that reproach! Go back
to your own past; look, for instance, at your guarantee to Denmark, at
Lord John Russell’s words: ‘Her Majesty could not see with indifference a
military occupation of Holstein’—and then see what England shirked;
and read that scathing sentence spoken to her ambassador in Russia: ‘Then
we may dismiss any idea that England will fight on a point of honor.’ We
had made you no such guarantee. We were three thousand miles away—how
far was Denmark?
“And another thing. On August 6, 1919, when Britain’s thanks to her land
and sea forces were moved in both houses of Parliament, the gentleman who
moved them in the House of Lords said something which, as it seems to me,
adds nothing to the tribute he had already paid so eloquently. He had
spoken of the greater incentive to courage which the French and Belgians
had, because their homes and soil were invaded, while England’s soldiers
had suffered no invasion of their island. They had not the stimulus of the
knowledge that the frontier of their country had been violated, their
homes broken up, their families enslaved, or worse. And then he added: ‘I
have sometimes wondered in my own mind, though I have hardly dared confess
the sentiment, whether the gallant troops of our Allies would have fought
with equal spirit and so long a time as they did, had they been engaged in
the Highlands of Scotland or on the marches of the Welsh border.’ Why
express that wonder? Is there not here an instance of that needless
overlooking of the feelings of others, by which, in times past, you have
chilled those others? Look out for that.”
And should an American say to me:
“I have the will to friendship. What can I personally do?” I should say:
“Play fair! Look over our history from that Treaty of Paris in 1783, down
through the Louisiana Purchase, the Monroe Doctrine, and Manila Bay; look
at the facts. You will see that no matter how acrimoniously England has
quarreled with us, these were always family scraps, in which she held out
for her own interests just as we did for ours. But whenever the question
lay between ourselves and Spain, or France, or Germany, or any foreign
power, England stood with us against them.
“And another thing. Not all Americans boast, but we have a reputation for
boasting. Our Secretary of the Navy gave our navy the whole credit for
transporting our soldiers to Europe when England did more than half of it.
At Annapolis there has been a poster, showing a big American sailor with a
doughboy on his back, and underneath the words, ‘We put them across.’ A
brigadier general has written a book entitled, How the Marines Saved
Paris. Beside the marines there were some engineers. And how about M
Company of the 23rd regiment of the 2nd Division? It lost in one day at
Chateau-Thierry all its men but seven. And did the general forget the 3rd
Division between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans? Don’t be like that brigadier
general, and don’t be like that American officer returning on the Lapland
who told the British at his table he was glad to get home after cleaning
up the mess which the British had made. Resemble as little as possible our
present Secretary of the Navy. Avoid boasting. Our contribution to victory
was quite enough without boasting. The head-master of one of our great
schools has put it thus to his schoolboys who fought: Some people had to
raise a hundred dollars. After struggling for years they could only raise
seventy-five. Then a man came along and furnished the remaining necessary
twenty-five dollars. That is a good way to put it. What good would our
twenty-five dollars have been, and where should we have been, if the other
fellows hadn’t raised the seventy-five dollars first?”
