Part 16

It is that power with which we are at war today. Shall men, shall the people, be governed by some remorseless and soulless entity softly called the "State" or shall the instrumentalities of government yield alone and at all times to the wants and necessities, the hopes and aspirations, of the masses? That is now the issue. Nothing should longer conceal it. It is but another and more stupendous phase of the old struggle, a struggle as ancient and as inevitable as the thirst for power and the love of liberty, a struggle in which men have fought and sacrificed all the way from Marathon to Verdun.

It seems strange now, and it will seem more extraordinary to those who come after us, that we did not recognize from the beginning that this was the issue. But, obscured by the débris of European life, confused with the dynastic quarrels and racial bitterness of the Old World, it was difficult to discern, and still more difficult to realize, that the very life of our institutions was at stake, that the scheme of the enemy, amazing and astounding, was not alone to control territory and dominate commerce, but to change the drift of human progress and to readjust the standards of the world's civilization. Perhaps, too, our love of peace, our traditional friendship for all nations, lulled suspicion and discouraged inquiry. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt now.

Whatever the cause, however perverse the fates which bring us to this crisis, we are called upon not to settle questions of territory or establish new spheres of national activity, but to defend the institutions under which we live. Who doubts should we fail that the whole theory and system of government for which we have labored and struggled, our whole conception of civilization, would be discredited utterly? Who but believes that, should we lose, militarism would be the searching test of all Governments and that the world would be an armed camp harried and tortured and decimated by endless wars?

No; we can no longer doubt the issue, and, notwithstanding some discouraging facts, we must not doubt the result. We are simply meeting the test which brave men have met before, for this issue has been fought over and over again for 3,000 years. Islam's fanaticism was grounded in the same design and made of the same stuff, but it broke upon the valor of Charles Martel's men at Tours. But the conflict was not conclusive. The elder Napoleon was obsessed by the same dream of world dominion, the same passion for military glory, that now obsesses those against whom we war. But he, too, saw his universal sceptre depart when chance and fate, which sometimes war on the side of liberty, turned from him on the field of Waterloo. And now the issue is again made up, and again this dream of world dominion, this passion for military glory, torments the souls of our would-be masters. And now again somewhere on the battlefields of Europe the same fate awaits the hosts of irresponsible power. In such a contest and with such an issue we cannot lose; it would not harmonize with the law of human progress.

It has been the proud belief of some that not only would this war result in greater prestige and greater security for free institutions, but that it would effectuate the spread of democracy throughout Europe. We all hope for great things, for we believe in the ultimate triumph of free institutions, but we must not expect these things out of hand. The broken sobs of nations struggling to be independent and free so often heard in that part of the world and then heard no more, the story of Russia just now being written in contention and blood, admonishes anew that the republican road to safety and stability is encompassed by all kinds of trials and beset by countless perils. Democracy is the severest test of character which can be put upon a people, and must be learned and acquired in the rigid school of experience. It cannot be handed whole and complete to any people, though every member of the community were a Socrates.

But what we have determined in this crisis, as I understand it, is that we will keep the road of democracy open. No one shall close it. If any nation shall hereafter rise to the sublime requirement of self-government and choose to go that way, it shall have the right to do so. Above all things we have determined, cost what it may in treasure and blood, that this experiment here upon this Western Continent shall justify the faith of its builders, that there shall remain here in all the integrity of its powers neither wrenched nor marred by the passions of war from within nor humbled nor dishonored by military power from without, the Republic of the fathers; that since the challenge has been thrown down that this is a war unto death between two opposing theories of government we are determined that whatever else happens as a result of this war this form of organization, this theory of state, this last great hope, this fruition of 130 years of struggle and toil, "shall not perish from the earth."

So, Sir, stripped of all incidental and confusing things, the problem which our soldiers will help to solve is whether the theory of government exemplified in the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns or the theory of government exemplified in the faith of Abraham Lincoln shall prevail. It is after all a war of ideals, a clash of systems, a death struggle of ideals.

Amid the sacrilege of war it is our belief that the old order passeth. In such a contest there is little room for compromise. We can no more quit than Washington could have quit at Valley Forge. We can no more compromise than Lincoln could have compromised after Chancellorsville.

We can and should keep the issue clear of all selfish and imperialistic ambitions, but the issue itself cannot be compromised. Cost what it may in treasure and blood, the burden, as if by fate, has been laid upon us, and we must meet it manfully and successfully. To compromise is to acknowledge defeat. The policies of Frederick the Great, which would make of all human souls mere cogs in a vast military machine, and the policies of Washington, which would make government the expression and the instrument of popular power, are contending for supremacy on the battlefield of Europe. Just that single, simple, stupendous issue, beside which all other issues in this war are trivial, must have a settlement as clear and conclusive as the settlement at Runnymede or Yorktown. To lose sight of this fact is to miss the supreme purpose of the war, and to permit it to be embarrassed or belittled by questions of territory is to betray the cause of civilization. And to fail to settle it clearly and conclusively is to fail in the most vital and sublime task ever laid upon a people.

We need not prophesy now when victory will come. Neither is it profitable to speculate how it will come. If it is a real and not a sham peace, we will have no trouble in recognizing it when it does come. Whether it shall come in the bloody and visible triumph of arms or, as we hope, through the overthrow and destruction of militarism by the people of the respective countries, we do not know. But that it will come we confidently believe. Indeed, if the principles of right and the precepts of liberty are not a myth, we know it will come.

It has been said by some one that it was not possible for Napoleon to win at Waterloo, not on account of Wellington, not on account of Blücher, but on account of the unchanging laws of liberty and justice. Let us call something of this faith to our own contest. Let us go forward in the belief that it is not possible in the morning of the twentieth century of the Christian civilization for militarism, for brute force, to triumph. It would be in contravention to every law, human and Divine, upon which rests the happiness and preservation of the human family. It would be to place brute force first in the Divine economy of things. It would be to place might over right, and in the last and final struggle that cannot be done.

No; we cannot lose. We must win. The only question is whether we shall, through efficiency and concerted and united action, win without unnecessary loss of life, unnecessary waste of treasure, or whether we shall, through lack of unity in spirit and purpose, win only after fearful and unnecessary sacrifices.

It has often been said since the war began, Mr. President, that a republic cannot make war. I trample the doctrine under my feet. I scorn the faithless creed as the creed of cowards and traitors. If a republic cannot make war, if it cannot stand the ordeal of conflict, why in the name of the living God are our boys on the western front? Are they there to suffer and die for a miserable craft that can only float in the serene breeze of the Summer seas and must sink or drive for port at the first coming on of the storm? No; they are there to defend a craft which is equal to every conflict and superior to every foe--the triumph and the pride of all the barks that have battled with the ocean of time.

A republic can make war. It can make war successfully and triumphantly and remain a republic every hour of the conflict. The genius who presided over the organization of this Republic, whose impressive force was knit into every fibre of our national organization, was the greatest soldier, save one, of the modern world; and the most far-visioned leader and statesman of all time. He knew that though devoted to peace the time would come when the Republic would have to make war. Over and over again he solemnly warned his countrymen to be ever ready and always prepared. He intended, therefore, that this Republic should make war and make war effectively, and the Republic which Washington framed and baptized with his love can make war. Let these faithless recreants cease to preach their pernicious doctrine.

Sir, this theory, this belief that a self-governing people cannot make war without forfeiting their freedom and their form of government is vicious enough to have been kenneled in some foreign clime. A hundred million people knit together by the ties of a common patriotism, united in spirit and purpose, conscious of the fact that their freedom is imperiled, and exerting their energies and asserting their powers through the avenues and machinery of a representative Republic is the most masterful enginery of war yet devised by man. It has in it a power, an element of strength, which no military power of itself can bring into effect.

The American soldier, a part of the life of his nation, imbued with devotion to his country, has something in him that no system or mere military training and discipline as applied to automatons of an absolute Government can ever give. The most priceless heritage which this war will leave to a war-torn and weary world is the demonstrated fact that a free people of a free Government can make war successfully and triumphantly, can defy and defeat militarism and preserve through it all their independence, their freedom, and the integrity of their institutions.

Defending the World's Right to Democracy

By James Hamilton Lewis

_United States Senator from Illinois_

[FROM A RECENT SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE]

No democracy was ever founded in any Government of earth that did not have to fight to continue its existence or maintain its ideals. Hear Goethe proclaim to Prussia, "Those who have liberty must fight to keep it." The test of every free land that tries out its worthiness or unworthiness to exist as a Government of freedom has been its willingness or refusal to fight and die for its faith. No Government that has not exhibited a capacity to sacrifice all it has for the theory for which it was founded, and to prove its ability to protect and perpetuate the institutions it has created, has ever yet existed for a length of time sufficient to be recorded in history as having fostered liberty or transmitted democracy to men. No Government has yet been accorded by civilization a place among the nations of the earth until it had first demonstrated its worthiness to administer justice by doing justice to itself, and then to prove its power in conflict to overcome its natural enemies, whether from within or without. * * *

Our United States, too, must pass under the rod. America's institutions of freedom, inspiring mankind to her example and awakening oppressed lands to follow her course if they would know liberty, inflamed the souls of the royal rulers of Prussia with fear and fired them to war of destruction upon all that America stood for and was living for. * * *

Whatever riches America has amassed from her industry, whatever wealth gathered from her commerce, what harvests garnered from her fields, are all as but the least of offering compared to that which she brings to civilization in the growth of liberty, the perfection of justice, and the expansion of freedom with which she has been able by her example and her power, through her religion and her generosities, to endow mankind. Other nations have risen in triumph of power and lived for a while in the glory of arms, but by selfish achievement--conquest through the slash of swords--they have fallen. As these wrenched victory by strength and success by power, they but showed the way to the rival wherein to multiply and by these same standards prevail. That which was victor yesterday was the conquered of today, and thus one after the other the powerful nations of the world, resting only upon the achievement of riches, the multiplication of wealth, and the power of the sword, have broken and melted away, leaving nothing enduring to which mankind appeals as example to follow or the children of men turn to as gods to be worshipped or praised. Hear Ruskin echoing this truth:

Riches of Tyre, Thebes, and Carthage; yea, I say also the once Rome and great Persia are left for our beholding in the periods of their decline. They are ghosts upon the sands of the sea. Theirs was power, riches, grandeur; much for a country--nothing for man. They rose; they shined, yea glowed, laughed, persecuted, and oppressed, and then they died, and man asks not, where are they? nor cares that they live not among nations. As among men, there is to nations a justice of God and the vengeance of time.

Mr. President, refined civilization as it increases in its purpose of equality among men and justice to all peoples scorns the suggestion of accepting these dead nations of the past as models of national education or guides of personal conduct. The people of the modern world shun them and hold as their boast before earth how they disdain to pattern after them, and turning the face of all those that are new and hopeful to the one standard, approach the United States of America, and bowing in admiration, ask but to follow her past growth, hold her guiding hand, and walk beside her in the light of approving heaven.

Then who are they who misrepresent the purpose of democracy under Wilson that they may defeat all democracy to all men? These charge that America, under Wilson, would continue war to force Governments and people of foreign lands to take our form of government. Let the world know that as George Washington fought for democracy as a right to America and Thomas Jefferson proclaimed it as a necessity to mankind, while Lincoln made it his creed of emancipation for all color and all climes--so, too, Wilson fights for democracy as a right of the whole world. The promise of Wilson to "make the world safe for democracy" is no threat to make the world take democracy. It is but the assurance of the effort to give to the world its chance to take democracy. This war of America is the announcement that we, by our entrance into the conflict, will prevent any despot from depriving any people of the right to exercise their free will in rejecting despotism and choosing democracy. The United States does not fight to force any Government to adopt the theory of our Government, nor does the United States fight to force any foreign people to take our form of government against any form of government they may choose for themselves. But America does fight to prevent any foreign Government from thwarting any land from enjoying democracy if it so wills by the voice of its own people. And this United States fights now and will ever fight to the expenditure of its last dollar and the sacrifice of every son, rather than submit to any monarch wresting our democracy from us, to the death of our liberty and the end of our Republic.

Messenger Dogs in the German Army

How They Are Trained

Through captures made in the battle of the Chemin des Dames the French General Staff has obtained precise information regarding the German Army's use of dogs as war couriers. The training of the animals is divided into two periods--the training at school and that at the front. At school the men receive detailed instructions as to the care and treatment of dogs, after which they begin a rigorous drill, training each dog to run daily over a longer and longer course, accompanied by his masters; then the dogs must run over the same courses alone, while the two trainers are posted one at each end. The longest course is about three miles.

On the battle line there is similar training. On Sept. 1, 1917, for instance, the 52d Meldehundetrupp left the school at Wiegnehies to join the 52d Infantry Division, near the Hurtebise Farm, in Champagne. The troup consisted of one officer, six sub-officers, thirty-six men, and twenty-one dogs. It was divided at once among the units of the division, the level sectors receiving a larger contingent than the hilly sectors, where communications are less difficult. Marshy ground, where human messengers might be mired, and positions heavily pounded by artillery also were favored.

In their respective sectors the dogs are subjected to local training. Little by little they are drilled to run as couriers between the company and the battalion, on the one hand, and the battalion and the regiment on the other. Thus the courier that has to keep up connection between the company and the battalion is sent by one trainer, who stays with the company commander, to the other, who is quartered with the chief of the battalion. In twenty or thirty days, it appears, the dogs are broken to their work as couriers, and have become familiarized with the tunnels, trenches, shelters, and officers' posts, as well as with the roar of cannonade and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns.

As for the practical results of all this training and ingenious organization, the French officers say these are still in doubt. They indicate the nature of the doubt by citing the case of two trained dogs at Pinon. When the French attacked with a heavy bombardment, one dog disappeared in terror and the other was made sick and useless by a French gas bomb. The fact remains, nevertheless, that canine messengers are doing useful work in dangerous places on both sides of No Man's Land, and to some extent conserving human lives.

Full Record of Sinkings by U-Boats

Statement by Sir Eric Geddes

_First Lord of the British Admiralty_

_Sir Eric Geddes in a speech before the House of Commons on March 20, 1918, for the first time revealed the total shipping losses of Great Britain and the other Allies and neutrals from the beginning of the war up to Jan. 1, 1918. His summary was followed next day by a statement from the Admiralty Office giving the figures in fuller detail. This was made public simultaneously at London and Washington. The essential portions of both utterances are presented below. Sir Eric Geddes said:_

The world's tonnage from the commencement of the war until Dec. 31, 1917, exclusive of enemy-owned tonnage, has fallen by a net figure of, roughly, 2,500,000 gross tons. This is out of 33,000,000 estimated allied and neutral ocean-going tonnage, which is arrived at after deducting small craft, river and estuary craft, and a considerable amount of lake tonnage, tugs, &c., so that with a net loss of 2,500,000 tons we, the allied and neutral world, have suffered about 8 per cent. reduction in ocean-going tonnage of the world, excluding enemy countries. The total world's tonnage, exclusive of enemy tonnage, is 42,000,000, and the deduction is made after careful consideration and investigation. The percentage of net loss in British tonnage alone is higher than this, and reaches 20 per cent. for British tonnage, the more favorable allied and neutral tonnage percentage being, of course, due largely to a credit brought in by the United States of interned German ships.

The main submarine attack is upon us. It was to starve these islands that the enemy instituted this form of warfare. In 1915-16 the output of new tonnage was very low--it was lowest in 1916. In fact, before the intense submarine warfare commenced we were over 1,300,000 tons to the bad from all causes since the beginning of the war. Then our shipping has been in the war zone to a far greater extent and far longer than has that of some of our allies, and our navigational risks and losses, which are included, are greater, because of the absence of lights in the waters around our coast and elsewhere.

With regard to enemy exaggeration: For the twelve months of unrestricted submarine warfare, from Feb. 1, 1917, to Jan. 31, 1918, the enemy has proclaimed in his public notifications that he has sunk over 9,500,000 tons of British, allied, and neutral shipping. The actual figures of vessels sunk by submarine action, including those damaged and ultimately abandoned, amount roughly to 6,000,000 tons, so that we have an exaggeration of 3,500,000 tons in twelve months, or well over 58 per cent. In January the exaggeration was 113 per cent. It is rather amusing that since I publicly showed up this grossly false declaration of results the usual return of submarine sinkings for February has not been issued by Berlin. It is now overdue. I think, if any proof of the failure of the campaign is needed, this exaggeration and Berlin's reticence would show it.

TO THE SHIPBUILDING TASK

For the first two years of the war or more the shipyards of the country had lost their men and the work had become dislocated. Hulls had been on the slips for very long periods and there was no material in existence to finish them. Vessels were lying in the yards awaiting engines, but the engines had never been built, because up to 1917 the Admiralty had made use of the engine shops for naval work. There was great confusion in the shipbuilding industry, not due to the fault of the industry, not really due to any one's fault, but due to war conditions. The output had been checked by urgent work being placed in the same works by different departments. With the introduction of the Controller's Department it was immediately realized that this policy was bad for output as a whole. It was accordingly arranged to allocate yards or separate sections of yards, so that one class of tonnage only would be produced. The result is that forty-seven large shipyards, containing 209 berths, are wholly engaged on ocean-going merchant vessels. That is entirely apart from the large private warship building establishments, which are obviously most suited for naval work. But there are in addition eleven--and only eleven--other yards suitable for large merchant tonnage which have at the present time naval craft on the stocks.