Y1 
 
 Class . 
 Booki ' . 
 
AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 STUDIES IN LIGHT AND SHyiDE 
 
 BY 
 
 IGNATIUS PHAYRE 
 
 € 
 
 What h/ith this Day deserved? 
 What hath it done 
 
 That it in golden letter a should be set 
 Among the high tides in the calendar ? 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1919 
 

 4 
 
 Copyright, 1918 
 Bt DODD, mead and company. Inc. 
 
 ^^//y 
 
TO 
 
 AMERICA 
 
 ENSHRINED IN MY OWN HOME 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATE 
 
 A smile among dark frowns, a gentle tone 
 Among rude voices, a beloved light, 
 A solitude, a refuge, a delight! 
 
THE FOREWORD 
 
 BEING A NEUTRAL VISION OF THE WAR 
 
 My aim is to lift the note of the United States above the 
 clamour of a world-war, its man-killing, restoration, and 
 rearrangement. It shall be throughout an impersonal aim. 
 I teach nothing — I only relate, conscious of a certain in- 
 sight into America's music, though the sound of it be in- 
 congruous as a Bach fugue on the guitar. After all, 
 more than a hundred million souls dance to this tune and 
 try to make new harmony by inspired violation of the 
 old. 
 
 The Great War affected this looser continent in various 
 ways: business and bosom were searched with many-sided 
 appeal. ''Keep your harvesters and ploughs," Chicago 
 heard with dismay. "What we need are thermite bombs 
 to burn the growing crops. Or send us pedrail tractors 
 to dig a ditch for the living and the dead." It was the 
 shriek of madness in American ears. Forty million men 
 were flung into the furnace of war. Europe was seen 
 shaken and distorted, like a reverend friend that foamed 
 with sudden epilepsy. I cannot speak of America's won- 
 der, for the sight so dazed her that "Keep Away" was 
 a compelling instinct which quelled all the rest. . . . 
 
 The live light of Christ was eclipsed with cave-man 
 vengeance. The olden pillars tottered; our common sanc- 
 tuary was soon a smoking heap involving the United 
 States in the wicked futility of its fall. These people 
 were aghast; they were also confirmed in their own ways 
 — "Et voir autrement que les autres, c'est presque tou- 
 jours voir un peu mieux que les autres." America was 
 
viii AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 strong and sure in this perception of her own good. Who 
 had seen it more clearly than her own First President, 
 whose ^'Keep Out" policy in regard to Old-World tangles 
 took a new lease when the rape of Belgium began with 
 headlong fury? The prairie farmer gave Woodrow Wil- 
 son a second mandate on Washingtonian lines — the lines 
 of Prosperity and Peace which reseated "that proven man" 
 in the White House^ — the first Democrat of double term 
 since Andrew Jackson's day. 
 
 Europe had run amok. America's millions stood far 
 off in dim espial, deafened with partisan cries at home, 
 where German bombs went off and the German Embassy 
 was organized as a focus of conspiracy and crime. It 
 was all so crude, this vengeful welter; startling as the 
 flash and clap of storm out of a cloudless summer sky. 
 So unaccountable to the naive American mind; so unex- 
 pected of twentieth-century man, who rode the clouds 
 and made the ether speak without wires. . . . Old seats 
 of grace were gruesomely transformed. Rheims Cathedral 
 was ablaze, Venice and the Isles of Greece were rained 
 upon with fire like Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 America shed her youthfulness in those dreadful days 
 and developed an impulse to save herself. No longer 
 diffident, she was now mature and grave, surging with 
 pity and timid ministration. How should it end, when 
 would it end? The older and once- wiser world was be- 
 come a slaughterhouse, crashing with satanic gear. All 
 flesh was as grass over there; each levy of men mere 
 Kano7ienf utter, or meat for guns that were great as factory- 
 shafts, with godlike youths high in the heavens guiding 
 them. There was a waste of money beyond any Wall 
 Street telling. The massed wealth of nations was now 
 turned to devastation, with malign Science directing all — 
 under water, in the air, and across tortured lands, black 
 with refugees whose prayer to God sank into sul.len 
 
THE FOREWORD ix 
 
 blasphemy and bloody vows of vengeance. Such was 
 America's vision of the calamity. . . . 
 
 At the same time, she reflected, the London poor con- 
 tinue to live like dogs. Trench heroes, pictured in the 
 papers for glowing deeds, returned from the King's Palace 
 to homes unimaginably vile. The Children's Hospital 
 was pawning its last security and advertising the fact: 
 ''Unless help comes at once we must close our wards.'* 
 America could only stare at it all, and reckon the cost of 
 each day's killing which would surely heal a world's woe. 
 She heard of girl-babies collecting for the blinded and 
 maimed with an empty bomb as a money-box. Mother's 
 fur coat was officially branded as a crime against the 
 nation. Why? Because the cost of it would give the 
 hidden sniper sixteen thousand chances of shooting his 
 German brother! 
 
 Alas, that Bellona's robe should be the only wear in 
 Merrie England — "0 moissoneuse des premices du ciel!" 
 And America turned away from this shearing of the 
 human race. Bright streams of joy lay stagnant ; the fra- 
 ternity of man was but a memory, known by its tribute 
 of tears, like the Shrine of Pity in Athens. In the glare 
 of war our striving frailty w^as a baleful thing; our di- 
 vinity an august lie, our efforts to rise mere twisting of 
 a rope of sand, "which was a task, they say, that posed 
 the devil." Depressed and bemused by it all, America 
 took comfort in the better part which was unmistakably 
 her own. Therefore the philosophy of George Washington 
 was taken down from its dusty shelf and re-read as the 
 gospel of salvation. 
 
 "We are reasonable creatures," America insisted with 
 Grotius. "Therefore our works may be moral or unjust, 
 even in the rough grapple of war." It was a hint to all 
 the belligerents. For by this time grief had given place 
 to orievance as the United States steered a worried course 
 
X AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 between the German devil and the deep sea where Britain 
 was enthroned. America blamed both sides with biting 
 impartiality. "Why were they so ''national" and not ra- 
 tional at all? America's creed was the reasonableness of 
 man, and this she preached to exasperation. It would 
 yet transmute the greed and guile that loosed this wither- 
 ing blast. Scoffed at now, it would yet lure Evil from its 
 lair into a shadowless White House day. 
 
 America was moved with Pauline sense of duty: ''Ne- 
 cessity is laid upon me." She must somehow try to heal 
 humanity, long rent with hate and bloody aberration. 
 "Let us keep our heads," was Wilson's counsel — as a man 
 might urge when caught in a maniac surge and swept 
 away. "America is about to be thrust into the economic 
 leadership of the world." Let her stand clear of the 
 wreckage if she were to serve and rebuild when this Eu- 
 ropean brain-storm was overpast. The genial Bryan (most 
 typical of all Americans) laid stress upon the spiritual 
 side of this future. "Some nation," he felt, "must lead 
 mankind out of the blackness of war into the light of 
 day. Why not make that honour ours?" Here was the 
 voice of America in her neutral time. One caught it in 
 all keys, from the Executive Mansion to the sod-shack 
 of the Nebraskan plains. 
 
 From Vienna to Van, America assuaged the misery of 
 war with grain and meat and shelter. From Douglas to 
 Dantzig she mothered the prisoners of war, hearing the 
 plaints of all and marvelling how God saw eye to eye with 
 each belligerent. "The Throne of the Most High," Amer- 
 ica thought — distracted enough herself — "must be like 
 Jove's whispering-place in Lucian, where prayers criss- 
 crossed in conflict, some for rain and others for shine"! 
 And so, deafened with contending claims, the big Republic 
 turned away from them all. She was ill at ease and angry 
 to find that her neutral role was in Allied eyes that of the 
 
THE FOREWORD xi 
 
 grafter and poltroon, battening upon the world's woe and 
 cursed from every side. ... On the whole, she thought, 
 Europe was best left to the God that watches over the 
 afflicted and cares for drunken men in the murderous traffic 
 of city streets. 
 
 Then lust of cruelty, America feared, was a very real 
 passion. Witness the Turk with his victims — say at Tre- 
 bizond on the Black Sea, where a whole nation was to 
 be destroyed. They were taken out in shiploads and 
 scuttled in a wholesale way. . . . Cruelty! The child 
 with a worm, the boy with a wounded bird — what flower 
 of evil blossomed here in dark abysses of our nature? 
 It was no sacred flame that moved the white hunter in 
 Uganda and made him drop the elephant-gun for a 
 Service rifle and the greatest game of all, which was the 
 killing of men. Why, the very curates ''had to be held 
 down," as the Bishop of London announces. "I should 
 like to get back quick," Charles Lister wrote from Gal- 
 lipoli. "I've seen just enough to tantalize. . . . And 
 there 's no sound like the scream of enemy shrapnel through 
 the sky." Or hear another paladin — young Julian Gren- 
 fell, "when the burning moment breaks" — 
 
 "And all things else are out of mind 
 And only Joy-of-Battle takes 
 Him by the throat, and makes him blind." 
 
 Such is the lure of war. This fever was not infectious 
 in the United States, though sporadic cases were to be 
 found: I mean American volunteers in the French and 
 Canadian Armies. "It is well that war is so terrible," 
 mused Lee, the Confederate leader ; ' ' otherwise we 'd grow 
 too fond of it." Washington himself could revel in the 
 bullet's song — "There is something charming in the 
 sound!" It is an acquired taste which present-day Amer- 
 ica had thought outgrown in a more enlightened age. 
 
xii AMERICANS DAY 
 
 She tried to understand it — to say of modem war what 
 Shelley said of the Medusa's head: ''Its beauty and its 
 horror are divine.'* But only the horror emerged. Messrs. 
 Swing and Swope, America's privileged correspondents, 
 wrote of trench scenes discreetly glozed over by their Eu- 
 ropean rivals. The dry-land drowning of the gassed 
 Canadians, for example. The wild-beast rattle of their 
 end; their purple faces and starting eyes with blood and 
 tissue welling from dying mouths in torment that broke 
 down the veteran nurse and surgeon. Here was Science 
 enlisted in the war; it was the wraith of Science that 
 hovered at sundown over the gas-graveyard of Poperinghe. 
 
 There came a time when America yawned over the war. 
 News from the Great Ditch became drab and samely. So 
 did cries from the sea where ships were shattered and the 
 crews took to leaky boats amid German jeers. There was 
 no longer a public for wolfish fights between the wounded 
 and the dying out there in No Man's Land. Nor for the 
 suicide of crazed men who exposed themselves deliberately 
 on the parapet '*to get it over." Haggard scenes in the 
 dug-out hospital ceased to fascinate the American reader, 
 with sweating surgeons cutting and hacking amid eerie 
 screams or the cigarette-smoke of resignation from rows 
 of stretchers on the floor. 
 
 There were ghouls that robbed the dead, it seems. There 
 was a crash and din of shells that robbed the living of their 
 reason, so that they bombed or shot the pals at their side 
 until these in turn destroyed them, as they might the 
 swarming vermin of the trench. There were few horrors 
 left in the inkwell when the American reporter was done, 
 so adept was he in sounding the horrid crannies of our 
 nature. 
 
 Custom can (and does) brass us all with ease. The 
 widow's tears are quickly dried; her mourning passes 
 from harsh crepe to dull decorous silks and serge, to shine 
 
THE FOREWORD xiii 
 
 at last in pearl and gold. It is the way of the world ; it 
 was America's way when she knew the worst of war that 
 her Swings and Swopes could tell her. And then, like 
 Tommy in the trench, she developed a talent for forgetting. 
 From over the water I caught the carol of Prosperity; it 
 was care-free as a dug-out serenade : 
 
 "The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling 
 For you — but not for me." 
 
 The stupidity of war became a fluent theme when the 
 horror of it no longer made the American cables burn. 
 "Who's going to profit?" was a query that rose from 
 President and car-conductor. *'The Cause," they were 
 told, was in every case *'My Country." the conse- 
 crated curse that put the State before humanity and made 
 of each nation's flag a shroud that meant more than dia- 
 dem and robe to those damn-fool patriots! So this was 
 the lay-religion of the Old World ? It put America in mind 
 of a noble fane reared in a pagan land; the light of it 
 streaming vainly, like a lamp in a sepulchre. 
 
 *'When shall I do a decent day's work?" asked the 
 pruner of vines of a New York reporter on the Marne. 
 When would his mother do a decent day's work? — that 
 patient soul in lace cap and clogs. She was now stamping 
 steel and filling endless shell-maws out of dread alembics — 
 sticky stuff brewed pour les Boches by the learned Turpin, 
 and tried upon silly sheep in waste places of the Saone. 
 America mourned with the peasants of France, who saw 
 the very earth defiled by stinking warrens in zigzag rows — 
 thousands of miles of them, with deep galleries here and 
 there in which half a division could assemble and defy the 
 guns. Then there were enormous craters and shell-pits 
 in which you could hide a house. The patient fields 
 were turned inside out; the vineyard churned to chalk 
 by ceaseless drum-fire, and little homes ground to dust 
 
xiv AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 and rubble under the leprous moons of war. . . . Look! 
 There was the white-haired cure trying to trace where his 
 village street had been. 
 
 **We must send over implements," America said in her 
 cheery way. ''We'll ship you a lot of frame houses. 
 We'll renew your farm-stock, too — we'll send you seeds 
 and pigs and poultry." It was no use. The top-soil of 
 the Somme was swept away. Just as it was an army's 
 job to make them, so it would be an army's job to level 
 these lunar landscapes, scooped out as they were and 
 heaped up like a frozen sea. They might grow forest seed- 
 lings — beech, and the like. But God help the cultivator 
 who tried to wring a living from vengeful hectares in les 
 regions actuellement liber ees de Vennemi — say, in the Oise, 
 the Meuse, the Vosges, or Meurthe-et-Moselle. 
 
 This slaughter of the soil was a phase that shocked 
 America in a new way. It was abhorrent to every instinct 
 of the United States, now thrilling with regret that she 
 had any art or part or profit in this crazy surge — that 
 her Texan cotton, kneaded and nitrated, should fill the 
 war-head of German torpedoes. Why, in her own waters 
 half a dozen ships were smashed on the Lord's day, and 
 terrified souls cast upon stormy waters sixty miles from 
 land ! 
 
 Then American steel — fine stuff for rails and bridges — 
 was being frittered in gun-tubes and armour plates. A 
 British artist (in khaki, of course) was cutting new masks 
 and faces for the hideously maimed out of Arizona and 
 Montana copper. America's wheat and meat were too 
 often snatched from starving Poland and Syria to feed the 
 poison-gas fiend and peeping assassins of the Turkish 
 trench. America was abased at her own trade, haunted 
 by dim eyes of women that outwept the clouds with an- 
 guish. Who could grasp the totality of it in this war- 
 time .world? Here is Emma Wilkins, the white-haired 
 
THE FOREWORD xv 
 
 widow, who begins life over again as a cook in far-off 
 Winnipeg. Her husband fell at Modder River, in the 
 Boer War. Six times in succession had the British War 
 Office wired to this woman to say that a son was killed. 
 To these add three stepsons and a brother-in-law, as well 
 as a sister who "became a raving maniac before my eyes 
 when she heard her husband was lost in the Jutland fight. ' ' 
 
 Acres of print were published in the United States about 
 the twin arts of killing and curing until America was 
 stultified with a sense of crime. She lost interest in those 
 surgical miracles: how bone was taken from the rabbit 
 and grafted on the pet of the hospital ward; how blood 
 was transfused, and the calf robbed of nerves for the 
 sake of the V.C. bomber, or the palsied lad who had ripped 
 up a dozen Huns in a minute's "haymaking" with the 
 bayonet. Such wonders grew more than stale. So did 
 pictures of the Hughes balance; the electro-magnet and 
 the microphone for locating steel fragments in the living 
 tissue. 
 
 Against these America set the German flame-projector 
 that burns men alive as they face the foe. How perverse, 
 when all was said and done; how revolting to men of 
 sense was this endless game of hurt and healing! Here 
 was Dr. Barthe de Sandfort who made a sound job of the 
 flayed poilu — "barely recognizable as a human being" 
 when brought in for the ambrine treatment to the famous 
 hospital at Issy-les-Moulineaux. America had no en- 
 thusiasm for this wanton mending. Nor had she any 
 pride in her own undoubted skill in the production of 
 artificial limbs. It was an added reproach, indeed, being 
 primarily the result of her own industrial speed-up, whose 
 casualties vied with those of Verdun and the Somme. 
 
 You will gather from my Foreword that America was 
 an unmilitary Power, with a policy diametrically opposed 
 
xvi AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 to the Might before Right of Bismarck. **We are a very- 
 rich people," Theodore Roosevelt reminded them. ''We 
 are a fat, untrained, and helpless people. We have treated 
 money-getting, soft ease, and vapid pleasure as the all- 
 sufficing ends of life. We have let our Navy run down, 
 we have refused to build up our Army. We have acted 
 as if wealth and wordy sentiment atoned for the lack of 
 those stern virtues upon which alone true national great- 
 ness rests. There is no surer way to court disaster than 
 to be opulent, disliked — and unarmed!" 
 
 But that reproach has passed in a Day of violence of 
 which no man can see the end ; it was passing when Roose- 
 velt wrote those words. For the first time nationhood was 
 being born in the United States. New seeds and sparkles 
 glowed in the melting-pot, and all eyes were fixed upon its 
 ferment. For the older nations were now pale with the 
 sickness of war. They were indeed "among the graves," 
 as the prophet said, ' ' and broth of abominable things is in 
 their vessels. ' ' 
 
 Having said so much, let me light my candle at the 
 cannon's mouth and show the Land of Opportunity, its 
 striving castes and problems, together with the perils which 
 beset the people's chosen path, and for the first time thrust 
 them into a mighty struggle overseas. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER fAGE 
 
 The Foreword vii 
 
 I "Keep Out" and *'Keep Off" 1 
 
 II Revelation from the Hill of Mars .... 14 
 
 III The Setting Forth of Strange Gods .... 28 
 
 IV "States^ Rights" versus'the Nation .... 40 
 V America in the Making 50 
 
 VI The City of Cities 68 
 
 VII "Dare and Do" 94 
 
 VIII The Militarism of Money 114 
 
 IX Adventures in Success 138 
 
 X Pay-Dirt of the Plains 159 
 
 XI "An Helpmeet for Him" 181 
 
 XII Publicity and the Press 206 
 
 XIII The "People of Now" 228 
 
 XIV Thinking Pink as a National Outlook . . . 247 
 XV The World Must Be Safe for Democracy . . 273 
 
 XVI The Watchman and the Sword 298 
 
 XVII Germany and America in the "Empty Conti- 
 nent" 334 
 
 XVIII "Our Own Eastern Question" 359 
 
 XIX The New Anglo-American Understanding . . 398 
 
AMERICA'S DAY 
 
AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The apostle of Preparedness was early abroad in the 
 United States preaching the god of war to Stoics and Epi- 
 cureans of capricious hearing. For these, their President 
 feared — with relucting mind, you understand, forced to it 
 by the press of fact — had been too long aloof "in provincial 
 isolation." It was a revolutionary saying. The many 
 Americas debated it back and forth — here with assent, 
 there with dissent or discord, dying away to complete in- 
 difference in the great food-acres of the Middle Yv^est. 
 
 In the United States we have the hugest assembly under 
 any civilized flag. They muster well over a hundred mil- 
 lion souls scattered through sixty degrees of longitude, and 
 they include every race upon earth. "We are to play a 
 leading part in the world-drama," Dr. Wilson announced, 
 "whether we wish it or not." But the last election showed 
 no crusading zeal among the masses. America, her Chief 
 Executive told us, was vitally interested to secure universal 
 peace and save the smaller nations from violence and 
 wrong. But there are many Americas : who knew this bet- 
 ter than Woodrow Wilson? Knightly champions there 
 might be along the Atlantic fringe ; there were none at all 
 in the intermountain States east of the Rockies and west 
 of the Mississippi Valley. Here Freedom's pibroch had a 
 soothing sound; the price of beef on the hoof was more 
 than all the tortured Armenians. 
 
 When you mentioned war down in Texas or Arizona, it 
 
 1 
 
2 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 was Mexico that became the fluent theme. On the Pacific 
 Slope the Japanese bogey brooded as an abiding menace. 
 So that each America was immersed in matters of its own ; 
 it was the Federal Government's affair to unite them all, 
 and call a country's pride out of the continental immen- 
 sity. The prime purpose of the United States, as Dr. 
 Wilson reminds us, was to crystallize — *'at any rate in 
 one government, the fundamental rights of man." . . . 
 "America," he said again, ''must be ready hereafter as a 
 member of the family of nations to exert her whole moral 
 and physical force for the assertion of those rights through- 
 out the earth." 
 
 So did the President prepare his people for that "leap 
 in the dark" which Senator Lodge and many others con- 
 demned. Certainly Wilson was throwing to the winds of 
 war the great principles of his predecessors, above all, the 
 "Keep Out" counsel enshrined in Washington's Farewell 
 Address, and handed down as America's gospel! "Eu- 
 rope," the Liberator explained, "has a set of primary in- 
 terests which to us have none, or a very remote relation." 
 Again and again the First President warned the infant 
 State against foreign wiles. "Our detached and distant 
 situation," he was glad to say, "enables us to pursue a 
 different course." America might extend her commerce, 
 but she would do well to have "as little political connection 
 as possible" with the older Powers, their devious unions, 
 quarrels and intrigues. 
 
 Such was the advice of the greatest American. To the 
 "Keep Out" of Washington, James Monroe added his 
 famous "Keep Off" in 1823, thus completing America's 
 aloofness. It was with vague unrest that Monroe heard 
 the pious vows of Prussia, Russia, and the Holy Alliance. 
 Those precepts of Christ, those principles of justice, char- 
 ity, and peace were thought to hide the devil's own designs 
 upon Spanish America. 
 
^*KEEP OUT" AND ''KEEP OFF" 3 
 
 "We owe it to candour," Congress was told in Monroe's 
 famous message, "to declare that any attempt on the part 
 of the Allies to extend their system to this hemisphere will 
 be considered dangerous to our peace and safety." With 
 existing Colonies in the New World the United States had 
 no concern. But any fresh adventure would be viewed as 
 an unfriendly act. 
 
 "Keep Out" and "Keep Off" were the guiding politics 
 of the United States down to the fateful year of 1914. 
 The Great War put an end to this isolation, though the 
 masses would not admit as much. America was so secure 
 in the old days, so free to develop herself in ways of her 
 own choosing. For nearly a century each Administration 
 sang the praise of this policy. On the 4th of July silver 
 tongues (like Bryan's) blessed the care-free hugeness over 
 which Old Glory waved. What happiness was here, what 
 lofty theories of life and man's duty to his brother! 
 American envoys abroad were set apart from their col- 
 leagues. They were glad to be mere crows amid the para- 
 dise-birds around a throne; black-coated democrats in a 
 gorgeous rout, decked with the gold lace and jewelled 
 orders of a guileful and secret service. 
 
 The election of 1916 altered the political map of the 
 United States, to the confusion of the Old Guard. For 
 the first time something like a nation's voice was heard, 
 but not even a Quixote would construe it as that of a 
 champion of the world's woe. "He kept us out of war," 
 men said of Wilson. There were wonderful times ahead, 
 with America thrust into leadership and Europe a chaos 
 of mourning and spilt blood. The election revealed the 
 strength of the "Keep Out" tradition. Wilson's first term 
 was full of it — though he veered and changed with every 
 beat of the storm. His Message to Congress in 1914 op- 
 posed preparation for war. That of 1915 called upon the 
 people for whole-hearted efforts "to care for their own 
 
4 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 security and that of the Government they have set up to 
 serve them." Twitted with inconsistency, Wilson owned 
 to a receptive mind, ever alive to fresh streams of thought. 
 He was serene as Lincoln under these anxious digs. * ' Yes, 
 said the Emancipator calmly, "I've another opinion now. 
 I don't think much of a man who isn't wiser today than he 
 was yesterday." 
 
 ''Always learning" was Wilson's motto, as it was Michel- 
 angelo's. But could he impart his knowledge to the de- 
 votees of Prosperity and Peace? Would his people accept 
 his prompting before it was too late? ''We can no longer 
 indulge our parochialism," the President told them plainly, 
 with no hint of his owm regret for the old American way. 
 They must pile up ships, he urged. They must patrol 
 their coasts with aircraft, and not pla}^ the foolish virgin, 
 caught unprovided in the stormy dark. So said the cau- 
 tious Wilson to the States of the Union — those easj'-going 
 sovereignties which to the average Briton are "something 
 like our own counties." America's vastness is seldom 
 grasped, though most of her problems spring from it. Cali- 
 fornia alone is bigger than Great Britain and Ireland. 
 So is Montana — though its population is not much more 
 than Bristol's. 
 
 In Texas — the Lone Star State — you could stow all 
 the kingdoms, principalities, and Grand Duchies of the 
 German Empire, leaving room for Holland and Belgium 
 in the semi-arid Panhandle, which is now a field of corn. 
 Unless this immensity is borne in mind, with its range 
 of climates, crops, and races — European, Asiatic, and Afri- 
 can — no attempt to reveal America is of any avail. 
 
 Isolation was over. The "Keep Out" counsel of Wash- 
 ington was well enough for three million settlers strung 
 out along the Atlantic coast. But now — ! And even 
 Washington had something to say about Young America's 
 risks and liabilities. These, it seems, grew with "our rising 
 
^'KEEP OUT" AND *^KEEP OFF'* 5 
 
 prosperity. " ' ' There is a rank due to the United States, ' * 
 her first President declared, "which will be withheld, if 
 not absolutely lost, by a reputation for weakness." So 
 the pursuit of peace might become an abject aim — far 
 worse, indeed, than any lust of war for its own sake on 
 Clausewitz lines. 
 
 Slowly, then, conviction crept through the United States 
 that God was on the side of big battalions, and that Jus- 
 tice, in the last resort, spoke with giant guns and bombs. 
 I say the conviction "crept," for it was not a welcome 
 thought. The "Keep Out" advice died very hard in spite 
 of urgent warnings. It survived the Lusitania shock and 
 many another, bobbing up serenely with all the toughness 
 of a timber-laden derelict. A word from the State De- 
 partment, and "that easier feeling" supervened, as it did 
 after the Nebraskan, the Arabic, Hesperian, Persia, Silius, 
 Sussex, and Marina. 
 
 Beyond question the desire to Keep Out delaj^ed the 
 "strict accountability" of President Wilson's First Note 
 to Berlin. Two minor tragedies — the Falaba and GidjUglit 
 — came before the Lusitania and involved American lives. 
 As the list grew longer, fury rose in the Eastern States- 
 only to die away in vast spaces west of the Alleghanies. 
 On the other hand, New York and Washington laughed 
 at the prairie politics of Hickory Creek, where the cowboy- 
 statesman started a war-withering simoon in his local pa- 
 per, comparing the American soldier to a watchmaker on 
 the Congo — a man who should change his job at once lest 
 society turn upon him as a useless drone. 
 
 We are all familiar with Roosevelt 's f ulminations against 
 Wilson, the man of peace. 
 
 "Nothing permanent," he told the people in one of his 
 early moods, "is ever accomplished by force." Then how 
 were the British expelled, tlic dissentients asked. How was 
 this continent won from the Indians ? How was Secession 
 
6 AMKKICA'S PAY 
 
 orusluHl. aiid the Union saved in the Civil War? . . . Wil- 
 son was hodgiiii: at last, and changing his tune: '"The 
 United States can never K^ the Siime again. '^ Here ^vas 
 the new note. *'Frvnu aoross the Atlantie. fi*om aorv->s8 the 
 Uaeitie, we feel in our heart new ealls and eurreiUs that 
 touch our very life,'* 
 
 No wonder the professional soldier itiereasod his domaiids. 
 Here was the Federal Chief of StatY. General Hugh L. Seott, 
 pri^jxvjino: a standing army of 250.000, expanding to three 
 millions in war-time and drawn frvnn the whole manhood 
 of the ev>ntiuent. General Leonard Wood. Commander- 
 in-Chief of the American Army, was equally blunt iu an- 
 swering Mr. Bryan. **Xo wolf was ever frightened by 
 the si/e of a tUvk of sheep. ... If you have ideals worth 
 defending, then words aloue will not avail you. . . We 
 have far too many orators — too many Fourth of July 
 liower^ about a million citizens leaping to arms between 
 dawn and dark. We of the War College s^it up all night 
 for thrxv weeks iu 1916 hoping to see thirty thous^md 
 volunteers take that leap for service on the Mexican border 
 at the President's call. Take my worii for it, it was a 
 heavy jump they made with seventy-tive per cent, of fail- 
 ure among the athletes we had count eil on.'* 
 
 The President's party was well provided with answers 
 to all reproach. Elihu Root accusevi them of not making 
 timely provision '*to back American diplomacy by actual 
 or assured naval and military force." But ^Ir. Root and 
 his colleagues, the Democrats said, had had twelve years 
 of control in which to mjike this very pi\nision. Not even 
 Roosevelt, the most forceful of Presidents, cinild rouse en- 
 thusiasm for his Big Stick, which America was to carry 
 and speak softly if she were to win her way and command 
 the world's respect. 
 
 *'ls our nation one, or a discordant multitude?'* Mr. 
 Root tiuuir at the State Convention in New York. '*Have 
 
"KEET OCT" ANT) ''KEKP OFF" 7 
 
 selfish living, factional jars, and love of ease obscured our 
 spiritual vision ? lias the patriotism of a people never 
 summoned to sacrifice become lifeless?" Here were search- 
 irj^' fjiir'stions from a j^reat Ajjicri<:an. They went to the 
 'Wdvy source of a coritinc/ital apathy which has lon'^ been 
 the despair of statesmen \n a loose federation of soverei-^n- 
 ties. "Here's a hoop to the barrel!" was tlic bitter toast 
 of Ceneral Washinj^ton's officers lon^^ ago. It was a caus- 
 tic allusion to the disruptive tendencies of the thirteen 
 original States. This lack of cohesion persisted until IfilG, 
 IjaHling and obstructing the national <^overnment. 
 
 It is no easy matter to make a nation with three thou- 
 sand miles between two of its capitals. The ideals of Ire- 
 land and Albania are no further apart than those of New 
 York and Nevada. Far more than distance divides sub- 
 tropic Florida, its orange-groves and palms, from bleak 
 Montana, where the very wolves perish in their winter 
 lairs. As for social contrast, let me set on one hand the 
 Babylonian splendour of Newport, and on the other hand 
 negro squalor in the "Black Belt" of Mississippi, where 
 the white man is in a minority, and racial hatred is for ever 
 smouldering. 
 
 I hope I convey some idea of the problems confronting 
 the Federal Administration in 1016. President Wilson's 
 appeal for unity to the League of the Foreign-Born had 
 high significance. "A man or a woman," he said, "who 
 becomes a citizen of the United States is not expected to 
 give up his or her love for the land in which they were born. 
 But we do expect them to put their new allegiance above 
 all others." Nor should the foreign-born (Dr. Wilson 
 hinted) continue to live by themselves — using their own 
 language, having their own newspapers, and passively re- 
 fusing to merge with America, where the "good mixer" 
 has the best chance in opportunity's arena. It was the 
 foreign-born who warred upon their adopted country in 
 
S AMERICAS DAY 
 
 A S!e^>on of ^trAni^* n\,^liiriianoe. Infernal :v :. . ■ . " : i < w r;\ k^vl 
 Ameri.\in v:cvks a:ivi Allied ships. Alv;.: : :: tcu'.vries 
 veT>? $>^t barbed wire; armed s»eii tries protected the plant 
 frora dtiaens whom the President, in a famous Message 
 to Con^rnei^i* *' blushed to admit'' as Americans. They 
 **ivvai>ed poison into the v^eiy arteries of the United States,'' 
 the National Assembly was told. It was an onslaught of 
 whieh America had never dreamed: **And we are with- 
 t»ut adeqtiate Federal laws to deal with it/' Here was a 
 frank confesdon of impotenoe. The judgment of crime is 
 a matter of States' Rights. A fugitive murderer must 
 needs be extradited, as from a forel^i land. It was so with 
 the notorious Harry Thaw, whom Xew York could only 
 •riest after long and costly litigation with the States of 
 Vermont and Maine. 
 
 There are, indeed, myriads of American laws, most of 
 them easily evaded because framed by amateurs and in- 
 operative beyond the State line, Tiius the bachelor in 
 Reno v^^«?>~sda^ fresh from the **nisi-mills" of the Desert 
 State, may lind himself a big^amist in Spartanburg — for 
 South Carolina has no divorce law at all. A girl child of 
 twelve can be a wife in Kansas and Kentucky. She must 
 be eisriiteen in Idaho and Xew York. It is hard to imagine 
 the chaos made in this way by forty-eight Parliaments 
 electing over four thousand mejnN?rs^ all of them anxious 
 to please local supporters in a novel field. At the last 
 leg"islative session in Sacramento (,Cal,\ 2S77 new Bills 
 were introduced, and 771 were added to the Statute Book. 
 "T: V Sessions Laws of Arkansas for 1915 fill a volimie of 
 1 -J pages, those of Massachusetts one of 1100 pages. I 
 write of a Xew Worid isled in its own immensity, and im- 
 possible to grasp in a single cowp ti'tri?. It is a politico- 
 social experiment on the hugest scale, preferring its own 
 mistakes to our experience. America is a noisy pal*stra 
 of sleepless wit and unresting hands. Its strenuous aura 
 
"KEEP OUT" AND ''KEEP OFF" 9 
 
 Ik best felt in the personal formula of George W. Perkins, 
 the insurance ma^^nate, who retired at fifty to devote him- 
 self and his wealth to public welfare, education, and art. 
 "My own method," Mr. i-'erkins says, ''has been to live 
 (tv(iry day as though it was the only day 1 had to live, and 
 to crowd everything possible into that day. I gave no 
 heed to the clock, nor to what I was paid. 1 worked and 
 lived for all there was in it." 
 
 Here is business efficiency defined by a master, with the 
 speed-up focussed into a burning spot of corrosive power. 
 For many years this w^as America's gospel, but today it is 
 questioned for the first time. The colossal waste of life 
 in Europe set up waves of constructive sympathy in the 
 United States. "Over here," says Mr. Darwin P. Kings- 
 ley, of the New York Life Insurance Compan}^, "the hu- 
 man machine begins to go to pieces at fifty-five. It is the 
 price of our peace, and nobody counts the cost. So marked 
 is the death-rate increase that all the companies have re- 
 vised their rules for accepting lives at fifty-five and over." 
 
 Physical unpreparedness w^as hailed by professional sol- 
 diers as a factor in their favour. They argued that a 
 stiffish course of training in early manhood would fit the 
 American for every emergency of modern life, whether in 
 peace or war. Governor Whitman of New York declared 
 that compulsory service was in no way inconsistent with 
 American tradition and aims. The revered head of Har- 
 vard University, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, also defended this 
 step, since "the oceans are no longer barriers but high- 
 ways inviting the passage of fleets." Besides, a citizen 
 army on the continental scale was America's duty towards 
 the peace of the world. Force was still supreme. And, 
 reviewing the Great War, the old scholar reminded his 
 people that: "Neither religion nor popular education has 
 shown any power to prevent this lapse to savagery." 
 
 The American masses not only loathed war; they mis- 
 
10 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 trusted the panoply and ritual of it. Congress has always 
 suspected soldiers and placed them under a ban. The Gen- 
 eral Staff — a recent creation — was not loved in "Washing- 
 ton, where the AVar Department has thus far been in 
 civilian hands. ''Keep away from Congress/' General 
 Wotherspoon warned his colleagues on his retirement. For 
 he also was an alarmist; a man of conscience and plain 
 professional speaking about a small and dwindling army, 
 and a system of State militias worthy of the comic stage, 
 and all the anathema heaped upon them in the report of 
 Generals Wood and Barry. 
 
 There was something unmartial in this New World at- 
 mosphere. American history shows an inveterate reliance 
 upon citizen levies, from Bunker's Hill to the Mexican 
 Border of 1916. The army was abolished — re-established, 
 reduced to 6000 men, and throughout regarded as a nui- 
 sance. One result of this, was a war of seven years against 
 the Seminole Indians, who, with 2000 braves in the field, 
 called for over 60,000 American troops to put them down, 
 at a cost of $70,000,000. The larger war in Mexico, the 
 Rebellion of the South, and the clash with Spain — these 
 taught America little in the way of armed preparation 
 suited to the needs of a growing Power. "It is unhappily 
 true," says Major-General W. H. Carter, U. S. A., ''that 
 in none of our wars has the Government been able to count 
 upon the active support, or even of the good-will, of all the 
 nation . . . even when the very life of the Union was at 
 stake." 
 
 It was ignorance of these facts which made our own 
 newspapers ask "What will America do?" after each new 
 affront put upon President Wilson by Germany. What 
 else could he do but "Keep Out" if that were the wish of 
 his people? When he pictured them as champions of the 
 weaker nations — quick and ardent custodians of the world 's 
 peace, "with every influence and resource at their com- 
 
*^KEEP OUT" AND ''KEEP OFF" 11 
 
 mand" — Dr. Wilson was careful to add: ''Bat the war 
 must first be concladed." He showed marvellous insight 
 into the many-sided Republic. No doubt he hoped to edu- 
 cate the masses in preparedness, with wasted Europe before 
 them, and a growing power iA Asia fast closing the 
 once "Open Door" in China, and heaping up fighting 
 forces by sea and land and air. But in the flush time of 
 1916 Wilson admitted frankly that America had no world- 
 policy at all. "To carry out such a program we need 
 unity of spirit and purpose." And the "unified strength" 
 upon which the President harped was not as yet in 
 sight. 
 
 The New World was wholly misunderstood in Europe. 
 Why, it was asked, had not the Big Neutral given a moral 
 lead to the rest? Why had she fussed over her cotton 
 and grain; why had she taken up Prussia's catchword 
 about "the freedom of the seas"? It was because (one 
 heard) of that trade neutrality which made Sweden protest 
 so sharply over her mail-bags, Holland over her herrings, 
 Spain over her oranges and cork — bulky cargoes in a time 
 of tight tonnage and ruthless submarines. If America had 
 only thrown her aegis over Belgium when the scrap of 
 paper was torn, and the German hordes began to martyr 
 the most innocent of all nations! So ran the reproaches 
 on this side, whether expressed or implied. 
 
 European poets and scholars scathed neutrality of every 
 shade, from the Pope's to that of American people. "The 
 world is watching," Maeterlinck called across the sea, "to 
 judge if the strength of your fathers is also yours." But 
 America was not aroused; she was not in fighting trim 
 at all. She would feed the hungry and care for the father- 
 less and prisoners of war. Beyond this she was power- 
 less. "What can America do?" asked the German papers, 
 with an easy contempt that was almost incredible, ad- 
 dressed as j.t Fas to a continent of a hundred millions — 
 
12 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 the richest dn earth and the most insistent upon moral 
 claims and covenants. America must needs win her masses 
 to whole-hearted preparation if she were to be among the 
 guarantors of universal peace. *'It is inconceivable," 
 President Wilson told the Senate, "that we should play no 
 part in that great enterprise." For if peace were to en- 
 dure, it must be secured by "the organized major force 
 of mankind." And in the same address Dr. Wilson dwelt 
 upon the limitation of armaments by sea and land as ' ' the 
 most intensely practical question connected with the future 
 fortunes of nations and mankind." 
 
 It is plain that America has strong views upon this 
 subject. It was the piling up of weapons which menaced 
 * ' the sense of equality among the nations. ' ' Therefore the 
 President favoured a reduction, advising the world 's rulers 
 to "plan for peace and adjust their policy to it." But he 
 could not be consistent in this matter. He was plainly 
 in a strait between the ideal of disarmament and the de- 
 fence of the United States, which was an urgent affair upon 
 all grounds. 
 
 Wilson, indeed, went further than Roosevelt in his naval 
 aims. He declared himself in favour of "incomparably 
 the greatest Navy," since America's coast-line is so exten- 
 sive. The Cabinet's new five-year program called for an 
 outlay on ships of $661,000,000, with twenty per cent, 
 above specified prices for speed in building and general 
 efficiency of all craft. Professional advisers of the Gov- 
 ernment insisted upon these measures; the masses either 
 resisted or were listless and unconcerned. It was the in- 
 terplay of these active and passive forces which gave rise 
 to so much confusion. Official Washington had to walk 
 very warily, doling sympathy and blame to all belligerents 
 with the apathy of the larger Americas ever in view. 
 
 Britain was aghast at the detachment shown in the Presi- 
 dent's early speeches. So was France, where Freedom 
 
^'KEEP OUT" AND ''KEEP OFF" 13 
 
 blazed in the very heart of desolation. And she signalled 
 mute reproach to her sister Republic across the seas : 
 
 "I am she that was thy sign and standard-bearer, 
 Thy voice and cry; 
 She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer, 
 The same am I!" 
 
 Still there was no sign, and the amazement of Paris 
 broke into open reproaches. ''When England tried to op- 
 press you with the help of hired Hessians, the peasants 
 of France came to your aid. They fought by your side, 
 they died for you. And yet, today in our agony. ..." 
 It roused nothing but vexation, as the memory of a debt 
 so often does. 
 
 As a well-wisher, the New York Tribune was sorry to 
 record this sentiment. However, there it was, faintly mov- 
 ing America in the mass. It would be well for the Allies, 
 the Tribune said, "to renounce all thought that America 
 is a sympathetic country, or one in which community of 
 ideas exists with regard to the present clash." It was 
 true that both France and Britain had warm friends in 
 the United States. "But they are in the minority; they 
 have not been able to mould American feeling." The old 
 French alliance, ties of British race and of language — 
 these were but frail exhalations from history's page. "The 
 sooner the Allies think of America as a foreign country — 
 not necessarily friendly, and certainly not of their way 
 of thought — the better for all concerned. ' ' 
 
 It was "reparation for the American lives lost," that 
 Dr. Wilson demanded in his first Lnsitania Note. And 
 if in his next he warned the sea assassin "with solemn 
 emphasis," it is well to remind British readers of hot 
 American protest against the "vexatious and illegal prac- 
 tices" of our own blockade. All nations were foreign when 
 viewed from neutral Washington, whose outlook may be 
 expressed in the mild phrase of Lincoln, "With malice to- 
 wards none, with charity for all." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 
 
 A QUAINT episode in American history is the offer of a 
 crown to General Washington by the officers of the Revo- 
 lutionary Army. It was almost a mutinous army, ill-clad 
 and ill-fed; dismissed at last and scantily paid in paper 
 worth two per cent, of its face value. Only Washington's 
 influence prevented an open revolt. It is curious to survey 
 America's dislike of the *' standing army," and later on 
 of a navy — that added evil due to crescent power and the 
 new duties that came with it. It has always been a point 
 of honour with Congress to lop and prune these noisome 
 growths of the State; it was at one time a moot point 
 whether they were necessary at all. 
 
 In 1810, when Europe flamed with the Napoleonic wars, 
 John Randolph of Virginia rose in the Lower House with 
 the familiar motion "to reduce our naval and military 
 establishments." "With respect to war," cooed that 
 Bryan of his day — poet, orator, and wit — "we have in the 
 Atlantic a force wide and deep enough to ward off peril 
 from the land." Two years later that moat was crossed 
 by a hostile army ; before the war was over the very cham- 
 ber in which Randolph had spoken was burned by British 
 soldiers. But nothing altered the traditional mistrust of 
 Congress for an armed host; the consequence is seen in 
 America's unreadiness for all her wars. 
 
 What alarmed her advisers in 1916 was that the first 
 onset of a modern enemy might be a lightning stroke, like 
 the German sweep towards Paris. Leisurely war was a 
 thing of the past ; so was the raising of levies by bounties 
 or reluctant drafts, as in the long-drawn Civil War. ' ' The 
 
 14 
 
REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 15 
 
 records show conclusively," says Major-Geueral W. H. 
 Carter, the military historian, ''that the theory of citizen 
 volunteers ready to march in our defence is wholly falla- 
 cious. " When the nation's fate hung in the balance, only 
 46,626 men over twenty-four years of age could be found 
 for the Union Army; the vast majority were boys of six- 
 teen or less. It took two years to train these troops and 
 develop a Gettysburg from the dangerous rout of Bull Run, 
 w^here disaster was only averted by eight hundred regulars 
 who fought a rearguard action. In the war with Spain the 
 volunteers, Avith few exceptions, were unfit to embark. 
 Their lack of discipline, the failure of supplies; the disease 
 and chaos at Chickamauga and Key West Camps — these 
 are today as ghastly as they are fresh in the memory of 
 professional soldiers. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief, General Leonard Wood, 
 warned the House Committee on Military Affairs in the 
 usual way. "To send our troops into war as they are, 
 without guns or ammunition, would be absolute slaughter." 
 It was the Federal Army to which the speaker referred. 
 Of the National Guard, or forces of the several States, 
 called out on the Mexican Border, General Wood reported 
 to the War Department that "only 25 per cent, of these 
 can be reckoned as reasonably instructed soldiers." The 
 Kentucky and Georgia Guards showed 50 per cent, of 
 physical rejections. Of the 8th Ohio Infantry, 500 men 
 were unfit. It was no wonder, therefore, that on the 
 march Virginia lay down in companies; New York shed 
 90 men in 6 miles of the open road. Thousands had no 
 uniform ; thousands more had never fired a service rifle in 
 their lives. 
 
 But why were such troops employed in a national 
 emergenc}^? In order to give the Regular Army a chance 
 to recruit and make ready; it was at that time 34,307 
 men below its peace strength under the new law. On the 
 
16 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 other hand, the Navy was 2000 officers and 60,000 men 
 short, so that when the Arizona went into commission 
 she retired three older battleships, absorbing their crews 
 and putting to sea short-handed herself. Such is the mo- 
 notonous story of both Services. 
 
 The Washington Bureaux are full of secret reports 
 pigeon-holed by a genial sin of habit. Here is one such 
 warning from Secretary of War Dickinson and his Chief 
 of Staff: "A foreign country," the House Committee was 
 informed, ''could land 200,000 veterans on our Western 
 Coast in thirty days. To meet this invasion the three 
 States west of the Rockies (California, Oregon, and Wash- 
 ington) could only muster 3000 Regulars and 5000 Mili- 
 tia; these last of little use, and all lacking transport and 
 munitions." Still more alarming were reports upon the 
 coast-defence artillery. The whole continent was more or 
 less defenceless, although millions of money were spent, 
 and the Washington Bureaux issued rosy reports to the 
 papers. 
 
 The condition of the Navy was very bad. A Committee 
 of Congress was its real ruler; the fighting Staff could 
 only report defects and hope for the best, though with no 
 illusions about promise or performance. Five battleships 
 of the Kentucky class and five destroyers of the Alwyn 
 class were accepted with defective machinery. Admiral 
 Fletcher found the submarines in a "deplorable condition." 
 At times not more than five were ready for duty. They 
 could not reach their assigned stations 75 miles south of 
 Nantucket, nor could they maintain their surface speed 
 in moderate weather. Some of them leaked, others broke 
 cylinders and cranks, or else they could not submerge at 
 all. Rear- Admiral Grant assured the Naval Committee 
 that "twenty-two of our K submarines are about equal to 
 three of the German U-39." 
 
 Target practice by the larger ships brought bitter com- 
 
EEVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 17 
 
 ment from Admiral Winslow and Captain Sowden Sims, 
 two of the ablest officers in the Navy. Admiral Edwards 
 pointed out that there was not a dry dock in the South 
 Atlantic or Gulf coasts capable of taking a superdread- 
 nought. Nor was there a single crane there that could 
 install or remove a heavy gun. It may be taken for granted, 
 on the best professional authority, that both Na^y and 
 Army were at all times unready for active service against 
 a modern enemy. To America, war was a preposterous 
 thought. Therefore soldiers and sailors, guns and ships 
 existed only on grudging sufferance. They ate up mil- 
 lions, America was ashamed to say; so the wise thing was 
 to keep these dragons as feeble as possible by denying 
 their demands. "Ten of my twenty-one 5-in. guns can- 
 not be manned," mourns the captain of the Neio York dur- 
 ing manoeuvres. Shortage in the engine-room staff of the 
 Arkansas caused a serious explosion. It crippled the ship, 
 and caused the admiral to declare himself unable ' ' to meet 
 on equal terms similar types in foreign navies." 
 
 It was this repressive rule wdiich made Roosevelt say 
 that "the whole Service is being handled in such a wa^^ 
 as to impair its fitness and morale." But the American 
 people would have it so ; their whole complexion and quality 
 of life was rosed over with peace and strenuous joy. Only 
 the statesmen and professional fighters were anxious over 
 the new era of armed sanction. Elihu Root impressed upon 
 the Yale students that "while democracy has proved suc- 
 cessful under simple conditions, it remains to be seen how 
 it will stand the strain of those vast complications upon 
 which the country is now entering." In other words, 
 America was at the parting of the ways, and her men on 
 watch had a delicate task to break the unwelcome news to- 
 gether with the sacrifice of comfort it would entail. 
 
 This accounts for President Wilson's vacillation and his 
 slow abandonment of the "Keep Out" policy. After all, 
 
18 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Washington himself foresaw a sweeping change ; there was 
 comfort in that for the present White House occupant. 
 The first President traced young America's growth along 
 inevitable lines. He dared not hope that his impress would 
 remain for ever, or his guidance * ' control the usual current 
 of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the 
 course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations." 
 
 America's new destiny was soon the insistent theme of 
 President Wilson. ''The business of neutrality is over," 
 he assured the farmers. This war of peoples was the very 
 last from which America could hope to refrain. As things 
 chanced, however, Fate was kind — kind to the United 
 States, equally kind to stricken Europe, who looked over- 
 seas for a friend on the grey morrow of her dreadful orgy. 
 ''They will need us," the Ohio folk were assured by their 
 President. His hearers agreed, recalling how King Albert 
 asked the late Jim Hill, of the Northern Pacific, to rebuild 
 the Belgian railways when all was over. 
 
 There would also be Russia and East Prussia to renew, 
 with Northern France, the two Polands, Serbia, Rumania, 
 Bulgaria, and Montenegro. Here were wide marts, and 
 with them high mission to comfort the sore and scattered 
 races. It was a lattermath of service which appealed with 
 peculiar force to America. Already she felt the fires of 
 war falling away. Uncle Sam would yet be the hierarch of 
 a nobler altar, one built of Vermont marble and Nevada 
 gold, overlaid with silks from the New Jersey mills ! Busi- 
 ness first, and with it Samaritan ministry for all the bel- 
 ligerents. There was "infinite prosperity ahead," as Dr. 
 Wilson assured his people in election speeches. "We have 
 bought back two thousand million dollars' worth of securi- 
 ties. In the first two years of war we amassed one-third of 
 the world's gold." 
 
 And yet — ? This riot of riches seemed to bring anxiety 
 in its train. Official Yf ashington, as nerve-centre, felt auras 
 
REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 19 
 
 of fear chilling the wide elation of the continent. Military 
 weakness was no longer a joke, neither was the endless 
 "war" between Committees of Congress and keen officers 
 of both Services who had America's honour and safety at 
 heart. Even the State guardsman, a purely political figure, 
 disappeared from the comic papers upon whose coloured 
 covers he had capered with a javelin and a stone ax. ''We 
 must Prepare," men told each other — without any alarm, 
 however, for there was no hurry. This was the new note 
 that flickered from Bar Harbor to San Diego — which is 
 now an aircraft station on the Pacific. *'We shall be called 
 upon to defend this Prosperity of ours. ' ' It was at once a 
 nuisance and a novelty. There was talk of Preparedness — 
 just talk and little more — all the way from Puget Sound 
 to the Florida Keys. 
 
 Out at Sheepshead Bay the New York police manoeuvred 
 with bombs and maxims before an admiring crowd. Naval 
 Secretary Daniels invited likely citizens to take a three 
 weeks' cruise on a warship with a view to increasing the 
 Naval Reserve. But when all was done, it was a languid 
 campaign. To the Slovak farmer twelve hundred miles 
 from any sea. Preparedness for war was pointless babble. 
 In the Atlantic tier of States men were awake and aware ; 
 they were also carping at ways and means, like the rich 
 burgess of other days who peered from the coach and spied 
 robber horsemen in the chilly dawn. There were "Get 
 Readys," and there were "Let Bes." Between these and 
 the anti-British and pro-Germans, the President steered a 
 precarious and troubled way. His position reminds one of 
 the Pope's own, with the gentle Mereier of Malines upon 
 one hand and Cardinal Plartmann of Cologne on the other, 
 rolling out a very different tale of the Herrenvolk and their 
 ways in a conquered land. 
 
 " 'Tain't easy, bein' Pres'dent, I guess," was a sympa- 
 thetic hazard flung at Lincoln in his darkest days. The 
 
20 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 great man agreed, with gaunt simplicity. *'I feel like the 
 Irishman," he explained, ''who was ridden on a rail and 
 tried to keep his dignity all through. 'Ef 'twasn't f 'r the 
 honour o' the thing,' Pat called to his friends, 'I declare to 
 God Oi'd rather walk!' " With the queerest of wars in 
 Mexico, with German defiance at sea and rabid hyphenism 
 at home, centring in the Imperial Embassy at Washington, 
 Dr. Wilson's was indeed an unenviable lot. 
 
 There was much to be feared from the German- Ameri- 
 cans. Nationalism had lain dormant in these exiled 
 millions; it woke to frenzy the whole world over at the 
 Fatherland's call. 
 
 "Don't you dare declare war on us," panted the Mil- 
 waukee German to his half-brother, the American. "If 
 you do, you'll have the Japs on your back and ourselves in 
 your guts ! " It was not a pretty speech, but it was charac- 
 teristic of the hyphenate in his early heat. Military weak- 
 ness, then, as well as mixed races and unconcern for the 
 issues, account for the humiliations heaped upon America 
 during the first two years of the war. Her newspapers — 
 those of the East should be understood — fretted and fumed 
 afresh over the havoc wrought by U-boat 53 in home waters. 
 How Gay of the Benham was waved aside by Hans Roze, 
 who smashed ship after ship, leaving the American to pluck 
 his citizens from a watery grave if he chose. "Here is 
 congenial use for our warships," wailed the New York 
 Herald. "They shall pick up women and children, while 
 these German sea-wolves blockade our coasts and wreck 
 our commerce. A noble task for the successors of Oliver 
 Perry and Isaac Hull; Stephen Decatur, Farragut, and 
 Dewey!" 
 
 Comment of this kind had as yet but little weight. Presi- 
 dent Wilson expressed his views in an identic Note to the 
 warring nations, and subsequently to the Senate in Wash- 
 ington. The calamity oppressed him : ' ' Every part of the 
 
REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 21 
 
 great family of mankind has felt the burden and terror of 
 this unprecedented contest of arms." In that contest 
 America would take no part, but so ardent was her concern 
 for the ensuing peace, that she was (her Chief Executive 
 said) willing to forego her isolation and join an over- 
 whelming coalition to preserve the sanctity of a new era. 
 
 The President spoke pontifically, and raised a great to-do. 
 He had no censure for the submarine, no condemnation of 
 chlorine gas or liquid flame ; no abhorrence of the Zeppelin 
 airships, nor of torture and killing from Louvain to Lake 
 Van, where the Kaiser's Kurdish allies had done their 
 damnedest to wipe out a nation. None of these things did 
 President Wilson condemn, but there was pointed allusion 
 to "the freedom of the seas" which was clearly intended for 
 Britain. The presence of her cruisers was "vexatious and 
 uncourteous to the United States." The observer is struck 
 by the different treatment meted by America to the two 
 leading belligerents in this war. I\Ir. Lansing's Notes to 
 Von Jagow contrast oddly with the sharp ring of protest to 
 Sir Edward Grey over the stoppage of mails and the like 
 non-vital issues. 
 
 The British Minister, Crampton, was given his passports 
 in '55 for no greater offence than enlisting soldiers for the 
 Crimean War. Sackville-West was dismissed for replying 
 to a decoy-letter, to which he replied advising Americans of 
 British birth to vote for Grover Cleveland. Whatever be 
 the cause — clever propaganda on a great scale, homage to 
 success, or hyphenate influence in Congress and the coun- 
 try — it cannot be denied that German and British trans- 
 gressions were judged by two different standards in the 
 United States. Count Bernstorff could boast of his 
 "Army" — an army of crime that terrorized industrial 
 America. "They have formed plots to destroy property," 
 was the President's own plaint about them. "They have 
 entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Gov- 
 
22 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ernment; they have sought to pry into confidential trans- 
 actions in order to serve interests alien to our own. ' ' 
 
 But for the time the hyphenates were able to baffle that 
 Government. Their violence had a longish run because, as 
 the President reminded Congress, **We are without ade- 
 quate Federal laws to deal with it." It was a German 
 axiom that ' ' Frightf ulness paid" and that German insight 
 into national motives was superior to that of any other. 
 There was much to support this view: for example, the 
 astonishing spectacle of a pro-German Spain, with an 
 officer of the General Staff drinking to the victory of the 
 Central Powers. "Many people in Norway," said M. Nils 
 Vogt, a well-known publicist and brother of the Norwegian 
 Minister in London, *' admire Germany's power" — ^the same 
 power, you will recall, that sank fifteen of Norway's ships 
 in a single week to the tune of $4,200,000, to say nothing of 
 drowned men, or of lingering death and torment in the open 
 boats. 
 
 Beyond question America w^as impressed; millions ad- 
 mired the German machine, and at one time backed it to 
 win. Consider the gifts and banquets offered to Captain 
 Koenig of the subaqueous liner, Deutschland, which offered 
 to carry the American mails. *' There's nothing like Suc- 
 cess to win over these people," said the Muenchener 
 Zeitung. The writer went on to purr over the ''atmosphere 
 of victory" with which Deutschtum enveloped itself in all 
 lands, but especially in the United States. It was a solid 
 asset, one invariably neglected by that ponderous dunce, 
 John Bull. 
 
 I know nothing so curious as the rousing and regimenting 
 from Berlin of German forces overseas. In Bismarck's day 
 they were despised expatriates. ''America," the Pan-Ger- 
 man stalwart, Hasse of Leipzig, used to say, "is the grave 
 of Deutschtum." There was a big army there, but it was 
 an army of deserters, which had to be organized by the 
 
REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 23 
 
 Pan-German League. So far back as 1896 the Emperor 
 was appealing for help in the matter of linking these lost 
 forces. There was at first no more enthusiasm for this than 
 for the Navy League, whose mission was to convince the 
 Empire that ''Our future lies upon the water." German 
 opinion had to be educated to these movements. It was to 
 the adhesion of learned men that Pan-Germanism owed its 
 rise at last. There was a time when Mommsen dismissed 
 members of the League as "our patriotic madmen." Yet 
 the cult continued to gain, even in the Reichstag, where it 
 won men like Hahn of the Agrarians, and Bassermann, the 
 head of the National Liberal Party. 
 
 It was Pan-Germanism that informed with new fire the 
 local Liederkranz of American cities ; the Saengerbund, the 
 Verein-for-this, and the Gesellschaft-for-that. Devotees 
 were soon raising scJioppens and steins to "Der Grossere 
 Deutschland," which would one day stretch from the 
 Scheldt to the Persian Gulf, embracing the "Kaliphate of 
 Berlin," which Sazonof outlined in the Russian Duma. As 
 a dream it was magnificent, and of course it meant war. 
 What mineral treasures lay in those Taurus depths ! Assy- 
 ria and Babylonia should rival Oklahoma, California, and 
 the Caucasus as producers of oil. Cilicia and the Syrian 
 plains were to grow cotton for the German Empire. There 
 was to be wool from Anatolia, seas of wheat from the Meso- 
 potamian flats; flocks and herds beyond count upon classic 
 pastures now given over to the rascally Bedouin. The 
 whole face of Western Asia was to be changed. German 
 States were to be erected well out of Britain's reach and 
 beyond that hated ''Seegewalt" which hampered Deutsch- 
 tum's every move. 
 
 In 1900, when the German-American ' ' Army ' ' was organ- 
 ized, Von Holleben was Ambassador in Washington. A 
 very truculent envoy — no willow-back man like Bernstorff, 
 who succeeded him — Von Holleben defied Roosevelt over the 
 
24 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Venezuela dispute until the President massed his fleet at 
 Guantanamo, and gave the Germans twenty-four hours to 
 clear out. It is interesting to follow the German- American 
 in those days, and watch him develop into the rabid hyphe- 
 nate of 1914-15, whom the serious New York press styled 
 ''The most disappointing symptom of our national life since 
 the disloyalty of the South in the ' 'sixties. ' ... No nation 
 has ever been called upon to suffer so seditious a press as 
 that published in the United States in the German tongue." 
 
 Yet before the present war no citizens were more es- 
 teemed. Germans and men of German descent had enor- 
 mous influence. You found them in Congress and in the 
 State Legislatures; they were bankers and railroad kings, 
 manufacturers and traders on the largest scale. 
 
 The German-American Alliance had over two million 
 members; Herr Hexamer, its President, wore the Red 
 Eagle Order conferred by the Emperor ''for diffusing 
 German Kultur in the United States." But what was the 
 part which Bernstorff's ''Army" was to play as citizens 
 of the divided allegiance? America was their home, but 
 the Fatherland must be "over all"! In the first place — 
 as Bernhardi pointed out — "the German element forms a 
 political centre of gravity in our favour." They were 
 really missionaries. The National Alliance was charged 
 witli the task of introducing the German language into 
 American public schools; and how this is done is told by 
 Dr. H. H. Pick, of the Cincinnati Education Service. The 
 cities were bombarded with circulars urging the elect to: 
 "Speak only German in your home, in your club, and in 
 the stores. And speak German loudly m the street cars." 
 
 Political power was also sought. Herr Weismann, of 
 Brooklyn, set the hyphenate machine in motion to defeat the 
 election of a New York Congressman, and a Judge. In this 
 he succeeded, and set out the moral in a rescript to all 
 
REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 25 
 
 concerned. "The returns have proved that Deutschtum is 
 armed and able, when the word goes forth, to seat its chosen 
 men." So Germanism was already a menace to America s 
 peace. Reckoning aU enemy races, all shades of Teutonic 
 sympathy and descent, I suppose there are nine or ten 
 million adherents, beginning with the newly arrived Posen 
 Poles and going on to State Governors and mayors, chiefs 
 of police, and members of Parliament, whether of the Fed- 
 eral Assembly or the State Grange. 
 
 It was startling to see an ex-Cabinet ]\Iinister of the 
 Roosevelt Administration — the late Von Legerke ]\Ieyer — 
 prancing as a priest of Deutschtum, and warning America 
 not to goad "his Fatherland" to extremes! This frenzy 
 was a crippling disability in the body politic — especially 
 so when joined with the Irish forces, and those of pure 
 pacificism in farming areas of unrealized vastness. Here 
 was a trinity which, consciously or unconsciously, hindered 
 all preparation for national defence. And that this was 
 the aim of Pan-Germanism is shown by the correspondence 
 between Professor Appelmann of Vermont University and 
 Dr. Paul Rohrbach, the protagonist of the Berlin-Bagdad 
 "Kaliphate, " which is Germany's dearest dream. 
 
 The Professor wrote "home" to ask a question that 
 troubled him: "Was Deutschtum in America justified in 
 supporting these movements for a big army and nsivyV^ 
 To this Dr. Rohrbach sent an emphatic negative. "It is 
 quite possible," he wrote to Appelmann, "that in an Ameri- 
 can-Japanese war we might act as benevolent neutrals to- 
 wards the Asiatic, thus making it easier for him to defeat 
 the United States. Therefore I cannot believe that our 
 ends are in any way served by German-Americans lending 
 themselves to domestic schemes of armament. ' ' 
 
 Well might the Neiv York Tribune describe the rise and 
 reign of the hyphenate as * ' the most shameful period of our 
 
26 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 history." **One thing is certain/' said the powerful Her- 
 ald, as stroke followed German stroke at home and abroad 
 — "the tide of popular wrath is rising higher." But the 
 journal was mistaken. There was as yet little trace of any 
 such tide beyond Herald Square. America had grown ac- 
 customed to the horrors of war. She quivered a while after 
 each shock, and then was still, just as parted water reunites 
 after the waving of a wanton hand. 
 
 Frightfulness furnished table-talk; and this was excited 
 or mild according to the zone and temperament of the 
 America discussing it. ''We shudder at it the first time," 
 as Goethe said of the Merseburg beer, "but after we've 
 drunk it a week or so we can't do without it." I know 
 nothing so strange as the detachment with which grievous 
 national insults were discussed, from the Great Lakes down 
 to the Gulf. 
 
 Meanwhile Johann von Bernstorff, as director of an 
 internal "war," went his way with wonderful unconcern. 
 Not Hangman Peters in the heart of Africa ever pursued 
 a policy of crime with less regard for "the natives." 
 Washington itself might have been Windhoek; the Presi- 
 dent and his State Secretary, a couple of influential chiefs 
 whom it were well to conciliate with suavity and the heau 
 geste of a good-humoured boss. To this unique Embassy 
 the Americans were of no account, as we know from Von 
 Papen's captured papers. "I always tell these idiotic 
 Yankees to hold their tongue," this apostle of Deutschtum 
 wrote to his wife. 
 
 What could the President do in such a welter? "Amer- 
 ica has never witnessed anything like this before," he told 
 the hushed Houses of Congress. "Never dreamed it pos- 
 sible that men sworn to her allegiance . . . would ever turn 
 in malign reaction against the Government and people who 
 welcomed and nurtured them." But new purpose glowed 
 in Wilson's moves to lilch power from the States and con- 
 
REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS 27 
 
 centrate it in the national authority at Washington. For, 
 after all, if democracy was to be saved, the President must 
 needs become a "despot" as Lincoln did in his darkest 
 hour. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SETTING FORTH OP STRANGE GODS 
 
 Neutral America, uneasy and beset, hoped that Prepared- 
 ness was not a very urgent issue. And, whilst endorsing 
 the theory, she put the practice from her, feeling sure that 
 the world's Peace would hereafter enforce itself through 
 vivid memories of tedium and terror drawn from these 
 ghastly years. 
 
 Meanwhile, unpleasant truths were swallowed with a 
 meekness entirely new. Girding and goading became the 
 order of the day. Even the Hearst papers scolded the 
 Americas, from Boston to Los Angeles. That odd farrago, 
 the New York American, examined external dangers and 
 rejected them all as negligible compared with the native 
 lethargy that stifled military effort. It was not the yellow 
 man nor the black man who was to be feared ; there was a 
 more insidious foe than Germany or Britain, the Hearst 
 paper found. ''The great white danger is here at home — 
 the danger of national conceit and heedlessness of all things 
 outside our continental circle" . . . ''We cry out against 
 the barbarism of Europe's war, well knowing that an army 
 is only a mob. At the same time, our own mobs catch men 
 and burn them alive. We call ourselves a Republic, yet 
 any one can name a dozen rich men who have ton times 
 the power of all the officials in the United States, because 
 the Big Dozen stand for organized Money, which is the real 
 ruler in our midst." 
 
 "Our abiding peril," the Ainerican concluded, "is not 
 in this or that bogey overseas, but in the home-bred hydra 
 of extravagance, self-satisfaction, inefficiency, and military 
 
 28 
 
THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 29 
 
 weakness which will make a walk-over of any foreign at- 
 tack." In this vein was the new literature of Prepared- 
 ness conceived ; it flooded the continent, and then receded, 
 apparently without leaving a lasting trace. It brought 
 the dreamer back to earth ; it killed the high hope of a new 
 social order handed down by the early New England set- 
 tlers. For a season you could scarce open a book or a 
 magazine, a ])amphlet or a newspaper, without finding the 
 national fear shivering np and down the page. "The 
 American people is today in the plight of a man with a 
 dull knife and a broken cudgel in an ever-growing circle of 
 wolves." Statecraft pulled this way and Pacifism the 
 other; the listless masses pulled no way, but wanted to be 
 let alone. 
 
 "We implore your help in humanitj^'s name," was 
 agonized Belgium's cry, cabled to the Great Neutral by M. 
 Carton de Wiart, the Minister of Justice. But official 
 America was powerless. Her own citizens called in vain 
 as they drowned, nearly two years after the Lusitania 
 crime. "Roosevelt is right," you heard men admit in the 
 Eastern States. "We've relied too much upon moral sua- 
 sion. What fools we were to throw his Big Stick in the 
 ash-barrel! Now here's Europe dumping her devilry at 
 our door, and no doubt perfecting trans-oceanic aircraft for 
 an invasion." Pacifism was weakening at last, even in 
 States of the Central West — those exuberant Edens of beef 
 and grain. Here orators became shy of painting a divine 
 dawn when "the lion shall eat straw, and dust shall be the 
 serpent's meat." 
 
 Those orators had many jars in the new day and found 
 the old pose derided; their platform flags and water- 
 pitchers, their stuffed doves and rolling periods about "citi- 
 zens leaping to arms," and licking a leagued world of 
 wicked aggression. It was embarrassing to have "Get 
 Ready ' ' leaflets showered from an armed plane upon beati- 
 
30 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 tude like this. Shortly before the war, Friederich von 
 Bernhardi appeared on the Pacific Slope, having come from 
 Japan and the Far East on a secret mission to the German- 
 Americans. Dr. David Starr Jordan, a Californian paci- 
 fist of note and Chancellor of the Leland Stanford Uni- 
 versity, was invited to meet the famous General, who was 
 instructing Bernstorff's hyphenate army. 
 
 The German visitor was business-like and curt at these 
 private meetings. ''Law is but a makeshift," he told his 
 hearers : "the only reality is Force." And quite as frankly 
 Bernhardi dwelt upon the tenuous nature of international 
 treaties when the first shot rang out and German pledges 
 melted like a dicer's oath. ^'Not kennt Icein Gehot" — 
 which is to say that need covers any deed ; and reasons of 
 war excused all things, from the poisoned well and the 
 sinking of a hospital ship to slave-raiding and extortion 
 among the heart-broken peasants of a conquered zone. 
 
 Upon these tenets America brooded in wonder and dis- 
 gust. The people grew bored with all the prompting. 
 Preparedness lost its edge: surely the thing was overdone 
 by these politicians? Practical men put aside alarmist 
 leaflets and turned again to the literature of power, such as 
 drops like dew from the Department of Agriculture in 
 "Washington. On the Value of Muck is a worth-while guide 
 to the worthy farmer. On Hog Cholera and Grain Smuts, 
 The Best Numher of Hens in One Fen, Black Rot of the 
 Cahhage, Fungus Troubles of Fruit Trees, and The Toad 
 as the Farmer's Friend. There was more for humanity 
 here, it was argued, than in shrill appeals for machine- 
 guns and bombs. 
 
 The conversion of President Wilson to militarism came 
 as a real shock. So did the echo of German taunts in 
 Democratic mouths that were trying to rouse the nation : 
 ^'You have no Army. And such Navy as you have — a 
 costly collection of ships— must stay at home. " ' ' It is our 
 
THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 31 
 
 wooden sword," the people were told afresh, "that is the 
 source of all dispraise, all flouting of our pride and hon- 
 our. So it behooves us to arm, and to arm 7ioiv ere the night 
 of our undoing be upon us." It was a strange turn of 
 Fortune's wheel that would heap weapons upon the Land 
 of Peace, just as Germany, the Land of War, sickened with 
 surfeit of that ''drastic medicine," which her Saxon his- 
 torian prescribed for a sluggish world. And how radiant 
 Prussia's war appeared in 1914, with its dazzling dementia 
 of overweening! What flaunting and flapping there was 
 in pedlar Britain's face, what fanning of Deutschheit to 
 white flame of passion by virtue of the sword ! 
 
 ''If you sink," cried ecstatic Fichte to the Fatherland, 
 "all humanity sinks with you." Hence the cocksure onset 
 of the German Michael in shimmering armour. But war- 
 weariness stole away his Are; the trampling mania grew 
 tamer until Wir halt en durch (We're holding out) was the 
 master-word of the German masses' iron time. Last Christ- 
 mas saw no cards sold in the Wertheim store showing the 
 Christ-Child knocking nails into Hindenburg's wooden 
 boots. All had changed, and from war's abyss nothing rose 
 but plaint and rue. For in the depths no shining milliards 
 of indemnity showed, but only trainloads of beloved corpses 
 tied with steel wire in stark naked fours, ready for pitching 
 to hell in the blast-furnaces of Seraing. 
 
 It was the creep of this cure in the very shrine of war 
 that America watched as one under a spell. She read 
 letters from mutinous German mothers; she weighed the 
 world's torment, and meted its tears all the v/ay from the 
 Somme to the Tigris, and from African trails back to Ver- 
 dun where Prussian maclit lay like a broken moth, self- 
 shrivelled in its own flame. 
 
 An unlikely season, one had said, in which to bid America 
 pile up arms. And how did she take all the urging? Very 
 variously. Here excitedly; there disputatiously or feebly; 
 
32 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 with a shrug elsewhere, or a blank stare across seas of corn 
 where ''God an' Natur' " for ever wars against the farmer. 
 The ''Get Ready" goading was often resented as treason 
 against the summer mood of a people concerned with out- 
 put and results, and beyond these with the uplift and the 
 better life of man as they conceive it. 
 
 "It behooves us to keep our heads," said the Western 
 stalwart, whose feelings I want to interpret. And, mark 
 you, he was a power in the land, as President Wilson was 
 aware throughout. "Let us hug the real American hero. 
 He's no bomb-and-bayonet butcher; no gas-masked Thug 
 who lies in ambush where broken men sway and drip from 
 the barbed wire. No, sir. He's a benefactor to the race; 
 he's the lad who brought out of Switzerland the alfalfa- 
 seed which has transformed our empty West. ' ' 
 
 America's new Civil War was one between the "Let Bes" 
 and the "Get Readys." These last were stern realists 
 entrenched in the hard angularity of facts. "Human na- 
 ture," they owned sadly enough and with due disrelish for 
 the fact, "is the same now as in the first Olympiad. We 
 love war as little as you dreamers do, but we see it now as 
 an immedicable sickness — one that must endure until God's 
 own artillery shall blow away the stars. We're forced to 
 accept the Fichtean maxim that Right has no reality unless 
 fenced by Might." Between the two schools passed the 
 men of graft and "pork," mainly concerned with petty loot 
 and local power. 
 
 It was therefore a time of parry and thrust, of plain 
 words and sharp exordium, that withered America's olden 
 pride. Her wealth was no longer extolled as a shield or 
 an agent of defence at sudden need. Rather was it now 
 a flaring lure, one that called down destruction as careless 
 lights will do when the airship rides aloft in the dark. 
 "America is an undefended gold-mine," was the note of the 
 National Security League. And from both oceans (to say 
 
THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 33 
 
 nothing of the air), with Science in diabolic ministry, claim- 
 jumpers were pictured closing in upon piled-up treasure 
 worth $250,000,000,000. Meanwhile ten million citizens, 
 untaught in arms, stood idly by, with the ghost of Lincoln 
 renewing his reproaches of the Civil War and all his lonely 
 desperation. 
 
 "Are we degenerate?" the Emancipator flung at citizens 
 who refused to defend America in her darkest day. ''Has 
 the manhood of our race run out?" Equally blunt were 
 appeals from the statesmen of 1916, yet the martial spirit 
 remained anaemic and cold. "Look at China," was a hint 
 from the Security League. "That unmartial giant is now 
 the helot of Japan." "Look at ourselves in the 'sixties," 
 urged the Navy League, which took up the call. "We 
 had to let the IMonroe Doctrine lapse in the chaos of our 
 Civil War. And see how France took advantage ! She 
 marked out Mexico as a sphere, just as Germany fastened 
 on Brazil in our own day. The Third Napoleon set Maxi- 
 milian on that tragic throne, and we had to wait till our 
 naval arm was free before we could reassert our authority. ' ' 
 
 All this should have been moving stuff at such a time. 
 Yet Preparedness fell upon listless ears. "Sj^eaking in all 
 solemnity," said President Wilson at Kansas City after his 
 conversion to the cult of force, "I assure you there is not 
 a day to be lost. ' ' Within twenty-four hours of that speech 
 a vote in the State Grange put two million farmers on 
 record as being dead against a single dollar of increase in 
 the Army and Navy appropriations. Sea-power had little 
 meaning for the inland cultivator. What cared he for 
 shadowy foes, Asiatic or European, when he wrestled night 
 and day with ' ' God an ' Natur ' ' ? There is never any truce 
 in this war with the soil; no rest, no decisive victory, but 
 eternal grappling with mysterious, elusive hosts of heaven 
 and earth. There are cyclones and hailstorms, drought 
 and floods; frost and snow, wild beasts and poisonous 
 
34 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 plants. A single family of Montana wolves will destroy 
 $3000 worth of stock in a year. The State of Colorado 
 fought in vain to keep down the costly loco-weed that 
 withered her horses with a slow, incurable marasmus. One 
 campaign against this weed cost $200,000. There are also 
 the fruit and grain-eating birds — plagues like the sand of 
 the sea for multitude. There are rabbits and rats, bob- 
 eats and "bugs," or insects. Of these last the American 
 farmer faces a monstrous host — a hundred thousand differ- 
 ent species, and of each kind legions beyond any counting. 
 These scaly foes exact a toll of $700,000,000 a year from 
 forest and farm, so that Prosperity calls for a valour of 
 its own if it is to win and maintain its tide. 
 
 This peculiar valour the American possesses in a high 
 degree. Moreover, he adds to it a rugged joy of battle 
 which turns every obstacle into hope. I v/ould call this 
 strength the very mainspring of American character; it is 
 the test by which all men are weighed and appraised in 
 that strenuous land. ''Ef our woes had a Million Club, 
 the same as 'Frisco has," a grim Texan put to me in Gal- 
 veston, "they'd be out o' business in no time. As it is, 
 they jus' sharpen our wits. Wha's the boll-weevil to me, 
 man? Why, he's a noble inseck boostin' the price o' my 
 cotton! As f'r the green-bug, he's an angel in disguise 
 that forces the farmer to vary his crops. I tell ye tha's 
 the true Amur 'can sperit." And so it is — a spirit of gem- 
 like hardness and nimble flame, focussed on the day's work 
 and oblivious of all else. 
 
 Men upborne by this force are naturally slow to add 
 fellow-workers in other lands to the crowding pests that 
 prey with devilish ingenuity upon labour and life. Here, 
 it seems to me, is the secret seat oi: that languor in the 
 matter of America's defence. In the election of 1916 Wil- 
 son ruined his rival's chance with a simple phrase,' followed 
 by a damning question: "He wants War; what other 
 
THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 35 
 
 alternative is there to the policy I have pursued?" Upon 
 this a political revolution was wrought, soothing the unrest 
 of a prosperous people vaguely impelled and drawn against 
 their wull into the seething vortex of the older nations. 
 But the cocksure days are over, the days of beaming and 
 spread-eagling, with happy assurance that potency and 
 privilege lurked in the American name. During the war 
 newspaper envoys were sent abroad to seek counsel and 
 guidance in all quarters, from Vatican halls to Verdun it- 
 self, where democratic Joffre (that saviour of France) was 
 asked to judge between America's men of peace and those 
 who would "Prepare" with ships and guns and men for 
 some tremendous Day. 
 
 In burly silence the soldier heard the case for Peace and 
 War. It was the old dilemma of a demos swayed by every 
 wind of words ; a people fatally fond of its own ease ^nd 
 now tossed with dim dismay. 
 
 There was a frank parade of this before the French 
 Generalissimo. IMisgivings were quoted, from those of 
 Hamilton to Wilson himself. . . . Now had he any fetters, 
 Joffre was asked, to put about these free-footed fears? 
 No, he had not. That captain of hosts had nothing to say 
 about the people 's control of foreign affairs, or the demand 
 for russet Yeas and honest kersey Noes, instead of gold- 
 laced guile in chariots and grand saloons, with princely 
 precedence at Court and table. The great soldier was not 
 to be drawn into a "story," any more than the late King 
 Oscar of Sweden, whose aid the American editor sought "on 
 the exceptional terms of twenty dollars a word." On the 
 whole it was a meagre interview. All that fell from the 
 Gallic oracle was quiet insistence upon "the quality of self- 
 discipline!" There was need for it, this man of few words 
 explained, in a Republic where the claims of liberty and the 
 individual were unduly loud. Joffre extolled the suppres- 
 sion of self — L'ouhli de soi pour V ideal — which all the 
 
86 AMEBIC A ^S DAY 
 
 world saw in the stricken heart of France. After all, what 
 was the love of country but the white flame sprung from 
 the mystical union of race and soil — Par l' immemorial ei 
 severe Jiijmenee. . . . Discipline — just that and no more. 
 The stifling of weedy caprice ; the calm O France, taut que 
 tu voudras of young poets and painters, already swallowed 
 in the ditch of deadly eyes. And what artists they were, 
 what ministers of grace and high gifts! Of these lyric 
 souls — ecrivains morts pour la Patrie — France had a shining 
 legion. They left the sunlit heights for a vile sewer of 
 butchery; they chose a bloody death before the Chopin-life 
 of beauty, incense, and dreams. . . . 
 
 After all, that lovely spirit and unswerving choice was 
 not peculiar to Europe. It glowed in George Washington's 
 life as the American caller was reminded by his soldier-host. 
 It was seen in Lincoln 's faith when his friends fell away in 
 the night of terror. There was little need for the United 
 States to seek advice abroad, for she had heroic voices of 
 her own. *'A nation is not worthy to be saved," President 
 Garfield told the Lower House in '64, ' ' if in the hour of its 
 fate it will not gather up its jewels of manhood and go 
 down into the conflict, however bloody and doubtful, re- 
 solved upon measureless ruin or complete success." 
 
 Nevertheless, Joffre's ''quality of discipline" proved a 
 hard saying to the prosperity of the United States, where 
 military service was ever a hateful thing. In the stormy 
 'Sixties it was called ''unconstitutional" — an attack upon 
 liberty which inflamed the mob to murder and madness. 
 Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago ran red with riot against 
 the Lincoln "drafts"; the New York streets were full of 
 furies carrying flrearms, iron bars, and knives. Federal 
 troops were clubbed to death with their own muskets ; and 
 when Colonel O'Brien drew a pistol to defend his men he 
 was hanged upon a lamp-post and his body beaten by the 
 outraged proletariat. Yet one and all knew America's 
 
THE SETTING FORTH OF STRANGE GODS 3? 
 
 future was at stake on that fateful April day when Beaure- 
 gard's g'uns opened fire upon Fort Sumter. 
 
 Down to 1917 the panoply of war was decried by the 
 zealots of moral suasion, of whom Mr. Bryan was the great 
 exemplar. At dove-and-brotherhood meetings these men 
 deplored the genius wasted in war devices and proposed a 
 more rational use for them. Thus aeroplanes might locate 
 the forest fire — that summer curse of the wilderness — and 
 warn American settlers in the path of the flames. The 
 submarine was given a clear commercial future up and 
 down the Alaska coast, where the winter floes prevent ordi- 
 nary craft from landing Uncle Sam's mails. 
 
 So the first idea of a national army vanished, and with 
 it went War-Secretary Garrison, whose plan the President 
 would not openly endorse. For Woodrow Wilson, with 
 perfect knowledge of his people, was a slow and cautious 
 convert to the ' ' Get Ready ' ' creed. He knew that America 
 in the mass was indifferent to a huge army, if not actually 
 hostile to it. 
 
 His attitude to the notorious Hay Army Bill was a seri- 
 ous error. It was a deplorable measure; the largest and 
 most recent looting of the Federal Treasury by politicians 
 who love "pork" — America's name for graft which use 
 and custom have made respectable, especially in the State 
 centres that profit by it. Never has Washington seen such 
 flagrant lobbying in both Houses of Congress as that which 
 marked the passage of the so-called Army Reorganization. 
 Never were the meanest of provincial interests arrayed so 
 cynically against the nation. 
 
 The forty-eight States have armies of their own. I shall 
 not dwell upon the performance of these troops, for the 
 story is tedious as well as grotesque. As soldiers they were 
 all but entirely negligible — untrained, unequipped, ill- 
 disciplined, and physically unfit. They were a social as 
 well as a quasi-military body ; on festal days they gave the 
 
S8 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Governor's estate a certain figure and equipage. The 
 Militia or National Guard could be called out to quell riots, 
 but they were not under national authority, and swore 
 allegiance only to their several States. The Dick Law of 
 1903 brought a certain measure of Federal control, and 
 this was carried further by the National Defence Act of 
 1916. But the State Militias were still forty-eight easy- 
 going armies. They served the local politicians, but were 
 of little use to Federal officers worried over the problems 
 of invasion and ail-American defence. 
 
 ''Could anything be more scandalous," asked General 
 Butt, "than to take green men off the streets and send 
 them down to the Border half-equipped, or with no equip- 
 ment at all?" The men of Arkansas left with umbrellas 
 and straw hats. Minnesota had ''everything but uniforms 
 and guns." The Illinois cavalry had no horses. Iowa 
 boggled over the Federal oath; so did New Jersey, Mary- 
 land, and Massachusetts — whose Guardsmen were presently 
 poisoned by their own rations ! It was an aggrieved citizen 
 army that kept watch on the Rio Grande and wrote letters 
 to Colonel Roosevelt, of which the burden was "Never 
 again!" . . . 
 
 The Hay-Chamberlain "pork" Bill was jockeyed through 
 Congress by parochial lobbies and local champions, who are 
 the worst enemies of their country, and are now thoroughly 
 discredited. The idea underlying ' ' pork ' ' and political loot 
 is that the Federal authority exists, not to be loyally served, 
 but to be milked and plundered whenever possible; that 
 Federal taxation of the States is really a system by which 
 money flows to a common centre, and is — or should be — 
 piped back again for distribution in "our district." A 
 typical case was a bill to appropriate $75,000 for a post- 
 office in McKee (Ky.). This turned out to be a village with 
 a population of two hundred souls! But the appetite for 
 ' ' pork, ' ' like other ugly symptoms, is not so keen as it was. 
 
THE SETTING FORTH OP STRANGE GODS 39 
 
 There is everywhere a desire and demand for decency and 
 social service among the mixed communities of this vast 
 land. Thus the little town of Ripon (Wis.) renounced an 
 appropriation for a public building that was to cost $75,000. 
 Ripon 's Commercial Club asked to have that sum applied 
 to Preparedness for national defence, preferably in the 
 matter of aircraft. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 VERSUS THE NATION 
 
 It is no easy matter to present in brief a clear idea of a 
 * ' country ' ' whose frontier has advanced two thousand miles 
 in a single life-span. Let me take that of Colonel W. F. 
 Cody, better known as "Buffalo Bill," because of his task 
 of feeding with buffalo-meat the trackmen of the Kansas- 
 Pacific Railway. Advancing in years, the Colonel settled 
 down at last as farmer and irrigator in the dry lands of 
 Yfyoming. But the man's real nunc dimittis came in 1883, 
 when he put his big Show on the road and knew the Wild 
 "West for ever tamed. 
 
 Dan Boone, Dave Crockett, Kit Carson, and Bill Cody — 
 here in four dare-devil names is evoked the fascinating 
 story of pioneer conquest in the United States. Her epic 
 period is strangely near to us. The figure of Lincoln has 
 all the magic of myth for America's younger generation, 
 yet their fathers knew the Slave-emancipator in the flesh. 
 Colonel Cody's life saw the passing of the Redskin, with 
 his teepees, and squaws and scalps. Today the Shoshone 
 brave wears a billycock hat and a Semi-Ready suit by Kup- 
 penheimer *'as advertised for dressy College men"! The 
 Five Civilized Tribes — Choctaw, Chickasaw, and the rest — 
 are now demurely herded and taught in the Reservations. 
 Black Hawk and Sitting Bull of 1918 are flourishing den- 
 tists and attorneys; the smaller fry accept bread-and- 
 blanket doles from a paternal Government in Washington. 
 The big chief, once lord of the lonely horizon, now scuds 
 abroad in a Ford car hunting a drink of bad whisky in 
 some corrugated iron cave, far from the omniscient eye of 
 Prohibition. Sic transit gloria mundi! 
 
 40 
 
^'STATES' RIGHTS'^ VERSUS THE NATION 41 
 
 Many States, like Texas and California, are potential 
 empires in area and natural resources. All of them lay 
 claim to sovereignty, and this is clearly defined in the orig- 
 inal Constitution. When the Peace of Paris closed the War 
 of Independence in 1783, there were thirteen autonomous 
 States with no common bond at all, and certainly no thought 
 of Federation. New York especially opposed the idea. 
 
 To the eloquent Hamilton, the early Continental Con- 
 gress presented an ''awful spectacle" of stormy disunion 
 and jealous watch upon State prerogatives and rights. 
 Delegates eyed each other as foreigners, alert and wary as 
 Prussian envoys at a Hague debate upon Disarmament. 
 None was a patriot whose aims outsoared the boundary of 
 his own State: Federation, Government from a common 
 centre for the common weal — here was a notion long and 
 violently resisted. A "League of Friendship" was put 
 forward instead, as betw^een striving nations of a virgin con- 
 tinent, beset with dim perils and engaged in a sauve qui 
 petit. 
 
 Washington and Franklin, Madison and Hamilton, had 
 an all but impossible task, but at length they won the States 
 to a Federal Constitution. It soon fell into utter chaos. 
 Congress alone could decide upon war, but it was powerless 
 to raise or equip an army. In case of dispute, Congress 
 was to arbitrate between the States, but either party could 
 (and did) flout the Federal decision. It rested with Con- 
 gress to make foreign treaties, yet any State might violate 
 these with impunity. Washington himself wrote to the 
 autocratic governors urging the need for a national revenue 
 to be raised by Congress. To this there was only a stinted 
 and grudging response. Some of the States pleaded pov- 
 erty, and fell into arrears. Others offered their own woe- 
 fully depreciated paper. A few declined with wrath until 
 delinquents had paid their share. 
 
 It was a phase that could not last. "We are labour- 
 
42 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ing hard," wrote Alexander Hamilton, 'Ho establish in this 
 country principles more and more national ... so that we 
 may be neither Greek nor Trojan but thoroughly Ameri- 
 can." The task is not yet complete, for States' Eights have 
 always had their champions, of whom the most noted was 
 that sturdy Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, the third Presi- 
 dent of the Union. A more formidable advocate was Jef- 
 ferson Davis, who, in a dramatic Senate speech, announced 
 the complete severance of his own ''nation" from the 
 United States. On February 9, 1861, Davis was elected 
 President of the seceding Confederation. He desired to 
 live in peace with the older Union, but there was a growing 
 menace in his professions. If he were not "let alone," 
 Davis at length declared, those Yankees should "smell 
 Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Which, in- 
 deed, they did during the four years of America's domestic 
 war. 
 
 I shall not venture far into the maze of American politics, 
 but I must show both parties warring in the several States, 
 whose internal affairs are beyond the control of the Federal 
 Government. The result is confusion and much frittering 
 of the national spirit in unworthy ways. Each State is the 
 battle-ground of unseemly forces, and there is call for a 
 Man, as there was for Hughes in New York and for Taft 
 in Ohio, against Boss Cox and his evil works. It is in State 
 crusades of this kind that national careers are made. 
 Twenty years ago Wisconsin was in the clutch of the 
 brewery-ring of Milwaukee and the railroad ring of Madi- 
 son. In this case Robert La Follette was the liberator of 
 the State. New Hampshire broke the bonds of her railroad 
 ring through Robert P. Bass; and, after many years of 
 shameless corruption and misgovernment, the great Key- 
 stone State of Pennsylvania threw off boss control with the 
 aid of Governor Brumbaugh. 
 
 But the most notable instance of the oppressed State and 
 
** STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 43 
 
 its champion is California and Hiram W. Johnson ; he was 
 twice Governor, and is now a Senator in Congress. For a 
 generation the political rottenness of • this glorious land 
 was beyond belief. In municipal looting the San Francisco 
 gang out-Tammanied Tammany Hall even in the classic 
 reign of Boss Tweed. Under Abe Ruef and Mayor Schmitz 
 (who wound up in gaol) the great city sank to sordid 
 depths unparalleled in the history of American robbery and 
 graft. The Pacific State had long ceased to be a republic, 
 far less a democracy. It was ruled by the Southern Pacific 
 Railroad with a tyrannous grip which is difficult for the 
 European readei* to realize. First Huntington and then 
 Harriman was absolute "Tsar" over a country three times 
 the size of England, and iron rule was directed from a 
 Wall Street office three thousand miles away. 
 
 The State Legislature in Sacramento was made up of 
 voting machines nominated by the Southern Pacific. Cali- 
 fornia's laws were matters of bargain and sale. It was the 
 Railroad that appointed judges, and broke them, too, when 
 they disobeyed. . . . Here enters Hiram Johnson. How 
 that Quixotic orator captured the Republican nomination 
 and smashed the preposterous machine is too queer and 
 tedious a tale to tell fully here. First of all he got in 
 touch with the farmers, as the reform party did in Kansas. 
 There were times when the young Governor despaired of 
 success, so securely were the Southern Pacific interests en- 
 trenched, so lavish and unscrupulous were their agents in 
 the doling of bribes. Ignored by the press, Johnson set out 
 like a religious revivalist, spouting at the street corners and 
 haranguing 'wayback farmers under the shadow of Mount 
 Shasta, where railroads and politics were all but unknown. 
 
 It was a typical American crusade, but at long last the 
 prophet found honour in that sunny land. At his meet- 
 ings there were now reporters and advance agents. And 
 from citrus-groves and fields the cultivators came running 
 
44 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 at the sound of eow-bells on the Johnson cars. They heard 
 him gladly, if a little dubiously at first. "Will you keep 
 faith with us ?' ' the people asked of their new apostle, when 
 he showed the way to brighter things, and the crippling of 
 the Corporation autocracy that ruled them all. Johnson 
 said he would — and he did. The reformer led his democ- 
 racy against the big business and overthrew it. Today 
 California is the freest and most progressive State in the 
 Union; its new Senator in Washington is even hailed as 
 *' Presidential timber" for the 1920 election. 
 
 Such are the issues and interests that draw men from 
 really national affairs. The central Government is well 
 aware of this weakness; and there is a quiet but forceful 
 tendency to break down State control and merge more and 
 more authority in the Federal Congress. It is recognized 
 that forty-eight sovereignties working at cross-purposes 
 must hamper America's development, both internally and 
 in foreign affairs. Industrial justice is not possible with 
 forty-eight different codes governing accidents in factories 
 as well as sanitary conditions, old-age pensions, and social 
 welfare in general. A trading company may register in 
 one State and operate in another, with serious results alike 
 to debtors, creditors, and customers. A valid marriage in 
 one State may be held null and void in another. There are 
 thirty-five different causes for absolute divorce recognized 
 by the various States of the Union. But not one of these 
 is recognized by all ! 
 
 Nor is there any uniformity in the per capita taxation, 
 which ranges from $9.47 in Nevada down to $1.72 in South 
 Carolina. In some States the Judges are elected by the 
 people, in others by the Legislature ; or again, they may be 
 appointed by the Governor. In Texas and Arizona the 
 Mexican vara of thirty-three inches is used in land meas 
 urement; of course it is unknown in the North. Legal 
 holidays vary in all the States. Jeff Davis 's birthday is a 
 
*' STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 45 
 
 holiday in Virginia, but Good Friday is ignored in New 
 York. In fact, each State is a law unto itself, and looks 
 harshly upon its neighbour when that neighbour is stricken 
 with a deadly disease. The old days of shot-gun quaran- 
 tines disappeared with the yellow fever; but during the 
 mysterious plague of paral^^sis in New York in 1916 there 
 was a panic over the water in New Jersey, where boats and 
 trains full of convalescents were turned back with senseless 
 cruelty. 
 
 Inter-State quarrels crop up at times, like that between 
 North Dakota and Minnesota over the marketing of wheat. 
 But far more serious are the conflicts between individual 
 States and the Federal authority in Washington. The 
 gravest of these was the stand which California took (and 
 still takes) over the penal laws which she passed against 
 the Japanese settlers in her midst. This brought the shadow 
 of secession again, and even the menace of international war 
 with this I deal elsewhere. But the cleavage of States and 
 peoples was a condition which could not last. Berlin was 
 aware of it; the German Embassy in Washington traded 
 upon it for two years of the Great War. Thus far the 
 national consciousness showed no flame ; the far-flung States 
 were immersed in problems of peculiar diversitj^ Thus 
 Iowa was warring on her rats, Nevada on her mad coyotes 
 and the rabies in her flocks and herds. Louisiana was con- 
 cerned with the hyacinth that choked her Avaterways. 
 Rural Minnesota talked of model farms, West Virginia 
 defied the Supreme Court to collect her ante helium debt of 
 twelve million dollars. And that mountain fastness, Wyo- 
 ming (it is larger than Britain), was forming a game pre- 
 serve for the greater antelopes and bears. 
 
 These things were real ; the world-war came as a tiresome 
 yarn to be swallowed on the Tertullian principle : * ' 'Tis 
 impossible, and therefore to be believed!" These people 
 praised Lord Fisher and shut his genius from their Hall 
 
46 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 of Fame. But there we shall find Lord Lister, the gentle 
 healer who ' ' with one gentle stroking wiped away ten thou- 
 sand tears out of the life of man. ' ' 
 
 It was curious to see how America grew tired of war in 
 war-time, and fell back upon her own isolation. The great 
 topic was now tabu, being a source of social friction and a 
 business bar. ''Leave it outside!" became an office door 
 appeal in New York City. One heard hyphenates dilate 
 upon the German primacy in war, its novel engines and 
 twisted technics of destruction. But these speakers were 
 quickly tamed ; there seemed no prospect of universal serv- 
 ice even on the Swiss lines, except after some invasive coup 
 such as was planned by Von Edelsheim in 1901, and de- 
 bated in the Army and Navy Club of Berlin. In this 
 scheme stress was laid upon the fact that Germany was, 
 of all Powers, the one best fitted to conquer America. Ref- 
 erence to the weakness of the Regular Army, to the un- 
 trained Militias, and "the inexperience of the American 
 Staff" showed how well informed the Baron was when 
 outlining this adventure. 
 
 It was the State patriot who all but defeated the idea 
 of a unifying Constitution; and after sixty years he all 
 but ruined the national structure over the questions of 
 Secession and Slavery. States' Rights have been pleaded 
 to delay or defeat urgent laws relating to pure food, child 
 labour, transportation, and the conservation of natural re- 
 sources. These Rights have also been invoked to rally and 
 shelter anti-social forces and to arouse sectional bias and 
 local prejudice. But they have no place in the new Ameri- 
 canism of 1918. In the Supreme Court the utterance of 
 Justice Hughes in the Minnesota and Shreveport cases lays 
 down the all- American law in a classic decision: "There 
 is no room in our scheme of Government for the assertion 
 of State Right in hostility to the authorized exercise of 
 Federal control." 
 
^'STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 47 
 
 Serious thinkers and leaders of public opinion are every- 
 where alive to this peculiar danger. Thus in the Senate 
 Mr. B. R. Tillman of South Carolina, Chairman of the 
 Committee on Naval Affairs, condemned the State patriot 
 in forcible terms: "It is as though men were crazy over 
 local affairs," he declared, "and had no broad national 
 grasp at all." Each State has its own floral emblem: 
 Alabama, the golden-rod; Florida, the orange-blossom; 
 Mississippi, the magnolia ; Wyoming, the gentian ; Utah, the 
 sego lily, and so on. 
 
 Before the Great War the ablest thinkers were afraid 
 the United States was less of a nation than it was when 
 Washington wrote his political testament over a century 
 ago. Senators, professors, and social reformers pointed to 
 alien forces that were fast corroding the finer traditions 
 and setting up standards that clashed with them. "Ton 
 have in a common cause fought and triumphed together," 
 the First President wrote in his historic Address. The 
 new-born nation's independence was "the work of joint 
 councils and efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and 
 successes." 
 
 But many of the newer States know nothing of such 
 bonds, largely peopled as they are by Europeans of every 
 race, intent upon material success and the good time denied 
 them in the older lands. These settlers also tend to become 
 State patriots. They show little or no interest in foreign 
 affairs; they have Jeff Davis's own desire to be "let alone" 
 by the Federal Government in Washington. "We are still 
 sectional," Senator W. G. Harding of Ohio was sorry to 
 say. "Not divided on the old Mason and Dixon line, but 
 by East and West, North and South, coast and interior; 
 financial and industrial on the one hand, and agricultural 
 on the other. ' ' 
 
 This parochial spirit survived the dismissal of Bern- 
 storft* and the rupture of relations with the Central Powers. 
 
48 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 It was the despair of men of larger grasp who would have 
 had the President take a bolder line and fling at the masses 
 the calm Lincoln-query: ''What is our Duty?" They 
 pointed to France, their sister Republic, just then "a-tingle 
 with grief and glory," as her prose-poet said. What a pity 
 Wilson was no incendiary of souls, voicing the jeunesse 
 endiablee of Verdun and the Somme to a quick-witted, 
 warm-hearted people like the Americans! A man of apos- 
 tolic fire would have pictured the women of France up- 
 standing in the nave of Notre Dame with streaming eyes 
 and rapt senses on the burning appeal of Pere Janvier ; it 
 rang like a challenge to the eternal Throne: ''Justice for 
 France, God ! " This appeal the organ lifted with stormy 
 splendour to storied windows and darkling heights above 
 the sworded statue of the Warrior- Virgin in the apse. 
 
 But Wilson erred on the cautious side. The world-war 
 was to him a mystery in these neutral days. "Its origin 
 and objects," the President said, "have never been dis- 
 closed. ' ' The Wilson of that time was a shocked spectator 
 of the scene, with Mediation in his left hand when returning 
 sanity should prompt an exhausted Europe to sue for it. 
 . . . "With its causes and objects we are not concerned. 
 The obscure fountains from which the stupendous flood 
 burst forth we are not interested to search or explore." 
 How different it was when the rising waters threatened the 
 speaker's native land! 
 
 It was this incuria which made America reckon the Allied 
 cause in headlines and press sensations. The European 
 battles were at length no more than "movie" features. 
 They eclipsed the home-made thrills of colliding trains and 
 men who leaped from sky-scrapers or tackled sharks on the 
 sea floor. But it was mainly on business lines that the 
 colossal struggle was judged. "War films faked" was an 
 urgent telegram from Little Rock (Ark.) to an agent for 
 the Somme pictures, "No smoke and soldiers laughing." 
 
*' STATES' RIGHTS" VERSUS THE NATION 49 
 
 . . . ''Sending another," was the prompt reply: ''Clouds 
 of smoke and men sobbing. One dollar a loot— guaranteed 
 American make!'' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 AMERICA IN THE MAKING 
 
 For two years or more, a lively press and a listless people 
 were discrepant features of the United States. They were 
 also the subject of puzzled comment on this side. The New 
 York Herald, the Sun, Tribune, and Evening Post expressed 
 themselves impeccably throughout, and with due wrath 
 against German methods. Yet the American masses were 
 but faintly moved. If they were stirred at all it was only 
 between editions, so to say. One should not forget that the 
 New York papers spoke for the cultured East alone. They 
 did not reflect the masses at large any more than the Lon- 
 don Times may be said to speak for Tyneside, or the Morn- 
 ing Post for the Norfolk farmer or the mechanics of Wool- 
 wich and Canning Town. 
 
 I am aware of the paradox which maintains that a me- 
 tropolis is unrepresentative of its own nation. One hears 
 this of London and Paris, of Rome, Vienna, and Madrid. 
 Whether it be true of Europe is here immaterial; but let 
 me say with all emphasis that no intelligent American can 
 be found who will claim that New York City is in the 
 smallest degree "American.'* It is, in fact, the most for- 
 eign of all the world centres; a native of Manhattan Bor- 
 ough is by no means easily found. Foreign names pre- 
 dominate in New York. All the races of Europe and Asia 
 live here and labour in vortex rings of nationality. Over 
 in Brooklyn you may lose yourself in a new Naples. Wil- 
 liamsburg is wholly German ; Washington Street is Syrian, 
 and reads a Daily Mirror in the Arabic script (Meerat el- 
 Gharh). Mott Street and Pell Street are Chinese, with 
 
 50 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 51 
 
 throngs of yellow men slipping past each other like eels in 
 a tub. 
 
 In a thousand night-schools English is taught to new 
 citizens who have formally "asked for their first papers." 
 But these hordes are all apt to lapse into their own tongue ; 
 or they take no interest in study after a day's work at the 
 highest tension. It is above all New York which deserves 
 the name of ''the melting-pot." It contains nearly a mil- 
 lion Jews — a type of immigrant who will not be lured out 
 on to the farms. The Jew loves New York City, where 
 ninety per cent, of America's money is. Here in truth is 
 an Israelitish camp to awe the modern Balaam: "Who 
 can count the dust of Jacob?" One person in every four 
 is a Jew whom you meet on Manhattan Island. 
 
 It is largely in her make-up, then, that the secret of 
 America's apathy must be sought, apart from causes that 
 are more obscure. If the special correspondent from Lon- 
 don would take the ferry over to the Ellis Island Immigra- 
 tion Station, he might see America in the making and 
 understand the swamping of the United States by alien 
 stocks which became a problem so far back as 1885. It is 
 astonishing that this Door of Hope has been neglected by 
 British editors and enlightenment sought from the "men 
 higher up" who live in wholly different spheres. Let me 
 present the rushing of these foreign floods, for surely no 
 such human portent, no politico-social factor was ever so 
 strangely staged. 
 
 I shall go no further than the Franco-Prussian War, 
 when the population of America was less than that of 
 Britain at the last census. And Britain is smaller than 
 the single States of Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona. Today 
 America musters over 105,000,000 souls, white, black, yel- 
 low, and red. It is a welter of contradictions, a riot of 
 inconsistency ; and yet there is something in the very atmos- 
 phere which makes for national traits — the clash of races, 
 
52 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 immensity of area, ''States' Rights," and local patriotism 
 notwithstanding. In thirty years America doubled her 
 population, such was the spate of foreign peoples tumbling 
 in by the shipload. The Immigration Commissioner was 
 once expecting two million new citizens a year. 
 
 Ellis Island, out in New York Harbour, was well named 
 "Uncle Sam's Sieve," and I shall show it in pre-war opera- 
 tion. It is a breezy, emotional place, with vistas of spar- 
 kling waters ; great ocean ships and fussy tugs, scows carry- 
 ing railway-cars, ferry-boats, black with passengers, and a 
 procession of double-decked barges plying between the island 
 and the latest arrival of the immigrant fleet. There are 
 sea-noises and land-noises, shrill whistlings and distant 
 boomings. The roar of the city drifts over from Manhat- 
 tan, with its sky-line of pinnacles and deep canons full of 
 fierce endeavour. Behind is the Statue of Liberty, whose 
 torch is now ablaze in the dark ; the colossus by day has a 
 background of factory shafts and trailing smoke. 
 
 Here is the first barge-load from the ship, and a fantastic 
 crowd pours out to the tune of "Presto!" from a cheery 
 American inspector. The big red building yonder is the 
 gateway of the United States. Go in with the awestruck 
 rabble and ascend to the gallery. Novv^ look down into the 
 vaulted hall where future Americans are sorted in two and 
 twenty pens, with high steel railings in between. All are 
 examined by doctors and the unfit weeded out ; the rest pass 
 from fold to fold, answering questions at each official desk. 
 
 Listen to the languages in this busy hive of citizenship. 
 In these pens are races that have never met before ; people 
 far apart as the Sicilian and the Hebrew patriarch from the 
 Russian Pale. Three-fourths of the crowd are from south- 
 eastern Europe — from Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, 
 Poland, and South Russia. Seventy -five per cent, are farm 
 and village folk, with an average of twenty dollars between 
 them and that "dependency" which means deportation. 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 53 
 
 The men are mostly under forty, pioneers in this magical 
 land; their families will come on later, when Fortune's 
 trail has been blazed, and the father is doing well. They 
 are not pretty people to look at, these of the Ellis Island 
 cages. They are primitive creatures, coarse and crude — too 
 often illiterate, and on that account not so acceptable to 
 America in her day of doubt. . . . 
 
 A Polish dwarf is prompting a nervous giant near the 
 inspector's desk. A Magyar girl in a dull red shawl, with 
 a guitar under her arm, stares up at the Stars and Stripes 
 of the gallery. On the seat beside her is a cane hamper, 
 with a pillow, a blue teapot, and other belongings. There 
 are muffled fights between the Greek and Irish children. 
 Picturesque dudes of Bessarabia and the Bukowina are busy 
 with mirror and comb, oblivious to all else. There are 
 burly Finns and Bulgars ; gaunt Armenian women, Syrian 
 maids of real beauty from the Lebanon, odds and ends from 
 the rayah races of the Kaliph in Europe and Asia Minor. 
 
 Steady streams of immigrants are passing out. A wait- 
 ing-room is raucous with relief in many tongues; shrill 
 inquiries are made for the Jersey City ferry, and the New 
 Citizens' train in the Pennsylvania station. Their baggage 
 is quaint or mediaeval; humpy sacks, boxes of tin, and 
 gaily painted wood secured with rawhide strips. Hundreds 
 of them have no hea\y baggage at all. These are mere 
 straws in humanity's tide; sad-eyed waifs with all their 
 worldly goods tied about their persons, and rattling oddly 
 as they pass to and fro. There is one cage marked ' ' Tem- 
 porarily Detained"; telegrams must be sent to friends 
 about the occupants of this place. 
 
 They may be young girls, to whom Uncle Sam stands 
 in loco parentis. His officials are very suspicious of ''do- 
 mestic agency" men, who may be White Slave raiders 
 doing a big home trade as well as exporting victims down 
 to Rio and Buenos Aires. 
 
54 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 The telegraph operator has at last a sheaf of messages to 
 
 send: ''Detained Ellis Island, steamer . Need ten 
 
 dollars. Also proof of your ability to support." For 
 America has a horror of paupers and prostitutes. The pen 
 of the "Detained" is at once a gay place, and a sad. Boys 
 and girls are merry enough, buying cakes from a Polish 
 pedlar; but in shadowy corners sit the old and weary, in 
 every attitude of dejection. Some of these have been de- 
 tained for days, well enough lodged and fed by the author- 
 ities. Before the week is over they must go before a Board 
 of Inquiry. . . . Haply there is no answer to that appeal 
 flashed into great American spaces. If the immigrant be 
 old and feeble, he is deported — a word of damnation in the 
 Ellis Island pens. . . . 
 
 An official in uniform calls names from a list, and the 
 hall seethes with excitement. Four or five nondescripts 
 step forward, tremulous with glee. These pass down a 
 corridor into the "Lovers' Lane," which an inspector tells 
 you "holds more kisses to the square inch than any other 
 spot on earth." Here in a room walled with wire-netting 
 the "American" pioneer, incoherent and overdressed, 
 greets his people from overseas. He has already prepared 
 a home for them in the jostling arena. Over-ardent swains 
 are not allowed to claim their sweethearts when these young 
 persons arrive alone. But the Island has a marriage- 
 bureau of its own that works all day and makes love re- 
 spectable from its outset on American soil. 
 
 Three judges hold session upstairs in the Board of In- 
 quiry, and before them sit doubtful cases — red-eyed or 
 listless folk, indignant or full of dread. In the Deportation- 
 Room are some contract labourers — Bulgarians hired for 
 the anthracite mines. They were marked down at Varna 
 by an official of the American Federation who advised 
 Ellis Island by cable of this infraction of the law. For 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 55 
 
 such cases there is no hope ; all are sent back to Europe at 
 the steamship company's expense. 
 
 Now * ' a wise man 's country, ' ' as Zeno says, ' ' is where he 
 finds happiness/' so it would appear that this migration 
 flatters the United States. But sentiment in the matter 
 has long since flown. It stands to common sense that many 
 of these people are not the best citizens of the nations they 
 have left. Think what it means to tear up home by the 
 roots; to leave one's own land and sail across the ocean to 
 begin life anew in a continent of strange ways and foreign 
 language, with extremes of climate which are very trying 
 to the European. 
 
 It is depressing to watch the bitterness of the disinherited 
 in these sorting-pens; the surliness of outcasts and trade- 
 fallen failures — yet no sooner do they step ashore at the 
 Battery than they fill their lungs with American air, which 
 has a marvellous efl:ect. Giani or Pietro, from Ajaccio or 
 Messina, is soon a transfigured man ; a hustler — a devotee of 
 America's dare and do, poring upon success-books or study- 
 ing law between each pair of boots he shines (at five cents) 
 outside the corner saloon. At home in Corsica, Giani 
 dreamed his life away in a hot sun with no more fortune, 
 no more future than a few goats and a crop of chestnuts 
 that dropped into his lazy mouth as he lay in the shade. 
 
 What is the secret of this sudden aspiring — of this young 
 Eodin-passion — haunted day and night with the idea of 
 doing quelqiie chose de puissant? It is the mysterious 
 American element that favours the transmutation. One is 
 reminded of the trout which in a Scottish burn may never 
 exceed a fingerling size, yet when placed in New Zealand 
 waters attain a weight of five-and-thirty pounds. All the 
 same, America's pride and satisfaction in these hordes has 
 long been jarred, especially when the million-mark was 
 passed in 1905. 
 
56 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 The insistent theme of thinkers was that, as immigra- 
 tion grew in volume, the quality of it fell off until the 
 "men (and women, too), who are to vote" were eyed in 
 the mass as questionable Americans. Statesmen began to 
 discuss and classify the various races in the throng. Some 
 were more industrious than others; some more ambitious, 
 more assimilable. Others, again, would not respond to 
 the American challenge. They herded together ; they lived 
 doubtfully, even calling for special police and secret agents 
 of the law in polyglot squads, such as one finds in New 
 York, Chicago, and San Francisco. This falling off in 
 quality may be said to coincide with the rise to power' 
 and wealth of the German Empire, which checked and with- 
 held the most desirable of immigrants. 
 
 So early as 1885 Teutonic and Celtic sources were thin- 
 ning out; a prosperous Ireland could only spare 20,000 
 of her sons in 1914, whereas she sent 60,000 in 1891. As 
 Northern and Western Europe began to keep their people, 
 there was an abrupt migration of Iberian and Slavic stocks 
 from the South and East; and these, America tried to tell 
 herself, would be at least a passable substitute. The sta- 
 tistics of the change are remarkable. Thus in 1885 Ger- 
 many showed an immigration percentage of 31; by 1900 
 it had dropped to 4. The Scandinavian nations fell from 
 14 in 1880 to 4 in 1905. Meanwhile the "ramshackle em- 
 pire" of Austria-Hungary was readjusting the balance 
 with Magyar and Czech, Ruthenian and Serb, Croat, Ru- 
 man, Slovak, Slovene, and Jew. Here the American table 
 shows a percentage of 1 in the year 1870, leaping to 13 
 in 1895, and a decade later to 27. Italy's percentage was 
 2 in 1875 and 22 in 1905. In the same period the Russian 
 influx rose from 4 to 18, whilst Britain's contribution 
 crumbled from 30 or 40 to 13. 
 
 Applying the dollar test, it was seen that the German 
 or Dane brought with him twice as much money as those 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 57 
 
 stagey figures from South-Eastern Europe. The average 
 Sicilian or Greek or Jew who landed at the Battery with 
 $15 in his pocket was voted poor American stuff. 
 
 Worse still, out of a million aliens more than one-fourth 
 could neither read nor write. Accordingly, the restriction 
 screw was given further turns, and the steamship com- 
 panies responded, having grown tired of taking back to 
 Europe undesirables whom America refused to admit. It 
 is beyond question that, in spite of all precautions, thou- 
 sands of aliens have invaded the country who were on the 
 verge of dependency, defectiveness, and crime. Then 
 came the perplexing task of distribution, so long the crux 
 of statesmen and social students; of professors of eco- 
 nomics and sociology, the press and pulpit, the learned 
 and industrial bodies, and the Labour Unions. At Immi- 
 gration Conferences evidence of shocking congestion in 
 the cities was produced. The Jewish immigrant especially 
 will go no farther afield than New York, where his race 
 has enormous power. Out of 694,172 Jews landed at Ellis 
 Island, 504,181 remained in the city and settled there. 
 Out of a million foreigners admitted, the Census Bureau 
 shows that well over one-third claimed the State of New 
 York as their "ultimate destination." 
 
 Most of that million were bound for the cities or suburbs 
 of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston. Amer- 
 ica was vexed to learn that seven-tenths of these citizens- 
 to-be settled in centres already thronged, instead of ''going 
 "West" which has long been held classic counsel for the 
 ambitious. Five years of residence is the term for citi- 
 zenship. It is preceded by a declaration of intention "to 
 renounce for ever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign 
 prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty; and particularly 
 to the one of which he may at the time be a citizen or 
 subject. ' ' 
 
 Here let me note that there is much changing of names 
 
58 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 on the part of the new American. The Magyar and Pole 
 must not be unpronounceable among his fellows, so Rab- 
 binovitch is neatly trimmed to Robins. There is whole- 
 sale shedding of "skis" and "offs." Jangling consonants 
 of Bohemia are dropped, so are smooth vowels that mark 
 the "Dago," and whole slabs of syllables that show the 
 Greek: Spyridon Paraskevopoulos is a serious handicap 
 in the hot American race for Success. The Jew will often 
 drop a too "Sheeny" name — and with it much of the 
 olden faith, which his children frequently lose. Aliens 
 who take to prize-fighting adopt Irish names — Murphy, 
 Sullivan, or O'Brien. 
 
 The last census showed altogether 13,515,886 persons 
 of foreign birth in the United States. To this one may 
 add ten or twelve million negroes in order to gauge the 
 hugeuess of elements that clash with, or merely hamper, 
 the true American ideals. 
 
 One learns casually that Norway has in the United 
 States a population nearly as large as its own, and that 
 M. Paderewski forwarded a Polish protest from America 
 representing 4,000,000 citizens banded together in societies 
 and organizations. 
 
 Altogether over ^ve hundred journals are printed in 
 foreign languages, thus fostering "national" feelings which 
 conflict with the new citizenship. America shows an in- 
 creasing dislike of the many quarters in her midst, ruled 
 as they are by the padrone and the ward boss. Some 
 reformers would press compulsory English upon the newly- 
 landed immigrant. He should be guided and taught, they 
 say, as one teaches children; for it is in the intelligence 
 of these people that the future of democracy lies. On the 
 other hand, to neglect them means a listless electorate and 
 weakness in the body politic. 
 
 "Americanization Day" was last year celebrated in 150 
 cities. The women's clubs take a hand in the process of 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 59 
 
 moulding new citizens ; and a Forward-to-the-Land League, 
 with experimental tracts in Florida, tries to coax the Ellis 
 Island hordes out of the Eastern cities into the real Amer- 
 ica beyond. But the immigrant question bristles with 
 difficulty. The labour market is in chronic rebellion 
 against a flood of workers who compete with the native 
 on un-American bases. And those interested in the purity 
 of politics see in these docile mobs a new supply of cor- 
 ruptibles upon whose votes (often secured with forged 
 naturalization papers), ''machines" may be reared and 
 supported for the purpose of municipal loot. So serious 
 a matter had immigration become that America was glad 
 of the respite given her by the war. During the second 
 half of 1915, there were only 169,291 arrivals. As against 
 these, there were 166,899 departures for Europe, leaving 
 a net increase for the half year of only 2o92. 
 
 It was one of war's few blessings, this abrupt exclusion 
 of unskilled labour. Restrictionists were glad to see there 
 was less unemployment than ever ; fewer claims upon pub- 
 lie and private charity through the checking of a human 
 tide which had become a danger. Of course, America dis- 
 cusses immigration after the war, and that with renewed 
 anxiety. Some thinkers contend there will be a great mi- 
 gration from the "militaristic" nations; that men, heart- 
 sick at the very thought of war, will turn eagerly to 
 the land of peace and the serener uplift of life. Others 
 are that the older nations will need all their sons to repair 
 the wastage in man-power and material; that all the won- 
 drous gear bought and built in America, and long em- 
 ployed upon munitions of war, will in the Old World be 
 turned to productive labour, so as to reduce the enormous 
 debts under which the warring Powers must groan for a 
 generation. 
 
 Nor is America sorry to see her supply of Jewish citizens 
 cut off. Jewish influence permeates the United States, 
 
60 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 and is pacific to the point of emasculation. Jews own 
 great newspapers like the New York World and Times. 
 Jews are elected Governors of States. There is "Honest 
 Mose," the reformer of Idaho, who once sold cheap togs 
 in a wooden shack of Boise City; and Simon Bamberger, 
 the first Democratic Governor of Utah, who is still a ''Gen- 
 tile" in the Mormon State. A Jew — Louis Brandeis — 
 sits in the Supreme Court of the United States. As for 
 ambassadors at foreign Courts, one has but to mention 
 Oscar Straus, Henry Morgenthau, Abraham Elkus, and 
 Lewis Einstein. But it is in the realm of finance that the 
 Jew is supreme; a notable exemplar is Jacob Schiff, the 
 philanthropist, who played a leading part in the League 
 to Enforce Peace. 
 
 My point is that Hebrew pacifism is opposed to vig- 
 orous measures of national defence. "Over yonder," the 
 generous Jews were told in Carnegie Hall, "Despotism 
 rallies its victims to a bloody death. Here in America 
 we set in motion vastly different armies. Behold our 
 20,000,000 school children laughing as they go. See yet 
 another army of 20,000,000 stalwarts who march out each 
 morning to the anvil, the forge and the loom. ' ' So what 
 with Jewish and Gentile pacifism, the influence of the 
 women, and German intrigue from Cuba to Colon, and 
 thence to Mexico City, Preparedness for war had "hard 
 sledding" indeed in its early days. 
 
 It was this feebleness of the national will which engaged 
 the ablest American minds. It also accounted for the feel- 
 ing of relief when immigration stox)ped, and the alien tor- 
 rent was shown to be a factor which the country could 
 do without. For many years American students of this 
 problem have been of three schools — restrictionist, selec- 
 tionist, and exclusionist ; these last weighed police reve- 
 lations of unexampled crime, as well as horrible crowding 
 in the slums. But the demand for cheap labour, for il- 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 61 
 
 literate, non-En<4lisIi speaking serfs, was both insistent and 
 fierce. Beyond doubt the poor devils of aliens were cruelly 
 exploited. Until quite recently (and the change of spirit 
 is startling to one who knows the facts) no nation on 
 earth held human life so cheaply as the United States, 
 in spite of professions to the contrary which were conven- 
 tions and little more. 
 
 *'The casualties of our peaceful industries," wrote Pres- 
 ident Roosevelt to Josiah Strong, the statistician, ''exceed 
 those of a great and continuous war." In round figures 
 they amount to 50,000 killed and 500,000 injured every 
 year. Such is Prosperity's toll; this is the seamy side of 
 America's speed-up. According to Dr. W. II. Tolman, 
 ''the Pennsylvania coalfields alone furnish a Bull Run 
 Battle of deaths year by year." And so reckless are the 
 railroads that their foremost expert, Mr. James J. Hill, 
 remarked to a Cabinet Minister: "Every time I take a 
 journey I expect it to be my last, so uncertain has the 
 thing become." 
 
 "Ah, Bawss," said the negro brakeman to me at Fort 
 Worth, "w'en soldierin's as deadly as switchin' I guess 
 we'll have disarm 'ent at hand!" The railway havoc for 
 one year was 10,046 killed and 84,155 injured. Angry 
 protest appeared in the papers about this, but public opin- 
 ion was never roused. The Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion collected almost incredible facts and figures. The 
 Sunday journals had whole-page articles on "The Price 
 of Peace" — "Every time the second-hand circles the dial 
 of your watch, an American is slaughtered or maimed." 
 
 "It's cheaper to kill men than to protect them," said 
 the disappointed inventor to Dr. Josiah Strong, who gave 
 his whole career to preventive work in this direction. 
 "When I produce a thing that saves time and labour, it 
 goes off like hot cakes. But directly I make a device 
 to save human life and limb, I've only wasted energy; 
 
62 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 and I can't give the thing away!" It is undeniable that 
 the alien immigrant was no more than raw material, 
 cheaply held, mere unconsidered gun-meat in America's 
 eternal war. 
 
 I saw an Armenian arrested for begging on Third Ave- 
 nue, New York. The man had both hands destroyed by 
 the machinery of a harvester concern in Chica.^o, and he 
 was soon thrown on the community as a [)ublic charge. 
 The flesh-and-blood havoc of bursting fly-wheels in the 
 factories is another reckless tale. So also are the casualties 
 in lead and copper mines; in city subways and in the 
 streets, where motors and trams take a fearsome toll. 
 Chemical works and quarries, laundries, foundries, and 
 textile-mills — the slaughter and crippling of workers in 
 these places has long been the despair of social pioneers. 
 The farming and lumbering trades had awesome records of 
 their own; so had construction-work, especially in bridges 
 and skyscrapers. "Count the storeys," your guide told 
 you impressively in the down-town tour of New York, ''if 
 you want to know how many human lives the So-and-So 
 Building cost." And truly, from the deep caisson to the 
 fiftieth tier of windows, these towers have a dreadful rec- 
 ord in killing and crippling for life. 
 
 It is for this reason that America became proficient in 
 the making of artificial limbs. And here we found her a 
 useful ally in the aftermath of war, offering the Carnes arm 
 to Roehampton Hospital, as well as mechanical legs and 
 jointed feet that hid all deformity. "Success is a fine 
 goal," says that typical American, Mr. Darwin P. Kingsley, 
 of the New York Life Insurance Company, "but in our 
 eagerness to win it we lash out right and left, trampling 
 and wounding in ruthless concentration. We destroy far 
 more than we afterwards redeem by our public and private 
 beneficence." Mr. Kingsley heads the "Safety First" 
 leagues of America, which now preach a saner gospel of 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 63 
 
 values, and point out ''the brutal and costly inefficiency 
 of a speed-up that defeats itself.'^ The last ounce of out- 
 put is exacted of the worker — and then the bit beyond, 
 which brings disaster on so huge and frequent a scale 
 throughout the American sovereignties. 
 
 I have explained how the laws are made by forty-eight 
 Parliaments, laws which are not uniform and are quite 
 beyond count. In this connection I may quote Secretary 
 Trefz, of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. ''In the last 
 five years," he says, "our national and State Legislatures 
 have passed 62,550 laws, as compared with 1500 laws 
 passed by the British Parliament in ten years." It is not 
 so much new laws that America needs as what Elihu Root 
 calls "the organization of the nation." Lincoln himself 
 had this at heart when he conferred with General Dodge 
 about the new trans-continental railroad — "not only as a 
 military asset, but also as a means of holding the Pacific 
 Coast to the Union." To foster a really national spirit 
 came before all else in President Wilson's war-time plans. 
 "What I am striving for," he told Labour delegates at the 
 AYhite House, "is to blot out all the lines of cleavage in 
 America. To sweep away groups and camps, and caste 
 distinctions; to close up our ranks and kindle fresh unity 
 of purpose." This was the foundation of Americanism 
 in 1917. 
 
 There should be less exuberance and more reflection ii^ 
 an era that broke with the past before all men's eyes — 
 that rollicking past when Macaulay found "all sail and 
 no anchor" in the Constitution of the United States. I 
 know no symptom of this effort more striking than the 
 new relations of capital and labour — of master and man; 
 even of the helpless alien who was so lightly regarded in 
 the heedless America of yesteryear. I heard a Pennsyl- 
 vania coroner, ]\Ir. J. C. Armstrong, of Allegheny County, 
 express himself sadly in this matter. "The number of 
 
64 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 alien deaths in our furnaces and mills is truly distressing. 
 But nobody cares — they're only Hunks or Dagoes. Why, 
 there's more fuss made over the loss of a horse or a 
 mule!" Thirteen Hungarians were killed in Pittsburg 
 by one blast of molten metal. The furnace was known 
 to be defective, and some of the men were wary enough 
 to leave their work in time. At the inquest the foreman 
 explained that ''a rush of orders had kept the company 
 from making repairs in time." 
 
 What did it matter?— They were only Hunks. That 
 day an Austrian Lloyd steamer landed a thousand more at 
 Ellis Island from the port of Fiume; the morrow or next 
 day would see groups of them squatting at the gates, glad 
 of $2 a day and a life of withering hardships. I suppose 
 the valley of the Monongahela from Pittsburg to McKees- 
 port (where the Hungarian colony is) shows industrial 
 America in its most terrifying aspect. There are no words 
 for the vileness and flame of this hissing Gomorrah. Fif- 
 teen thousand factory-shafts spout smoke and soot. In 
 the vengeful reek of this place the dead Hunk is buried 
 in an unceremonious ditch to a dirge of psalms, oddly 
 confused with the crash of steam hammers and blast- 
 furnace roars of imminent menace. 
 
 The half-naked Hunk, wrinkled and wan, half-blinded 
 by the glare of liquid steel, gasping and scorched, stream- 
 ing with sweat as well as half-gassed with the poisonous 
 reek — this is no picture piled up for effect, but a fact 
 from which the onlooker turns away. No negro, no Chi- 
 nese coolie would undertake this foundry and rolling-mill 
 work; it is too heart-rending. But the Hunk is dumb; 
 he knows no English. Fifty per cent, of these indus- 
 trial slaves are Ellis Island pioneers. They come over 
 alone, and do not send for their families till they have 
 a pittance put by. I called upon these outlaws in their 
 shacks by the drear churchyard. Here they lived like 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 65 
 
 swine, in an atmosphere of murk and damnable tumult. 
 Their patient acceptance of it all was to me more moving 
 than any rage. Was not this America — the only Amer- 
 ica they knew? The joyous Old-World days v/ere over; 
 the blue Adriatic, and fair Carpathian valleys, too un- 
 real now for any dream. Between Transylvania and 
 Pennsylvania, hell's own gulf was yawning — and this was 
 called the Valley of the Monongahela ! . . . 
 
 Yet even the worm, we are told, will turn. These 
 aliens have shown fight in murderous strikes, especially 
 where they see miniature standing armies maintained by 
 employers for their own repression, as in the coal mines of 
 Colorado. An affray of this kind broke out two years 
 ago at the big plant of the Fertilizer Trust in Roosevelt, 
 N. J., barely twenty miles from New York's City Hall. 
 At the first volley fired by the private guards eighteen 
 unarmed strikers fell dead or wounded. But here again 
 they were only Hunks and Dagoes ; and tradition of Amer- 
 ican capital rates these below the beeves and porkers of 
 the stock-yard. Tradition of this kind dies hard in a land 
 where business has become a god. But such conduct is 
 bound to react upon the community. The criminal rec- 
 ords of these aliens are of peculiar flagrancy ; they call for 
 police-squads and special agents, like those of the famous 
 Petrosino, who had a detective bureau of his own in La- 
 fayette Street, New York. Petrosino was murdered in 
 Sicily whilst following up a Black Hand trail. 
 
 Here I touch those secret societies which the immigrant 
 floods bring with them from Europe. I refer to the Ar- 
 menian Ilenchakist, the Chinese Tong, the Athenian blood- 
 pact, and Neapolitan vendetta; as well as the Mafia, Ca- 
 morra, and La Mano Nera or the Black Hand. One hesi- 
 tates to mention the exploits of these murder-clubs, for 
 they surpass the crudest fiction and reveal fatal flaws in 
 the civilized polity upon which they prey. There are over 
 
66 AMERICANS DAt 
 
 half a million Italians settled in Greater New York, and 
 the Black Hand Society had extraordinary license among 
 them. In four months hfty-four persons were killed or 
 maimed by pistol, knife, or dynamite: the victims had 
 ignored the usual Black Hand letter demanding money 
 under pain of death. 
 
 Big corporations, like the United States Steel, have de- 
 tectives of their own to protect their industrial army. At 
 one time $25,000 a month was extorted by threats from 
 the foreign workmen of this huge concern. But the Se- 
 cret Service agents crippled the system by seizing the 
 bandit leader, Pagnato, and ten of his assassins at the 
 pay-office of the Hillsville Quarries. It is remarkable what 
 license all classes permit themselves in the slack immen- 
 sity of this New World. Even the city police are apt to 
 consider the brothel, the gambling den, and saloon as law- 
 ful sources of income. It is a point of view very difficult 
 to deal with, based as it is upon custom and a peculiar 
 ethical code. 
 
 New York City has for many years tried to reform her 
 police, pointing out the scandal of the lowly officer who 
 could advertise the loss of his $1500 diamond ring. Then 
 there was the discovery of forty-three bills, each of $1000, 
 in the desk of a captain who fell dead in the West 47th 
 Station. And a corruption fund was raised by the force 
 at large to defeat the Anti-Graft Bill in the State Legis- 
 lature at Albany. 
 
 It was strange to see sober journals in so great a city 
 as New York referring to their police as *'a semi-secret, 
 semi-criminal association that fosters and battens upon 
 crime, and will not stay its hand at murder." But all 
 such crudity is passing, as well as the docility and uncon- 
 cern which has long been a marked trait of citizenship. 
 This was glaringly shown in New York's acceptance of the 
 ruffian rule of Tammany Hall, its thugs and thieves, and 
 
AMERICA IN THE MAKING 67 
 
 criminal "Grand Sachems." Inaugurated long ago as a 
 "friend of the poor," this singular body turned to politics 
 under Aaron Burr and bossed New York for generations. 
 Tammany Chiefs were brigands of incredible boldness and 
 absolute sway. Boss Tweed died in gaol, after looting the 
 city of millions. But the hateful dynasty was far from 
 extinct. It began to decline in 1901 ; entire control of 
 the New World's greatest city passed from Tammany 
 with the evil days of Van Wyck. Under Mayor Mitchel — 
 a typical crusader — New York was not only "free," but 
 aspired to be America's model municipality. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CITY OF CITIES 
 
 The intelligent immigrant has a great desire to survey 
 New York from the Singer building, "which is forty-seven 
 storeys high, and towers six hundred feet above Broadway, 
 between Liberty and Cortlandt Streets. It is an awesome 
 experience for the simple soul, rapt heavenward in the 
 '^Observatory Express." And the panorama below him 
 at last is overpowering. It makes real all the wonders 
 that glowed in those letters from America, which were read 
 aloud to neighbours at cottage doors in the Black Forest, 
 where toys are made, or in hot Sicilian steppes where the 
 slaves of the sulphur-mine hear the Statue of Liberty call- 
 ing them in their sleep. 
 
 A glance at Lower Manhattan from this height shows 
 the difficult building problem of New York, and how the 
 skyscraper has solved it with characteristic daring. Busi- 
 ness interests of enormous range are here squeezed into 
 an area less than two square miles, bounded on the 
 south, east, and west by the waters of the Bay and the 
 Hudson and East Rivers. Here huddle the offices of the 
 trans-continental railways. Here is the stronghold of the 
 Standard Oil — that giant among the giants of American 
 trade, with mysterious claims reaching from California 
 to Rumania, and from the Black Sea to Siam. Here the 
 Steel Trust is financially at home beside famous corpo- 
 rations with skyscrapers of their own. On this narrow 
 tongue are the big exchanges, the banks, trust companies, 
 and brokerage offices. Land has fetched as much as $700 
 a foot in the Wall Street district. 
 
 ^he only outlet was gained by the steady pushing of 
 
 68 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 69 
 
 non-business dwellings to the north end — and by going up 
 in the air. Hence the skyscraper, a cage of steel beams 
 carried on sixty or eighty legs which are thrust down to 
 bedrock, ninety feet or so below New York's famous 
 Broadway. These legs are the wind-anchors of a land- 
 lighthouse which is without a peer in any nation. If there 
 were no wind, a skyscraper of a hundred storeys would be 
 possible. As it is, there is talk of a tower a thousand feet 
 high and a hundred feet square, swaying with perfect 
 safety in a gale of a hundred miles an hour. This is the 
 estimate of Mr. Ernest Flagg, the architect of the Singer 
 building; he has no love for these monstrosities, by the 
 way, though he admits the necessity for them. The steel 
 skeleton is weighed in advance — every beam and bar and 
 bolt; the furniture, too, and the safes, together with the 
 population of a country town. Upon the legs of the 
 Singer tower rests a weight of 86,000 tons. 
 
 It is these tremendous buildings which make New York 
 unique, and turn the streets into profound chasms, with 
 dizzy troglodyte walls that blaze at night with dim and 
 weird effects. The progress of the skyscraper, as one 
 might suppose, was bound up with the elevator, which 
 dates from 1870. The vertical cylinder hydraulic lift was 
 developed in Chicago with an eye to safety and certainty 
 of control ; a speed of 600 feet a minute was soon demanded 
 in the twenty-storey structure. Real estate values rose 
 with the height of these new buildings. Owners and ar- 
 chitects, engineers, builders, and inventors hailed the steel 
 construction, for it increased the price of sites prodigiously. 
 It also produced a new race of workers from the "sand-hog" 
 of the pneumatic caisson deep in the bowels of the earth, 
 to the reckless riveter who would pose for a "stunt" por- 
 trait on a swaying, crane-fifted girder, seven hundred feet 
 above the curb of Lower Broadway. 
 
 The skyscraper is a complete city under one roof, with 
 
10 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 racing elevators carrying sixty thousand passengers a day. 
 Such a pile has its own electric light and gas plants, its own 
 waterworks and fire brigade; a police-force, mail-chutes, 
 telephones, telegraphs, banks and clubs. A business man 
 need never leave his lofty suite. Here are restaurants 
 and bedrooms; bathrooms and barber-shops, news-stands, 
 safe-deposits, and all professional aid — manicure, medi- 
 cine, and the law, together with minor stimuli ranging 
 from candy and chewing-gum to cigars and soft drinks. 
 The aura of the skyscraper favours exact and continuous 
 concentration. Nevertheless responsible men foresee dis- 
 aster to the swarming cliff-dwellers of New York, and 
 also to the city itself — especially since San Francisco was 
 destroyed by earthquake and fire. The Board of Alder- 
 men have a Building Codes Revision Committee, and this 
 body met to consider the limitation of the skyscraper in 
 view of repeated protest from experts of undoubted stand- 
 ing. Architects, builders, and insurance men were invited 
 to state their views. An important witness was Mr. G. H. 
 Babb, President of the New York Fire Underwriters. 
 
 ''San Francisco has taught us," Mr. Babb declared, 
 "that our so-called fire-proof buildings will not resist an 
 uncontrolled wave of flame. We know that these lofty 
 shafts nurse the fiercest fires of all. And we do fear 
 an outbreak in that down-town nest. It would beat and 
 drift across the narrow streets, involving other pinnacles 
 at their topmost floors. The firemen could do nothing; 
 no system of sprinklers would avail, nor all the attempts 
 at fire-proofing. We dread a blaze involving whole blocks, 
 and therefore menacing the city. The inoiiey loss might 
 amount to billions, and so cripple the insurance companies 
 that they could offer no more than twenty-five cents on the 
 dollar to owners and mortgagees." 
 
 But America will not stay to consider these things: 
 heedlessness is a trait peculiar to the genius of the people. 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 71 
 
 Risks are ignored, so that present ease be assured. A lurid 
 morrow there may be, but it lies on the lap of gods who 
 have always been kind to America ! 
 
 It is New York that sets the pace for the continent. 
 Here notions are born with abrupt caprice that alters a 
 woman's gown or the income of her man. Or even the too 
 orderly topography of the trees, which are torn up and 
 pulled down with uproarious glee. There were no new 
 aliens, as it chanced — no Ellis Island Americans to witness 
 the moneyed invasion which marked the New York of 
 1916-17. Nothing like it was ever known, even in a land 
 of freak spending and mushroom millions. Of course, it 
 was war money. October promised a fairish season with- 
 out any hint of the orgy ahead. Giant hotels, lavish 
 restaurants, and cabarets made ready for the election 
 crowds; for dancers and skaters, for lovers of the theatre 
 and music-hall, who sup at two in the morning and cry, 
 "What's a hundred dollars?" with their whole heart. 
 
 Those election throngs remained in the city, and to them 
 were added visitors from all the States, until New York 
 swelled and sang with carnival. Families from Buenos 
 Aires piled in; from Rio, Havana, and the Central ^Vmer- 
 ican capitals. For Paris was now an unattainable goal. 
 There were also the idle rich who are, I must say, a di- 
 minishing caste; there are signs of penal laws against 
 them. There were brokers and speculators, celebrating a 
 revival with "any-price" dinners and Neronic gifts to the 
 ladies. There were quite new types seen in this invasion: 
 families from the Central West, farmers, contractors, and 
 manufacturers intent upon circulating some of the money 
 which deluged America, and now taxed even New York 
 wits to devise new ways of melting it. 
 
 The city's floating population was more than doubled. 
 Seven hundred thousand "purses" came into New York, 
 asking for genial robbery and a good time therewith. The 
 
72 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 hotels overflowed; a mattress in a bath-tub fetched five 
 dollars a uight ; rich men lay on the floors or sat contorted 
 in the corridors awaiting the dawn of new delights. Grad- 
 ually guests were driven out of the city. They might sup 
 on Broadway, or in Fifth or Madison Avenues; but for 
 beds they were billeted afar off — in Yonkers or in New- 
 ark, in dingy Hoboken, or Long Island City, and the 
 other ''nowheres" of New York. It is not possible to 
 exaggerate the nightly riot, nor the outrageous prices 
 asked and gaily paid for food and wine, amusements, and 
 souvenirs bought in shops which in normal times are the 
 most expensive in the w^orld. 
 
 Money appeared to have lost its value. There were 
 yellow-back tips (of $100) for the bowing maitre d'hotel, 
 five dollars for the boy that ^'boosted" an overcoat and 
 handed out a hat from the cloakroom. Two dollars was 
 paid to enter a noisy cabaret ; here one sat down exhausted 
 to a supper-dish of eggs at one dollar a plate. Cham- 
 pagne poured freely as ice-water on a sultry night. The 
 men who speculate in theatre tickets got fifty dollars 
 for a stall. Beggars of yesteryear were now telephoning 
 madly to order banquets in princely suites at ten dollars 
 a plate. . . . The manager would put the receiver down 
 and dwell with wonder on the meteoric rise of men whom 
 no fate could floor, since they *'came back" with unquench- 
 able elan to astonish the natives — an all but impossible 
 feat in sated New York. 
 
 I am bound to deal with this tiresome phase; it was 
 a phenomenal reflex of the Great War, and one which 
 American thinkers would be glad to forget. Moreover, 
 New York, though voted un-American by all, is yet Amer- 
 ica's playground, and therefore an index to flush or tight 
 times throughout the continent. Above all others this 
 city is sensitive to the drift of European affairs. Dra- 
 matic events of the war were calmly received elsewhere; 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 73 
 
 only New York was really excited in the early claj's, and 
 crowded to the bulletin-boards debating belligerent chances 
 the whole night long. This is the American metropolis. 
 Washington, the political capital — the Westminster of the 
 United States — is 220 miles away in the south. It is a 
 beautiful, uncommercial city of sleep^^ avenues and broad 
 sunlit leisure, contrasting sharply with New York. The 
 Federal seat, in its brief and vivid season, is a wholl}^ de- 
 lightful centre of sets and cliques and aristocracies. Wash- 
 ington is, in fact, America's ''Court," at once informal 
 and prim — not to say rigid in rule; hospitable, witty, and 
 sown with American salons of surprising and diverting 
 range. If it were possible to unite New York and AVash- 
 ington, the result would be a capital of unique allurement 
 and zest for a brief stay. 
 
 The note of New York is impermanence; it never is, 
 but always to be blest with civic and architectural per- 
 fection. Last season's hotel, with an amusement-annex 
 that cost a fortune, is this year already under a cloud. 
 For another is projected — one of fifteen hundred rooms 
 and the soaring splendour of eclipse. It will cost fifteen 
 million dollars. Before it opens a still more attractive 
 palace is planned and talked of — not necessarily larger — 
 but with novelties that take the town and are flashed for 
 thousands of miles to maintain the siren fame which has 
 been New York's since Revolutionary times. 
 
 It is a city of noise, of course, with electric railways 
 borne upon iron pillars over tram-laid streets paved with 
 granite blocks. The passion for altering is everywhere 
 seen. Great pits yawn here and there — perhaps for the 
 leg-rests of yet another skyscraper. Or the hole may be 
 part of a city tube. Bombs explode; there is quarrying 
 in the building lots — erection, demolition, carting away of 
 debris, and the dumping of new and costly materials. 
 
 The '* Great American Novel," so long expected and 
 
74 AIMERTCA^S DAY 
 
 discussed, lies here ready made, expansed for every nation 
 to read, each in its own tongue. The glamour of New 
 York invades the prairie farm; it fires young ambition 
 in the cross-roads store thousands of miles away in the 
 Oregon sage or Nevada sands. There is but one Fifth 
 Avenue, only one Broadway, and no room in either for 
 the ill-dressed or glum; they would be out of place as a 
 bully would be in the nursery. 
 
 New York is a city of late hours, a temple of airy intoxi- 
 cation, where the drunken man is a rare bird indeed. Ex- 
 travagance is a game in this place, haply encouraged 
 in the young folks by dad, who beams amid the nightly 
 glitter recalling the day he landed at Castle Garden with 
 all his worldly goods in a ragged handkerchief. Quaint 
 tales are told of spendthrift "stunts" that vied with one 
 another, until folly fell exhausted for a space of new 
 germination. There was the hostess who bought boxes 
 for three plays, that her guests might choose according 
 to their after-dinner mood. There was IMrs. So-and-So's 
 ball with costly jewels for cotillion favours; the banquet 
 with dancers on the table, and stocks and bonds folded 
 in the serviettes as little gifts. There were ballets on the 
 Long Island lawns brought en masse from the Metro- 
 politan Opera, with Caruso himself to sing "Hail Colum- 
 bia" at the close. There was the special train from Los 
 Angeles to New York which enabled young love to keep 
 its tryst ; there were the famous monkey-and-horseback din- 
 ners, with many another prank and curvet to outshine all 
 the revellers from Caligula to Louis Quatorze : 
 
 "Why should the gods have put me at my case 
 If 1 mayn't use my fortune as I please?" 
 
 The answer is that today this riot is voted bad form. It 
 is a crudity of jaded senses which the best people leave to 
 
 I 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 75 
 
 the unsophisticated newly-rich who block Broadway at 
 night with a tangle of sumptuous cars. 
 
 It is for her invaders that New York displays electric 
 signs so glaring that the native citizen cultivates blindness, 
 hoping tc save his soul alive and keep his limbs from the 
 mercy of Broadway joy-riders. For here night shineth 
 as the day. There is blazing publicity for all manner of 
 wares. Ebullient rainbows leap and race, flicker and 
 flash, as for a Fourth of July that never ends. Fabulous 
 glow-worms crawl up and down. Zigzag lightnings strike 
 an acre of signboard — and reveal a panacea for over- 
 eating! A four-storey Highlander dances a whiskj^-fling ; 
 another pours out a highball, with a hundred feet between 
 his bottle and the glass. Household words race with in- 
 visible pen across a whole city block. An electric kitten 
 plays with a mighty spool of Somebody's silk, then jumps 
 at a bound to the top of a skyscraper. The man does not 
 live who could clearly record his impressions of New York 's 
 phantasmagoria. 
 
 "More light" is the city^s motto; the blaze of it is 
 another form of idealism which dispels the gloom of life. 
 It is certain that restaurants, theatres, and shops have 
 been dragged out of ruin by sheer glare. "Do it electric- 
 ally" is now a familiar exhortation, and the thing is done 
 with ferocious glee — not alone on the Great AVhite Way, 
 but also in countless homes that cook and clean at five 
 cents per kilowatt-hour. New York has a mania for this 
 unseen force. Her missionary fervour carried an Elec- 
 trical Week into fifty-nine other cities, passing thence to 
 the farms, where 108 new applications of electricity were 
 speedily found. Thus the milkmaid is an electrician; the 
 prairie goodwife runs a mysterious churn and chats at 
 her work with a lonely neighbour twenty miles off by 
 means of a telephone visor on her head. It is a country 
 
76 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 of marvels, of tip-toe expectancy, and impatient scorn 
 for all the older ways of ' ' dad an ' the ox-cart. ' ' 
 
 Liberty's torch blazes electrically above the bay. All 
 manner of irksome tasks grow easy when done electrically. 
 In this way is the baby's bottle heated and mother's 
 curling-iron made ready once a day for two weeks with 
 one cent's worth of wired magic. Another cent makes 
 ten rounds of toasts, a third runs the sewing-machine for 
 two hours. The electric range produces a tempting din- 
 ner; and there is a dishwiper to deal with the plates 
 in the scullery and coffee is served from an electric per- 
 colator on the table. A washer and wringer makes short 
 work of the week's linen; electric irons follow it up the 
 same day and give languid maids a ''boost" which there 
 is no resisting. In this manner is the domestic problem 
 solved in New York where menial service is hateful to a 
 joyous democracy. ''Rare as an American waiter" is a 
 phrase of high significance. 
 
 The matter of hired help has driven city folk to live in 
 hotels, apartment-houses, pensions, and tenements. It is 
 hard to imagine the range of these communal dwellings, 
 from the alien squalor of Avenue A to the ultra-Roman 
 magnificence of the Plaza by Central Park. In middle- 
 class buildings the janitor is an autocrat collecting his 
 rake-off from tenants and traders according to custom. 
 The American inventor busies himself with household 
 chores, knowing that even moderate success in a labour- 
 saver will mean a fortune. These domestic aids bring 
 comfort to a woman's life in a land where home service is 
 only for the rich. 
 
 "She's leaving you!" is a poignant thrust printed in 
 huge letters in advertisements on the servant question, 
 issued by electrical concerns. "Leaving her job disgrun- 
 tled; leaving you discouraged and down." It was a true 
 enough statement of pre-electric days. The sick-at-hcart 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 77 
 
 mistress would tramp Third Avenue in search of ''help/' 
 She rang Sullivan's bell and went up — and down she came 
 again with a flushed face. She climbed four dirty flights 
 to a frowsy room which had Dienstmddchen on the door. 
 Within sat Frau Schmidt, a female bully with an odd 
 platoon before her of Finns and Swedes, Poles, Italians, 
 and Syrians. "Jus' landed alretty," the Frau explained, 
 waving a plump hand at the menagerie, and adding a 
 warrant that all in the squad were free from kitchen vice. 
 The crudest of these asked Ave dollars a week, although 
 more familiar with a spade or a plough than a saucepan. 
 And to this demand the creature would add (through the 
 Frau interpreter) conditions and privilege of unexpected 
 guile. 
 
 Another agency tempted the mistress with ''real South- 
 ern help." But first of all there was first a matter of 
 $20 rail-fare to pay the coloured mammy in the corner. 
 That savage grinned engagingly, and praised her own fried 
 chicken and waffles. ... If they only knew of her at the 
 White House. . . ! Alas, she turned out to be a dope- 
 fiend given to cocaine; a notorious "rounder" of the 
 agencies well-known at The Island — which is not Ellis 
 Island at all, but another place of penalty and shame. 
 On the third day it took three policemen to remove this 
 Ethiop from a stricken kitchen and strap her in the sta- 
 tion wagon outside. 
 
 No wonder the true American housekeeper is the most 
 efficient of all, though you will not find her in New York. 
 She relies upon her own wit. She is without any servant, 
 and quite likely runs a prosperous business into the bar- 
 gain, apart from her husband's, or else in partnership 
 with him. Of course the telephone is a great help, alike 
 in the hot weather and on zero days; in fierce New York 
 gales, torrential rains and snowstorms, such as London 
 and Paris will never know. 
 
78 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 As a developing agent the telephone has played a vital 
 part in the United States. Here in New York you meet 
 middle-aged men who remember the birth of it. They 
 tell you how, on a March day in 76, Alexander Bell spoke 
 to Tom Watson over a few feet of wire in the top floor of a 
 Chicago office building. Today America has twelve mil- 
 lion telephones, a smooth and perfect service of astonish- 
 ing range. Portland, Me., talks to Portland, Ore., over a 
 continental stretch equal to that between Stockholm and 
 Stamboul. This New World chatters electrically ; you can- 
 not escape the telephone in New York City. It is to 
 an instrument you speak in your hotel bedroom. The 
 receiver is rarely out of a business man's hand; the Wall 
 Street titan, the Trust, or railway king is photographed 
 "on the 'phone" with millions of money in his rugged 
 frown, for the 'phone is the sceptre of American sway. 
 
 My lady has a telephone in her boudoir. Here she can 
 shop in cosy peignoir and slippers. She gossips with her 
 friends in this way; she orders opera tickets, or calls her 
 husband from the office dictaphone to speak of a change 
 in the dinner-hour or measles in the nursery. At the 
 smart restaurant the ever-ready mouthpiece peeps at you 
 from the roses and lilies of a silver-set feast. There is a 
 telephone in the smoke-room of the luxurious limited train 
 going down to Palm Beach, or across the continent to Los 
 Angeles in California. It is a habit in this wide-awake 
 land where things happen as the avalanche falls, and 
 market panics leap and race like forest fires at the merest 
 whisper. Witness the result of leakage from the White 
 House over the President's famous Peace Note. 
 
 I would even call the telephone a New York instinct; 
 the "HuUo-girl" knows this to her cost as she sits at the 
 switch-board watching the tinted bulbs glow with endless 
 inquisition. "Where's that big blaze? ..." "Say — is it 
 really true that Senator Smith is dead? ..." ''Would 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 79 
 
 yon mind calling me tomorrow at five thirty? My alarm 
 clock's busted, and I've a train to catch." There are 
 schools of politeness and patience for the young ladies who 
 receive these impetuous calls. But the telephone service 
 is seen at its best in country districts, far from any rail- 
 way — perhaps in a region where no roads exist, and the 
 trails are impassable through bad weather and furious 
 storms. Here the farmer is *'neighbouri/ed" by the 
 friendly wire. These rural lines have a regular news serv- 
 ice supplied b}^ a general call after supper at night. 
 Widely-scattered subscribers gather round in their own 
 homes, whilst the far-off Central first of all gives out the 
 correct time — a greater boon to these lonely folk than the 
 city dweller might imagine. Next comes a condensed re- 
 port of the day's home and foreign news; then the current 
 quotations for wheat and cotton and corn, oats and eggs, 
 butter and all sorts of live stock, from the Jersey cow to 
 the laying hen. Country teachers give lessons over the 
 'phone to pupils who are blizzard-bound in their own homes 
 for days together. The deaf have telephones in their 
 church pews; even the marriage ceremony has been con- 
 ducted over sympathetic wires, with a lady reporter as 
 bridesmaid and the press photographer as best man. 
 
 Electricity is the god in America's car, solving every 
 crux of today and tomorrow. She regards Thomas Edi- 
 son as her greatest genius. Her editors never tire of 
 sending star men over to that wizard's den at West Orange, 
 N. J., to hear the latest miracle — actual, potential, or merely 
 desired for humanity's sake. . . . 
 
 ''The future of electricty?" echoes the mage; he is old 
 and very deaf, yet America made him chairman of her new 
 Naval Consulting Board. ''Why, the sky's the limit! 
 One day everi/thing will be done by electricity. Our rail- 
 roads will be electrified, so will the labour of farm, factory, 
 and fireside. The miners will turn their coal into current 
 
80 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 at the pit's mouth. The sea's tide will be harnessed to 
 our needs; we shall call down nitrates from the air to 
 fertilize our fields. Hydro-electric engineers will take hold 
 of water now running to waste, and evoke from it the 
 strength of sixty million horses." 
 
 The Athenian appetite for ''something new" is a keen 
 American trait, and keenest of all in New York, which is 
 the most inquisitive and acquisitive of cities. She expects 
 Europe to serve her, and is lavishly served, with every art 
 and craft and inspiration. Few foreigners realize how 
 New York combs the earth for luxuries, paying a princely 
 price for each flash of conceded rule. Every cult and 
 whim comes here — an Eastern faith, preposterous frocks 
 and Paris follies, like diamond heels and the torpedo 
 toque. 
 
 Or it may be the Houses of the Children; tenement 
 blocks on ideal lines for parents with large families only. 
 Here we touch the ''race suicide" question which Mr. 
 Roosevelt has at heart. Married couples with a big brood 
 are hard to find among the New York natives; landlords 
 and janitors will have no truck with people thus encum- 
 bered. The native birth-rate has declined since the Civil 
 War. In 1860 there were 634 children under five years for 
 every 1000 women of child-bearing age. By 1900 the fig- 
 ure had fallen to 424; and flush times, as the Central 
 Bureau shows, result in a still greater decline. The South- 
 ern States have a better record in this respect than the 
 North; New England has the lowest birth-rate of all. 
 On the other hand, the Mormon State of Utah is unique, 
 for it has 233 children per 1000 women more than Colorado, 
 and 309 more than California. The contrast between 
 town and country in this respect is very striking. Out of 
 160 cities of 25,000 population and more, 390 children 
 under five were found to every 1000 women; whereas in 
 the rural districts outside those centres, the proportion 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 81 
 
 was 572 children for each thousand possible mothers. 
 
 The causes contributing to this state of things are four- 
 fold: the migration from country to town, the facilities 
 with which divorce is granted, the increase of wealth 
 and luxury, and the constant vying to maintain or exceed 
 one's social position. A mortgage on house or farm for 
 the motor-car's sake is a symptom of these times. But 
 in the matter of birth-rate, lavish New York deserves a 
 space of her own, so curious are the facts. In eleven 
 months only thirteen infants were born in the four-and-a 
 half mile stretch of Fifth Avenue, from Washington 
 Square to Ninety-Fifth Street. This magnificent Avenue 
 houses the fewest children of any residential quarter in 
 the world. In the section observed, there were over seven 
 hundred rich homes and four immense hotels. In strik- 
 ing contrast with this is the record of teeming Avenue A, 
 where in the same period 445 children appeared. 
 
 An elaborate system of tubes has of late years improved 
 the New York transit systems out of all knowledge. It 
 is not so long since a blizzard was able to throw the city 
 into hopeless confusion, especially on the Brooklj^n Bridge 
 and the Elevated lines, where frozen switches and ice- 
 covered spurs defied the most resourceful of engineers. 
 Hosts of city workers were driven at the rush hours to 
 the surface cars ; these had their snow-ploughs and sweeps, 
 with ingenious engines for scattering kerosene and salt 
 in the outlying districts. It is well to remember that 
 Greater New York covers 315 square miles, and disputes 
 with London the primacy of the world: it musters more 
 than six million people. 
 
 The transit companies receive weather-warnings from 
 Chicago and St. Louis. When a storm is signalled, cars 
 are run all night, so as to keep the tracks open. A blizzard 
 is a very costly as well as a disagreeable city visitation. 
 To remove an inch of snow means an outlay of $35,000 
 
82 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 for labour. In case of a great fall, perhaps eighty miles 
 of main streets in Manhattan and The Bronx are promptly 
 cleared, and rather less in Brooklyn ; the rest — a thousand 
 miles or more — are necessarily left ''to God and the rain." 
 
 But when the worst is said, it must be owned that 
 New York gets plenty of sun, even in the severest winter. 
 And when the weather clears — towards Easter, say — the 
 city flames with a new bli then ess which there is no resist- 
 ing. She is now all smiles — "like a cotton-patch after a 
 spring shower" — to quote the Texan visitor, as he climbs 
 into the sight-seeing car outside the Flatiron Building 
 where Broadway and Fifth Avenue converge. New York 
 is at all times hopeful, but more so than ever at this 
 season. You may dwell upon the war with its latter- 
 math of hate and a future full of guns and smouldering 
 revenge, New York will agree to some extent, and then 
 confound you with jets of life and laughter from Walt 
 Whitman . . . "Yet how clear it is to me that those are 
 not the born results, influences of Nature at all, but of 
 our own distorted, sick, or silly souls. Here amid this 
 wide, free scene — how healthy, how joyous, how clean, 
 and vigorous and sweet!" 
 
 New York looks all this and more to those transient 
 pilgrims who buy a two-dollar ticket and seat themselves 
 in the Rubberneck Wagon — a sort of grand-stand on 
 wheels which "does" New York, from Grant's Tomb ("ten 
 minutes for prayer and meditation") to the Temple of 
 Confucius down in Chinatown. Here the timorous are 
 assured that "no vice or dens shall be shown, no immoral 
 phases, but only the curious shops and homes." Perhaps 
 a Chinese opera too, and a chop-suey feast of barbaric 
 cates. 
 
 The Rubberneck Wagon is so called because the rows 
 of sightseers crane this way and that at the sonorous bid- 
 ding of the megaphone man — "a bright, entertaining, 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 83 
 
 well-informed, and courteous gentleman, who provides a 
 brilliantly-told tale of history and romance." One learns 
 this from the program. But surely the personal expe- 
 rience of that historian — the rich humours of his daily 
 trundling through the town with America in petto, wide- 
 eyed and tense under his monster trumpet — would make 
 a far more acceptable yarn! The Memoirs of a Ruhher- 
 neck Man should command a great sale; only none but 
 that genius himself should have a hand in the script. 
 
 This is a slow-moving wagon. Its cicerone stands up 
 with his back to the driver, and from his 'phone fall 
 measured accents which the hindermost can hear: *'0n 
 the right are the twin Vanderbilt houses" . . . *'0n the 
 left you have the famous St. Regis Hotel, which cost 
 Twelve — million — dollars!" To all which the rubbernecks 
 attend, with periodic buzz of eager babble ere the next 
 marvel shall come into view. . . . Was not this the hotel 
 that suffered from too-exuberant advertising when it 
 opened? Publicity o'erleaped itself in the case of the 
 St. Regis — not publicity of the paid-for kind, but a jocular 
 inspiration of the newspaper wags. 
 
 This stately pile was overwritten, overpraised. New 
 York and all America was soon gorged with the ''gorgeur" 
 of the St. Regis, so that the ordinary visitor fought shy 
 of it as a New York headfjuarters. It was a monument, 
 one gathered, in all manner of precious marbles and bronze, 
 reproducing the glories of Versailles and the Petit Trianon. 
 What damasks and tapestries were here; what far-fetched 
 ivories and cloisonnes, silken carpets, rare silver, and fra- 
 gile Sevres! Such music and wines, with exotic meats 
 prepared by artists equal to the great Soyer or Vatel! 
 
 A lady reporter slept one night in the famous tulip- 
 wood bed of the State suite, so as to record her regal 
 dreams. Without sleeping there at all the cartoonist of 
 the Sunday supplement recorded a nightmare of anticipa- 
 
84 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 tion over his bill in the overwhelming hostel. Lightning 
 zigzags were seen in the picture, hitting the victim as 
 he slept and confirming his worst fear with legends like 
 these: "Beef and sinkers— $15!" Manager Haan, of the 
 St. Regis, protested against this nonsense, for which there 
 was little or no foundation. But New York would have 
 her jest. It was soon forgotten, of course, and the St. 
 Regis has long been ranked as one of the foremost hotels 
 in this eccentric city. 
 
 In considering New York, her spendthrift season, her 
 white lights and ''glad hand," it is well to remember that 
 she is also the metropolis of the New World. Here are 
 four hundred miles of docks, with roaring marts and fac- 
 tories so efficient that psychology is brought into play 
 to get the uttermost out of the human machine. As a 
 financial centre, New York hopes she eclipses London 
 already. Since 1914 money has flowed this way as water 
 flows down hill. "Only by the most careful and constant 
 extravagance," as the native humorist explains, "can we 
 keep it from bursting the banks!" 
 
 "My only despair," M. Prosper Grevilot told me at 
 Delmonico's, "is to plan dishes costly enough for the tastes 
 and bottomless purses of our patrons." It is chiefly the 
 visitors who maintain this standard of splash. They bring 
 with them the old traditions of freak-spending upon which 
 Mrs. Astor frowned long ago; then she regimented the 
 "Four Hundred" into a new American aristocracy. 
 "There are degrees here as elsewhere," a Hindu reminded 
 me in Olympia, Wash. "It must ever be so, since the 
 fingers of the hand cannot be all of one size." 
 
 1 found caste-marks everywhere in America, and heraldic 
 searching was a profession that paid handsomely. 
 
 "There is a fad for armorial bearings," I was told by 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 85 
 
 a vivacious lady with a tidy business in this line. *' You'll 
 see a big display of shields and quarterings on our cars 
 as well as ,pn plate, china, and linen. One season there 
 were crests and mottoes on our stockings! But you know 
 New York's weakness for notions." I do indeed. But 
 no man lived who knew them better than the late George 
 Boldt, manager of the Waldorf Hotel — "a singular genius" 
 was President Wilson's tribute to the inventor of Pea- 
 cock Row, which is the women's parade in that Fifth 
 Avenue temple of frocks and food, music, fine wines, and 
 good cheer. 
 
 Although social centres shift in the queerest way, the 
 Waldorf was for many years a sort of court or palace : a 
 rendezvous for the wealth and fashion of the United States. 
 By the way, the social ebb and flow is very disconcerting 
 to property owners in New York. Sold under the ham- 
 mer recently, the highest bid that could be obtained for 
 Madison Square Garden — the Olympia of New York — 
 was only $2,000,000. This was less by $1,375,000 than 
 was paid for the building in 1911. Twenty -third Street 
 has steadily declined in value ; Sixth Avenue is a still more 
 striking instance. In three years a tract across Manhattan 
 Island, from Fourteenth to Fortieth Street, showed a de- 
 preciation of $65,000,000. 
 
 Twenty years ago the social axis of New York was at 
 Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Seventh Street. It is now in the 
 Sixties and beyond. Even Newspaper Row is dissolving 
 and dispersing. ''Nothing stays put" is the good-hu- 
 moured plaint of this restless city. People of wealth give 
 up their mansions, and pay tens of thousands a year for a 
 wonderful suite in the latest skyscraper apartment-house. 
 Then they grow tired of it. They complain they have "no 
 more privacy than a goldfish," and find repose at last by 
 taking a country home after the manner of the English, 
 importing furniture and works of art through agents in 
 
86 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 New York, London, Paris, and Rome. The American coun- 
 try house, at any rate on this scale, is a recent portent. It 
 is also a fashion likely to endure, as the agrophobe tra- 
 ditions of the cities break down and green trees are found 
 to be more companionable than skyscrapers. 
 
 It is well to remember that what New York says ''goes," 
 in the terse American meaning of that word. Her visitors 
 roam up and down in the true pilgrim spirit of veneration 
 expressed in the modest "I'm from Missouri, and you must 
 show me." They take home to Podunk and Bird Center 
 impressive facts that fell from the megaphone man on the 
 Rubberneck Wagon. How, for instance. New York has 
 thirty fires every day. How her burglars make off with 
 $20,000,000 worth of property in a year ; how her railroads 
 provide marble halls and terminal stations beyond the 
 palace dreams of Tsar or Sultan. How glad also is New 
 York to see the man with money — and how glad to see her 
 is the man who has no money at all! For it is after all 
 a very kindly stepmother that America has here. The 
 municipal charities begin with the babe's milk, and end 
 beside the nameless alien's grave out there in the Potter's 
 Field. 
 
 "Look prosperous" is the tacit order of the metropolis. 
 You read this on the box of matches given away at the foot 
 of the "L" stairs. "Wear diamonds" was another prompt- 
 ing on the label. ' ' Come and choose a nobby gipsy setting 
 and pay us as you please" ! To stint and save in New York 
 is said to be the maddest extravagance of all, if a man is to 
 win. Yet free food is offered to the destitute with im- 
 pulsive cheer. There is free lodging too, and good books, 
 with the hand of uplift extended to the sinking soul. As 
 for entertainment, where will you find such a movie-show 
 as New York herself! Why, it rivals all the films of Los 
 Anp.eles — pretty Maud in the leopard's den, bold Romeo's 
 fall from the fortieth storey, and the long, long kiss of 
 
THE CITY OP CITIES 87 
 
 reunion — which must not, however, be prolonged beyond 
 eight feet of film! The States of Ohio and Kansas are 
 more generous in this respect ; there the censor will permit 
 a ten-foot kiss. 
 
 Is it any wonder, with all these facts before them, that 
 New York's visitors are reluctant to return to their native 
 obscurity ? There is a glamour in this place for provincial 
 America. There is wit everywhere, if only you understand 
 the language — Hungarian at the sidewalk cafes of Second 
 Avenue, Yiddish in Canal Street; German, Italian, Greek, 
 Arabic, and Russ. And the theatres and halls, what a 
 range of distraction is here, from the Diamond Uorseshoe's 
 blaze at the Metropolitan to the howling mob that assails 
 the hobo singer or dancer on ''amateur night" down the 
 Bowery, or over on Eighth Avenue. What talk of plays 
 and players around breathless tables at night in the res- 
 taurants, cabarets, and hotels ! How Maude Adams earned 
 $10,000 a year more than the President of the United 
 States. How any sum was paid to anybody for anything, 
 so long as it drew a crowd. How Bronson Howard pock- 
 eted $100,000 the first year as his share in Shenandoah. 
 How the Old Homestead just "growed," with no author at 
 all to its name and therefore no royalties to pay on pro- 
 duction. 
 
 This classic play began as a shapeless sketch somewhere 
 'in the slums. Then it changed its name, and took on more 
 acts; it developed snow-scenes and chimes, and choruses of 
 home until at length it got on Denman Thompson's nerves. 
 The "old rustic" that New York adored would have no 
 more of it; he retired to a country castle and lived as a 
 bucolic lord. The younger people hear father recall these 
 simple far-of¥ times. How remote they seem to the New 
 Yorker of today! That negro phrase, "befo' de Wah," 
 strikes quite a new note now. It is not of Lincoln's time 
 at all, but of Wilson's, with memories of the Twelve Days 
 
88 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 in August, 1914, and the frantic scramble of stranded 
 Americans abroad to get home before Germany came to 
 blows with the Mistress of the Seas. 
 
 The Rubberneck Wagons and yachts still toured New 
 York in war-time; the city was fuller than ever, indeed, 
 because the pleasure resorts of Europe were closed. Palm 
 Beach became the Monte Carlo of these times. San Diego 
 did duty for Cairo ; and instead of the Alps there were the 
 Colorado Rockies to climb, with a ''See America First'' 
 society behind this new domestic travel. But what resort 
 could eclipse New York, if numbers are to count and the 
 length and cost of stay? There is no such arbiter like New 
 York City for laying down the law — or more strictly, being 
 the law in all things, from business ethics to dress. Now 
 the matter of women's clothes I may for the moment leave; 
 whereas the correct wear for men is a shrewd New York 
 concern calling for comment here and now. **A new suit," 
 as the suasive announcements tell you, *'is more than a 
 purchase ; it is an investment. ' ' And the psychology of it 
 is fully explained in the many books and magazines which 
 deal with salesmanship, efficiency, and success. 
 
 " It is an axiom, ' ' the student is told, * * that when a man 
 looks successful, he finds it easy to feel and to act success- 
 fully. On the other hand, when he feels shabby his power 
 to do a deal falls off appreciably. Even a detail may af- 
 fect a man's mental and moral state; a wrinkled tie or a 
 dusty hat can upset the salesman, and so business passes 
 to a smarter rival. Do we not hire a cobbler to build up 
 the heels of a tramp's shoes? There's more in that than 
 meets the casual eye." . . . The composer Haydn thought 
 so, too, you remember, and sat down to do ambitious work 
 in his best clothes. Now the mass of men's wear in New 
 York City is of the ready-made variety. British goods cut 
 by a tailor of Fifth Avenue are only for the gilded youth, 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 89 
 
 to whom the London cachet means as much as that of 
 Paris to his mother and sisters. 
 
 This *' semi-ready" trade is in the hands of Jews, and 
 the advertisements are a great joy. The New Yorker, it 
 seems, must always look young, so the jacket suit is most 
 in vogue. Morning coats and silk hats are unusual wear; 
 the walking stick is rarely seen. The Ready-for-Serviee 
 people have an ideal model; it is that favoured by the 
 exigent college man, "but any youthful mind and figure 
 can wear it." It is ''bred in the lap of science." You 
 are asked to mark the "vigour and character" of a double- 
 breasted sack which is subtly attuned ''to the wave of 
 clothes-culture now sweeping the continent." Over it you 
 wear "a sort of bantam ulster with all the bulk tailored 
 out of it, and the snap and virility of a form-fitting coat 
 tailored into it." "Knee-length and double-breasted; half- 
 belted, plain or inversely pleated and finished with slash 
 pockets and a convertible collar that operates as easily as 
 an electric push-button." 
 
 "Made in both dark and colourful fabrics; skeletonized, 
 with a flash of satin in the blades; cut with an eye for 
 curves, tailored with an eye for trifles, and finished as 
 finely." . . . Such a garment clearly needs "a swagger 
 hat to top it off." And here it is — "a new soft felt made 
 for us by Stetson, and lending itself to the most rakish 
 twist." There may be a fancy vest with this radiant out- 
 fit — one "that comes in pearl or tan, or Cuba brown." 
 There must be a suitable shirt "of four-ply bosom with 
 split neck-bands, felled seams and placket sleeves." From 
 this meticulous attire down to the "Trousers Mecca" in 
 Fourteenth Street is a heavy fall, but I must deal with the 
 great sources of men's dress in New York. 
 
 Those Arabian offerings seem to sell themselves. Here 
 they are — "the togs of stunts and outsizes." You may 
 
90 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 take them or leave them at $2.50 with no guidance but the 
 one sign — "Green is the latest caper!" This is no place 
 for the 'varsity man with "sixty years of knowing how" 
 behind his "bench-tailored clothes-craft." The Trousers 
 Mecca is just a plebeian hoard of pants — "the stout, chubby 
 sort, the tall slender kind," which need a lot of finding 
 amid the pants of normal men. A Shoe Medina is next 
 door to the Trousers Mecca. Here is a giant dude in card- 
 board at the door; a gay Charlie Chaplin of insinuating 
 smile, who bids the prowler "Be Good to your Feet this 
 Fall"! 
 
 It is in these poorer parts of the town that one sees New 
 York's kindliness in operation. Here a college settlement, 
 out there in the river a floating home for mothers and 
 babes, with trained nurses and dainty food for the suffo- 
 cating summer nights. There must be no mention of 
 charity in America — only what is due from the Haves to 
 the Have-nots. Even the New York slums are sensitive, 
 and are quick to resent a tactless exploitation. Some 
 years ago the Rubberneck Wagon went down Canal Street 
 and toured the East Side — a very different East Side from 
 today's — to "do the depravity" of that section between 
 Allen Street and The Bowery. The natives were highly 
 indignant, and got an express-man to fit out a retaliatory 
 expedition at fifteen cents a head. 
 
 Soon Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive beheld the 
 queerest portent creaking by — a crazy van full of happy, 
 dilapidated folk, men and women, boys and girls, and 
 infants in arms. All were hilarious and ragged and noisy ; 
 all hugely interested in the palaces they passed, in aston- 
 ished faces at the windows, and in the racy yarns— social, 
 financial, and matrimonial — which their cicerone fired off 
 about the gazing exhibits in a fluent Babel of many tongues. 
 It was a great success, and thereafter the Rubbernecks 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 91 
 
 confined themselves to Chinatown, leaving w^hite America 
 severely alone. 
 
 The benefactions of the metropolis, whether loft in wills 
 or given in the donor's life-time, are truly staggering. 
 Millions of money rain upon the city's institutions — edu- 
 cational, pathological, religious, and philanthropic. There 
 is money for art, and false teeth for the poor; money to 
 cure consumption and "the hook-worm of laziness," which 
 is said to affect the Southern negro. There is money to 
 fight all things which America dislikes, from despotism to 
 old age: there is a Life Extension Institute with ex-Presi- 
 dent Taft at the head of it. And there is money without 
 stint — millions untold — for scientific research, the kind 
 that lightens labour and brightens life. For no limit is 
 set to possibilities of science in the United States. 
 
 There are free lawyers to assist the Ellis Island immi- 
 grant in the most unlooked-for plight. Here, for example, 
 are three Russian women, from whom the Appraiser of 
 Customs is claiming $170 duty on the bales of feathers 
 they have brought with them, and which rank as "mer- 
 chandise." It seems these peasants had long been pluck- 
 ing Volga geese and packing their household treasures in 
 between the feathers, in anticipation of the day when they 
 should sail for America. Embedded in the bales were 
 cooking-pots and candlesticks, holy books, gilt ikons, and 
 smelly clothes. The Legal Aid Society pleaded success- 
 fully with the Port Collector, and the feathers were at last 
 admitted as "household goods," though there was enough 
 in the bales to bed a whole street. 
 
 Such is New York, whose war relief work in the neutral 
 Day covered Europe from Brussels to Belgrade, and thence 
 to Beirut and starving Palestine. Through the Federal 
 Council of Churches the city appealed to 35,000,000 Amer- 
 icans, and through Cardinal Gibbons to America's 16,- 
 
92 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 000,000 Catholics. It was New York, in short, that mobil- 
 ized the impulsive generosity of the continent. There 
 were In-aid-ofs of inexhaustible ingenuity; "chain -let- 
 ters" crossed over to the Pacific, gathering millions of 
 dollars as they went. You were bidden buy eyes for the 
 blinded soldier, milk for the Armenian babe, clothing for 
 Serbian refugees, an ambulance for the Somme; a soup- 
 kitchen for Berlin, or Warsaw, or Paris. 
 
 At emotional meetings women gave the jewels from their 
 necks and wrists. The illiterate immigrant threw twenty 
 cents on the platform. Jacob Schiff handed up $100,000 ; 
 the Rockefeller Foundation voted $1,000,000 for relief in 
 Poland and the Balkans. 
 
 The Clearing House Wharf at the foot of Charlton Street 
 showed how great was New York's anxiety to alleviate 
 Europe's woe with some of her own prosperity. But the 
 metropolis, like the rest of America, longed for peace, and 
 the ceasing of a havoc too strange for transatlantic minds 
 to grasp. *'Yes," said the typical New Yorker at a naval 
 review, ''the Pennsylvania's a wonderful gun-platform; 
 so is her sister, the Arizona. The new Mississippi will be 
 greater still, I guess. But we'd rather have the Maure- 
 tania racing in once more for our Christmas mails. Can't 
 you see her, man, sighted from Nantucket in the tail-end 
 of a December blizzard? What a vision of power and 
 utility in grey-white tones, shining with frozen spray! 
 Her towering bows awash, cascades of water streaming 
 from her scuppers, and four enormous funnels belching 
 flame and smoke. A regular Pittsburg tumbling through 
 our wintry bay. . . . Watch her back up the Ambrose 
 Channel, her course lit with blazing buoys, her upper v/orks 
 higher than the roofs on the wharfs! Ah, my friend, 
 that's the old-time social link — the giant shuttle of broth- 
 erhood between the Old World and the New! You may 
 keep your destroyers, your Eevenges and Warspiies and 
 
THE CITY OF CITIES 93 
 
 Iron Dukes. Only send us the Maurdania again, and 
 by God! we'll give her skipper such a welcome as Colum- 
 bus never knew!" 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 '^Atmosphere" is an intangible thing, yet it can mould 
 new men. Call it environment if you will, or the radiant 
 aura of place and people. The working of it is surprisingly 
 seen in America. I have entered a Syrian restaurant in 
 Washington Street, New York, and been all but mobbed 
 for language lessons by rayah shepherds and small culti- 
 vators from the i\Ietawileh villages around Ba'albek. The 
 keenness of these men amazed me, for I have known them 
 at home — slow, apathetic, and resigned to the wicked 
 tyranny of the Turk. Here they were free. Here life 
 has a blue-eyed, cheery look ; all were striving and thriv- 
 ing, as waifs and strays have done since the first steamer 
 Siriiis crossed the Atlantic in 1838. It is an inspiring 
 sight, this widespread impulse and aspiration. 
 
 *' Where were you last night?" I asked the Lithuanian 
 ■Jew boy, who sold me the Evening Post outside the Sub- 
 way. "At the Law School," he replied. He was saving 
 his money, that earnest lad, not frittering his dimes and 
 quarters at the movies or at Coney Island shows. You 
 will meet hundreds like him in the Canal Street cafes. 
 And Manhattan's Ghetto is the surest place to look for 
 poets, musicians, and painters. My paper boy will soon 
 be at the New York University, where nine undergrads 
 out of ten are Jews. But the zeal for knowledge is uni- 
 versal here; it is the key to all success, and that elation 
 which sings in Cliopin's letter — "I move in the highest 
 circles, ana don't know how I got there!" 
 
 The spirit and process are well shown by the Texan 
 
 94 
 
*'DARE AND DO" 95 
 
 student who arrived at the State College with two Jersey- 
 cows of a good grade. ** We've lots of cows at home," he 
 explained to President Bizzel, ''but we are a bit short of 
 money, so I'm going to sell milk on the college campus to 
 pay my way. All I ask is the use of a barn and a little 
 pasture." It was pretty cool, but the freshman had his 
 way. At nine cents a quart he cleared $54 a month, 
 and wrote off $14 for the cows' feed. In this way did 
 the Texan boy secure a college education, at the same 
 time offering to others a living lesson in ways and means. 
 "I will study and get ready," Abe Lincoln said, "and 
 maybe my chance will come." 
 
 This motive is plainly seen in a party of immigrants 
 roaming the New York streets to gain ideas and weigh 
 their own chances. They have an air of independence 
 since they landed. They are like Daniel and his fellow- 
 aliens in the gate of the Babylonian king, with notions 
 of their own about the worship of the golden image. The 
 newcomers are not only thinking; they have already be- 
 gun to read. They are spelling out Success-books which 
 tell how, from a wooden shack on the water-front at St. 
 Paul, James Hill saw an empire in the wilderness — a rail- 
 way system which was to cover half the continent. It was 
 the same Hill who went to a bush school as a boy, and 
 lived to promise aid to King Albert in the rebuilding of 
 his ruined kingdom. ''There is no substitute for hard 
 work," is a saying of this man which the immigrant takes 
 to heart in his early stages. 
 
 "Organize your leisure" is a hint from people with books 
 to sell, the right sort of books. The great thing is to ac- 
 quire knowledge, and to buy an outfit for the game. Quite 
 likely the immigrant's education began on board the ship. 
 Here he had nothing to do but listen, and compare what 
 the teacher said with the letters that Franz wrote from 
 the Florida groves and Lucia from the Little Italy of 
 
96 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Brooklyn, where she had a fruit stall at the side of a 
 saloon. On the big immigrant ships trained social workers 
 gave classes in English and talks on American ways; so- 
 cial, civic, industrial, and political. Such a missionary 
 was the friend and guide of perhaps fifteen hundred souls, 
 who were soon to be caged and sorted in the Ellis Island 
 pens. 
 
 Even illiterates show new aptitude to learn on board 
 the ship bound for America. There are cinema shows, 
 dealing with the wonders of town and country life, and 
 warning the immigrant of danger to body and soul in the 
 siren-city of New York. There are friendly tips and ex- 
 hortations to the queer crowd on deck, much as the veteran 
 sergeant gave as ''the Kitchener Crowd" drew near the 
 liring-trench for the first time. ... A little colloquial Eng- 
 lish would get a man a job ; it would also help him to find 
 his way about the town, and open new avenues of better- 
 ment. This ship-board schooling was an excellent plan. 
 It roused the interest of these aliens; they were encour- 
 aged to continue in the night schools of New York and 
 complete the process of Americanization. 
 
 In those night schools the teacher needs no language 
 but his own. He knows his adult pupils personally ; their 
 daily work, ambitions, and tastes suggest new drills in pho- 
 netics and English conversation. It is surprising what 
 progress these people make, especially the Germans, Sy- 
 rians, and Greeks. The ideal tutor of a night class shows 
 sympathy and perseverance; he is a fervid, ingenious or- 
 ganizer supplementing the routine in a social way, and 
 turning his school into a club. Debating and singing so- 
 cieties are formed. There are musical evenings, addresses 
 from public men; recitations, theatricals, visits to the 
 library, art-gallery, and museum. 
 
 As for the immigrant women, they are a handful for 
 the domestic educator. Mainly peasants from field and 
 
*'DARE AND DO'^ 07 
 
 farm, they know no more than an ox of sanitation and 
 hygiene; of food values, home nursing, or the sewing- 
 machine. They need instruction in the very A B C of 
 city life; their New York teachers have a tragi-comic 
 tussle with dirt and flies, queer customs, and superstition 
 deep as life itself. It is different wdth the children, of 
 course. Their former w^ays melt readily enough in the 
 public schools. Here the clash of races so often seen in 
 adult classrooms — the impatience of Latin with Teuton, 
 friction between Asiatic and Slav — is rosed over with 
 cool reason and tact. This softens strife in the play- 
 ground, and the races quickly blend. 
 
 All through the elementary grades in school the love 
 of home is fostered, and reverence for the parents incul- 
 cated with anxious zeal. And for this there is special 
 need. Illiterate or careless parents and quick, clever chil- 
 dren are all too prone to fall apart in this land of ''Presto/^ 
 where ^'Adagio'' is the inveterate note of a slum home. 
 Gradually the breach widens through a lack of sympathy 
 and understanding on both sides. Sons and daughters 
 grow ashamed of uncouth fathers and mothers, who re- 
 fuse to mix with America, and cling to the older life. A 
 little girl from the Ghetto wants to go on to high school 
 from her graduating class. She is already a great reader, 
 and father hides her library-card, hoping to avert the 
 disruption he sees ahead. 
 
 I am here reminded that the American money-lust — 
 the eternal hunt for dollars which tradition abroad has 
 fastened on these people as their anima mundi — is very 
 largely misapprehended. 
 
 It is not so much money that these people laud as 
 energy, efficiency, and success in all walks of life, public 
 and private; civic, industrial, artistic, or humanitarian. 
 It is in the earning — in the matching of wits, the vying 
 in a breathless race, that the American finds his crowning 
 
98 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 satisfaction. This is well put by an industrial lord like 
 Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem Steel-works, a con- 
 cern with 70,000 hands and a pay-roll of $72,000,000 a 
 year. ''What is it," asked the ironmaster, "that drives 
 us on to great enterprise? It is not for the money's sake, 
 but for the thrill of accomplishment. Whenever I see a 
 man out for nothing but wealth, I ask myself— as the 
 brakeman did of the little dog that chased a trsiin— What 
 the devil will he do with it when he gets it?" Let Amer- 
 ica, therefore, be believed when she defines her Get-rich- 
 quickness as the greatest game she knows. Mere money 
 these prodigals cannot keep. ''While we are the wealth- 
 iest people," says the American Bankers' Association in 
 its Thrift Campaign, "we are still a nation of spenders." 
 
 A man who saves his money is voted mean; the thing 
 is hardly respectable and certainly un-American. Social 
 standards rise and surge with the flush time. Establish- 
 ments swell with new accretion of income; the same is 
 freely spent and capital encroached upon with gay dis- 
 regard for the future. A successful neighbour must be 
 "gone one better" in the way of frocks and jewels for 
 mother and the girls; and sonny must have the car of 
 the hour — "an Aluminium Six that rides like a liner and 
 leaps to the gas like a blooded horse under the whip!" 
 There are seasons at Newport and Palm Beach where 
 money is shed as a garment. There is also the visit to 
 New York. Here, as we know, riches are put "on the 
 toboggan"; and the hotter the pace, the more it is appre- 
 ciated. 
 
 There are signs of slowing up, however. This free "cir- 
 culation" is questioned now, as so many American traits 
 are at this time. It is a hundred years since savings 
 banks were first established in America; and a nation- 
 wide effort was recently made to educate the people in 
 personal preparedness for the bad times which may be 
 
*'DAKE AND DO'* 99 
 
 ahead. Five Thrift Days were observed in the public 
 schools; special pamphlets were read to the children, and 
 then given them to take home to their parents. There 
 were Thrift Sundays in the churches, with suitable sermons 
 and appeals. Thrift called to citizens and farmers from 
 all the papers and magazines. There was Thrift in the 
 street-cars and subways and L-trains; advertising on bul- 
 letin-boards all over the United States. Illustrated pla- 
 cards, changed every month, appeared in the factories, 
 offices, and stores. The wage-earner found in his pay- 
 envelope a thumb-nail folder suggesting novel ways in 
 which he might save. And, of course, the movies preached 
 Thrift on the continental scale. America was impressed 
 by all this, and still more by the feckless record of one 
 hundred typical young men, set out by the Savings Bank 
 Section of the American Bankers' Association. These 
 were real cases from the courts and insurance companies; 
 from the poor-farms, charity societies, and credit depart- 
 ments of large concerns. This ''Light Brigade" consisted 
 of normal Yankee blades, sound enough in body and soul ; 
 quick and keen, but with no more idea of saving money 
 than they had of loafing their young lives away. Their 
 downhill ''charge" begins at the age of twenty-five, when 
 these knights of the golden spur prick forth on the high 
 emprise. Twenty years later fifteen have fallen out and 
 are dependent upon their children, or the neighbours, or 
 some benevolent society. At the age of sixty-five, fifty- 
 four of these have become thus dependent. Out of the 
 hundred only five become rich. Sixty of them leave enough 
 to pay for their own funeral; thirty-two fail even in this 
 miserable respect. 
 
 This is not a wholesome example for the immigrant, 
 whom I have pictured schooling himself in New York and 
 drilling for the business fray. He is a glutton for knowl- 
 edge, this citizen-to-be; his children develop with pushful 
 
100 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Americans in the common schools, which are purely demo- 
 cratic, in Illinois a dual method of education was mooted, 
 one for the well-to-do, another for the working-classes. 
 But the Chicago Teachers ' Federation defeated this scheme, 
 and at the same time fought the School-book Trusts. 
 
 There are, however, hundreds of private academies for 
 the sons and daughters of wealthy people. These are lav- 
 ish establishments— "schools of personality," in which the 
 elegant arts are taught, from leadership to entertaining; 
 how to make a speech or ride a horse, or play the violin 
 with the pearly purity that Sevcik taught in Prague. In 
 the hot weather such schools as these dissolve into sum- 
 mer camps, where the young people frolic in idyllic sur- 
 roundings by lake and wood and mountain. The States vie 
 with one another in this matter of education; private 
 gifts and bequests to the college and university run into 
 millions every year. The rural school is a genial com- 
 munity centre; and there is now vocational training for 
 the Indian children in twenty-four Western States, with 
 headquarters at Santa Fe, N. M. 
 
 Only the South has been backward in this regard, but 
 she is showing improvement, even as regards the black 
 children and those of the ''poor whites" of the mountain 
 districts. Education must be above all things practical, 
 and much ingenuity is locally shown to make it so. Thus 
 a school in Portland, Ore., has twenty-four acres of model 
 garden. Arithmetic is taught in a ''play -store," which is, 
 in fact, a well-found shop, complete with groceries, canned 
 goods, and dairy produce. There are business-like coun- 
 ters for the little salesfolk; an automatic till, too, and a 
 cashier's desk, where accounts are paid and change given 
 out in real American money. 
 
 The Bible is barred from the schools through fear of 
 sectarian teaching and consequent discord in the homes. 
 I hjave heard many protests against this, as a system which 
 
^'DARE AND DO'' 101 
 
 provides no spiritual or ethical ideals beyond a patriotic 
 hymn and an occasional salute of the Stars and Stripes. 
 
 Thus far I have considered the married immigrant and 
 his family. But what of the alien bachelor, lingering in 
 America's gate, which is New York? He slips into a job 
 the day after he lands — any sort of job. And then he looks 
 round to take his bearings. He dresses gaily, as young 
 Montai^i^ne did to humour a world that likes a brave show. 
 This Aladdin city takes hold of the man. Anything is 
 possible here, he believes. And this spacious faith, this 
 pervasive wonder and tip-toe looking for "the next" forms 
 the groundwork of a patriotism that grows until the da}' 
 of citizen papers, with its pageant of music and flags, and 
 general felicitation. 
 
 The five-year interval has been well and shrewdly spent, 
 for America works like a charm on the receptive man, and 
 spreads the will-to-win with infectious zest. His earliest 
 reading was the literature of self-building, and those books 
 of power which fairly shout from the advertisement pages 
 of every newspaper and magazine. "Which is YOU'^ — 
 is a typical challenge — ' ' the Man in the Street, or the Man 
 in the Car; the IMan with a grand home and a string of 
 servants to do his bidding?" A picture at the top shows 
 a poor devil nearly run over by a fur-coated plutocrat with 
 panicky hands on the steering-wheel and a diamond "head- 
 light" in his tie. "You can't get on by looking on," is a 
 caustic reminder. "From Pick and Shovel to Consulting 
 Engineer" is the tale of a lonely alien who gave up his 
 evenings to a correspondence course. And again: "The 
 Boss is Sizing You up!" The boss of the salesmen, whose 
 star lad (the text informs us) is now on the road to earn- 
 ing $100 a week with a bacon-slicer which enables the 
 grocer to sell bone at twenty-five cents a pound. 
 
 These appeals carry portraits of great men who were 
 "all poor boys and missed a college education." Thus the 
 
102 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Carnegie family are pictured in Barefoot Square, Slabtown, 
 Pa. Here little Andy got a job as bobbin-boy in the cot- 
 ton mill at $1.20 a week — the mighty Andy who was one 
 day to mould millionaires and give away $300,000,000. 
 
 Joe Pulitzer, the Hungarian Jew, was another humble 
 alien whose career is set out as a model. He was soon a 
 prince of the press, the owner of the New York World, and 
 the donor of a couple of millions to Columbia University 
 in one lump. And so with all the big fellows. Henry 
 Frick came of folks so poor that as a child of eight he was 
 sowing corn on the farm, with no boots and only a precari- 
 ous winter schooling. Now behold Henry Frick today, 
 buying Rembrandts and Flemish tapestry; bronzes of the 
 Renaissance, and rare furniture by great ehenistes of the 
 eighteenth century! What capital had these strong souls 
 to start with? What culture or social ''pull" as they set 
 foot on the first rung and stared at the stars? . . . 
 
 Consider the career of ' ' Plunger ' ' Gates ! Or the cattle 
 baron, whose herds range over a bovine empire; the mail- 
 order man whose suasive leaflets fall like snow in every 
 town and prairie hamlet between the two oceans. How 
 assiduous they all were ! How unwearied in pursuit, por- 
 ing and experimenting with incredible pains ; the Lionardos 
 of a business era, determined to ''get there" and rule 
 the rest — ''Better be the head of a mouse than the tail of 
 a lion!" 
 
 Such is the printed word that kindles the young Ameri- 
 can — "the man who won't stay down," as the rousing pages 
 of power describe him. There is no conceivable calling, it 
 seems, which may not be taught in his leisure hours through 
 Uncle Sam's mails. Thus the New Yorker can study song- 
 v/riting under the Tsar of Rag-time, who lives a thousand 
 milcr> off in Chicago. There are postal courses in forestry 
 and law; in dentistry, chiropody, and aviation. The as- 
 pirant merely makes a choice and pays his money; books 
 
*'DARE AND DO'* 103 
 
 and postal lessons do the rest. He may incline to plumb- 
 ing or poultry; to mining, railroading, or the dressing of 
 a draper's window. Here again the ambitious are fired 
 with golden facts, such as the fees paid to famous profes- 
 sionals. ' ' They have no more ability than you, only they 're 
 trained in grip and go." 
 
 In this way are high hopes of his own career raised in the 
 restless youth who feels within himself the ''hundred per 
 cent, efficiency of a goal-getter." For three dollars he 
 can buy a book of secrets which will change his whole life. 
 The author of that book is not modest; indeed, ''How to 
 have Nerve" is one of his leading chapters. He claims 
 to be a builder of back-bone ; the deviser of a system which 
 dispels all fear and plays upon the small man's diffidence 
 as "a ghost-scattering searchlight on the rich fields of life." 
 His book will galvanize the weakling into activity. It will 
 mass the cell-forces into new power to "put things over," 
 and fox the foxiest neighbour until that neighbour laughs 
 at his own defeat and hails his master in that studious 
 fellow. 
 
 All this for three dollars! But there are deeps beyond 
 mere knowledge, and the reader is promised "a bodily 
 buoyancy — a tingling zest which you never felt before." 
 The mention of physical fitness reminds me that America 
 puts health even before this hypnosis and drill of the 
 mind. There are stringent food and hygienic laws, rang- 
 ing from clean milk to mad dogs. There are weird diets 
 for the fat and the lean, the neurotic, dyspeptic, and sleep- 
 less; Mr. Edison has his own "Insomnia Squad" helping 
 him in the problems of electrochemics and naval war. 
 "Health first — pleasure follows" is the arrestive slogan of 
 the Corrective Eating Society. One is amazed at the pub- 
 licity given to "preparedness" of this kind, together with 
 tips and warnings from all manner of men — the prize- 
 fighter and an ex-President of the United States, Mr. 
 
104 AMERICA'S BAY 
 
 ^V. H. Taft. During his term at the White House his 
 great bulk was a real trial to Mr. Taft. It may be remem- 
 bered that his fabulous trousers were borue upon a pole 
 by admirers in the Inaugural Parade. That genial states- 
 man tipped the beam at 342 lbs. when he re-entered private 
 life, and then he began a regimen which reduced his 
 weight by 75 lbs. in ten mouths. Mr. Taft himself tells 
 the story. 
 
 I know no people so keen as Americans upon physical 
 \igour, and the causes supposed to promote it. Of course 
 it is the last of the speed-up which accounts for this; the 
 business world's message to all is ''^lake good or get out!'* 
 Hence the artillery of tonics and dope for the man who 
 feels "all in" from overwork or strain. Hence the best 
 dentists and the worst quacks in the world — the vitopath 
 and hypnotic healer: the magic potions and electric belts 
 which "charge the body with the bubbling joy of wingfoot 
 manhood." 
 
 An addiction to drugs and bracers is decidedly on the 
 increase, especially those containing cocaine, morphine, 
 heroin, and opium. The Harrison Act of 191-4 has failed 
 to stop the traffic in these narcotics; and Dr. C. B. Towns 
 of Xew York has urged upon Congress a Federal Com- 
 mission to study the grov\'ing evil and stamp it out with 
 drastic laws. It is not so long since America was startled 
 with vital statistics, and the causes behind them, from the 
 Association of Life Insurance Presidents, a body entitled 
 to attentive hearing. At their convention the Public Serv- 
 ice Commissioner of the Equitable flatly declared that 
 "the physical force of our people has declined.'' This was 
 partly due to the great increase in wealth, parth' to the 
 time- and labour-saving devices which had altered American 
 habits and made all forms of exercise unnecessary. 
 
 At the same time, the consumption of rich foods had 
 increased; the sedentarv worker took far more than the 
 
*'DARE AND DO'^ 105 
 
 2500 calories a day prescribed for him by Professor Lusk, 
 of the Cornell Medical College. The result was alarming, 
 as seen from the insurance records. These showed far too 
 many people over forty who were from fifteen to eiglity 
 pounds above normal weight. And among these the death- 
 rate was from nine to seventy-five per cent, in excess of 
 the average. 
 
 Revelations of this kind tend to increase anxiety and 
 fads, and to multiply experts of dubious fame. In the 
 schoolroom boys and girls — with the aid of cardboard 
 skeletons — are tauj^ht how to drive "the internal com- 
 bustion engine" of the body through a strenuous Ameri- 
 can life, with due regard for the nerves which are "the 
 sparking plugs or energizers" of the whole machine. 
 ]\leanwhile mother vows she will bu}- no food at the grocer's 
 which is not put up in sealed packages. And father is 
 Avarned by the physicians not to cultivate any hair on his 
 face. What is the moustache but a focus of infection in 
 the office, workshop, and factory? "You may not jeel 
 the bacteria that flock to your face, but all the same you 
 take home a choice collection of belligerent bugs"! The 
 Menace of "Whiskers is the theme of an M.D. in a popular 
 paper, and he thanks God that "the Americans who sport 
 a trellis-work of this kind are as rare as Irish royalists"! 
 
 Chicago was the first metropolis to start a municipal 
 Diet Squad of twelve men and ladies. They were well fed 
 on forty cents a day; they were frequently weighed, and 
 the figures flashed to all the cities of the continent. It was 
 an heroic regimen for Thanksgiving Day, when all Amer- 
 ica feasted on turkey and mince pies, while a devoted squad 
 drilled with Dr. Robertson, the city's principal physician. 
 
 "Don't hurry," he ordained, as the hominy and codfish 
 balls were disappearing. "You must Fletcherize, and 
 chew each mouthful at least twenty times." This sort of 
 thing is taken seriously in America. "Don't hurry; don't 
 
106 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 worry''; this is the latest official counsel. Even Federal 
 Government concerns itself with these social aspects and 
 their bearing upon the national soul. "Worry weakens 
 our mental forces," the U. S. Health Service explains in a 
 special pamphlet for popular circulation. '*It tires and 
 undermines us by doing nothing. The mind's engine runs 
 idle under these vague fears, at the same time delivering 
 no propulsive force. Worry is the protective instinct be- 
 come abnormal. Consider the lower creatures. No bird 
 that we know ever tried to build more nests than his 
 neighbour. No fox ever fretted because he had only one 
 hole, no squirrel ever died of anxiety lest he hadn't laid 
 by enough nuts for two winters instead of one. We are 
 quite sure no dog ever lost any sleep because he hadn't 
 buried enough bones to provide for his declining years. ' ' 
 
 The campaign against the liquor traffic is only a fight for 
 clear thinking and productive power, with the moral aspect 
 an "also ran," on the great industrial course. Twenty- 
 three States are now bone-dry; nine more are drying up; 
 and by 1920 the Bryanites may easily win the thirty-six 
 State votes which will place 105,000,000 people under 
 nation-wide prohibition. The long battle between alcohol 
 and industry is well worthy of notice, for the issue is pre- 
 eminently American. It recalls the complacency of Ben 
 Franklin, who, as a "water- American" in the London 
 printing-shop, proved himself a stronger fellow than the 
 beer-drinkers. That was nearly two centuries ago. 
 
 The tenets of the citizen on this question are not those 
 of the fanatic, or the Anti-Saloon League, but rather those 
 of the Tin Plate Trust and the Pennsjdvania Railroad. 
 Throughout the vast works of the Illinois Steel at Joliet 
 and Gary, electric signs shower discouragement upon drink 
 — "Did Booze ever get you a better job?" Promotions 
 are only made from among abstainers by the company's 
 foremen and inspectors. The social change in this respect 
 
''DARE AND DO" 107 
 
 is more than sweeping; it amounts to a revolution. There 
 was a time when the town bell rang for the labourers' 
 grog; there was rum provided by farmers at harvest- 
 time ''to w^ard off the sun." In winter the ice-cutters, 
 the masons and carpenters out in zero weather, drank 
 hot toddy as a matter of course. Grog-shops followed 
 the railway gangs and the miners and lumbermen of the 
 "West, as well as the prairie pioneers of Boomtown, where 
 crude petroleum spouted over the tops of the derricks. 
 The Labour Union, as Samuel Gompers reminds us, at 
 first met in a saloon; the steel mill managers were sure 
 that workers in the blast-furnace would die unless they 
 were dosed with whisky between the heats. Even the 
 engine-driver on the railway took a bottle into his cab, 
 and after an awful accident one heard that ''some one 
 had been drinking." 
 
 It was Science which altered this — the science that saves 
 time and converts every atom of human energy into out- 
 put, efficiency, and results. But it was the employers' 
 liability for compensation which set that science in motion. 
 The injured workman had to be paid, no matter what 
 the cause of the mishap. So if the employer tolerated 
 tippling it was his own look-out. And he began to look 
 very keenly indeed into the matter. lie was soon inter- 
 ested in appliances and safety campaigns. Then came 
 the war upon alcohol. In this the railroads led, for here 
 if anywhere was need for clear eyes and nimble wits. 
 A switch misplaced, a signal ignored, a telegram misread, 
 and a hundred human beings were killed with every cir- 
 cumstance of horror. Yet the pioneers of teetotal reform 
 had an uphill climb; "personal liberty" was not to be 
 interfered with in Liberty's own land. The railroads per- 
 sisted, however. They exacted pledges, and went further 
 still — they dismissed from their service the man who en- 
 tered a saloon. The logical sequence was to cut out the 
 
108 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 drinks served in the dining-car; and in this reform the 
 Pennsylvania Railroad led. 
 
 Today there are over two million employes who are 
 strictly dry, and well catered for by railway clubs and 
 centres of cheer. One hundred and fifty steel and iron 
 magnates gave their views about the old-time vice of 
 ''rushing the can"; all were agreed that it reduced the 
 men s labour, and was a source of serious accidents. Some 
 large employers buy up the saloons near their works in 
 order to abolish them. ''A man with a bottle of whisky," 
 says the Du Pont Powder concern, ''is as perilous in our 
 plant as a bomb-thrower." 
 
 In some centres cold milk and tea, and cost-price meals 
 are provided as an offset to the old lure. The Philadelphia 
 Quartz people put the matter on a dollar-and-cents basis, 
 and now pay the total abstainer — as the better workman- 
 ten per cent, more wages than the moderate drinker. It 
 is in the main a commercial crusade, and the results sur- 
 pass all expectations. No moral zealousy could have 
 worked the miracle which these business men have wrought, 
 and the wonder spread like a religious revival. Temper- 
 ance advocates talk to the men in the dinner-hour. Anti- 
 liquor literature is given out for home reading. There 
 are bulletin boards and flashing signs to make new con- 
 verts, and keep the wobblers and backsliders on the dry 
 line. Medical men lecture to the assembled hands on alco- 
 hol as a depressant ; and the time spent in listening to this 
 is paid for by the company at the highest rate. 
 
 Make no mistake about this teetotal taming of the Amer- 
 ican. He is above all things a practical man. He has 
 harnessed the Niagara Falls to electric turbines, and now 
 asks of the flood another two million horse-power. He 
 would unweave the rainbow if it paid him, or empty the 
 haunted air and the gnomed mine with a shrewd "What's- 
 iii-it-f or-me ? ' ' 
 
''DARE AND DO" 109 
 
 The American contends that his meat and grain have 
 done more for mankind than all the schools of philosophy. 
 Look at his little daughter — say, Minnie Rohmer of Bea- 
 man, la. Minnie was given a calf to rear in a feeding 
 contest which was not to exceed $6.50 per hundred pounds 
 of meat gain. Within a year the child stood beside a 
 monster that was hailed as champion by the Iowa Beef 
 Producers. Even the negro preacher-^the prize orator at 
 Tuskegee College waves a prize cabbage in his black fist as 
 he roars, "De eart* am full ob dy riches, Lord!" And 
 therewith he kicks a bushel of giant maize on the pulpit 
 floor at his ecstatic feet. 
 
 All the great stores read dollars and cents in the weather, 
 just as the electric power people do in the scenery of the 
 Rocky Mountains. Trade advertisements are displayed or 
 withdrawn in accordance with predictions from the Bureau. 
 Thus rain in the early morning is bad for the shops, whereas 
 afternoon showers give the counters a welcome boost. A 
 summer that is cool until late June means a heavy loss to 
 the stores, for the women refrain from buying. And when 
 it gets warmer they still waver, uncertain now whether 
 they will "get the good of their clothes" in what remains 
 of the season. Gloomy weather, the dentists say, keeps 
 their parlours empty in spite of the appointments made. 
 On the other hand a lowering day keeps the drug-store 
 clerks and telephones busy with orders for liveners and 
 dope. The insurance agents also bless the clouds and the 
 squalls, for these seem to chasten exuberance and give even 
 American life a more sober outlook in which a "policy 
 talk" is feasible. A tobacco company of New York City 
 with a chain of shops, looks to lose $4000 on a stormy day, 
 simply because smoking is disagreeable in a high wind and 
 rain. It is not alone the farmer and grain-gambler who 
 follows the forecast of the IT. S. Weather Bureau. 
 
 And yet for all his shrewdness, the American remains the 
 
no AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 most sentimental of men, with sooial and ethical aims l>o- 
 j"ond an^v 1 know in the older nations. Those aims may 
 be unrealizable — the mirag^^ of expeotanoy and national 
 youth ; nevertheles^s they remain a jn^tent factor in a people 
 to whom the day's strife is a relvllion with bannerss a 
 triumphant march towards betterment of mans estate. 
 Here is ineonsisteucy which is not easily* explained in a 
 paragraph. In these people qualities of sense conflict oddly 
 with the spirit. The most literal perspicacity is mixed 
 with a visionary exaltation which in this Xew World re- 
 calls the sin^ilar mitithesis of the Middle Ages. The Ger- 
 mans have judg^vl America correctl\' in this re^rard as one 
 sees from the opinion of Dr. Dornburir. who was their 
 propagandist in the United States. 
 
 **It is wrong.'* Herr Dernburg told his Berlin audience, 
 **to regard the American as a pure materialist. True, he 
 is English in language and habit (which was bad enough, 
 indeed!^ but, he does carry a great deal of moral baggage 
 with him." The point is aptly put, and force is lent to 
 it by President Wilson's Notes and speeches during the 
 war. '"'I would fain Mieve," Dr. Wilson told the Sen- 
 ate, "that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind 
 everywhere, who have had no place or opportunity to speak 
 their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they 
 see already upon the persons and homes they hold most 
 dear." In the same address the Upper House was re- 
 minded of America's special mission **ever since we set 
 up as a new nation in the high and honourable hope that 
 in all that it was and did it might sliow mankind the way 
 to LiWrty." This is the note of America's schools. It 
 is also the lesson which the immigrant learns with much 
 of the patriot faith of old Japan: '* There is no need to 
 pray, for the country itself is divine." America is con- 
 sidered apart in destiny, with higher ideals and unique 
 facilities for attaining tliem. 
 
''DAKIO AND DO" 111 
 
 Therefore all thinj^s combine to foster hope in the hum- 
 blest citizen, if he keeps his body fit anr] his brain keyed to 
 the hii^h American tension. With this end in view the 
 State Governments rain hyj^ienic guidance on their com- 
 munities. P>ijt their leaflets are now eclipsed by the 
 Moving,' Picture Health Car, which North Carolina sends 
 on a rural round where a guarantee of $90 can be L'ot 
 for a month's service, and go-ahead county boards, rich 
 farmers, and local housev/ives often start a fair for the 
 purpose. This laboratory on wheels carries a trained me- 
 chanic and a medical lecturer who announces the show 
 with a megaphone. The car has a camp and kitchen out>- 
 fit for the crew's use in the remoter wilds. It generates 
 electric light, and strings the village hall with cables full 
 of coloured bulbs. The program is changed every fort.- 
 night for the edification of country folks; and these look 
 for the car as their children might for a circus. It is an 
 event, a distraction, a novelty. It is even good for trade, 
 because a film on the care of the teeth increases the sale 
 of tooth-brushes; the fly-fighting pictures induce folks to 
 order screens for their doors and windows. 
 
 Typhoid, malaria, and tuberculosis are some of the sub- 
 jects flashed upon the screen, with cunning embroidery 
 of human interest, lest they prove ''deadly" in the show- 
 man's sense as well as in the doctor's. It is now proposed 
 to extend this service to agriculture and domestic science — 
 even to religious and uplift themes, such as make for better 
 rural homes, and a happier and richer country life. All 
 this ministry sharpens expectations and gives the charlatan 
 unbounded scope among simple people who look for mira- 
 cles, and are often robbed on a great scale. There is 
 no land so afflicted with bogus doctors as America, thanks 
 to the welter of laws in her self-governing States. I know 
 no scandal so insidious and huge, no American reform more 
 urgent — especially on account of the foreign born, who are 
 
112 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 easily impressed by big words, by strung out *' degrees," 
 and the magic of science which can do all things but raise 
 the dead. 
 
 Consider New England as a quack field, now swarming 
 with alien labour. Here the foreign born are thirty-one 
 per cent, of the population, with 81 newspapers of their 
 own in thirteen different languages. It comes as a shock 
 to learn that one-third of the great and cultured city of 
 Boston is made up of foreigners. I know a small Massa- 
 chusetts town whose seven thousand people you may sort 
 out into twenty-one races, speaking as many different 
 tongues. These are the communities reached and fleeced 
 by bogus doctors, who spend $40,000,000 a year in the 
 newspapers, playing upon credulity and anxiety with mer- 
 ciless cunning. 
 
 The mischief done by these pests is heartrending. Here 
 is a Polish boy of nine, discharged from the New York 
 Orthopaedic Hospital, securely trussed in iron braces. 
 These, the mother was warned, were on no account to be 
 removed for fear of straining the cripple's spine. Then 
 came the quack advertisement and the fond mother's 
 reply; the visit to a palace of magnetic healing with $100 
 in her hand — all the savings of a little bakery in the slums. 
 Next day the child was back in hospital in a dying state, 
 and the wizard skipped off to his Baltimore branch until 
 the fuss died down. 
 
 ''We have no definition in this State," Mr. C. S. An- 
 drews told me — he was prosecuting counsel to the Medical 
 Society of New York — "as to what constitutes 'the prac- 
 tice of medicine.' AVe have often asked the Legislature in 
 Albany to define this for us, and they have as often re- 
 fused. We do what we can, of course, but our best effort 
 is no more than a drop of remedy in an ocean of infamy. 
 Some of the quacks employ qualified doctors to make false 
 diagnoses, or even to produce wounds upon healthy tissue 
 
**DARE AND DO" 113 
 
 by means of erodent acids. These are kept open as long 
 as the money flows. It is very difficult to convict these 
 men. In any case they set up afresh in another name and 
 another State, perhaps two thousand miles away. Then 
 Little Italy has its quack healers. So has Little Russia, 
 Bohemia, Hungary, Greece, and the rest. How are we to 
 get at these?" 
 
 Perhaps by ''tapping new springs of democracy," as 
 President Wilson urged in the domestic program which 
 is so dear to him in these crusading days. ''The votes of 
 far-sighted men must be recruited by the votes of women, 
 so that we may have fresh insight into matters of social 
 reform, and move more certainly and promptly in all the 
 problems with which our government must henceforth 
 deal." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE MILITiUlISM OF MONEY 
 
 t 
 
 "Legislation will be a vain thing until the antagonisms of industry 
 give place to generous rivalries in the pursuit of Fair Play. Labour 
 and Capital, with angry insistence upon their rights, have entirely 
 overlooked their obligation." — President Wilson. 
 
 The outbreak of a world-war threw tlie United States into 
 profound distress and gloom; it is curious to recall this 
 fact in view of the roaring times that followed. The South 
 was in despair, unable to sell its cotton. New York, for 
 all its wealth and careless pride, was afraid it could not pay 
 its debts, and therefore closed her Stock Exchange for 
 four months. "In all previous panics," says the official 
 chronicle of that institution, "the markets abroad were 
 counted upon to come to the rescue and break the fall. 
 Imports of gold, foreign loans and foreign buying were 
 safeguards which prevented complete disaster. But now 
 our market stood unaided. An unthinkable convulsion 
 had seized the world. Our boasted bonds of civilization 
 burst overnight and plunged us all into barbarism." 
 
 The savings banks fell back on a panic law, and would 
 only pay deposits upon sixty days' notice. For the first 
 time bankers called to their aid the Aldrich-Vreeland 
 emergency currency. And Clearing House certificates 
 were issued as in the dark old days. The great steel in- 
 dustry was turning thousands of hands into the streets; 
 and Government was appealed to on behalf of the unem- 
 ployed who were soon an army of millions. Soup-kitchens 
 and public charities were besieged in a manner wholly 
 un-American. . . . How the scene changed in 1915 as an 
 industrial drama of historic interest! For three months 
 
 114 
 
 \ 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 115 
 
 the export of food-stuffs rose; and by April the first big 
 order was placed for $83,000,000 worth of munitions of 
 war. Thereafter the clouds lifted with dream-like swift- 
 ness until America had paid off a mortgage of five thou- 
 sand million dollars, thanks to Europe's ravening needs. 
 The export trade of 1916 was nearly $2,000,000,000 be- 
 yond that of 1915; the excess of exports over imports was 
 ten times greater than in 1914. There are no records 
 comparable with these in the whole story of American 
 commerce. 
 
 Great fortunes were made in a night ; a concern like the 
 Bethlehem Steel could declare a dividend of two hundred 
 per cent. The humblest alien found work at unheard-of 
 rates, and buyers for the Allies were outbidding each other 
 in frenzied contracts. It is not possible to exaggerate the 
 chaos and confusion of this transition time, when agents 
 with unlimited credit burst upon traders who had been 
 whistling to keep up their courage after the first collapse. 
 One Government gave an order for a chemical which was 
 five times greater than America's entire production of it. 
 I cannot deal at any length with the "war-brokers" and 
 their games. The mechanic with the lathe, the clerk with 
 a can of coal-tar — these became shell-makers or dealers in 
 dye. They talked in millions, dogging the buyers from 
 London and Paris, Petrograd, Rome, Belgrade, and Bu- 
 charest. Short of cash, though long of nerve and wit, 
 many a bright young man dealt mysteriously in horses 
 and mules, in rifles, machine-guns, and explosives. In 
 cotton, too, and woollens and hides; in machinery and 
 food-stuffs, cartridges, copper and war-inventions of awe- 
 some range. 
 
 It is a peculiar fact that Labour troubles multiplied in 
 these flush times. In the fiscal year of 1915 the Depart- 
 ment of Labour dealt with forty-one disputes involving 
 138,100 hands. By 1916 there were 227 cases, affecting 
 
116 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 350,800 men. And yet large increases had been granted 
 to the workers, in most cases voluntarily, to offset the cost 
 of living, which had soared. There were economic causes 
 for this, of course; but there were also artful corners in 
 food, and the trickery of petty trusts like that of the 
 potato-men up in Maine. There were also cold storage 
 stunts and a general shyness to part with supplies. The 
 farmers were hanging on for a rise. 
 
 Here, as in Europe, profiteering was a great game, and 
 the man with food to sell extorted the last penny before 
 he would market his hoard. The result was that the 
 dollar bought less than at any time since the Civil War. 
 Flour went to $12 a barrel, or more than double what it 
 fetched in 1914. The mine workers of Ohio came to Pres- 
 ident Wilson, demanding a nation-wide inquiry into a 
 rocketing of food rates, which left the extra wages far 
 behind. *'He didn't keep us out of war-prices," was now 
 a rueful caption below the President 's portrait. The truth 
 is there was no thrift shown, and the carpenter at $50 
 a week spent every cent of his increase. With Europe's 
 millions withdrawn from productive labour ; with its youth 
 in the trenches, and millions more (to say nothing of the 
 women) turned to the arts of destruction, the immense 
 American workshop found fierce demands upon its energy, 
 and economic chaos was the result. 
 
 Factory bosses of the Middle West vied with each other 
 in tempting schoolboys with $15 a week for screwing 
 common nuts in place. A hurry call to the skilled me- 
 chanic meant two dollars an hour — or say $5000 a year. 
 All industrial concerns made haste to raise wages. The 
 U. S. Steel added ten per cent, to the pay-roll of 318,000 
 men, a matter involving $20,000,000. The Standard Oil 
 did the same, so did the Westinghouse and the General 
 Electric. Banks and insurance companies, the New Eng- 
 lai^d mills, and the motor-shops out West all followed suit. 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 117 
 
 until 25,000,000 workers had an increase amounting to 
 $7,000,000,000, distributed all over the continent. Even 
 Government salaries were raised — for the first time since 
 Walt Whitman was a Treasury clerk half-a-century ago. 
 
 And still Labour was dissatisfied. Strikes and lock-outs 
 were declared in the unlikeliest quarters. An eight-hour 
 day was the issue in Pittsburg. In New York even the 
 garment-hands walked out. Strangest of all, the typists 
 and stenographers of the American Federation of Labour 
 asked for a minimum wage of $3 a day, and were backed 
 up by the Central Union. But the gravest trouble — the 
 shadow of a national calamity — was the threat of a general 
 railroad strike throughout the United States, paralysing 
 the good time and bringing everything to a standstill. 
 This menace came in the midst of a Presidential campaign, 
 and Dr. Wilson handled it with a boldness quite unlike 
 his usual caution. He sided with the Four Brotherhoods 
 of railway labour in their demand for an eight-hour day. 
 Strike funds totalling $15,000,000 had been mobilized for 
 a confiict which should spread like a storm, involving many 
 other trades. 
 
 President Wilson hurried to Congress as champion of 
 the Brotherhoods and twelve other Unions, all linked with 
 the Federation of Trade, and representing 700,000 men. 
 Mr. W. C. Adamson framed the Eight Hour Bill, which 
 bears his name, and this was passed as the new unit of a 
 day's wage for all workers operating trains in Inter-State 
 commerce. 
 
 But the new measure was promptly challenged by the 
 railroads as "an unconstitutional interference with the 
 liberty of contract." Meanwhile the strike was called off, 
 leaving the employers sore and the men suspicious that 
 President Wilson had "tied a string" to the prize he had 
 given them. And so indeed he had. For when the Adam- 
 son Law was passed, the President urged that in fu- 
 
118 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ture an inquiry into industrial disputes should be made 
 compulsory; and that, furthermore, until the investiga- 
 tions were complete ''no strike or lock-out shall lawfully 
 be attempted." The President's model was the Canadian 
 Industrial Disputes Act, which has worked fairly well — 
 though the Dominion Trade and Labour Congress claims 
 that ''it pinches only one foot," and binds but one side in 
 these industrial wars. 
 
 In no nation have Labour troubles been so frequent or 
 so bloody as in the United States, where strike-breaking 
 is a regular craft employing thousands of armed men. 
 Disorder has often been on so great a scale as to pass 
 beyond police control and call out the State Militia, or 
 even the Federal troops, as in the Chicago "battles" of 
 1894, which began in the Pullman "Works and spread to 
 the Railway Union. It is now hoped that such strife 
 belongs to the past. There is a gulf not measured in years 
 alone between Henry Frick of the Homestead "war," and 
 the Henry Ford of 1917, with his profit-sharing schemes 
 and his minimum wage of five dollars a day for a staff 
 counted in tens of thousands. As a Peace apostle Mr. Ford 
 had no success; as an employer of labour the ascetic little 
 man is a power in the United States, where he aspires to 
 emploj^ a hundred thousand hands and turn out a million 
 cars each year. 
 
 Thomas Edison paid a visit to the "Detroit mechanic," 
 who v/as busy with farm tractors, such as the maimed 
 soldier might use after the war. "Ford is the most hu- 
 mane man I know," was the great inventor's verdict. 
 "He's all machines, of course; but what he talks about 
 most is his men. Are they doing their work easily as well 
 as efficiently? Henry's critics take him to task for the 
 high wages he pays. Why, they work out at America's 
 lowest! I pay less, but Henry gets more for his money." 
 Mr. Ford is the pioneer of shorter hours on quite new 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 119 
 
 (and meclianical) lines. In February, 1913, 16,000 of his 
 men, working ten hours a day, produced 16,000 cars. Just 
 one year later, with other aids and systems — with task 
 analysis and ''progressive assembling" — 15,800 men pro- 
 duced 26,000 cars. 
 
 This man is the Messiah of the Central West; an in- 
 dustrial dreamer, a benevolent despot, with fifty-three 
 different nationalities in his employ. ''No workman," he 
 contends, ' ' will take pride in his work if he 's underpaid, or 
 has no leisure in which to enjoy his life." And therewith 
 Mr. Ford cut a Christmas "melon" of $850,000 which he 
 shared among his foremen and department chiefs. These 
 are the new ideals of American business. They go much 
 further than the installation of a well-equipped hospital 
 in the mill, or the display of signs urging "Safety First," 
 and total abstinence from booze. The speed-up remains, 
 of course; it is even intensified in queer scientific ways. 
 But "welfare" is now a great word between employer and 
 employed. It is carried to extremes in that marvellous 
 ' ' foreign ' ' city of Detroit, where every third man you meet 
 is an alien. 
 
 The coloured map of the Board of Commerce in this 
 place, showing the location of the different races, is like a 
 war-chart of Europe in 1918. The Slav splash of colour 
 looms largest of all. Other areas show the habitat of 
 Italians and Jews; of Magyar and Ruman, Belgian, Ar- 
 menian, and Greek. Detroit is above all cities the best 
 in which to study the process of Americanization, as well 
 as that new "spirit of the hive" and specialized labour, 
 which can turn out a six-cylinder car at $1000, with a 
 constant tendency to raise the power and reduce the price. 
 
 "Keep your workers happy" is the watchword of Amer- 
 ican capital today. But the happiness must pay its way; 
 it is a commercial aim on peculiar lines, satisfying both 
 sides — for a while. I know a factory in Rochester, N. Y., 
 
120 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 where it takes seventy hands to turn a South American 
 ivory nut into a trousers button. The work is very mo- 
 notonous, but the girls who do it are cheered with music — 
 with lilting melodies from batteries of gramophones in- 
 stalled in airy rooms. Ventilation, by the way, is a typ- 
 ical feature as a dividend-payer ; for bad air is more tiring 
 than hard work. ''What's the matter?" asks the boss at 
 three in the afternoon. "Not so much snap and drive 
 as at eleven o'clock. Production seems to sag. What's 
 the cause?" And fans and blowers are installed; heating 
 and cooling systems whose cost is carefully weighed against 
 the extra output which energized workers will show. 
 
 ' ' The only way to mend a bad world, ' ' says Henry Ford, 
 "is to create a good one, and give the workman his due 
 in a generous spirit." Hence the profit-sharing principle 
 and the higher standard of life insisted upon by the 
 Ford Educational Department. This is an inquisition of 
 peculiar powers, like the company itself, which is inde- 
 pendent of banks and has its own deposits of iron ore on 
 the Pacific Coast. 
 
 It is worth recording that his polyglot army show no 
 great gratitude to this singular man. ' ' I don 't owe nathun ' 
 t' Henry Ford," snapped the rugged Pole at the Detroit 
 night school, where the motto is "Learn English and get 
 better pay." "When he pay me tree dollar, I make tree 
 hunnud bolts in ten hour. Now I work eight hour an ' get 
 five dollar. But I make nine huimud bolts!" Even the 
 alien worker has no illusions on this score. None the less 
 a profound change of relations is manifest. It was clearly 
 stated in an address to Cornell University by Mr. John D. 
 Rockefeller, Jr., who hoped that "the personal element in 
 industry would soon be regarded as an important part 
 of the college course, which aims at fitting a man for busi- 
 ness life." 
 
 "^Hitherto," Mr. Rockefeller pursued, "the chief execu- 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 121 
 
 tives of our great undertakings have been chosen chiefly 
 for their organizing or financial capacity. The time is 
 come, I think, when the bCvSt men for such positions are 
 they who can deal successfully and amicably with Labour, 
 which is, after all, the natural partner of Capital. And 
 personal contact of the right sort gives us the greatest 
 promise of bridging the chasm which opens between em- 
 ployer and employed ! ' ' The speaker had just visited his 
 coal mines in Colorado, where downright slavery existed 
 not long ago, and a bloody warfare broke out which scan- 
 dalized all America. Mr. Rockefeller went from camp to 
 camp among the aliens, talking with their families, visit- 
 ing their schools and places of amusement. "These men," 
 he reports, ''and many in the State besides, had formed 
 their opinion of any one bearing the name of Rockefeller. 
 . . . Because of the disturbances, bitterness and hatred ex- 
 isted in a high degree." And no wonder. The exploita- 
 tion of cheap foreign labour is a fact which no American 
 disputes, though he hopes the worst of it is over. The 
 labourers, especially in foundries and mines, were enslaved 
 in the most literal meaning of the word. And when they 
 rebelled they were shot down by armed guards, or by strike- 
 breakers, as at Lawrence and Paterson; and at Everett, 
 Wash., where on "Bloody Sunday" the casualties were five 
 killed, thirty wounded, and a hundred more in gaol. 
 
 Many of these aliens realize that, although they escape 
 one form of militarism in the Old World, they are seized 
 by another in the New — the militarism of money, and the 
 vicious concept of the human machine. Here they found 
 the titans of trade using men as the cottager at home used 
 bees. They were creatures of profit; the study of them 
 had a cash value, and was reduced to an exact science. 
 That the wage-earner's life and limbs were cheaply held 
 admits of no doubt. The American Institute of Social 
 Service collected industrial casualties for four years, and 
 
122 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 set them in telling array against the fours years' slaughter 
 of the Civil War. It was then seen that money's militarism 
 was by far the bloodier, exceeding that of the armed strife 
 by eighty thousand deaths. 
 
 In the quarries and mines — coal and iron, lead, copper, 
 silver, and gold — Mr. John Mitchell, of the United Mine 
 "Workers, reckoned 11,986 cases of killed and injured in 
 an average year. By no means all the States record their 
 accidents, and official returns are questioned by unbiassed 
 observers like the late Dr. Josiah Strong, whose motto 
 was: ''Better a fence at the top than an ambulance down 
 below!" Indiscipline and ignorance account for much of 
 this industrial havoc. Thus, out of 448 collisions on the 
 railway, three-fourths of them were due to negligence on 
 the part of trainmen and engineers. One hundred and 
 seven more occurred through heedless signallers and de- 
 spatchers. Then foreign workers in the mines are careless 
 of safeguards, and are too often left to their own ways. 
 So their death is accepted as a daily event, and their 
 friendless bodies sold for dissection to the medical schools. 
 
 There remains the question of overwork and fatigue. 
 Science is not everywhere alert in the United States; and 
 the speed-up strains flesh and blood to the breaking-point 
 and beyond. An inquiry into the Terra Cotta disaster 
 on the Baltimore and Ohio line, near Washington, showed 
 that the engine-driver had been on duty for forty hours 
 out of forty-eight, with no chance of any rest. Moreover, 
 the railroad time-sheets for the two previous months gave 
 fourteen hours as the working day of six hundred train- 
 crews. On the Southern Railway the President of the 
 system lost his own life in an accident caused by a track- 
 man who was too weary to flag the train. 
 
 This phase of prosperity has long been a theme of the 
 social reformer. "A perpetual war upon humanity," 
 Theodore Roosevelt called it. As Chief Executive he had 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 123 
 
 many a tilt against employers because of their callous 
 view of all this murder and maiming. Roosevelt also 
 brought it to the notice of Congress, pointing out that 
 *'in legislation and the use of safety devices we are far 
 behind the European peoples." But for business reasons 
 this was a ticklish target for the American crusader — 
 unless he were a mechanical genius like Henry Ford of 
 Detroit. 
 
 It is the passion for results — a love of short-cuts and 
 spectacular methods — which accounts in part for the cheap- 
 ness of life and limb in America. Her greatest holiday — 
 the Fourth of July— was, until recently, a lurid and death- 
 ful orgy. Luckily it engaged at last the drastic attention 
 of both State and Federal Governments. Before ''a saner 
 Fourth" was forced upon the nation, the day's fun cost 
 the lives of fifty persons, besides injuring five thousand 
 more, and inflicting anguish upon the sick in hospitals 
 through the din of giant crackers, cannons, and revolvers. 
 Many of the injured died later of blood-poisoning, lock- 
 jaw, and burns. This strange sacrifice has been gradually 
 reduced since 1899, when the Chicago Trihiine first began 
 to count the casualties of Independence Day. 
 
 I am well aware that these things sound preposterous 
 to the British reader, but my task is to present the facts 
 and seal them with American testimony which there can 
 be no gainsaying. I shall pass lightly over the death-roll 
 of city streets, only remarking that in New York I rode 
 in the car of a wealthy speedster, whose record is, I hope, 
 unique. That car had already killed two men; it figured 
 in thirteen accident cases, and had injured nine persons, 
 of whom five would be crippled for life. 
 
 Police Commissioner Woods looked for, at least, one 
 death each day, and a case of injury every twenty-three 
 minutes. Yet his traffic squads were picked men, each 
 with special knowledge of his own zone. Block systems, 
 
124 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 new semaphores, and safety-isles are tried, so as to reduce 
 the street accidents; but the traffic-courts of tlie city tell 
 ■woeful tales of lawless men (and women, too) who never 
 drove a car before, yet essay a prentice hand in the rush- 
 hour at Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue ! 
 
 European readers have a habit of dismissing queer or 
 monstrous happenings in America as mere Yankee yarns. 
 It is a mistaken frame of mind, an incredulity which is 
 resented over there as conveying a superior pose de haut 
 en has. What seems to us grotesque and strange is, to 
 an American, the commonplace of his daily paper. This 
 democracy claims extraordinary license, and chafes under 
 the new discipline lately urged upon it by leading men. 
 It is, indeed, a wayward people, following the feet of 
 cliange and revelling in the pol3^phonic surf of novelty. 
 Evasion of the law is a general symptom, coupled with 
 irresponsibility and the pursuit of individual aims. And 
 this entails calamity on a huge and frequent scale. Take 
 the burning of the pleasure-steamer. General Slocum, which 
 sailed past the foot of the New York streets with a blazing 
 holocaust of a thousand souls — surely the most dreadful 
 sight which a great city ever witnessed. The inquest 
 showed that every known rule and regulation had been 
 broken by the owners of the boat. And, to crown all, the 
 life-belts were found loaded with metal in order ''to give 
 them the required weight " ! 
 
 Then there was the defective steamer Eastland, which 
 rolled over at her dock in the heart of Chicago for a 
 horrified populace to see. *' There is not now," was the 
 official verdict on this disaster, "nor has there ever been, 
 an inspection service of the Federal Government for judg- 
 ing the stability of these boats." The result is that in 
 the last ten years thirty-one vessels have been lost on the 
 Great Lakes with every soul on board. A lawless spirit 
 in "the man higher up"; indifference or ignorance among 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 125 
 
 employes — these are contributing causes in a waste of life 
 and limb which has no parallel elsewhere. 
 
 The American worker of whatever grade is selected, 
 trained, and improved in a strictly productive way. There 
 are in the workshop taskmasters and efficiency engineers, 
 just as there are soil and crop intensifiers sent round to 
 the farms by the Department of Agriculture. The man 
 laying bricks, or feeding a furnace with coal; the woman 
 pasting labels on jars or cans — here is scope for highbrow 
 aid and the psychological laboratory of the University. 
 Or, again, here is a girl folding handkerchiefs. Somehow 
 she falls slack in the early afternoon; her output is below 
 that of her neighbours. Why is this? Here enters the 
 expert — if necessary with a cinema camera whose film will 
 reveal human frailty and fatigue in microscopic detail. 
 The reason for fewer folded handkerchiefs is that old chair 
 upon which the worker sits. It is too low, imposing extra 
 strain upon the girl to maintain her hands at the proper 
 level. Now enters the carpenter with four blocks for the 
 chair-legs — and lo, the automaton 's output reaches the nor- 
 mal again and surpasses it. 
 
 Or, again, here is a Detroit motor-shop where twenty- 
 eight men assemble four thousand pistons a day, each man 
 putting piston and rod together in three minutes. The 
 operation is a simple one — incapable, one has said, of any 
 further speed-up. Yet the analyst has his eye on it. A 
 sleuth-hound of time is this omniscient plotter; he detects 
 each flick of a finger which "does not pay," and forthwith 
 enlists it for service. Those twenty-eight assemblers, it 
 seems, spend four hours of their nine-hour day walking 
 back and forth. They are now reshuffled. The task is still 
 further subdivided; the result is that fourteen men are 
 reported to the foreman as "free for other work." Such 
 is the speed up, which has become an extraordinary mania 
 in the United States — at any rate on the employer's side. 
 
126 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Its ideal is to conciliate labour as it goes, selecting bosses 
 who arc born for control. * ' Tact, ' ' says the staff pioneer of 
 a big concern, "is the sweet oil of business. So keep your 
 can full!'' 
 
 Many of the big concerns catch their employes very young 
 and drill them with vocational insight. This is especially 
 true of the electrical industry. The New York Edison 
 Company is supposed to choose its youngsters "in the 
 nursery." They are weighed in the balance of heredity 
 and environment; they are appraised and educated, cred- 
 ited or debited with plus or minus marks. 
 
 Health and a good appearance are factors insisted on. 
 So are perseverance and energy; the "Hold on" and "Try 
 again," with all concentration, enthusiasm, observation, 
 memory, understanding, and will. This strenuous gospel 
 — this sleety faith and all its fruitful works — may be said 
 to be the real religion of the United States. "There will 
 soon be no more priests," Walt Whitman exulted. "Their 
 work is done. A new order shall arise, and they shall be 
 the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. 
 . . . They shall arise in America, and be responded to from 
 the remainder of the earth." 
 
 Here I am reminded that once, and once only, did Wall 
 Street reach out to save souls, with Mr. James Cannon, the 
 New York banker, as chief apostle. Five teams of well- 
 drilled scouts were sent out in advance to attack the strong- 
 holds of sin in the Eastern States, and that on highly 
 original lines. Even that difficult man, the late Mr. Pier- 
 pont Morgan, gave $5000 towards this novel mission, for 
 he was impressed by maps and figures, and by a card- 
 indexing of the redeemed which promised rich results. 
 The manager of this campaign gave up a fine position in 
 Detroit to act as the spearhead of assault ; and his action — 
 paradoxical as it may seem — was characteristically Ameri- 
 can. "We're going after souls," that zealot told me, "ex- 
 actly as the Standard Oil goes after business. And we're 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 127 
 
 backed by the best money and brains in America.'* But 
 the Standard Oil success was not forthcoming when the 
 first flush of novelty was gone. However, that soul-saving 
 is possible *'on business lines" has been demonstrated fox' 
 years by the famous Billy Sunday, the ball-playing evan- 
 gelist who must be a rich man now, with a fervid follow- 
 ing which no orthodox preacher can ever hope to win. 
 
 Mr. Sunday's methods are lurid beyond all American 
 records, which is saying a good deal. "He has the bellow 
 of Edwin Forrest," an admirer says: **the glare of Ed- 
 mund Kean, and the flip modernity of George M. Cohan. ' ' 
 Billy's manager will enter a great city and form a joint- 
 stock company to guarantee expenses; these may reach 
 $50,000. A board tabernacle seating 18,000 people is 
 rigged up on a vacant lot, and then the show begins. 
 Mother may take her baby and have the little one checked, 
 just as father checks his hat and coat. There is no de- 
 scribing the vast audience; it is simply America. Here 
 are shop-girls, and members of the Hod-Carriers' Union. 
 The rich man is in the front row ; so is the music-hall man- 
 ager, who follows the uproarious scene with envy. "Billy 
 Sunday's act is the greatest ever," he sighs, and tries to 
 profit by it on the boards. 
 
 As a pulpiteer the unreverend Billy Sunday is at once 
 actor, acrobat, and mime. His hearers are in tears over 
 the sob-story of booze, — when lo, the preacher convulses 
 them with antic mirth! He plays upon all the emotions. 
 He sounds all the human stops with a power that must be 
 seen to be believed; he uses the rich vocabulary of baseball 
 and prize-ring. See him picturing the eternal war of the 
 weak against the strong. "There's young David," he 
 scream.s, "soakin' Goliath on the coco, clean between the 
 lamps! Down goes the big stiff for the count. An' while 
 the kid's choppin' off his block, the whole bunch behind 
 the big feller skiddooes ! ' ' 
 
128 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 What milder pastors think of * ' Sunday salvation ' ' makes 
 very mixed reading. Billy had shattered Springfield, 111., 
 when a university graduate reported upon the moral after- 
 math of the orgy. "Our community seems disillusioned 
 and burnt out. The sacred power of souls to respond to 
 the gentle voice of Christ has been strained and coerced 
 by these high-pressure methods." 
 
 Now for their cash returns. Concerning these the fa- 
 mous evangelist is very frank. "Do as you want with 
 your own money," he roars as the collection pans go round, 
 with a Fitzsimmons reach. . . . "Give if you will. It's 
 none o' my business what you do with your dough, an' 
 none o ' yours what T do with mine ! ' ' Philadelphia 's dough 
 came to $51,156 ; Pittsburg gave Mr. Sunday $44,000, Bos- 
 ton beat them all — though Cardinal 'Council warned his 
 flock against Billy's bizarre performance. Here the col- 
 lections totalled $90,436. 
 
 These large offerings are chiefly from the masses, to 
 whom closeness in money-matters is the meanest of traits. 
 Thrift is today set before America 's millions, and was none 
 too welcome at first, even when masked as "efficiency" or 
 "conservation." The wealthy were asked to set a more 
 sober example ; the worker was besought to save his money 
 so as "to prevent his wife going directly from his funeral 
 to a job at the wash-tub." So keen are the employers of 
 labour upon the workers' thrift that they go to extremes 
 of paternalism and stir up wrath by welfare schemes of 
 drastic range. 
 
 Take the Educational Department of Henrj'- Ford's plant 
 in Detroit. "We estimate," an official said, "that sixty 
 per cent, of the men can look after themselves. So we or- 
 ganize to take care of the rest. ' ' The affluent workman is 
 here required to conform to a higher standard of life. He 
 must prove himself ' * clean, sober, industrious, and thrifty. ' ' 
 "It; is not wise," says the chief inquisitor, "for working 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 129 
 
 men to spend money on things above their station." Em- 
 ployes must bank theii surplus money, and domiciliary 
 visits are paid to see that this is done. Passbooks and 
 private papers must be produced w^hen the Ford Investi- 
 gators call. No profit-sharer may take in lodgers; and 
 should he settle in an evil neighbourhood, well-meaning 
 despots transplant him and his into a sweeter quarter of 
 the town. 
 
 It would be absurd to suppose that this system was 
 meekly accepted by tens of thousands of men: Ford him- 
 self knows quite well that it is not. He would like to see 
 all the guidance, the advice and oversight of private affairs 
 made less minatory, more optional and free. As a '^ Socio- 
 logical Department" the inquisition goaded the men to 
 mutiny. It set up a rigid code of morals, it had spies all 
 over Detroit reporting lapses; it took testimony from chil- 
 dren against their fathers, and from wives against their 
 husbands. Mr. Ford was <irieved over this tyranny, and 
 he checked and modified its scope. He does not believe in 
 Labour Unions, by the way, "because they mean war." 
 The equality of men he will grant you — as a theory with 
 considerable hedging. ''But power of all sorts," he says — 
 ** business, financial and political — seems to centre round 
 the big fellow; it has always been so, and I guess it will 
 always be." 
 
 Henry Ford plays the democrat out on his Dearborn 
 farm. It is a mistake to suppose he is greatly loved, or 
 that his social views have any influence upon the municipal 
 government of Detroit. This is an extravagant town, and 
 men of the right civic kind will not "play politics," having 
 a more alluring game of their own in the gas-blasts and 
 automatic conveyers of their miraculous shops. IMo doubt 
 Detroit is an exceptional instance of bossing and drilling 
 the human machine; it is at once the most foreign of all, 
 yet the most American of cities in spirit. Its population 
 
130 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 in 1900 was 285,000; today it has three-quarters of a 
 million, and assimilates aliens in a magical way, chiefly 
 through night schools, where Greek, Italian and Pole are 
 tempted to learn English, and so ''become a better citizen 
 with a better job." 
 
 Printed slips of advice on these lines are found in the 
 worker's pay-envelope. The saloons are plastered with 
 similar hints; the girl who borrows a book at the library 
 finds promptings on the first page. Preachers and editors, 
 gangsters and ward leaders, all lend their aid to break up 
 foreign ignorance and blot out hyphenism of all shades. 
 The big motor shops put premiums upon adult education ; 
 some offer an extra two cents an hour to Italians, Hun- 
 garians and Poles who are learning English. Their teach- 
 ers are themselves taught by experts in immigrant edu- 
 cation, like Mr. H. H. Wheaton and Dr. Peter Eoberts. 
 
 Here we see the ''progressive action" which President 
 Wilson sets before American employers. He would like to 
 have an end made of anarchy-breeding inequalities, which 
 are still so glaring a feature of the great Republic. The 
 President also hoped that mutuality of interests will hence- 
 forth receive support — "and that men of affairs will lend 
 themselves to the task of making democracy a more effec- 
 tive instrument of human welfare. It cannot be said that 
 they have done this in the past." Here is a thrust which 
 goes to the root of civic and social ills. Hitherto the ablest 
 and most fearless of men — men of great wealth and moral 
 strength — have not been willing to serve the community in 
 public positions. The word politics conveyed a taint of 
 trickery and graft. Then the newspapers were also feared. 
 The result was that State and civic government passed to 
 professional cliques of the Tammany type, intent only upon 
 power and loot. 
 
 "Real remedies," as Dr. Wilson points out, "wait upon 
 the development of a more honest and more discriminating 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY ^ 131 
 
 public opinion." That big business is giving a good lead 
 to the smaller concerns in the treatment of Labour is now 
 undeniable. A notable instance of welfare-work was the 
 laying out of the industrial city of Gary by the Steel Trust. 
 This model town of 100,000 souls was designed and built 
 as one builds a country house, amid the sand and scrub 
 of the southern end of Lake Michigan. There were two 
 square miles of furnaces, foundries, and mills ; four square 
 miles of tree-shaded streets, with parks, playgrounds, and 
 dwellings of many grades, each one perfect of its kind. 
 
 The Grand Calumet River was turned from its course; 
 all that science could suggest was here carried out to show 
 what American capital could do for its labouring men. 
 Industrial strife, it was hoped, would never mar the idyllic 
 life of Gary. Here the skilled hand could earn high wages 
 and rear a family, at the same time putting by a compe- 
 tence and enjoying life in the true American way. Squalor, 
 poverty, and vice — these were to have no part in the 
 Utopian city, with its fine boulevards and concert-halls; 
 its libraries, museums, and gymnasiums. All sewers, con- 
 duits, and pipes were laid in thirty-foot alleys behind the 
 town blocks, so as to avoid the noise and dirt attendant 
 upon the tearing up the streets. 
 
 As for the minimum wage, this is now^ assured in ten 
 States, and others will presently follow — though the Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labour opposes the idea, chiefly on be- 
 half of the working women. President Gompers cham- 
 pioned the cause of these before the Industrial Relations 
 Commission. ''I am very suspicious," said America's la- 
 bour lord, ''when I see Government agencies busy in this 
 way." His reasoning is too long and complex to set out 
 here, but undoubtedly there is confusion and evasion 
 through the conflict of laws in the various States. Thus 
 labour boycotts are forbidden in Alabama and Colorado — 
 where a Federal Statute declares them perfectly legal. 
 
132 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 There are laws against blacklisting in twenty-six States. 
 Others have special rules against intimidation, or against 
 conspiracy, or harsh conditions of employment like the 
 barring of a worker from his trade union. This lack of 
 uniformity hampers progress in unexpected ways. 
 
 The case for an eight-hour working day has established 
 itself after five and twenty years of agitation. It was 
 recently set before the Supreme Court in a brief of a 
 thousand pages intended to uphold the legality of the 
 Oregon Law. Tired workers and their diminished output 
 were here represented, whether in a candy store or in the 
 bituminous mines of Illinois. Shorter hours were elo- 
 quently urged upon a democracy that sets great store by 
 the intelligence of its citizens. How shall a man vote wisely 
 if he has no time for reading, or for study of the topics 
 of the day? Of what use are night schools to the worker 
 who comes home dog-tired after a complete round of the 
 factory clock? 
 
 Long hours led to poor health, and sjiiiptoms of strain 
 due to industrial speed and drear monotony. Cumulative 
 fatigue was set up and to this were traced the serious acci- 
 dents which figured so luridly in statistical tables. A 
 shorter day, it was claimed, increased the quality as well as 
 the quantity of work. It also promoted temperance; it 
 encouraged education and the general uplift which Amer- 
 ica is for ever preaching. 
 
 The rank and file of workers are now shown the way to 
 betterment ; the biggest prizes of all are offered to intellects 
 of devoted training, however lowly in station and poor in 
 this world's goods. ** There's not a man in power at our 
 Bethlehem Works," Mr. Schwab declared, ''who didn't be- 
 gin at the bottom and work his way up. Eight years ago 
 Eugene Grace was switching engines. But he out-thought 
 his job, and that, as well as integrity, lifted him to the 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 133 
 
 head of our corporation. Last year Mr. Grace earned over 
 a million dollars." 
 
 The smaller concerns follow this lead, and seek to kindle 
 in their staff a goodwill and interest which never existed 
 before. ''Let's put up a Sug'gestion-box," a certan partner 
 proposed. For some weeks it w^as a nest of complaints and 
 vile abuse — of course with no signature. "They've got a 
 grouch," said the smiling deviser of the plan. "Now 
 they're working it off. But we'll get some notions pres- 
 ently." And so they did. An idea of great value was one 
 day found among the mixed contributions, and a cheque 
 for $1500 was quietly handed to the man as he worked at 
 his bench. He was of course astounded. Two years' wages 
 for a few lines on a scrap of soiled paper! The news 
 spread like fire. A second man soon waved a $500 cheque ; 
 a third had $1000 to show, and was proud beyond any money 
 at this tribute to his wit in the utilizing of waste products. 
 
 Yet, in spite of this movement, America remains the land 
 of giant strikes fought out with firearms and dynamite. 
 How is this to be explained? Perhaps by the inequality 
 of distribution which here presents quite monstrous con- 
 trasts. Mr. Rockefeller is reported to be a "billionaire." 
 Certainly the man 's riches are beyond any dream. Against 
 him and his may be set the "poor whites" of Kentucky and 
 Tennessee, a folk who live as illiterate savages in a bleak 
 and dismal squalor passing all belief — even the belief of 
 most Americans. It is the record of the Standard Oil 
 and other Trusts which have set up those "antagonisms of 
 industry" w^hich President Wilson deplores. 
 
 "We find," says the Preamble of the Industrial Workers 
 of the World — a Labour body of seventy thousand members 
 — "that the centring of the management of industry into 
 fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to 
 cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class." 
 
134 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 That labour laws are nullified is beyond doubt; the 
 sovereignty of States and the povveriessness of the Federal 
 authority are great temptations to the unscrupulous in 
 this direction. "You must watch them I'' cried little 
 Sarah Shapiro to the Women's Trade Union League of 
 New York. Sarali was a garment-worker over on the 
 East Side, and could read the greedy employer like a book. 
 "I shall take you to our factory after hours, when the doors 
 are locked and all the windows darkened. Yet inside are 
 the girls and children — working, working, working!" 
 
 The Federal Government prohibited from Interstate 
 Commerce the products of all mines, factories, and mills 
 employing child labour. But there are still two million 
 working children not protected by this Act. The Southern 
 Senators opposed its passage in Congress as likely to clash 
 with existing local laws. Mr. Tillman, of South Carolina, 
 found the Child Labour Bill not only unconstitutional, but 
 also an infringement of States' Rights. New Mexico, 
 North Carolina, and Wyoming have no child-labour laws 
 at all. And nowhere does the Federal Act apply to farm- 
 work. On the whole, there is ample ground for Labour's 
 cynical attitude in the face of princely gifts from million- 
 aire employers. I was astonished at the spirit in which 
 these benefactions were received. "He'd steal the cow," 
 said a superintendent grimly of a very great man indeed, 
 "and give away the horns for the love o' God!" 
 
 At the best time of the year there are 7,000,000 wage- 
 earners in the factories, at the worst time only 4,500,000. 
 Therefore, according to the Census of Manufactures, there 
 is a regular human "slack" of 2,500,000 workers. The 
 number of men who lose four months or more out of the 
 year totals 3,300,000. Now, to regularize this drifting 
 labour baffles all investigation, so immense is the area to be 
 covered. Subway construction may be finished in New 
 York, whilst California figs and oranges are waiting to be 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 135 
 
 picked. But the distance between these two points equals 
 a journey from the Old World to the New 
 
 There are fine chances for the small cultivator in the 
 Yazoo Valley of Mississippi; the flour mills of Minnea- 
 polis send out hurry calls for hands. But it is nobody's 
 business to handle the floating forces of labour and distri- 
 bute them in strategic and seasonal areas of the continent. 
 American prosperity is, therefore, an elusive condition. No 
 man lives who will guarantee it for two successive years. 
 Desolation dawned with 1915 — only to melt into the pro- 
 digal riot of 1916. Bubble finance and frenzy were ram- 
 pant in the cities; the farmer was rolling in money with 
 his cotton at twenty cents instead of ten, his wheat at 
 two dollars a bushel instead of ninety cents. It is perhaps 
 this uncertainty which fosters in the United States a 
 gambling spirit which I have not seen equalled in any land. 
 
 '*We are a composite and cosmopolitan people," Presi- 
 dent Wilson owned in his Inaugural Address to Congress. 
 "We are the brood of all the nations now at war." A note 
 of regret runs through this grave message, because counsel 
 and action had been turned from ''the great problems of 
 domestic legislation" to "other matters lying outside our 
 own life as a nation." America had no control over those 
 gusts, "which have shaken men everywhere with passion 
 and apprehension." It was a disappointment to Dr. Wilson 
 who had set his heart upon the unity of the nation and 
 internal reforms of crying need. "We have sought very 
 thoughtfully ... to correct the grosser errors and abuses 
 of our industrial life, to liberate and quicken the processes 
 of national genius and energy, and to lift politics to a 
 broader view of the people's essential interests." 
 
 When all has been said about welfare schemes we still 
 have to consider the armed guards and strike-breakers 
 whose work it is to crush uprisings and disrupt the in- 
 dustrial Unions. Now this strike-breaking and gunning 
 
136 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 is an ugly symptom of that cleavage which the President 
 deplores. A Labour Board may be in full session over a 
 dispute, but both sides will take no chances. The em- 
 ployers order out their secret armies, with weapons and 
 without; the Unions have trained corps watching the pro- 
 fessionals who would force the open shop upon them. A 
 typical strike-breaker was the late James Farley, of Phila- 
 delphia, who was a rich man with a blood-stock farm at 
 Plattsburg, N. Y., and a cheque which Wall Street would 
 at any time honour for $100,000. Mr. August Belmont 
 used to say that Farley was "a born soldier." Certainly 
 he gloried in the fight ; he was shot at five and twenty times, 
 and received over five thousand threatening letters in a 
 year. Railroads, street car corporations, mines, machine- 
 shops, and factories all employ men like Farley and Harry 
 Bowen — who took out a special policy upon his own life 
 for $100,000. Strike-breaking bosses are on the pay-rolls 
 in peace time ; and as the first murmurs arise, secret agents 
 scatter among the men to ascertain their case and their 
 financial strength. Meanwhile the "breakers" are enlisted. 
 In a New York subway tie-up Farley was paid $5 a day for 
 each man, and $1000 a day for himself as field-marshal of 
 the strike army. It was a task of deadly peril, but Farley 
 cleared $130,000 in this one campaign. 
 
 Today the strike-breaker has a gentler name. Mr. James 
 A. Waddell is an ''expert in emergency employment." 
 This general has an armory of 1100 rifles in New York 
 City, as well as barracks where guards are drilled and 
 maintained. When a railway tie-up was in the air, Mr. 
 Waddell mobilized in Chicago 13,000 trainmen and engine- 
 drivers. For this force he drew the great sum of $65,000 
 a day, plus ten per cent, commission on the commissariat. 
 How large a matter this may be is seen in a thirteen-day 
 strike which called for $168,000 worth of provisions. In 
 many cases, the Labour Union is beaten, the strike called 
 
THE MILITARISM OF MONEY 137 
 
 off, and mortified men ordered back to work on their em- 
 ployers^ terms. 
 
 It is against militarism of this kind that President 
 Wilson has set his face. "Our industries," he declared, 
 "have been under the control of too small a body of men. 
 Business ought to be democratized, and made to see that 
 aristocracy is bad for it, just as it is for governments." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 
 
 ". . . Men can assist Fortune, but they cannot resist her; they 
 may weave her webs, but they cannot break them." — Machiavelli. 
 
 I KNOW no stranger institution than the Lincoln Memorial 
 College doT\ai at Cumberland Gap, in the lonely Appala- 
 chians. Here is a forlorn region of rugged spaces and 
 wretched farms, Avhich a negro would despise ; of one-room 
 huts where illiterate women spin, or barter hog-meat and 
 feathers. Vendettas and feuds are the only break in a life 
 of complete stagnation. There are no waterways in this 
 mountain land, the railways have been careful to avoid it. 
 Yet in these hills dwell Americans of the purest breed 
 descended from pre-Revolution pioneers; a real peasantry, 
 vaguely known to the outside world as the ''poor whites" of 
 Kentucky and Tennessee. They are unobtrusive, however. 
 The poor whites are lost Americans ; clannish and resigned, 
 given over to tribal wars and a diet of " 'possum and pea- 
 nuts, with occasional nips from a moonlight still. ' ' 
 
 From this unlikely stock have come some of America's 
 greatest men. The greatest of all was Abraham Lincoln, 
 who as a boy crouched at a "poor white's" hearth, and by 
 the light of a blazing pine-knot pored upon the Six Books 
 of his salvation. 
 
 When greatness came to the hero, he never forgot those 
 days, nor the bleak abandonment of that life. The poor 
 v/hites had no chance, so Lincoln asked his friend, Oliver 
 Howard, to help, and in this way the University for Lost 
 Americans was born. It has a farm of six hundred acres. 
 All the practical trades of men are here taught, all the 
 
 138 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 139 
 
 useful chores which a woman should know both in the home 
 and out of doors. Students at this College leave the plough- 
 tail, the cow-byre, kitchen, and sty to take their final degree, 
 then they walk home — fifty miles or more — to spread the 
 new light in a darkness which is generations old. 
 
 It is not so long since Dr. Wilson took over the Lincoln 
 hut at riodgenville, Ky. ; it is now a national memorial, 
 enclosed in a granite temple. That occasion was pecul- 
 itirly solemn. The speaker's fervour; the surroundings 
 and historic associations all combined with the war-cloud to 
 produce a deep impression. Gradually the speech veered 
 to the novel demands and duties of today. ''Democracy 
 will be great," the President said, ''and will lift a light for 
 the nations only if we ourselves are great, and carry the 
 lamp high for the guidance of our own feet. We shall 
 not be worthy unless we be in deed and in truth real 
 democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very 
 lives for freedom and justice." The speaker has often 
 shown himself alive to the limitations of the older Ameri- 
 canism, and he now appealed for a larger patriotism on 
 the lines laid down by Aristotle: "The salvation of the 
 State is the business of all its citizens. ' ' 
 
 Let me consider in passing the Americanism of yester- 
 year which rested on individualism and the square deal for 
 aH. It is best defined by the foremost of the intellectuals 
 — Dr. Charles W. Eliot, who for a generation headed 
 the academic world as President of Harvard University. 
 ' ' Americans desire for each citizen, ' ' Dr. Eliot says — ' ' what- 
 ever his birth or station — adequate opportunity to develop 
 the best there is in him, and to win a social position con- 
 sonant with his capacities and character, both innate and 
 acquired. They are quite aware that men are not born 
 equal in these respects; . . . but Americans insist upon 
 the chance to rise and to do the uttermost. Moreover, they 
 long for a mobile and fluent community, in which men and 
 
140 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 women climb or fall quickly — as it were automatically — in 
 accordance with their dower, whether this be strong or 
 weak, virtuous or vicious. They have no objection to 
 genuine leadership in politics or business — or even to dis- 
 tinctions of birth, provided that leadership is based upon 
 superior mental and moral powers, and that birth means 
 inherited force or transmitted culture. And Americans 
 believe that society should give or maintain no privilege, 
 save that which is founded upon capacity and achievement. ' ' 
 This need now merges in new national consciousness, be- 
 gotten by the war. What Emerson called ''the sluggard 
 intellect of this continent" is at last astir, and prepares 
 to meet "the postponed expectation of the world with 
 something better than the exertions of mechanical skill." 
 
 It is true that America has perplexity to face when we 
 haul home the guns and open bloodless fire upon her and 
 one another in the economic field, which is to say the whole 
 earth. ''Make no mistake about Britain," New York is 
 warned b}^ skilled observers, who went round our "shops" 
 after a visit to the red litter and black cities of Northern 
 France. "You wouldn't know her now. Britain is a new 
 commercial and manufacturing Power — alive, alert, and 
 plainly bent on conquest. When the crazy fight is over, 
 Old England will have what she never had before — a race of 
 business-breeders of the scientific sort. Such labour-saving 
 machines as they have now! Such fresh ideas too, and 
 enterprise that's postitively explosive! For the first time 
 you meet high-brow professors in the factory; physicists, 
 specialists, inventors concerned with Death today, but 
 tomorrow with dyes, or drugs, or dolls. 
 
 "So prepare for economic war after the War. Are you 
 ready for the coming tussle in Central and South America ? 
 Have you a clear-cut-polic}^ for Far Eastern trade ? Or was 
 Prosperity just a pipe-dream of the war — one that vanished 
 with the smoke of it, leaving Uncle Sam to bleat and trail 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 141 
 
 blindly behind the band-wagon, like a brindle calf behind 
 a Kansan hay-cart?" Such fears as these have a certain 
 following, but President Wilson takes a different view. 
 ' ' Even when peace comes, ' ' he said, ' ' what instant rivalry is 
 to be feared? Already the killed, wounded, and missing 
 reach a staggering total. The reconstruction of industry 
 and commerce is bound to be attended with confusion and 
 delay. It stands to reason that the first task will be along 
 the lines of repair, to make good the wastage and havoc of 
 war. Then prodigious debts will burden the belligerents. 
 And, aside from interest on money borrowed, each Govern- 
 ment will have to care for millions of cripples, widows, 
 and orphans." There was no reason, therefore, to fear a 
 surcease of America's prosperity. "Not only is there the 
 part we shall be called upon to play in the rebuilding of 
 shattered Europe, but the great markets of Latin-America 
 and the Orient are also calling." And to hasten develop- 
 ments, the Ship Purchase Act was devised, and plans laid 
 before Congress to assist American trade. 
 
 Here we have the President in practical vein, narrowing 
 his vision to the material needs of the hour and trying to 
 lay the ghost of business blues that stalks at every Ameri- 
 can feast. It is certain that the war-boom was no time for 
 Quixotic strokes on the part of ''those who love liberty, 
 justice, and right exalted." For no era had seen the Get- 
 rich-quick craze so reckless and wide. It threw into the 
 shade the mania for speculation which began in 1899 and 
 died down in 1907. Hundreds of new millionaires were 
 made in 1916. The cities Avere bulging with riches that 
 ached to be spent. Small farmers up in Maine (to their own 
 amazement) found themselves "potato princes," with their 
 land rich as Nevada patches where high-grade ore may 
 begin at the grass-roots. 
 
 Now was the heyday of wild-cat stocks and fly-by-night 
 "syndicates for undisclosed purposes." The promoters of 
 
142 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 these withheld the very nature of their venture, and on that 
 account reaped the larger harvest. Even shrewd financiers 
 were badly '' whip-sawed" — to use a Wall Street word — and 
 wrote off serious losses in the spirit of the man who sent off 
 a quarter for a ''fine steel engraving of George Washing- 
 ton," and received in exchange a penny stamp bearing the 
 hero's head! Why is it that Americans are so gullible? 
 Why is the craze for short cuts so common a maul to men 
 who aspire to be rich without any effort ? Because the short 
 cut is possible in this land of unique resources and spec- 
 tacular coups. Nowhere in the world are the ups and 
 downs of fortune so dramatic and swift as here. Consider 
 Dan Sully, the bull operator in cotton, who bossed the 
 markets of New York and New Orleans. He made millions 
 a day — for exactly one week. Then the price broke, and 
 Dan was forced to the wall with debts of $10,000,000. 
 
 Was he downcast at all? Emphatically no. Trade was 
 fairly singing, and the defeated Cotton King sang with 
 it from disappointed depths. He would ''come back," as 
 they say of the beaten pugilist. "Life springs anew," 
 mused Dan sententiously, "from the grave of lost wealth. 
 I'm down, but not out. I'll spring up again at the gong 
 with a new gait, and then you'll see things leap where now 
 they crawl ! " It is the American spirit that bubbles here. 
 Whatever is sent these men "receive in buxomnesse," in the 
 old Chaucerian spirit. They let hazard reign, retaining 
 their composure and the mens aequa amid stormy bliss that 
 changeth as the moon. 
 
 James R. Keene won and lost his all in plunging style — 
 not once, but half a dozen times. The Pacific Coast grew 
 too small for Keene 's operations; he must needs sell out 
 and go East to lock horns with Jay Gould in the Wall Street 
 arena where giants are for ever vying like the Broadway 
 (skyscrapers. 
 
 Wary and grim, the Railway King made ready for the 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 143 
 
 onset. * * I hear Keene ^s coming East in a parlour-car full of 
 money. Well, I'll send him West in a freight-car when the 
 fight is over." The invader did have a bad time at first. 
 He tried to corner the wheat market, and Gould squeezed 
 him badly. Then Keene tackled Russell Sage, but his foes 
 joined forces, inflicting a loss of $8,000,000 in a war of sixty 
 days. But plume-plucked Richard came back in the grand 
 manner. James Keene paid all his debts; then he began 
 to juggle with sugar, tobacco, and railway stocks till his 
 cheque was once more good for $30,000,000. 
 
 There was also "Bet-You-a-Million" Gates, a tragi-comic 
 figure of the old school, now passed from the hectic scene. 
 John W. Gates was a rugged fellow, a man of muzzle- 
 loading maledictions whom Pierpont IMorgan loathed. 
 John had a grudge against the great financier, who denied 
 him a seat on the board of the Steel Trust as a crude, in- 
 decorous person. Gates brooded upon this, and took his 
 revenge by buying the Louisville and Nashville Railroad 
 overnight from the Belmont family, afterwards forcing 
 Morgan to take it off his hands at a profit of $7,500,000. In 
 1902, a whole cohort of these *' Kings" came out of the West, 
 scenting battle and power in Wall Street. There were Tin- 
 Plate Kings, and Kings of W^ire and Sheet-Steel; others 
 again had kingship thrust upon them either by the Mc- 
 Kinley Tariff, or the accident of cheap fuel on the Ap- 
 palachian plateau. 
 
 But men travel by night, as the Moslems say, and 
 Destiny travels towards them. Playing with our daily 
 bread in the frenzied wheat-pit of Chicago, James Patten 
 cleared $750,000 in a few hours. Joe Leiter's corner is an 
 historic event, so is the railroad duel between Edward 
 Harriman and James Hill. This was the strategy which 
 allured America, though her leaders urged upon her the 
 ''competition of virtues" which Burke declared to be the 
 only profit of war. In this land a penniless man may, by a 
 
144 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 clever stroke, make himself master of the game. A striking 
 instance of this was the famous ''postage-stamp bid" which 
 Abe White of Texas made for Grover Cleveland's bonds in 
 the panicky days of '96. The President appealed for gold 
 to replenish the Treasury reserve, and a great idea flushed 
 the red-haired lad from far-off Corsicana. 
 
 White was without a dollar in the world; yet behold 
 him nosing in and out of Wall Street offices to estimate 
 likely tenders for the emergency bonds. I ought to say 
 that Secretary Carlisle exacted no deposit from patriots 
 on this occasion. Young Abe, with characteristic daring, 
 filled up a string of bids totalling $7,000,000, and saut them 
 off to Washington by registered mail at the cost of 1.11. 
 When the allotments were out, a sum of $1,500,000 stood in 
 the unknown name of Abraham White of New York. The 
 issue was a great success. Government credit rose, and 
 the bonds were listed at a premium. But how was Abe to 
 find this huge sum, with no more assets than a sure financial 
 flair, and that felicitas for which the Romans looked in the 
 genius of their generals? Mr. White took his allotment 
 down to Russell Sage, and begged for a boost with a suasive 
 tongue and argument there was no gainsaying. 
 
 The railroad giant was delighted to help. It was, of 
 course, a gilt-edged deal; and as he listened. Sage recalled 
 his own dim days as errand-boy in a grocer's shop up-state. 
 He financed Abe's bid, and the resulting clean-up gave the 
 Texan a handsome start. He had luck, and the multitude 
 followed him for a time. 
 
 It is no use pretending that careers like White's have no 
 influence upon the masses. ' ' Abe can fly without feathers, ' ' 
 his publicity agent said. ''He'll run a shoe-string into a 
 fortune. Look at his Bonanza Gold!" America looked 
 very hard indeed at this ugly venture. To give Abe his 
 due, he returned all moneys when nothing but "frost" was 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 145 
 
 found in those shining sands and veined rocks, which were 
 presently to dazzle the speculators. 
 
 It is of course a pity that wild-cat stocks are advertised 
 at all — especially with such decoys as the Mohawk Mine in 
 Goldfield, Nev. There was a time when Mohawk Mine was 
 quoted at ten cents a share on the New York Curb Market. 
 It soared to $20 when the ore in sight was paying $1,000,000 
 a month. Here, then, was a spring-board for the wild-cats 
 in 1916. They appeared in all the cities with Denver, Col., 
 as the fiercest of them all. For the Mohawk was a great 
 name. There was the Red Top, too, that hopped from 
 eight cents to five dollars. There was Great Bend and Sil- 
 ver Pick; Four Aces, Jumping Jack, and the Stray Dog. 
 America rose at them all as a pike will rise at a spinning- 
 bait. In boom-towns of the Sierras publicity-men were 
 writing ''human interest stories" of sudden wealth. Here, 
 for example, is a mysterious waster who sold his little claim 
 for six figures and lost all in Larry Sullivan's saloon. This 
 prospector owed his laundress $40; he paid the poor soul 
 with a bunch of worthless paper which she jammed into a 
 cigar-box among candle-ends and scraps of string. A few 
 weeks later they were dug out as ten thousand dollars' 
 worth of property. 
 
 These were everyday events, and not concocted stories. 
 One advertising agency spent $1,000,000 in newspaper ad- 
 vertising. Companies were floated in thousands, but not 
 one of them made good. And some idea of the speculative 
 spirit can be formed from that fact that this one boom 
 inflicted a loss of $200,000,000 on the credulous American 
 public. That Nevada rush had all the features of old-time 
 Western life, and boomers made the most of it in a liter- 
 ary way. There were desert tents with snowy ranges in 
 the background. Here was the tin bank with gay ruffians 
 cashing in on the strength of sensational daily strikes. 
 
146 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Great sums were lost and won in the gaming- joints, where 
 faro and roulette went on all through the drunken night. 
 Bad men held up the mule-teams, and stole ore that showed 
 ''four noughts to the ton." 
 
 Pneumonia and poor food filled a God-forsaken ceme- 
 tery ; some of the camps were thirty miles from any water, 
 and over a hundred from the railway. No timber was 
 available for the mines, fo crown all, there was no per- 
 manency in the patchy ores, and the boom collapsed at 
 last in dismay and general wrath. 
 
 At every turn Americans are tempted by the science of 
 investment, which Russell Sage used to say was "the most 
 profound and complicated of them all." To make money 
 quickly is an American obsession; one turned to rich 
 account by swarms of sharks whose array of argument and 
 appeal must rouse the student's admiration. Here again 
 State barriers and conflicting laws intervene to snatch a 
 rascal from the ball and chain of felony. The cheats had 
 an unexampled harvest in the flush time of 1916-17. But 
 there were fashions in the crooked game. Thus the old 
 bucket-shop disappeared; it was killed by crusaders of 
 the Stock Exchange and the Board of Trade. Another 
 factor was the refusal of service by the telegraph and 
 telephone companies. Bonanzas in cotton, and land- 
 irrigation schemes; fake insurance and the bold "syndicate 
 of secret process" — these also were missing. But the oil- 
 well and the mine are perennial lures, tricked out with 
 allusion to Rockefeller and Senator Clark, the Montana 
 copper-king and patron of art, whose Fifth Avenue man- 
 sion so bristled with bronze that he set up a foundry of 
 his own in West Sixteenth Street. 
 
 The motor-boom bred hundreds of fly-by-night con- 
 cerns, run by veterans from the backyards of finance — 
 often from the State gaols. One of these sharks, with 
 handsome offices in eight cities, was recently raided by the 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 147 
 
 Federal Government for using the mails with intent to 
 defraud. In ten months he had wrung over five million 
 dollars from every known class. His literature bore the 
 stamp of genius; his free book — The Open Gate — would 
 have opened the purse of Hetty Green herself. 
 
 In another brochure, a handsome lad was seen haunted 
 and dunned by outstretched hands — crude hands of trades- 
 men, dainty palms of women, expressive enough, but im- 
 perious or full of greed. '' Where's the Money Coming 
 From?" was the arrestive legend. "There's more due to 
 you out of Life," the harassed one was told. "Get it — 
 Get the Money, the repose and success which you ought to 
 have." 
 
 This is a diverting subject. You may follow it through 
 the bronze doors of the Stock Exchange in Broad Street, 
 a place of clanging confusion and maniac cries. Member- 
 ship here is so sought after, that $75,000 has been paid for 
 a seat. I shall not follow the financial brain-storms of this 
 money-mart, nor the records of panic and boom, with at- 
 tendant scenes of ridiculous frenzy. However, the most 
 recent deserves passing mention, for it preceded the famous 
 peace Note of President Wilson and quite demoralized 
 the Exchange. 
 
 People who were rich on paper only — plungers in "war- 
 brides" and munition stocks — saw their profit vanish as 
 they stared; all manner of people, from the scrub-lady 
 of the Ritz-Carlton to ranchers of the Western plains. 
 "Funny thing," remarked the moralist of the coloured 
 supplement, "but the moment the millennium bobs up — 
 bang goes the bottom out of our stocks!" 
 
 I shall not dwell upon the scenes of the Curb Market at 
 Wall and Broad Streets; they would read like a visit to 
 Bedlam — though the annual business done in this roped 
 enclosure exceeds a hundred million dollars. "The Curb" 
 is a fantastic pandemonium of hardy stalwarts, whose garb 
 
148 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 varies with the season. For this arena is no place for 
 invalids. Heavy rains find the brokers in sou 'westers, oil- 
 skins, and rubber boots. An August heat-wave brings them 
 out in shirt-waist garb; and in the zero blizzard a chorus 
 in Arctic furs serenades the luxurious towers all round 
 with, ''In the Good Old Summer Time!'' 
 
 Communication between the offices and these men is 
 very queer to watch. Excited figures lean from the sky- 
 scrapers and shower pellets of paper, or even weighted 
 notes, which sportsmen below catch before any one is hurt 
 or killed by them. There are secret codes of gesticulation 
 with the swift commerce of deaf-mutes. In all this mad- 
 ness, however, is money method on sound lines; and the 
 Dean of the Curb presides with eloquent fingers and a 
 megaphone of heaven 's own reach. 
 
 The dollar-hunt has lost some of its zest now that "big" 
 Americans have left it and given themselves to that public 
 service for which President Wilson has so often appealed. 
 Already there are signs of change, though they are not demo- 
 cratic signs. Afar off in California a thinker like Professor 
 Ide Wheeler, of the State University, regrets the grouping 
 of new "castes" and classes. At the other side of the 
 continent a typical magnate like Charles M. Schwab would 
 like to see an American "aristocracy": "The men who 
 have succeeded — who have helped to build up the countrj^, 
 and now contribute to the efficiency and well-being of 
 their fellows." There is less blatant vying of late years 
 among the "cottagers" of Newport and Lenox. Mere dis- 
 play in the House of Have is voted vulgar now, whether in 
 yachts or racehorses, or lavish entertainments with details 
 priced for the reporters — the frocks and jewels, the flowers 
 and food and wines, even the massed money represented 
 round the festal board in the persons of famous men. 
 
 One is surprised to pick up in salons of the great a sort 
 of American peerage, with pedigree tables set out with 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 149 
 
 regal circumstance, beginning with the Astors and the Van- 
 derbilts. There follow the Goulds and Rockefellers, the 
 Morgans, Mackays, Havemeyers, Fields, Lorillards, Ar- 
 mours, Harrimans, Du Fonts, Belmonts, Whitneys, Leiters, 
 and Goelets. Mrs. Astor queened it in her day, calling the 
 famous Four Hundred from the social mass as the cream 
 of America's money-power. Mr. George W. Perkins set 
 an example of civic spirit; the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan 
 spent nearly forty million dollars in looting Europe of its 
 art treasures for the enrichment of the United States. And 
 in a later day we find Mr. Benjamin Altman, the Fifth 
 Avenue draper, bidding seventy thousand dollars at 
 Christie's for a Hoppner portrait of the Lady Louisa Man- 
 ners. 
 
 The Rembrandts of Havemeyer, the Sugar King, are the 
 envy of connoisseurs. So are the Pompeian bronzes which 
 Mr. John Wanamaker gave to the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania. For the portrait of Pietro Aretino by Titian, Mr. 
 H. C. Frick paid $100,000. Well may the Old World fear 
 the American millionaire, when he seeks such treasures with 
 the best advice in Paris and London to guide saleroom bids 
 which are not to be denied. Italy had to pass special laws 
 to prevent her noble but faded families from parting with 
 heirlooms and works of art. Mr. Pierpont Morgan restored 
 to the cathedral of Ascoli its famous Cope, because he found 
 it had been stolen for sale to the "mad American" who was 
 in Rome with millions of lire to fling away for such things. 
 When the harassed banker returned to the Grand Hotel, 
 he found six thousand letters from people offering treasures 
 of all sorts, from a Cellini dish to a Delia Robbia plaque 
 built into ancestral walls. 
 
 This is an acquired taste in America, yet the rough 
 diamond seeks it — the social climber and men of mushroom 
 wealth who follow a leader with blind faith, and pay great 
 prices for unblushing fakes. 
 
150 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 No collector can escape these things : witness the Moabite 
 pottery which the faker, Shapira, foisted upon the German 
 Emperor. But no nation in the world buys bogus works 
 of art on the American scale. The subject has long de- 
 lighted the comic artists of New York, who pictured the 
 ' ' well-upholstered plute ' ' in his marble gallery on Madison 
 Avenue, staring at a Cinquecento pax or a monstrous god- 
 dess "by Rubens" . . . ''Why had the Old Masters no 
 pretty girls among their acquaintance?" Yet there is hope 
 for the plute who feels the bleakness of money, and regrets 
 a life in which *' Red-lined accounts were richer than the 
 songs of Grecian years." There are many such converts 
 in the United States today, where divine things are not 
 held lightly, despite all appearance to the contrary. 
 
 Many of these money-kings have had none but the "fe- 
 rocious education" wiiich Louis Philippe bewailed, with 
 physical torment too, a hard bed and never-ending battle 
 with toilsome tasks. The city child thinks in terms of 
 money, turning his spare time into dollars with precocious 
 flair. It is the money standard which faces the home- 
 seeker in the wilds when he presents his entry-claim at the 
 Pecieral Land Office — say, in the rolling foothills of the 
 Flathead Indian Reservation, which was opened to white 
 settlers in 1910. Here is cut-over land disfigured with 
 tree-stumps which must be blasted out with a low-freezing 
 explosive in cold or wet weather. "The ground covered 
 by a single stump," the State mentor tells the pioneer, 
 * ' will grow from twenty-live to fifty cents ' worth of food in 
 a year. You may take it that an acre of a hundred stumps 
 will produce $50 worth of a crop after clearing. So why 
 leave these dollars under the stumps? Why pay taxes 
 upon stump-land when the whole world cries out for Amer- 
 ican farm-stuff?" 
 
 So the speed-up is introduced to this jungle of yesterday. 
 Mother Earth must now produce; she is encouraged and 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 151 
 
 bribed and trained, her output watched and methods im- 
 proved precisely as with the human element in Detroit 
 shops. Most of the States send country advisers round 
 on regular tours of counsel and inspection. These men 
 are local Ministers of Agriculture, with social and uplift 
 missions as a sympathetic side-line. The farm expert 
 may make three hundred calls in a summer. He draws 
 maps of the lields, showing drainage, fertility, and fitness 
 for this crop or that. In passing he notes the barns and 
 houses; the village school, the social and economic con 
 ditions of the community. Then he meets the folks at a 
 peach and oyster supper, and in a hearty talk impresses all 
 with cheery science and assurance of bumper yields — if 
 his guidance be followed intelligently. 
 
 In this way pioneers are taught to know soil-types at 
 sight, as well as insect pests and remedies for their ex- 
 termination. Men learn how to test seeds and rotate the 
 crops; also the value of rock phosphate and limestone. 
 Social intercourse, promoted by that visiting genius from 
 the world beyond, develops a spirit of co-operation in buy- 
 ing and selling to the advantage of all. Yet these rural 
 sections need more than money, as Mr. Carl Vrooman testi- 
 fies; he is Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in Washing- 
 ton. **I know farmers, '^ Mr. Vrooman says, ''who have 
 broad fields, great herds, huge barns, and long bank ac- 
 counts, yet their success ends abruptly there. They live 
 dull, narrow, purposeless lives, devoid of all aspiration, 
 happiness, or public spirit. The wealth of such men is 
 like much of the fertility in our soil; it is not available. 
 These farmers need instruction in the art of living just as 
 their less skilful neighbours do in the art of growing and 
 marketing their crops. For, after all, it is only the wealth 
 we dominate and dedicate to some fine purpose that we can 
 be said actually to possess. ' ' 
 
 What I may call the new America has no quarrel with 
 
152 AMEKICA'S DAY 
 
 money-making, but does seek to endue it with high vision 
 and aims. Yet Success remains an absorbing game in the 
 United States: its votary is too often a hermit plotter, "as 
 unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop. ' ' as Byron said of 
 himself. This quest of profit is a peculiar peonage. It 
 begins in childhood: it matures in the hard miui of tabloid 
 speech, whose real couiidaut is the cyliuder of iui office 
 dictaphone. 
 
 Now come with me into the prairie spaces, and watch the 
 American boy coining his wits into gold. Hei*e is Charles, 
 aged thirteen, with a nice little pony of his own and $40 
 in the bank besides. His lii*st capital was a dying piglet 
 with a bi\">ken back, pi*esented by his father as a liopeless 
 case. But Crip pulled through and lived, fed by his young 
 master with pitiful care. Crip was soon sold for $4, and 
 the money invested in other piglets with equally slender 
 prospects of life: for Charles was now become an expert. 
 He was constantly marketing porkers, and reinvested at last 
 in sheep, with which he had great luck. 
 
 "I saveii my pennies and nickels till I was six." the suc- 
 cessful man will tell you in a reminiscent mood. ' * Then I 
 had ten dollars. With that I bought a Jei-sey calf, earning 
 money for its keep till it became a cow, and I was able to 
 sell milk, prouder than any farmer." 
 
 The girls make and sell college tlags to help their own 
 education. A widow with sick children and a mortgage 
 of $500 on her frame house will turn her last few cents into 
 the nucleus of a little fortune. She becomes a "cake archi- 
 tect." Thousands of women have found "the cook-stove 
 route to Success": Mrs. Ellen Kidd of Richmond, Va., with 
 her pin-money pickles; Miss Mary Laverty, with canned 
 and jellied fruits, now worth $7000 a year: Mrs. L. A. 
 Schaaft, who sells marmalade by the car-load in every city 
 of America. Man, wom^m, or child, these people will not 
 be kept down, whatever disability may hamper them. Con- 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 153 
 
 sider the case of F. R. Bigler, who as a railway servant lost 
 his right arm below the elbow and his left foot above the 
 ankle. *'I was up against it," this gallant fellow owned to 
 me in Kansas City, Mo. ''But I had to forget the word 
 * can't/ What's more, I slid past 'I Avill' and froze on to 
 *I must,' whilst learning to write with my left hand. 
 
 "On leaving the hospital I walked miles after a sales- 
 man's job, with a 'hot box' in the new joint of my artificial 
 leg. And a dandy salesman I became! When I called, I 
 gingered up the 'Can't-See-You's' and 'Nothun' Doin's,' 
 till they gave me the glad hand as 'Expecting-You's' and 
 'Dee-lighted You've Come!' Mind, I've broken no sky- 
 lights on my way to the top, but all the same I 'm comfort- 
 ably fixed." 
 
 The American spirit shines bravely here. It is a spirit 
 of many facets, with an ethical code which, it must be 
 owned, is lenient to "the 'cute trick that comes off." 
 Many a time have I heard the late Edward Ilarriman un- 
 ravel the tangled skein of American business with a sar- 
 castic smile. He would tell of a State Legislature that 
 blocked his plans. "These people are crooks," he would 
 say, calmly; "and I can buy them." This frail little man 
 was lord of fifty thousand miles of railroad and controlled 
 a more powerful oligarchy than ever sat in Washington. A 
 deep trader in the wash of Wall Street wars, Ilarriman 
 was absorbed and cool at the desk, though fidgety and 
 nervous in his private life. The ambit of his schemes over- 
 leaped the United States ; he pegged out Mexico and China 
 in enormous claims. It was strange, indeed, to hear this 
 man dissect human nature and American graft, with all 
 the frigid science and detachment which we associate with 
 Guicciardini and Machiavelli. To the hot-headed Roose- 
 velt (as President) this meteoric genius was "an undesir- 
 able citizen." But he was also a great American, carr^^ing 
 craft and force with him as Ulysses did the winds. 
 
1.>I AMEKICA'S PAY 
 
 Huntington. Harriman. and Hill — liere aro three master- 
 builders who ''found desert and left a gaixleu*' in that 
 mighty West where they earved out a group of the wealthi- 
 est States in the world, and shapeil with ste^l rails the 
 destin^- of tive-and-twenty million ptx»ple. As companions 
 these titans are far more interesting than their Eun>pean 
 ov^mpeers. They ma\* oare no more for ixK?try and art than 
 Darwin did ; they are probably- eaters and hunters of facts, 
 who 
 
 ^''Contemplate the wisdom of the past. 
 And sw the splMtdid thing weVe made of it at last.** 
 
 But their whole life is in their work. Big deals are to 
 them a delectation, just as painting was to Veronese; his 
 water-colours to T\imer, and to Gautier and Flaubert the 
 magic of carven words and jewelled lines. 
 
 Sir Rivers Wilson once travelled West with James Hilh 
 and for two hours sat with the statesman-strategist in his 
 private car. soaking in statistics and economics of the 
 prairie and its population. '*! was mentall\' prostrate/' 
 the Englishman owns, ''I left him at last with the excuse 
 that I had letters to write, but reall\- in order to sleep otf 
 the debauch ! An hour later I was awakened by a knock on 
 m\- door. It Avas Hill's secretary, with four foolscap sheets 
 packed with tigures, and commencing: 'Dear Sir Rivers, — 
 Pursuant to our discourse. ...'*' So thought and action 
 were ine:stinguishable tires ! James Hill saw with sleeping 
 eyes, and played the game in dreams by night as well as 
 da^\ 
 
 To sit with a group of these men on the deck of a yacht in 
 the Sound, or in the lounge of the Poinciana at Palm Beach 
 is to realize that truth is stranger than any fiction in the 
 matter of human experience and strife. The big fellows 
 relax and expand on these occasions: they grow episodic 
 and discursive, searching the detritus of j-ears and recalling 
 tiiiies with a tinge of regret in their mirth. Thus '*A'* left 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 155 
 
 a poor man's camp in Arizona, and was soon digging out 
 ''gold bricks as big as an Iowa barn that assayed twenty 
 dollars to the ounce. '^ As a lad, "B" was in a copper 
 boom on the El Paso and South- Western, a savage country 
 close to the Mexican border. "C" was of the ancien 
 noblesse of New York, with no rough corners in his career. 
 He came of a family that waxed great as realty values 
 grew in the most chaotic of cities. The C's had a pedigree 
 that went back to 1801, when hay was mown in Astor Place. 
 
 *'D-' was once the slave of a cross-roads store in south- 
 west Kansas, where railways were unknown, and broom- 
 corn and milo-maize stretched in leagues to a brassy 
 horizon. Here "D" doled crackers and tea to old-timers. 
 He chewed calico, too, and spat balls of it on the counter 
 before critical ladies to prove that the colours would not 
 run. As a child of eleven " E " ran errands for the men in 
 the Cambria steel-plant at Johnstown, Pa. At thirty-eight 
 he was a millionaire. One night "E" met ten of his col- 
 leagues in the Stotesbury mansion in Philadelphia, where 
 he sold Cambria to the Midvale people for $72,900,000. 
 
 "F" is the head of a mail-order concern whose sales 
 amount to $140,000,000 a year. Of this immense traffic, 
 not one dollar's w^orth is sold over the counter ; it is purely a 
 postal business, with catalogues and lists of which 40/300,000 
 copies were issued last year. This idea was due to a boy 
 station-agent in the ^linnesota wilds. He sold cheap 
 watches through the mails, and his advertising had an 
 irresistible pull. Today "F" retails every known article 
 from a button to a bungalow ; for wooden houses in sections 
 are commonly ordered through the post in the United 
 States. 
 
 "Your staunch Aladdin home" (the advertisement tells 
 you) "comes to you in a sealed box car, complete even to 
 the key of the front door. All is ready for the carpenter to 
 put up, with wide porch, a big parlour and dining-room; 
 
156 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 three bedrooms, a work-saving kitchen, a bath and the 
 latest hygienic closets. The price is $687. ' ' These are the 
 homes which the Western cyclone so easily whisks away, 
 often with serious loss of life. They can also be jacked up 
 and removed on wheels by a team of horses — or by a motor- 
 car which is photographed in the act of trailing a mansion 
 in its wake. Eor this will be a double-edged advertisement. 
 
 I must not forget "G" in my group of magnates; he is 
 the Timber King, perhaps the most distinctive of them 
 all. His hosts of lumbermen in the Pacific North-West are 
 turning American forests into cash with incredible speed. 
 The}^ sleep under pines that were towers of green when 
 Columbus fell on his knees and kissed the earth of a New 
 World. ' ' G " is something of a recluse, with a silent empire 
 of his own in the remote States of Oregon and Washington. 
 
 Here begins at dawn the song of the ax and hammer and 
 saw; the crop of centuries is harvested with an ardour and 
 method which has lately alarmed the Federal Government. 
 '*We are the champion wasters of the earth," Secretary of 
 Commerce Oldfield told the Philadelphia Board of Trade. 
 And he gave amazing instances, including the reckless 
 havoc wrought by squatocrats of the timber lands, before 
 whom noble forests melted away into a dismal tangle of 
 sumach and blackberries. 
 
 I have spoken of ethical codes peculiar to men who have 
 come to the solstice of honour and power. How these codes 
 have changed one realizes as ' ' H, " the tram-and-train lord 
 of New York, recalls the manoeuvres of Belmont and 
 Ryan, of Gould and Sage and Whitney. Historians of the 
 City try to probe the tangled mergers and pools of those 
 troublous times; the perfidious deals which considered 
 everything but the common people. ''The story of our 
 street railways," says a New York authority, "is one of 
 franchises stolen from the public. Of bribeiy and the 
 
ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS 157 
 
 corruption of officials; of debauchery in the Courts of 
 Justice, of stock manipulation and the deliberate wrecking 
 of rival roads, -whereby hearts were broken and the innocent 
 involved in direst ruin. A classic instance was the Thirty- 
 Fourth Street tramway, which showed costs of $6,472,287 
 per mile, whereas the real cost was only $150,000. The 
 sum charged for steel rails alone would have laid the whole 
 system with solid silver bars weighing forty-seven pounds 
 to the yard." 
 
 That era passed with the power of Tammany Hall. And 
 today the Federal Government, whilst averse from undue 
 interference — "Government by suspicion," as the President 
 calls it — is determined to attack business of the "loaded- 
 dice" variety: the description is again Dr. Wilson's own. 
 Business of that kind is often allied with shady politics; 
 and here an experience of the great Edison lends point. 
 Apropos his first patent was a machine to record votes, and 
 this he took to Washington, and showed to veterans in the 
 Capitol lobby. 
 
 "It's mighty ingenious," one of these conceded — "an 
 invention you couldn't monkey with if you tried. And 
 that's just the trouble, me lad. If all things here were 
 on the square, and no man tried to crook us, — why this 
 invention would be a dandy find. As it is, it's useless." 
 The crestfallen inventor asked, "Why?" 
 
 "Because we must leave a loophole," he was told, "a 
 chance to block the fellow who seeks to railroad through 
 Congress a little pork-barrel of his own. So you see, this 
 machine is the last thing we Avant. Mind, it's a bright 
 notion, all right for the Utopian State, but there's no ideal- 
 ism here — only just politics. So take the damned thing 
 away ! ' ' 
 
 Mr. Edison owns that the lesson "broke him all up." 
 He profited by it, however, and on the way home vowed that 
 
158 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 never again would he waste time and brains over an article 
 which would not sell. There is much "Americanism" in 
 both sides of this story. 
 
 With these dubious ethics we find a puritanical spirit in 
 the people at large. This paradox is seen in the career of 
 Elihu Root, who is one of the ablest of American states- 
 men. Mr. Root might have been Republican candidate for 
 President, only the White House is for ever barred to him 
 in public estimation. The counts against him are twofold: 
 His defence of Boss Tweed before Judge Noah Davis, and 
 his activity as leading counsel for the Metropolitan Street 
 Railway — the most reckless of all the old-time traction 
 gambles. William Tweed was the hugest embezzler whom 
 even Tammany has known. He looted New York on a 
 colossal scale; and the lawyer who defended him was re- 
 buked by the Judge after the notorious boss was convicted. 
 ' ' Good faith to a client, ' ' came from the Bench to Mr. Root, 
 *'can never justify or require bad faith to one's conscience. 
 It is well to earn fame as an advocate ; it is still better to be 
 known as an honest man. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 
 
 President Wilson locates the real wealth of America in 
 ''our great, flowering acres," and quite rightly points to 
 the farm as the greatest asset of all. In 1916, although 
 the crops were poor, agricultural products realized the 
 vast sum of $13,419,000,000. High prices made up for a 
 diminished yield, and the following season, in response to 
 Presidential appeals, the area under cultivation was 
 enormously increased. The city American knows little 
 about rural conditions. He is in the main an agrophobe, 
 and life in the country is to him inconceivable. Thus Rube, 
 the farmer, looms as a comic creature, whose ways are 
 drolly shown in coloured supplements of the Sunday papers. 
 He is scarcely real — a shadowy wraith, with scientific 
 guardians in Washington who teach him to tickle the soil 
 and so drown America with plenty. 
 
 Against this may be set the fact that Rube is leaving the 
 land for the streets of "white light," and the big industrial 
 centres ; here he does less work and earns much more money. 
 This movement is remarked in all nations, but I cannot 
 stay to comment upon it. Even Germany is alarmed by a 
 flight from the land which has reduced her rural population 
 from 63.4 per cent, in 1871 to barely 39 per cent, today. 
 But that Rube, the American rustic, should forsake his 
 garden came as a real shock to the city folk. He was 
 thought to be a pampered person, turning over wads of 
 wealth with a pitchfork, and keeping old age at bay in 
 the great outdoors. Thirty dollars hung from his fig-tree. 
 A Texan acre gave him a whole bale of cotton, or cauliflow- 
 
 159 
 
160 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ers to the value of $900 where there was a well to wet the 
 top. So at any rate the city understood. 
 
 What was the hog but a prowling dividend? The hen 
 was worth $9,000,000 to Kansas alone. As for the goat, 
 he cropped the worthless hillside and made grass-land out 
 of it in the process. He raised his own kids, boarding 
 them on brush and weeds, with much consideration for the 
 farmer. Experts of the comic supplement showed the goat 
 browsing on bits of paper and tin cans. He was said to 
 weed the garden, and repair the fences for the feeble 
 farmer who looked to Congress instead of to manure and 
 the sweat of his own face. . . . 
 
 So the homeseeker of the plains was now bound for 
 Broadway, and the intensive farming of human beings! 
 Not alone from the Dakota Bad-Lands was he trekking, 
 or the Oregon sage, but from that tropic paradise of the 
 poor man — palmy, piney Florida, surely the fairest State 
 in all the sisterhood of commonwealths ? Florida was below 
 the frost-line, the city man argued. It was an open-air 
 hothouse of sugar-cane and citrus groves, where no man 
 worked save for exercise and to feed the less fortunate 
 Northern people. 
 
 With little in his pocket but rectangular holes, the 
 merest hobo could buy orange land down here, and rich 
 muck soil such as old Nile never made in its overflowing. 
 For the terms of the agent were : " A dollar an acre do^^Ti — 
 that's all! a dollar an acre a month — that's easy." 
 Florida's name evoked a Pindaric Elysian for the pure in 
 heart. "A Garden of Eden without snakes," as the land- 
 boomer called it feelingly — ''A Riviera without swells." 
 Here the lotus-eater shot big game in his back-yard, and 
 hauled out of the sparkling Gulf red snapper, ponipano, 
 and the mighty Jew-fish of four hundred pounds. 
 
 Why, then, was Rube leaving the lush regions, and head- 
 ing for Manhattan and the skyscrapers ? The official reply 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 161 
 
 surprised America. It was because of the drear serfdom of 
 the farmer's lot; because of a host of foes beyond the 
 scope aud science of the Federal Entomologist in Washing- 
 ton. True, the Bureaux showed Rube how to fight the 
 chinch-bug and the army worm ; the weevil that spoiled his 
 cotton-bolls, the tick that tormented cattle and pierced their 
 hides to the farmer's loss. But human pests preyed also 
 upon Rube : usurer, the big railroads, and a gang of com- 
 mercial brigands who posed as middlemen and absorbed 
 nearly all his profits. "Our normal life is on the land," 
 says Henry Ford, speaking for America in the mass. 
 Ford's earliest dream was the cheap farm tractor, with 
 fuel distilled from the growing crops and not bought from 
 the greedy Standard Oil. "The mechanical tractor will 
 replace the horse and all draft cattle; it will do all the 
 heav}^ work and make our farmer independent of short-haul 
 freight rates. As things are, more than fifty per cent, is 
 added to the consumer's cost after the crops are grown!" 
 
 "Efficiency in production comes first," this typical Amer- 
 ican pursues. ' ' But not less important to Rube is the mat- 
 ter of handling, distributing, and marketing his stuff. Up 
 to now the trusts have cheated our farmer. The cost of 
 transport hampered him, the banks have soaked him an 
 awful price for loans. I want to do away with all this. I'd 
 like Rube to stay on the farm, for he's better fixed now than 
 ever he was. The cheap car keeps him in touch with the 
 outer world. He can hitch his telephone to the barbed 
 wire fence ; he has the phonograph, the moving pictures, and 
 electric aids. Still, when all's said, our farmers do need a 
 missionary government and influential friends in Con- 
 gress." They have a staunch friend in President Wilson, 
 whose Good Roads Bill and Cotton Futures Act, the Office 
 of ^larkets and Rural Credits Bill, are all sound measures 
 in the agricultural revolution which began with the greatest 
 of wars. 
 
162 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 America learned from her Government that Rube had 
 been neglected. He was a kind of mujik, it seemed, whose 
 very existence the intelligentsia of the East ignored, until 
 high food prices brought him, together with his crops and 
 ' ' critters, " on to the front page of the New York papers. 
 
 But who is Rube? Whence comes the most uinnartial 
 of all Americans, whose attitude to war is summed in the 
 Chinese maxim: ''We do not make swords of our best 
 iron, nor soldiers of our favourite sons"? Rube is often 
 enough an alien — a German, a Finn or a Swede, at his 
 ease on the early homestead claim, which may be twenty 
 miles off the rail in a primeval wilderness of dark pines 
 and tamarack and fir. Rube is the landless man on the 
 manless land; he squats with his women upon wild sod 
 soil, where steam outfits are breaking a tliousand acres a 
 day. I saw Rube in the primitive stage at a dry-farm 
 meeting of Poles on the prairie of Eastern Colorado. Here 
 thirty families sat down to a basket dinner, with stack- 
 covers upheld with boards to keep off a sun-blaze which 
 imposed silence upon us all. There was not a tree to be 
 seen as tired eyes swept a breathless horizon. This is how 
 townships begin. 
 
 The next scene is a group of wooden shacks and sod- 
 houses, with buffalo grass for lawns. Water must be hauled 
 two miles; but the women are brave, and take their turn as 
 path-finders, ploughmen and builders. Even so. Rube is a 
 good American ; he may even be a real American migrating 
 from another State. In any case, there is keen competition 
 to get him. Virginia makes an official bid. So do the rail- 
 roads and land-agents of the South a:;d South-West, going 
 out by way of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas ; the semi-arid 
 regions and the Pacific Coast — then back East through the 
 Rocky Mountain States: Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. 
 ThjQ rural homeseeker is really an immigrant of a secondary 
 type. He is one of the floating mass that studies, with a 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 163 
 
 view to betterment, the literature issued by State agencies, 
 as well as by realty-men of all grades. 
 
 Thus the intense cold of ^lichigan may prove too much 
 for th^ Italian berry-grower. He is therefore attracted to 
 the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, where the Reclamation 
 Service have, by irrigation, made apricot orchards out of a 
 desert of cactus and sand. On the other hand, a Dane or a 
 native American may be driven from Arizona by the fierce 
 heat; and he now surveys all America's range for 'a more 
 temperate clime. There is constant migration of this kind ; 
 and to lure the settler on to the land is the special work of 
 railway Industrial Departments charged with the develop- 
 ment of new territory. With the rhapsodic boomer-sales- 
 man who buys part of "Section 32 — Township 12 — Range 
 14,'^ I shall deal in more detail, as he deserves. For the 
 land-boomer is a genius, as well as the most amusing rascal 
 in America; he buys by the mile and dreams of selling by 
 the square foot. 
 
 Booklets and maps, folders, pamphlets, and "letters of 
 experience'' — these are turned out by the ton. Written 
 with skill and fervour, they are illustrated with photographs 
 of a conventional type. Here, for example, is an early 
 pioneer beside a crude hut on the roughest of land. On 
 the opposite page is the same man assisting a large wife 
 (and the girls) into a swell car outside a colonial mansion. 
 He has made good in a few years. In the background a 
 couple of whirling threshers are at work; and farm hands 
 are driving buggies through oceanic crops, from which 
 emerge only the men^s heads and those of the horses. A 
 glance at this farm literature is worth while, for it reveals 
 an important phase of America's materialism. Nature and 
 man's labour are here translated into dollars and cents; the 
 versions varying from sober tables and reports to soaring 
 raptures over "the golden pay-dirt which 3^ou handle with 
 a hoe." 
 
164 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 Virginia makes a dignified appeal, as befits the i\rother 
 of States. Settlers are shown the tobacco-fields, and 
 tasselled maize which is fourteen feet high. Orchard 
 ledgers of Waynesboro are produced to show how each tree 
 filled ten boxes, at $10 a box, with ''that sun-kist pippin 
 which we call the Young Man's Hope." Then come the tes- 
 timonials. Here is a doctor from California, disappointed 
 by coastal fogs and the heat of inland valleys. He had 
 lived in many States, and was now vowed to Virginia, 
 where niggers knew their place and malaria and mosquitoes 
 were alike unknown. 
 
 There was also the man from Iowa, to whom northern 
 blizzards and cj^clones were now but an evil dream. He 
 was today the Water-melon King, filling standard cars 
 on the railway with Eden Gems of forty pounds apiece, 
 grown on deep phases of the Norfolk loam. These migrant 
 settlers are met by local agents whose strident offers call 
 from the official booklets. *'The chance has come to You 
 — it will not come to your children." . . . "Be Careful!" 
 cries the Homeseeker's Friend. "You may encounter a 
 crook at the depot, and of course he has a big bargain 
 just to toll you off. If he says he's the agent, and won't 
 let you see the seller, then it's time you sat up and looked 
 for horns and a tail!" The honest one tries to put this 
 warning into German, Mag^^ar, and Italian. "Y^ou are my 
 guests, gentlemen," says he with the heau geste. "Your 
 board and livery will cost you nothing on the show-me 
 trip." 
 
 As we go South and West the exuberance of the boomer 
 rises. "It's mighty fine to be king of your own farm," 
 saj's North Carolina, where deed restrictions ' ' will for ever 
 prevent the land from passing to a negro": this clause is 
 never waived. "It's grand to know the future without 
 any fears, and that the man of fifty-five — the age of city 
 failure — is here at his best; his experience ripe, his judg- 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 165 
 
 ment good, with no lime in his bones — thanks to God's 
 sweet Southern air." . . . *'How can any reader," a sud- 
 den challenge rings, ''with red blood in his veins, scan the 
 leaping stories set down here, and not feel fired in the same 
 way? So fill up the contract-form on the last page — it is 
 your Declaration of Independence." Here is a Chadbourn 
 farmer who caxiie in a prairie schooner from Indiana after a 
 voyage of six weeks and five days. He was a cripple, with 
 an invalid wife and eight children — "as forlorn a family as 
 ever sought the sun in this blessed garden spot, where 
 merely to breathe is to drink Ambition in camel-draughts. ' ' 
 
 That heroic cripple cleared the first three acres on his 
 knees, and was soon raising wheat at forty-five bushels to 
 the acre. "But he said 'Yes,' " the earnest agent hammers 
 at waverers. "He grasped the offer, as the city man may, 
 leaving all the turmoil — the battering, bruising strife of 
 office and streets. Come where the tomato ripens in mid- 
 May. Come where the hog only dies when he goes to the 
 smoke-house, after a riot in peanut fields where the 40-bushel 
 crop merges mystically into pork at four hundred pounds 
 to the acre." 
 
 Kansas, the core of the continent, raises an unblushing 
 pa^an in her own praise. The Sunflower State is not the 
 treeless, sand-swept, cyclonic barren of city imagining, but 
 a granary "where the farmer has so much corn that he 
 can't find his way home !" There were no white men here 
 in 1850. The Indian hunted the buffalo ; American soldiers 
 hunted the Indian ; all the plagues of Egypt settled on the 
 soldier until the name of Kansas became a lurid reproach. 
 All that has passed, and today the State has nearly two mil- 
 lion people who have done wonders to plough the Great 
 American Desert off the map. 
 
 In the semi-arid regions of the West, vast areas are now 
 "brought under the ditch" by the U. S. Reclamation 
 Service. And by the Carey Act, agreements are made with 
 
166 AMEBIC A 'S DAY 
 
 the Federal Government for the development and sale of 
 desert lands — ''not exceeding a million acres in any one 
 State." Irrigated farms are sold with water-rights from a 
 system of canals, like that of the Arkansas Valley of Col- 
 orado, which cost $2,000,000. The result is very striking. 
 Cherry-orchards here make $500 an acre. Senator Crow- 
 ley 's little fruit-farm of ninety acres at Rocky Ford cleared 
 $20,000 in a single season. 
 
 But the boom State — the State of mushroom cities and 
 fortunes — is surely Oklahoma, which was long ago given to 
 the red man as a home ' ' so long as the grass grows and the 
 water runs.'^ It was President Jackson who signed this 
 domestic scrap of paper. But the Cherokees refused to 
 budge beyond the Mississippi. The Seminoles went on the 
 warpath for years; but at last the Five Civilized Tribes 
 were settled in Oklahoma. Not for long, however. One 
 April day in '89 an army of whites, 60,000 strong, invaded 
 this No-Man's Land, and the city of Guthrie was bom in 
 a night with a population of 10,000 souls. Next the Iowa 
 and Fox lands were thrown open. After these came 
 3,000,000 acres of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reservations. 
 The Cherokee Strip was twice as big ; and to it were added 
 lands of the Kickapoo, Kiowa, Apache, and Wichita Na- 
 tions. There was no rest for the red man. He is an Amer- 
 ican misfit ; he vanishes slowly, out of sight and out of mind, 
 with his tomahawk tamed to a pruning-hook, his buffalo- 
 robe exchanged for an agency blanket. Yet some of these 
 redskins are very rich. Braves of the Osage Nation draw 
 millions of dollars from lands and royalties on oil and 
 natural gas. A headright in the Osage tribe is worth 
 $27,500 ; but I fear wealth only hastens the process of decay. 
 
 Restrictions upon Indian lands have been gradually re- 
 moved in favour of the white pioneer. Soon there will be 
 little left for the aboriginal tribes but "reasonable areas for 
 homesteads." Meanwhile, the invaders develop Oklahoma 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 167 
 
 with impetuous zeal. New cities are shaped in an hour. 
 Newcomers dwell in tents and shacks and dug-outs until the 
 township of Pawnee or Shawnee is fairly on the map — 
 heated and lighted with natural gas, oiled in crude oil or 
 grain, and of course with a live newspaper to record and 
 boost the raw metropolis. 
 
 All the semi-arid States have irrigation schemes. Even 
 Nevada tried to forget her lurid past, and now poses as 
 ''Uncle Sam's Nine Million Dollar Farm." Here land is 
 almost given away, and water-rent charged for a ten-year 
 lease of the dams and ditches of the Truckee and Carson 
 Rivers. The idea is to supply the mining centres with fresh 
 home-grown food. For here is a large non-producing com- 
 munity with plenty of money to spend. Nevadan towns 
 and camps are largely fed with tinned stuff, imported in 
 carload lots from more fertile States. This elusive treasure- 
 house could never sustain herself, and at last the Reclama- 
 tion Service came to her aid with canals and pumps and 
 reservoirs. 
 
 Thereupon much of the desert bloomed. Diversified 
 farms appeared among the sagebrush of Las Vegas; oases 
 glowed in the Carson Valley, not far from the famous 
 Comstock Lode. And a new Nevada called to the farmer, 
 dressing the Sierras in orchard guise and denouncing as 
 slander her old repute as an ash-heap freaked with gold 
 and silver. 
 
 I fear she remains a volcanic desolation. After all, 
 Nevada has her own bonanzas — her sudden pay-streaks of 
 gold, and wild stampedes, as to the Kendall claim where 
 ore was sacked assaying $10,000 to the ton. Farming in 
 this Tom Tiddler's ground is a ticklish task. ''You must 
 have money to begin with" — even the land-boomer admits 
 this awkward fact. ''The capitalist can live here in com- 
 fort" is his victim's way of putting it. And therewith 
 that victim works up to a crescendo of disillusion. He 
 
168 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 writes a letter that sears the recipient who sold the land 
 and representing it as Nature's shrine, where a few twigs 
 stuck in the rock became a bending grapefruit orchard. 
 ''The only trouble with pears is the breaking down of the 
 trees." . . . 
 
 "Yes," sighed an agent to me in St. Louis. "Nevada is 
 an imperfect Eden, with a soil-making process that tends 
 to get on top of the water. It's a pity. The farmer out 
 there needs real science as well as the push you can't keep 
 in with a hog-tight fence. Strange, how the man of guinea- 
 pig power ivill hear Opportunity knock along that rainless 
 sand ! He takes up three hundred and twenty acres under 
 the Expanded Homestead Law, and then sits down to watch 
 things grow I Of course nothing grov/s but disgruntlement. 
 And the last chapter is a letter to the agent so hot that 
 Uncle Sam needs an asbestos mail-bag to carry it. ' ' 
 
 Dry-farming and the ditch are also features of New 
 Mexico and Arizona. Torrid arroyos and virgin mesas 
 have here been made to yield; but again the process is 
 not for the poor man. Both of these desert States are 
 larger than Great Britain ; their range includes the date- 
 palm and the turquoise mine. Here also, I must say, the 
 West remains very mild, and no boom literature can alter 
 the fact. It is all very well for Arizona to advertise her 
 fabulous copper mines, her new orange and olive gardens; 
 her ostrich farms, and that Ilomeseeker's Ideal — the Salt 
 River Valley, where irrigation has done flowery things. It 
 is good to hear that the Houses of Parliament in Phoenix 
 were "built without scandal, or even a breath of sus- 
 picion"; that college men are ranching here ; that the desert 
 is ' ' dry ' ' indeed in a whisky sense, and wholly free from the 
 toughs and yahoos too long associated with the Border State 
 in uninstructed minds ' ' back East. ' ' 
 
 Granting all this, the fact remains that Arizona is the un- 
 likeliest place for farming. Moreover, judge and jury have 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 169 
 
 not yet superseded the "hip pocket" court as an arbiter of 
 equity and law. The Arizona Rangers, under Captain T. 
 H. Rynning, could tell tales of frontier life madder than 
 any yarn set out in the penny blood beloved of British boys. 
 Grim encounters with smugglers and stage-robbers, moon- 
 shiners and cattle-thieves — Indian, Mexican, and American. 
 For the Arizona bad man still haunts the Border; and at 
 Douglas he has only to cross the dusty street to find himself 
 in Mexico. Down here desperadoes still spur into town 
 with pistols, rifles, and dynamite, intent upon the bank 
 safe. And later they gallop over the Border with their 
 haul. The lifting of horses and stock became so serious at 
 lost that small ranchei-s gave up in despair; and then the 
 Arizona Legislature brought the Rangers intO' action. 
 These are half-police, half-soldiers ; crack shots, and cowboy 
 sleuths well versed in the desert wiles and amenities. So 
 the farmer in these parts has enemies in lurk, even though 
 "God an' Natur' " be not ranged against him, or the wolf 
 and the worm — the flood and drought and tornado of the 
 Northern States. 
 
 It is this eternal warfare which in part accounts for 
 Rube's defection, and that growing distaste for life on the 
 land which has alarmed the Federal Government. The 
 symptoms are not merely local ; they are fairly general from 
 sea to sea. Over much of New England farming is un- 
 profitable now; the hilly sections are worked out. New 
 Hampshire and Vermont, northern New York and Western 
 Massachusetts have "abandoned farms"; the process is 
 spreading in Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and Virginia. Thou- 
 sands of men from the Middle West have gone over into 
 British Columbia or the Canadian North-West, in search 
 of cheap and fertile lands. What is the cause of this? 
 Partly the increase of population. The disappearance of 
 public domains has had much to do with it. So have spec- 
 ulative abuses of the land-laws; the "tiring" of the soil 
 
170 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 by imprudent methods, and the havoc of floods due to reck- 
 less destruction of the forests. 
 
 Few Americans realize the damage done by soil erosion, 
 caused by the cutting of timber on the hills. *'Will the 
 lumberman straighten up," asks the booklet of the Woman's 
 Club, "and see what his fortune is costing us?" No, he 
 will not, so the destruction goes gaily forward. The present 
 stand of timber covers 550,000,000 acres, or about one- 
 fourth of the United States. Of this stand four-fifths is 
 privately owned, and the present rate of cutting is three 
 times greater than the annual growth. Forest fires alone 
 cost $50,000,000 a year; and all efforts to rouse public senti- 
 ment have had little effect in reducing the prodigal waste 
 of timber which attends the development of America: the 
 extension of railroads, the settlement of public lands, the 
 building of cities, and the opening of mines. In one year 
 the State of Michigan alone cut 3,600,000,000 feet of white 
 pine, with the result that her wheat crop steadily dwindled 
 from 35,000,000 bushels to 8,000,000 bushels. Indiana's 
 forests, are but a memory now ; a century of clearing forces 
 that State to import eighty-two per cent, of her lumber. 
 Disastrous floods are frequent in deforested areas, like the 
 lowlands of the Southern Appalachians. In one year floods 
 fed from this treeless tract caused $18,000,000 worth of 
 damage, sweeping away bridges and dams and homes, as 
 well as spreading barren sands over thousands of fertile 
 acres. 
 
 The flood was a serious discouragement to the farmer, and 
 he began to give up ownership of the soil. In a couple of 
 decades one-tenth of all the holdings changed to a tenant 
 basis ; and nomadic renters hastened the agricultural decay. 
 In 1902 the Reclamation Act was passed; and a Board of 
 soil experts and Army engineers went out to survey the 
 desert States, with a fund of $20,000,000 behind them for 
 irrigation schemes. 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 171 
 
 Thirty million acres of likely land were mapped out by 
 the Reclamation engineers; then rivers were dammed and 
 waters impounded on a great scale. But from the first 
 Director Newell sounded a warning note. No simpleton 
 would succeed as a farmer in these arid zones. Labour 
 alone would not do, for "if working took the place of 
 thinking along the desert ditch, then every male would 
 have a bank account." 
 
 Here the opening is for the few; and the fact should be 
 made clearer to the trustful homeseeker, who is too often 
 swindled by visions of an irrigated West, where the orange 
 grows in dust and sleek kine turn' the alkali-flats into a 
 model dairy. There is too much of this hilarious stuff in 
 circulation, and the rustic, native or alien, is all too apt to 
 believe it. Is he not for ever absorbing miracles? He 
 hears of a cow on the shore of Lake Huron milked by elec- 
 tric power from Niagara Falls ; of moving pictures thrown 
 on the screen in Seattle by means of melting glaciers in far- 
 flung peaks of the Rockies. The wit of man — machinery — 
 electricity; all things are possible through these, the wide- 
 eyed rustic is told, until wonder has banished all mistrust. 
 
 ''If your crops increase at this rate," said the agent to 
 the Texan planter, ''what '11 they be worth ten years 
 hence?" Rube was overcome, but managed to blurt out at 
 last: "There ain't that much money in the world!" It 
 is this bouncing spirit which makes the boom literature so 
 easily accepted. A favourite State with the land-sharks 
 and colonizers is Florida, "where wire nails will blossom in 
 a sandy loam, which has a marl below it that shows eighty 
 per cent, of lime." Florida is a magical name, linked with 
 tropic fruits — the lemon and the lime; guavas, mangoes, 
 and pineapples. Nevertheless it is no place for the average 
 farmer, as a glance from the car window shows on the way 
 down to Palm Beach, which is the Monte Carlo of America. 
 
 Here are miles of palmetto-scrub with sworded leaves; 
 
172 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 miles of dismal Q^press swamp, and of live-oak festooned 
 with ragged moss; miles of grey wilderness too; and over 
 all a sifting of tine dust which covers everything in the train 
 as with a coating of flour. An unpromising garden is this 
 Florida, tricky and treacherous; rich enough in spots, 
 though often ruinous to the experienced citrus-grower. 
 Yet homeseekers buy land here which they have never seen, 
 relying entirely upon the boomer and the Development 
 Company who seem so fair and forthright, with their money 
 back offers and pressing* invitations to a Show-Me trip ^'in 
 our private car, Millicent. ' ' 
 
 As many as fifty of these concerns have operated at one 
 time in the "orange garden of the world." They buy 
 thousands of acres of sand-soaked stuff and sell it at $50 
 an acre to weaklings who drift from State to State in search 
 of an easier life. There is no resisting the boom literature, 
 nor the follow-up letters mailed at intervals from an office 
 in Chicago or St. Louis. These are positively ecstatic. 
 They anticipate each question and demur till it seems folly 
 not to sign and remit a money order for a stake in ''this 
 predestined centre of wealth and population." . . . 
 
 ' ' Here things grow for the sake of growing, and to make 
 glad the heart of man. Here noxious things call a hushed 
 truce, and good growing weather lasts from March to De- 
 cember. . . . You're homesick for the South, so come out 
 of bitter places where the thermometer gets white in the 
 face with cold. Come down to Punta Gorda and perfume- 
 laden zephyrs of the Gulf. The frail and feeble here get 
 well, the well get rich; the poor live for nothijig on game 
 and fish and a little garden. What you pay for coal up 
 North will clothe your family in Florida. "... And so the 
 wild place is invaded. The new homestead may look like a 
 forsaken goat-walk in West Texas. It may be in the tall 
 timbers, or in raw cut-over lands — even in a noisome marsh, 
 where a wagon sinks to the hubs in mire. Still it is always 
 
PAY-DIRT OP' THE PLAINS 173 
 
 Florida, and the Show-Me tripper is easily overborne by 
 the rogue's word. Just as dubiously (the shy visitor is 
 reminded) did the "Iowa pioneers survey those treeless 
 plains which now feed the world." 
 
 And then the boomer gets down to practical things. ' ' If 
 your hogs get wormy with over-eating, mix lye with their 
 feed and so protect your profits. Don't wait till the hogs 
 are dead. Try a quarter of a can to each barrel of slop. . . . 
 Your own health is assured. Doctors are the only droopy 
 people in these parts. If you hear a cough, be sure it's 
 imported. And you'll know the hearse horse when you see 
 him, for he's downright ashamed of his job!" The comic 
 side of this traffic has long been pictured in the papers: 
 Mr. Homeseeker's first night in a languid heaven which 
 turns out to be a floral swamp aflame with fireflies; the 
 boom of bitterns heard afar, and frogs in all octaves. A 
 bush township is on the map indeed, and there it will re- 
 main for a season. It will never materialize bej'ond the 
 boomer's first improvements. Remote from railway mar- 
 kets, it is impossible to sell delicate and perishable fruits. 
 So the lots merge once more into the jungle. And ^Ir. 
 Homeseeker — "his face working, his mind yearning for 
 likely curse-words" — is driven from an Eden where snakes 
 curl on his doorstep and alligators bark in his backyard ! . . . 
 
 There is no need to harp on the mischief of these frauds. 
 The failures drift back to the city, and for all time they 
 kick and croak whenever ''the land" is mentioned. For 
 it calls up a hell of a life, with savings sunk and farming 
 hopes gone down for ever. Such pessimism as this injures 
 America badly. Meanwhile, the boomer swings another 
 deal, being nobody's keeper but his own. Yet even this 
 callous calling shows signs of grace in a time of flux and 
 change. The new type of boomer is Ben F. Faast, of Eau 
 Claire, Wis. He formed a company and bought 50,000 
 acres of brushy, cut-over land to retail in the usual way. 
 
174 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Most of the buyers were factory aliens and steel-mill hands ; 
 nameless creatures known to the furnace boss as a number — 
 as a bull might be, or a convict. In the course of years these 
 men had saved a few hundred dollars; they could peel off 
 a few ragged bills to make the first payment on fifty acres 
 of the uncouthest land. 
 
 But such ''farms'' are not quickly cleared; perhaps an 
 acre a year is won. Knowing buyers will strip the brush 
 from ten acres or so, and then grow clover and timothy 
 among the stumps. Or they turn in cows and hogs and 
 sheep to grub over the ground, and help the frost to dislodge 
 the rugged roots. At any rate, Mr. Faast grieved over his 
 clients' bargain. They could not support a family on the 
 land; and, turning once more to wage-work, they fell 
 between the two stools of livelihood. In this case the 
 boomer decided to clear and develop the holdings; his 
 company could do it better and cheaper than any individual 
 settler. First of all the land was gone over with a steam 
 stump puller. Then Mr. Faast built i cottages and barns; 
 he also stocked each forty-acre lot with a cow and two pigs ; 
 a dozen fowls, six rolls of wire fencing, and other needs. A 
 ready-made farm was then offered on a long-time basis of 
 purchase ; and so low was the interest that the buyer could 
 make a living from the start. 
 
 I cannot stay to trace the rise of Boomtown from its 
 ''unincorporated" stage to the order of Judge So-and-So, 
 who proclaims it a city of the second class. But miracles 
 of this kind never cease. Not long ago the Imperial Valley 
 in Southern California was a tangle of tropic thorns and 
 arid scrub, infested with tarantulas and snakes. Last year 
 it sent out 100,000 bales of fine cotton, and 10,000 freight- 
 cars full of melons and other fruit. The chapparal thick- 
 ets of South Texas are conquered this way ; so are malarial 
 swamps of the Mississippi, which cover the richest of 
 alluvial lands. 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 175 
 
 Yet no skill can ensure success, and the fact is strikingly- 
 shown by the cotton crop. Of this commodity the world's 
 annual need is 20,000,000 bales, and America produces 
 about three-fourths ; the looms of Lancashire alone call for 
 4,000,000 bales. Now in the first month of the war, when 
 the New York Cotton Exchange closed its doors, the staple 
 stood at 7 cents, or $35 per bale of 500 lbs. Planters and 
 markets were aghast. A pool of $135,000,000 was formed 
 to steady the price, and ten cents were aimed at as desirable. 
 As consumers the Central Empires were cut off, but the 
 military needs of the Allies created a boom without prec- 
 edent in the trade. For in scientific hands the stuff can 
 kill as well as clothe; cotton is a prime factor in the high 
 explosive of today which destroys merchant ships and turns 
 Northern France into a crater-field. By the end of 1915 
 the price had risen to 12 cents, and Southern planters were 
 mourning their reduced acreage and the careless handling 
 of a growing crop which had been thought worthless. 
 
 The yield for 1915 had been over 13,000,000 bales, and 
 farmers now set to work with furious zeal on the largest 
 acreage ever sown to cotton in the United States. Mean- 
 while speculation and rumours of peace, with exhausted 
 nations replenishing their stocks at any price, sent the 
 staple up to 16 cents. The extra demand, it was thought, 
 would exceed three million bales, apart from Indian and 
 Egyptian supplies. But while man was proposing, Nature 
 disposed. In mid-July, when all looked well, the whole 
 cotton area of the Atlantic States was swept with storms of 
 wind and rain. The rich bottoms were flooded for days, 
 the uplands scoured and washed severely. To crown all, 
 the dreaded weevil attacked the bolls in countless swarms; 
 this insect flourishes in damp weather, and now it appeared 
 in districts never visited before. There was great distress 
 in Alabama, w^here the negroes were soon beating the woods 
 for food; even white landlords had to mortgage their 
 
176 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 plantations. The crop excess of three million bales, so 
 confidently predicted, now melted away. It was not even 
 a normal crop, but about three million bales below; and 
 the result was that cotton soared to 20 cents and over — a 
 figure unapproached since the Civil War. 
 
 Even more serious was the falling off in wheat. With 
 high prices ruling in the first six months of war, the Ameri- 
 can farmers added ten million acres to their wheat area. 
 But much of the extra crop was so poor that millers 
 refused to buy it; and there were many complaints from 
 purchasers abroad. In 1916 it was hoped that wheat pro- 
 duction would approach the normal, but here again Nature 
 intervened, and Government forecasts came whittling 
 down owing to losses from rust and blight, and other 
 causes. In any case our daily bread is at the gambler's 
 mercy. I know no stranger figure than that of the Chicago 
 Wheat King, who never sees a grain of wheat and may be 
 unable to tell a harvester from a plough. Yet he sways 
 vast tides of the North-Western plains. Behold him in his 
 skyscraper office, poring upon charts and wavering ratio- 
 lines of population and production. 
 
 The Wheat King has weather reports from Chile and 
 the Argentine. He knows the threshing conditions of 
 India and Siberia; the ''invisible" supplies in farmers' 
 hands and the "visible" in grain-elevators and ships; on 
 the railways, the canals, and Great Lakes. At the man's 
 elbow is a crop-map of the United States. And all day 
 long electric advices ring and buzz from his commission- 
 men throughout the continent, but especially in primary 
 markets like St. Louis, Buffalo and Duluth. The King is 
 warned of coming changes, and he acts accordingly. A 
 rising storm in Montana may reduce by two per cent, the 
 crops of Northern Minnesota. 
 
 Of scenes in the Chicago wheat-pit it would be tiresome 
 to speak. They are degrading ; and in war-time they 
 
• PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 177 
 
 showed trade neutrality at its worst, with frenzied men 
 screaming bids in each other's faces amid a tumult of 
 indescribable violence. In a recent ten-day tussle ''for 
 future delivery" forty-four cents was added to each bushel 
 of wheat. Millions of money were made and lost by 
 dealers whom present-day America looks upon as enemies 
 of the people and the farmers; the statesmanship of 
 President Wilson is dead against these produce-gamblers; 
 it may safely be said that their tricks and corners are a 
 thing of the past. 
 
 In Secretary Houston the American farmer found a 
 friend indeed outside the high-brow circles of Agricultural 
 Science. Mr. Houston is a practical economist; his 
 grading of crops and protective measures bid fair to restore 
 to the land its old prestige. Since the passing of the 
 Cotton Futures Act, the farmer is no longer at the mercy 
 of local buyers, nor can the big operator raise or depress 
 market prices at his own reckless will. In 1913 Mr. 
 Houston had two hundred Kansan farms surveyed. It 
 was then shown that with an average capital of $8800 
 the owner received — after paying five per cent, on his 
 money — exactly $529 for the year's work. On a farm 
 averaging $18,359 his share was only $659; and where 
 the investment reached $32,231, Rube had $1028 for him- 
 self when the season's battle was over. 
 
 This revelation surprised the city folks. They imagined 
 Rube planting dimes and reaping yellowbacks v/ith the 
 expert aid of Mr. W. J. Spillman, Chief of the Office of 
 Farm Management in the Bureau of Plant Industry at 
 Washington. The Department of Agriculture has been 
 justly held in high esteem. It has spent hundreds of 
 millions in research work, and heaped up records in 
 agronomy and biology. Moreover, it sent trained pioneers 
 into foreign lands for new things to grow. Here I touch 
 upon America's "plant immigrants"; the story is quite 
 
178 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 a romance, and, so far as I know, unrecorded in Europe. 
 It is assumed by the Department that there is not in this 
 world any variety of grain, or a fruit or food-plant, which 
 cannot be suited with a ''stepmother" soil and climate 
 somewhere between the bleak Dakotas and the Mexican 
 Gulf ; the cane-brakes of Louisiana, and the wine and citrus 
 lands of California. 
 
 Therefore a corps of explorers is maintained; devoted 
 men who will run any risks and use all means to send 
 home scions and cuttings, seeds, and even useful insects 
 like the kelep or Guatemalan ant, which it was hoped would 
 prey upon the cotton-boll weevil: these live consignments 
 go direct to the Parasite Laboratory at North Saugus, 
 Mass. The work of plant introduction dates back to 
 Franklin's day. So far back as 1770 we find that states- 
 man-scientist (as Pennsylvania's agent) sending home 
 mulberry clips and seeds. For many years American 
 consuls did the same; and at last Congress voted $20,000 
 a year for the support of botanists at large — keen-witted 
 legions of peace who should go forth to conquer the nations 
 on their own ground 
 
 Here, for example, is David Fairchild, with a caravan in 
 Babylon, and palm-suckers swaying from his camel- 
 packs. *'We pay $600,000 a year for dates to this very 
 region," he told our consul in Bagdad. *'Now we shall 
 introduce the palm to our desert gardens at Yuma and 
 Tempe, Ariz., and also at Mecca, Cal." Professor Hansen 
 went to Turkestan for new foreign plants; Dr. Knapp 
 brought the Kiashu rice from Japan; Carleton's prize 
 was the dhurum wheat which suited the two Dakotas 
 and Nebraska, and now is worth $10,000,000 a year^ 
 To transplant the Smyrna fig to Californian orchards took 
 nineteen years ; but the task was done by Explorer Swingle, 
 who made a special journey to Asia Minor for the wasp- 
 like insects which fertilize the flowers. 
 
PAY-DIRT OF THE PLAINS 179 
 
 I cannot linger over the adventures of these free-lance 
 farmers. Fairchild was arrested in Corsica; and in a 
 cross-country flight he cut enough scions or bud-sticks 
 from the citron groves to graft a small American orchard. 
 At Saaz, in Bohemia, the same envoy was a suspected 
 person among the hop-growers. Cuttings were secured 
 in the dead of night. Fairchild packed these in a ruined 
 barn, and sent them off as *' glass-ware " to his agent in 
 Hamburg. This work is but a minor branch of the 
 Department of Agriculture, Avhich may be styled the 
 mainspring of rural America. It has an army of 16,000 
 men and women, including technicians and specialists in 
 every branch. The past three years has entirely changed 
 its methods — or rather added economic efficiency to the 
 purely scientific side. 
 
 **It is all very well," says Secretary Houston, *'to teach 
 the farmer to make two blades grow where one grew before ; 
 but if he can't sell the extra blades at a profit, he's a 
 poor business man.'' And in this way ''we aim to help 
 him." The farmer has wondered why he got less money 
 for a larger crop. In 1912 America produced 677,758,000 
 bushels of maize in excess of 1913, yet the farmers received 
 $171,638,000 less for it To solve this and other problems 
 the present Government created the Office of Markets 
 and Rural Organization. In 1915 this Bureau showed 
 the cotton-planters of the South what their product was 
 worth, and induced them to hold it for a better price. 
 Land banks and good roads are amongst other features 
 of the renascence; and the Agricultural Extension Act 
 will spend $10,000,000 a year in direct education of the 
 farmer and his family. This Bill places in each of the 
 2850 rural communities a couple of county agents — a man 
 and a woman — specially picked for the task, and trained. 
 These will work with the aid and direction of the land- 
 grant colleges and the Department of Agriculture. 
 
180 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 It was Secretary Houston who realized that too much 
 science and too little sense had been shown by the Wash- 
 ington Bureau in their relation to the farmers, who were 
 as far removed from their national guardians as they were 
 from the State Department or the Coast and Geodetic 
 Survey. Of what use was it to spend millions in research 
 and pay no heed to practical application of the results? 
 The farmers' bulletins were found to be too diffuse and 
 technical. There was a treatise on the silver fox, but no 
 popular paper on the raising of colts. Guinea-pigs and 
 pheasants were learnedly presented, but there was no 
 compendious pamphlet on the feeding of the dairy cow. 
 Therefore concise and simple pamphlets were prepared, 
 and of these over seventeen millions were issued to the 
 farmers last year. 
 
 Moreover, an Office of Information was created to 
 summarize for the local papers all the literature of the 
 Department, and make popular the lessons of scientific 
 agriculture. So the farmer absorbed knowledge with the 
 day's news. He was taught the lesson of field tests 
 undertaken by the county agents: how a crop of hay 
 showed a profit of 257 per cent, on an extra outlaj^ in lime ; 
 how to sort his potatoes and sell the best to the city hotels, 
 getting as much for one grade as the entire crop used to 
 fetch in haphazard days. A new system of killing and 
 chilling poultry replaced the traffic in live birds; new 
 methods of picking and packing citrus-fruits saved decay 
 in transit which entailed a loss of $1,500,000 a year to the 
 Californian growers. The functions of the middlemen; 
 co-operative purchase and sale of all things from berries to 
 seed, and from implements to coal — these and other phases 
 of life on the land now engage the Washington Department. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 "an helpmeet for him'* 
 
 The "solemn emphasis" and "sacred duty" of the United 
 States, expressed by President Wilson in the Lusitania 
 Notes, set the Germans discussing a new enmity of inevi- 
 table drift. 
 
 "The fact is," concluded the Hamburg Fremdenhlatt, 
 after a caustic survey, "that so deep a chasm yawns 
 between our Kultur and America's that only a bridge 
 of swords can span it." "This New World," the German 
 stay-at-home was told, "is bossed by the women; they 
 are worshipped over there like the sacred cats of Thebes." 
 And to show the American man's nonentity, Herr Doktor 
 would quote a Texan paper: "If there's $10 to be spent 
 on clothes. Daughter takes $5, Sonny gets $3, IVIa grabs 
 $2 — and poor pa has his hat brushed!" 
 
 No land was more foreign to the Teuton habit than this 
 huge gynocracy; the rulers of it waddled out today in 
 Persian tubes, and tomorrow rolled forth like the hooped 
 Infants of Velasquez. American women were spoiled 
 by cockering and indulgence. They counted life by the 
 heart-throbs of passion and caprice, yet in twelve States 
 the polling booths were open to them ; they swayed ninety- 
 one votes in the Electoral College, and might well decide 
 what manner of President should go to the White House 
 and reign in their name. 
 
 Germany reviewed these facts with rising ire. For if, 
 as Bismarck said, the Fatherland was the male element 
 among nations, surely America was the female, owing to 
 
 181 
 
182 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 the social chromosome in her make-up which gave her a 
 horror of the destroyer's role. How diii'erent was the 
 status of woman in Germany, where she was a source 
 of strength as the prime recruiter of an ''Army with 
 a country"! Did not the German mother advertise her 
 new-born child as ''another little soldier for the Father- 
 land"? Here the Kaiser set decent bounds to female 
 activity, naming church, children, and kitchen as the 
 proper spheres. On the land, even in peace-time, four-and- 
 a-half million women handled the hoe, clad in the Petrine 
 apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, and withal bred to 
 worship of the male. These pious souls, as well as matrons 
 and maids of high degree, were compared with the gay 
 scansorial birds of New York and Newport who were intent 
 only upon candy and clothes; the car, the salon, and the 
 good time, with its biting thirst for change and the switch- 
 it-off and fade-through of a life that was like a perpetual 
 movie-film. . . . 
 
 Now in all this German girding there is a modicum of 
 fact leading to false conclusions in the Teutonic way, and 
 ignoring incalculable factors. No sooner was war declared 
 than America's women rallied to the President with a 
 fervour which Berlin found disconcerting. The hourgeoise 
 of France was not more devoted, nor the modish maid, 
 who turned from the tango and tight skirts to become a 
 pisqu'au houtiste — a bitter-ender with the passion of 
 Jeanne d'Arc lighting her girlish eyes. 
 
 A joint memorial, pledging loyal service and support, 
 was offered to the President by eight of the greatest col- 
 leges for women in the United States, including Barnard 
 and Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesle}^, and IMount Holyoke. 
 At the White House this vow was read to the President 
 by his two daughters, Mrs. F. B. Sayre and Miss Margaret 
 Wilson: "Although we believe that the settlement of in- 
 ternational difficulties by war is fundamentally wrong, we 
 
*'AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 183 
 
 recognize that in a world-crisis such as this, it may become 
 our highest duty to defend by force the principles upon 
 which Christian civilization is founded." 
 
 In the long list of German mistakes, the American 
 woman must be given a prominent place. Her adhesion 
 ensured the full measure of military and industrial aid, 
 to say nothing of the part played by the farmer's wife 
 and daughters in the food-supply of us all. I shall not 
 deny the supremacy of women in the United States, for 
 it is a fact. She is a law unto herself, imposing her will 
 in all directions, from the motor-shops of Detroit to the 
 ateliers of Fashion in the Place Vendome. Immersed in 
 business, her men are apt to leave civic betterment to the 
 women's clubs, as well as all the finer things of life, from 
 music and aesthetics to the planting of shade trees. Women 
 have much to do with the suppression of the liquor traffic 
 as well as the promotion of better babies, with prenatal 
 care and oversight for the poorest of mothers. In the 
 "West especially the woman in public office is a power for 
 good. She is there concerned with prison reform and pub- 
 lic recreation; with libraries and museums, city planning, 
 local efficiency, and fire and police protection. 
 
 In America marriage is considered from the business 
 angle, with a wealth of published anecdote and testimony 
 from successful men who love to tell the story of their 
 climb, and the part which their wives have played in it. 
 The effect of marriage upon employes is debated: how 
 it steadies the worker and helps the speed-up of factory 
 production; why bachelors are less efficient and devoted; 
 why the married man lives longer, with evidence upon 
 the subject from Herbert Spencer and the Germans, 
 the insurance companies, the Federal Census Bureau, and 
 big employers of labour like Mr. Armour and Mr. Vail. 
 Whether young love pays any heed to this prosy aspect I 
 take leave to doubt. Certain it is that couples are wedded, 
 
1S4 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 divorced, or merely "separated" with surprising ease in 
 the United States. 
 
 There is no attempt at uniformity in this matter. Some 
 States forbid marriage between whites and negroes, whites 
 and Chinese, and whites and Red Indians. Others allow 
 all three. Marriage between first cousins is prohibited in 
 sixteen States, and in some of these declared incestuous 
 and void ; other States are quite complaisant in this regard. 
 In most of the States you may not marry a step-relation ; 
 but in seven of them (and in the Hawaiian Islands) no 
 such veto is imposed. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest scandal of all is "easy alimony," as 
 the result of a collusive bargain between the parties; 
 the man willing to pay for freedom, the woman seeking 
 a life of selfish sloth. In one New York court, alimony 
 sets $4,000,000 a year in motion, and the evil has grown 
 with the flush time. "Divorce is our subtlest social 
 menace," says Judge Morschauser, of the New York 
 Supreme Court. "The alimony system is the sanction 
 of it by society and law, and it places a premium upon 
 idleness and vice." "Do away with collusive divorce," 
 said an eminent jurist to me in Washington, ' ' and two- 
 thirds of our childless couples will readjust their lives. 
 Then we'll hear less of the 'I'm tired of him and he's 
 tired of me, so why not fix a divorce?' " Last year in New 
 York City the courts of Manhattan alone granted 1300 
 divorces, and twice as many separations. Yet the metrop- 
 olis is by no means "easy" in this respect, whereas the 
 "nisi-mills" of Reno, Nev., and Sioux Falls, S. D., are 
 notorious all over the continent. Chicago's divorce rate 
 is higher than New York's; America's fairest city — Denver, 
 Col. — outpaced them all last year, having more than half 
 as many divorces as there were marriages. 
 
 This unrest is found among all classes, from the New 
 York motorman to the queenly "cottager" of Newport; 
 
*'AN HELPMEET FOR HIM'* 185 
 
 one of these dames threw her little son into the alimony 
 bargain for an extra payment of a million dollars. 
 
 Meanwhile the war offers new and vivid interests for 
 the women as for the men. Within a month of President 
 Wilson's declaration, the women of thirty -two States 
 had volunteered for substitute work in a way familiar to 
 us all, but wholly novel in the United States. The Wire- 
 less League impressed many college girls; they sat with 
 receivers on their heads, jotting upon pads the cryptic 
 buzzings sent by Mr. Otto Redfern, the radio-inspector 
 of the U. S. Navy. Then the suffrage parties formed 
 National Service bodies on the usual lines — nursing and 
 motor-driving, cooking, farming, and clerical work, i^^ew 
 York had its War Substitute Department, calling for a 
 unit of 100,000 women to replace in part the men who 
 enlisted for the first Expeditionary Force. 
 
 America's upheaval was the most bewildering of all. 
 The continent was soon adrift, groping for guidance and 
 trying to follow precedent of appalling trend. A lead 
 had already been given by Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt. This 
 great lady — a decoree of the Legion of Honour — worked 
 as a scullion in the Lycee Pasteur at Neuilly. She was 
 under fire at Pont-a-Mousson with Harvard amhalanciers 
 and young free-lances of the American Field Service who 
 were attached to the French Armies. IMrs. H. P. Whitney 
 was another early worker in the French field; she hurried 
 over with surgeons and nurses, motors, medical supplies, 
 and clothing for thousands of refugees. At home the 
 cloud of change spread slowly, till the state of war was 
 a fact, and Liberty's torch glowed with new demands 
 above New York Bay. Then it was that the pink tea 
 vanished, and the Red Cross function became a social 
 sign. Soon economy was a White House watchword; 
 Mrs. Wilson and the Cabinet ladies were urging thrift 
 and deprecating the extravagance in dress. Vanity's 
 
186 AMERICA \S DAY 
 
 mirror was seen shot to pieces by the European guns ; the 
 rites of Beauty were now concerned with that test of the 
 nation which the President put so plainly **for the future 
 peace and security of the world. ' ' 
 
 Now the American woman is an able recruit, as the 
 German writers know, even when they present her in 
 the rainbowed spray of Folly's fountain. She is, in fact, 
 peculiarly adapted for management. Self-reliance is 
 developed in her from childhood. Iler business head is 
 unaffected by a sentimental heart; the handling of affairs 
 comes more naturally to an American woman than any 
 other, not excepting the French. This applies to more 
 than the common trades and callings; it covers also the 
 learned professions, and the oversight of industry on the 
 largest scale. 
 
 A glance at the Census of any date shows hosts of 
 women doing work which was thought to be man's alone. 
 But this is a commonplace of American life. It has never 
 called for remark or borne any relation to war. Nowhere 
 else is the value and dignity of labour so respected, and 
 this esteem applies equally to the woman's share. I 
 take 303 occupations from the 1900 Census, and I find 
 women engaged in 300 of them. They are slaters and 
 plumbers, carpenters and house-painters; teamsters, elec- 
 tricians, masons, bricklayers, and mechanics of every grade. 
 Dentists, architects, and civil engineers are here in hun- 
 dreds; commercial travellers and clergy by the thousand. 
 And these last are licensed to preach, and to marry couples 
 according to the State law. 
 
 But I cannot hope to convey in brief space a fair idea 
 of woman's activity; it is too huge a subject, too diverse 
 and full of surprise. Consider the case of Widow Warren, 
 of Silver City, N. M.— ''General Contractor and Specialist 
 in Concrete-work." This typical Western woman has her 
 own quarries and saw-mills, her steam derricks, steam shov- 
 
"AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 187 
 
 els and steam pumps, ready for the biggest job. She 
 designed and built a dam of 50,000 cubic feet with the aid 
 of Mexican gangs, whom she bossed with more than Ameri- 
 can tact. 
 
 My survey could be continued indefinitely. Turning 
 to the South, we have IVIrs. G. H. Mathis, of Alabama, 
 the ablest soil-expert in the State, and a spreader of "pep 
 and ginger" among all classes, from Governor Henderson 
 himself down to the poor whites of the range, to whom 
 this energetic lady introduced tomato-growing with excel- 
 lent economic results. Mrs. iMathis has trebled the earn- 
 ing-power of farmers in this cotton State. She has mul- 
 tiplied values, introduced new crops, and wiped out 
 the cattle-tick which was costing the stockman over a mil- 
 lion dollars a year. 
 
 It is difficult to speak in general terms of the American 
 women, as it is of any other phase in a land of such 
 extremes and joyous novelty. Here caste and degree take 
 the widest flights, from the school-marm of the oil-lands 
 to the grande dame of the Newport cliffs, who breathes an 
 oxygen denied to the baser sort and spreads a feast like 
 the Eleusinian mystery for the elect and few. Such con- 
 trasts as America presents I have never seen elsewhere. 
 The distance from Palm Beach luxury to the Polish hovel 
 of the Panhandle is not to be measured in miles alone. 
 And here let me say it is the wife of Eube the farmer who 
 fills the asylums of the Middle West. Her lot is one of 
 appalling toil, quite beyond the ken of folk outside the 
 barbed-wire push of progress which is found beyond the 
 Rockies. 
 
 Very different is the city woman's life. Of course, it 
 varies with the cities, of which some are as far apart as 
 Cork is from Constantinople, with all manner of climates 
 in between. Speaking generally, the American house- 
 keeper is the most efficient of all, whether as contriver, 
 
188 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 seamstress, or cook. Yet in New York — and here is a 
 typical paradox — housekeeping is a lost art, save among 
 the rich, who pay their parlourmaids more than we do 
 our high-school teachers. The metropolis is a hive of 
 communal living; of vast hotels and apartments which 
 leave the housewife nothing to do, and are very proud of 
 the fact. Less wealthy families frequent boarding-houses; 
 but even the best of these depress the permanent home- 
 seeker, whether she come from Europe, or from the Southern 
 and "Western States, where home life has peculiar variety 
 and charm. A New York clerk with a wife and $2000 
 a year cannot look for a cosy suburban villa with a garden 
 and a maid; he might as well expect a palace in Madison 
 Avenue. 
 
 Life in the cities is not conducive to child-bearing, as 
 may be seen from the falling birth-rate among American 
 stocks, as distinguished from the foreign-born, whose 
 fertility brings the general level up to that of France, and 
 no more. The real American family has decreased sur- 
 prisingly in the past hundred years. Franklin found an 
 average of eight children to each married couple of his 
 day, but when the present century opened the number 
 had fallen to between one and four. It is the alien stocks 
 that increase, and the older aristocracies of intellect and 
 rank express dismay over the fact. In Massachusetts, 
 taking all social classes, it was shown that the foreign-born 
 had twice as many children as the native Americans. 
 Then Dr. William Guilfoy, of the New York Health 
 Department, showed that these alien infants were a more 
 resistant stock, with a death-rate well below that of Ameri- 
 can children. Why was this? Because the foreign mother 
 suckled her babe. ''She is more likely," Dr. Guilfoy adds, 
 *'to stay at home and look after her family." 
 
 All manner of leagues have sprung up to stud}^ and 
 solve the "race suicide," to which Roosevelt drew attention 
 
^'AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 189 
 
 years ago. Maternity is encouraged in various ways; and 
 much prominence is given to the so-called ''twilight 
 sleep" — the painless Ddmmerschlaf of Drs. Kronig and 
 Gauss, of the Frauenklinik in Freiburg, where the scopo- 
 lamin-morphine treatment has been long in vogue. Then 
 Baby Week, with its literature of hygiene and infant aid, 
 became a national institution; it was proposed by the 
 General Federation of Women's Clubs and welcomed by 
 the Public Health officials in thirty-nine States. Next 
 came Mother's Day, with its white carnation badge and 
 homage in the home to "the best woman who ever lived." 
 President Wilson proclaimed the first celebration, after a 
 special resolution in both Houses of Congress. 
 
 But all this deference does not alter the fact that mother 
 has a hard time of it as a housekeeper in the cities; she 
 is very far indeed from being the toy and tyrant of man as 
 set forth in the German papers. Even living in common 
 brings her up against petty tyranny and graft on the part 
 of janitors. Lack of steam heat and hot water leads to 
 unseemly squabbles and "rent strikes"; there are dis- 
 putes about the lifts which you would never suspect. For 
 example — is Baby in her car to go up by the main shaft, 
 or be relegated to the garbage-hoist, with the groceries 
 and the coal? I was in the New York Supreme Court 
 when such a case was fiercely fought out between landlord 
 and tenant. On the other hand, to run a home on British 
 lines means that the housewife must do her own work, for 
 the American servant is a contradiction in terms, the alien 
 charlady a trial too bitter to be borne. It is surprising 
 what shifts even families of a good class are put to by this 
 problem. Chinese and Japanese boys have been tried with 
 poor success; and as for the negro maid, her "goings- 
 on" would knock the breath out of a reformatory super- 
 intendent. 
 
 I have referred to electric devices in the home, from 
 
190 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 shaving-mugs to raisin-seeders. *' Nobody," declared Dr. 
 Eliot of Harvard, ''should be employed upon a task which 
 a machine can perform": this is a very American maxim. 
 Certainly the city housewife looks for universal service 
 from the button at her bedside, which starts the day by get- 
 ting breakfast without any drudgery at all. ''Free your- 
 self from the tyranny of servants" is a clarion note of the 
 electric companies to the women. "Get more time for 
 recreation — for worth-while family life and the things you 
 really want to do." 
 
 Now, as the finer vessel, the American woman does lean 
 to the higher things. She wants to read the best books, 
 to study music, and wander through Europe on the edu- 
 cational tour. Quite likely there is a husband to polish — 
 an earnest climber whose youth had known nothing of 
 art. "My carving was done at the wood-pile," he owns 
 with a new regret. Such a man will stand before the 
 costly Corot with the scoffer's "Only trees and water!" 
 Or he will agree with Walpole that the Divine Comedy 
 is like "the ravings of a Methodist parson in Bedlam." 
 
 Therefore much is expected of the women in matters of 
 culture and taste. It is for them that the Mentor Club is 
 formed, with a conversational course, "which enables you 
 to ignite a dinner party at fifty yards with Familiar Wild 
 Flowers, Three Weeks in Rome, and The Pictures We Love 
 to Live with." I find this an admirable tendency, though 
 it make the superior person smile. There is a story told 
 of a farmer's wife in Missouri, who wrought classic sculp- 
 ture in butter, as her familiar medium. Mrs. B sent a 
 
 Sleeping lolanthe to the Paris Exhibition. It was politely 
 rejected by the Art Committee, and sent down to the Dairy 
 Products section, where it wilted when the warm weather 
 came, and comically disappeared. 
 
 Yet ridicule falls with broken sting before the childlike 
 purpose of these people, and their naive pursuit of nobler 
 
^*AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 191 
 
 things, when the get-ahead game is over. Before the war 
 one met American girls of quite humble origin in Milan, 
 studying opera under a maestro of unconscionable fees. 
 But then America and millions are convertible terms in the 
 Continental mind. In far-off Prague I found American 
 girls in Sevcik's violin school in the Lindengasse. The 
 Bohemian hermit took thirty kronen for an hour's lesson 
 from the Chicago school-marm, who had saved her money 
 
 for ten years in view of this tuition. Miss R went 
 
 back at last in a low-necked gown that showed the ' ' Sevcik 
 mark," a little bruise that bore witness to eight hours' 
 practice every day. It was the women who in pre-war 
 da^^s organized the grand tour abroad from Killarney to 
 Darjeeling; from the Rue de la Paix to Plato's Academe 
 in Athens — that mangy mound of picnic litter and tawdry 
 memorials. Who was so frank as the American over the 
 disenchantment of foreign travel? 
 
 The month of May saw the Exodus begin from New 
 York City. There were more than a hundred magnificent 
 ships in the service, and in ten weeks $7,000,000 was col- 
 lected in fares. For many years the ''See America First" 
 movement was little more than a voice in the wilderness 
 of joy. But with Europe closed, the tourists overran their 
 own continent, climbing the Rockies instead of the Alps, 
 taking cures at Hot Springs and Paso Robles ; camping out 
 in the Maine woods, and spearing giant tuna in the Pacific 
 off Santa Cruz. 
 
 ''Discover America" was now a shrewd appeal. "Swit- 
 zerland is ringed with armies," the holiday folk were 
 warned. "The peaks of Tyrol bristle with guns, so turn 
 this year to Colorado and the Garden of the Gods." This 
 America did, increasing the railway revenues by $326,- 
 401,568. Hotels and farmers, ranchers and innkeepers, all 
 had handsome hauls. 
 
 The "Discover America" literature of this year is cun- 
 
192 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ningly addressed to Mother and the Girls; and patriot 
 ladies support the movement with diverting tales of travel 
 disillusion. What a fraud the Orient was after all, with 
 dirt and squalor in the Christ-shrines, and in hotel beds 
 ''old warriors with plated backs" of a less heroic breed than 
 Milton had in mind. . . . Here was the great Sikh, Patiala, 
 striding down the platform at Charing Cross to his car — an 
 incongruous figure for London town in flowered silks and a 
 chaplet of roses. The Mikado had sent his palanquin to the 
 Uyeno Museum ; today that divinity shot forth in a racing 
 Twin-Six which could climb the castle wall ' ' on high with- 
 out a knock." Then reviewing her tour in India, Mother 
 was sarcastic over a call upon the Rajah of Faridkot, a 
 model State studded with schools, grain elevators, and other 
 agencies of hustle. The gorgeous nautch was non-existent 
 in Shahadpur; its place was taken by a movie-show which 
 exposed the evils of booze in the most rabid Kansan man- 
 ner. 
 
 So it was better to stay at home and do the Grand 
 Canyon, the Big Trees, and Spouting Geysers, which no 
 age withered nor custom staled. Americans abroad — one 
 of the Girls declared — went in vicious ruts beset with vul- 
 garity and dollar-chasing fights all the way from the Giants' 
 Causeway to the Pyramid of Cheops. In Rome itself there 
 were Coney Island shows on the hoar}- Borghese acres. In 
 all the capitals were noise and heat, hurry and smells, with 
 sights which left the soul blind and the body limp in lands 
 where ice-water and the shower-bath were extravagant 
 wants. Nor was it true that * ' English will carry you any- 
 where"; or that the contadini of Tuscany will fetch and 
 carry at a bidding in Pennsylvania Deutsch. 
 
 It is safe to say, however, that American armies of culture 
 will always go abroad, even with the slim purse that boards 
 in Bloomsbury and ''does" artistic Paris from a five-franc 
 pension in the wilds. As for the social climber, the cachet 
 
*'AN HELPMEET FOR HIM'^ 193 
 
 of forei^ travel is as necessary to her as the name of Car- 
 lier in a hat, or Worth or Paquin on the waistband of a 
 gown. There are climbers of many grades, from the pro- 
 vincial elegante of the Middle West to the great lady of 
 New York who aspires to the dazzling record of ]\Irs. J. J. 
 Astor; that gifted hostess who received the King of Eng- 
 land as a guest in her own home. 
 
 It would take too long to trace even a modest climb, 
 diverting as the stages are^ and the many stumblings in 
 unfamiliar ether. There are social sponsors, of course; 
 openers of doors in which even the rattle of golden keys can 
 spell disaster. But the whole career — this shooting and 
 shining through the London season like a star, belongs to 
 another world, marked with the milestones of Ascot and 
 Cowes, the moors and the Carlsbad cure ; the Nice Carnival 
 and a winter in Cairo, with orgies of dress and days of 
 tumult too silly for belief in the deathful glare of 1918. 
 This European triumph was very dear to the American 
 woman, and doubtless will be again ; it was the subject of 
 cable matter to the New York papers, often with portraits 
 of the victors and spicy details of intrigues and vying: 
 "Our stars must glister with new fires, or be — today 
 extinct." But the men cared little for these costly cam- 
 paigns; the uplift at home was more to them than social 
 gains abroad, and the idea spread that wealth were best 
 regarded as an instrument for the common good. 
 
 Before the war the industrial king moved in a glare of 
 publicity. His business deals were discussed in the papers, 
 his cliques and projects, and the buzz of Wall Street rumour 
 against him. The splendours of his wife were set down 
 with Pharasaic micrology. Her ocean-going yacht was 
 expressed in dollars and cents, its silver fittings and grand 
 saloons ; its crew of sixty men ; a French chef in the galley, 
 and on the shade deck a dozen Japanese valets in white silk 
 tending men of awesome name on Astor Cup Day in the 
 
liU A:NtERICA-S DAY 
 
 Sound. Parade and pageant ry at Newport was the papers' 
 untiring: theme; it wa^^ ^«aid to surpass all that went before, 
 e\eu in Byzantium or Baizxiad. It wa^ always the women 
 who willed these modish stunts, whether as breaker in upon 
 the established powei*s, or as an arricic of austere nuiirniti- 
 eenee, more or less seeurely throned. The man was 
 acquiescent and no more, haviuir interests of his own in the 
 home town or in the ottiee. 
 
 Yet wlien success came he strayed joyward with the rest 
 on conventional lines: in no country has the say-so of 
 Fashion such unquestioned sway. The new millionaires sat 
 to visiting painters, men who came over from Europe to 
 give a pompous rendering of business humanity : then they 
 boomed the portrait like professional barkers outside a 
 show. For this was a further boost and counted in the 
 social climb, ^lother and tlie Cirls favoured Art in like 
 manner, so that suave painter-immigrants reaped a golden 
 harvest with unsubtle and sentimental brushes. There was 
 I. a Gandara and Chartran. ^hicha the Czech. Zorn the 
 Swede, Thaddeus the Irishman, and Boldini the Paris- 
 Italian, who paints chittons divinely and sets the insipid 
 maid on a full-length canvas as the heroine for bold 
 dragoons. There should be rich stuff in the American 
 memoii*s of these visitors. 
 
 Here I cannot escape Newport : it is amazing how this 
 town has held American attention. For many years 
 preachei*s and social reformers inveighed against its freak- 
 ish riot. Newport life was the scandal and target of the 
 masses all over the continent. ''The expression we get of 
 society in this place," Bishop Potter of New York used to 
 say, "is quite beyond my comprehension.*' But it was 
 well within the compass of reporters for the yellow press, 
 who piled Pelion upon Ossa in preposterous yarns, as 
 though the bare facts were not sufficiently absurd. 
 
 On these Newport clitTs. tracts of rock and scrub have 
 
''AN HELPMEET FOR IIIM'^ 195 
 
 been sold by the square foot, as land might be around the 
 l*aris Opera or the Bank of England. Here ''cottages" 
 were built (like The Breakers) more stately than Dorches- 
 ter House in Park Lane; here castles of marble or granite 
 sprang up in the desert — like Grey Crag, the massy pile 
 which overlooks Sachuset Beach. As there was no shade, 
 huge trees were tunnelled and uprooted far inland, then 
 hauled to Newport by tractors and Italian gangs, to be 
 planted on the sea-lawn of America's Croesus. The for- 
 mula for a cottage on Bellevue Avenue is "A million for 
 the house, a million to furnish it, and $100,000 for a stone 
 wall or a steel fence that would defy the safe-breaker." 
 
 This exuberance needs a good deal of trimming, yet what 
 remains is lavish enough; it is a fact that the wall around 
 Mr. Berwind's chateau cost a fortune. Nor can it be denied 
 that Newport is the playground of America's plutocracy; 
 a none too wholesome influence in the nation's life, con- 
 sidering its antics and the devouring interest taken in them 
 by the people, especially the women. When fortune smiled 
 upon her man, Mrs. Break-in aspired to conquer Newport ; 
 and press and pulpit never tired of her pushful manoeuvres. 
 First of all the lady rents a cottage at $10,000 for the sea- 
 son : this begins in late June, reaches the zenith in August, 
 and trails away after the Horse Show in September. Then 
 the elect move up to the Berkshire Hills — perhaps the love- 
 liest spot in America, when the autumn blaze of woodlands 
 beggars all description. 
 
 But Newport remains unique among the resorts : it is the 
 social citadel, its freedom and favour a precious guerdon 
 bestowed upon very few. Dragons innumerable are here 
 on watch ; and let it be said at once that money is powerless 
 to move them. Many a prodigal spender knocks in vain at 
 Ochre Court and The Crossways; the season fades without 
 any hint of an Astor or Vanderbilt invitation. There is 
 indeed small hope for rueophytes of the rough diamond 
 
196 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 order; the Western woman who is just hon enfant and a 
 good sort, brimming over with hospitality and faith. Many 
 such have played a waiting game at Newport and Palm 
 Beach, aided by their Girls, who have no doubt attended the 
 most exclusive (and expensive) of private schools. I refer 
 here to the wives of mining magnates, or to those of men 
 who made a fortune in munitions or the motor trade — or 
 even in ways still more abrupt, like the produce gamble or 
 an oil-strike in Texas or Oklahoma. Newport has no love 
 for these sudden ladies ; their career is not so much a climb 
 as a rocketing, with inevitable fall in it from the first. 
 
 Behold Mrs. Break-in receiving in a Bourbon salon of 
 green and gold ; a merry and flaring soul in orchid brocade, 
 with a social guide behind her, and in the kitchen a hierarch 
 of pots and pans imported from Paris on his own terms. 
 The lady's meat-bill is already $1700 a month, the retinue 
 she brought with her a joy to the brigand tradesmen of 
 the town. It was to resist the exactions of these that the 
 richest members of the colony declared a boycott, and 
 started markets of their own. Mrs. Break-in was at last 
 shown checking her bills by the cartoonists of the Sunday 
 papers, who knew the game by heart. She was discharging 
 servants in desperation, or even cleaning her own tiara and 
 cursing in Gehenna-torrents the butcher who sent twenty 
 pounds of sirloin up to Reckless Castle and charged for a 
 hundred on a crested and scented bill. 
 
 Behind old Newport rises the twelve-mile avenue of 
 mansions in which American women rule. Here are 
 formal gardens such as Lenoir laid out for Josephine at 
 Malmaison. There are alleys and hedges, exotic trees 
 and colonnades; aviaries, pagodas and fountains, with 
 classic nymphs outlined against park-like thickets. A 
 striking feature of the colony is its hostility to casual 
 trippers and sight-seers. The most tempting x^aths are 
 blocked with ** Private — Keep off!'' Alert attendants 
 
''AN HELPMEET FOR IIIM'' 197 
 
 chase away the curious prowler who would invade the 
 sanctity of Bailey's Beach, or survey the famous cottages 
 from the street side. It was only the old law of Fivsher- 
 men's Rights that saved Cliff Walk for the public; and 
 the city fathers were asked to move a road which exposed 
 to vulgar gaze the luxurious bathing-huts of the rich. 
 
 Some of the embassies have summer quarters here, and 
 foreign diplomats play a leading part as arbiters of ele- 
 gance and devisers of novel fetes. The mania for novelty 
 spread like a sickness: the starter of a new craze was 
 acclaimed with brazen smiting, for Newport abhorred 
 monotony as Nature does a vacuum. There was competi- 
 tion for the occult person with a turban and a mystic 
 line of talk; he sat in a Chaldean boudoir, turning blood- 
 red crystal and tracing life-lines that were badly tangled 
 on the matrimonial side. 
 
 Brahminism and Bahaism had their day; so did coach- 
 ing and polo and golf. Auction bridge enjoyed unfading 
 vogue, with losses and gains on a staggering scale. At ban- 
 quets the lordliest dish was voted dull at last. Becasse a 
 la riche and Truite saumone a la MonseignexiVy these gave 
 place to heathen plats — perhaps a Canton puppy with 
 bamboo-shoots and birds' nests; shark-fins to follow, and 
 sea-slugs with as many legs as a centipede. These Apician 
 tricks, we are told, will never again be played after the 
 purging of a world-war on unparalleled lines. However 
 this may be, the recorder of social America notes a great 
 advance in taste and interests. Gone for ever are the days 
 when jaded guests waded in the public fountains of Balti- 
 more, or played leap-frog in the Washington streets after 
 a smart ^dance. 
 
 Ten years ago the mone3'-splash was rampant. The New- 
 port hostess scoured history for spendthrift notions which 
 should eclipse the Roman feasts of Horace and Petronius. 
 Freakish pageants were weighed, from the "costlie brav- 
 
198 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 erie" of Elizabeth's wooing to the mindless whim of a 
 former Gaekwar who spent a million rupees on the mar- 
 riage of his favourite pigeon with one belonging to his 
 Prime Minister. The great thing was to outshine one's 
 neighbour and maintain a loud lead in lavish entertain- 
 ing. No wonder the yellow press showed ''Plow the Rich 
 Live," with facts and figures procured from the Fifth 
 Avenue shops. Here everything was set out, from Moth- 
 er's rope of pearls to Baby's hundred-dollar doll, with its 
 Paris hat and "fluffy undies" of fine silk and filmy lace. 
 
 But apart from strident folly of this kind it is a mistake 
 to suppose there is no American aristocracy. Families 
 of rank and breeding maintain ancestral pride with rigid 
 hauteur, as any one knows who has even a nodding 
 acquaintance with the elite from Charleston up to Boston — 
 where, as the satirist says, "a Cabot will only speak to a 
 Lowell, and a Lowell only to his God!" ''Your minds 
 turn more to the past than ours do," Lord Northcliffe told 
 America in a message of racy insight. And there is no 
 abler or more intimate witness than he in matters relat- 
 ing to the United States. "You have an astonishing cult of 
 local antiquities, all the way from andirons to inscriptions 
 on tombs. You have an incredible number of books 
 devoted to family history, with lists of ancestors and 
 enormous lists of descendants. You have also a unique 
 array of patriotic clubs and societies — especially for 
 women — to which nobody may belong unless descended 
 from some special group of historic persons somewhere 
 in the remote Colonial or Revolutionary past." Lord 
 Northcliffe refers, of course, to such bodies as the Daugh- 
 ters of the Revolution, whose chapters have been recruit- 
 ing for the Army and Navy. There are also the Society of 
 the Descendants of the Mayflower; the Society of the 
 Colonial Wars and the Daughters of the Holland Dames, 
 
 J 
 
''AN HELPMEET FOR HIM'^ 199 
 
 Descendants of the Ancient and Honourable Families of 
 New York. 
 
 The American woman's view of the war is worth noting. 
 As onlookers they surveyed it for more than two years, 
 paying little heed to the martial or mechanical sides — 
 the hero who muffled a bomb with his body, or the sea- 
 plane which torpedoed a ship from the air. It was the 
 bleak agony of Europe's women which most impressed 
 their sisters in the Great Republic. The wailing of Ger- 
 man Klageiveiher, or Grumble-wives, such as shocked the 
 Bavarian poet, Ganghofer, in letters found on the slain 
 of his own side. "Barely a word of cheer," this recorder 
 noted — "nothing but cries of misery and lamentation, with 
 news of mutinous parade in the cities, and a shrill ' Give us 
 back our men'; which defies the drawn sabres of the Berlin 
 police." . . . "Our little Klauss has died of emaciation," 
 was a typical passage from a letter found on a dead sol- 
 dier. "And I should like those Herren of the Reichstag 
 who tell us all is well, to have a look at my baby now." 
 
 American women wept over these scraps of paper. 
 They knelt with the girl-wife in the slime of France, as 
 the Last Post died down, and men with arms reversed 
 turned away their faces from a figure of shaking desola- 
 tion. . . . "Where is he? . . . Am I too late?— Oh, my 
 darling, come back to me, I can't live alone"! Such 
 scenes moved American women profoundly. So did the 
 opinions of great ladies like the Countess of Warwick, 
 who dwells on the eternal battle between feminism and 
 militarism; the bleak dismay and new knowledge forced 
 upon suffragists "belonging to families with a great mili- 
 tary record." 
 
 "We must learn to hate war," American women were 
 told by Ellen Kay, the Swede. "We must hand on the 
 spark of hate till this evil thing is quenched for ever." 
 
200 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 The revolts of hospital nurses were weighed in the United 
 States; the glee and gladness of the shabby mother whose 
 son was yet alive, although half his face had been shot 
 away. And likewise the awful nescience of her who turned 
 from God with unbearable ache: ''If prayer was any 
 use, would the child I bore with so much anguish have been 
 torn limb from limb, and left to scream for death in a pool 
 of filth and rats?" 
 
 This woman-view was seen with stark clearness on the 
 other side of the water. Here Jane Addams and Julia 
 Wales echoed Aletta Jacobs, the Dutch organizer, who 
 called an International Congress at The Hague. "We 
 women, ' ' Dr. Jacobs said, * * judge war from our ovti angle. 
 The men consider economic results — th€ glory, power, 
 and so on. But what are such things to us beside our 
 husbands and sons, the fathers and brothers, who march 
 out and never come back again?'' Here no comfort is 
 felt "because they died in honour's lofty bed." The 
 great test has come to all the women. And today even 
 the German mother is no Spartan, but a blasphemer, stand- 
 ing with Death the reaper in the hortiis siccus of a ghastly 
 field. 
 
 I have dealt elsewhere with the American farmer's wife 
 and her slavish lot, which is in glaring contrast with that 
 of the idle rich in Newport. Theodore Roosevelt received 
 a letter from Mrs. Rube, in which her outlook upon war 
 is expressed in artless terms: — 
 
 "Dear Sir, — ^When you were talking of 'race suicide' 
 I was rearing a large family on almost no income. I often 
 thought of writing to you about my hardships, and now 
 when 'preparedness' may take of my boys, I feel I must. 
 I have eleven of my own, and brought up three step- 
 children besides. Yet in all the thirty years of my married 
 life, I have never had a new cloak or a winter hat. I have 
 
*'AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 201 
 
 sent seven children to school at one time. I had a family 
 of ten for eighteen years, with no money to hire a washer- 
 woman — though bearing a child every two years. Nine 
 of my children (several are through or nearly so), got into 
 high-school; two reached the State Normal, and one the 
 University of Michigan. 
 
 *'I haven't eaten a paid-for meal in twenty years, nor 
 paid for a night's lodging in thirty years. Not one of my 
 five boys — the youngest is fifteen — uses liquor or tobacco. 
 I've worn men's discarded shoes; I've had little time 
 for reading, so I think I have served my country. My 
 husband has been an invalid for six years, leaving me the 
 care and much of the work on our sandy little farm. Now 
 I've bothered you enough. Only to me, race suicide has 
 perhaps a different meaning when I think my boys may 
 have to face the cannon. — Respectfully, 
 
 ^'Mrs. " 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt thought his correspondent more worthy 
 of salute than ''any colonel of a crack regiment.'* He 
 could only instance Belgium, whose sons were helpless 
 when their mothers and sisters were abused. He could 
 but reassert that law rested on force alone, and that 
 "Preparedness no more invited war than fire insurance 
 invites a fire." Here feminism and militarism are seen in 
 hopeless clash. "What the claims of women may be when 
 this scourge has passed is a theme beyond my present 
 scope. Certainly American women add to a social sway 
 already unique, new political power in a dozen States. 
 As a live issue Woman's Suffrage is endorsed b}' all parties, 
 and may well be an important plank in the election of 1920. 
 Girl workers of the sweat-shop talk about votes; it is in 
 this direction that President Wilson seeks "new springs 
 of democracy" . . . "that we may have fresh insight into 
 all matters of social reform." 
 
 I must deal briefly with the old " indictm»ents " of candy. 
 
202 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 cars, and clothes. The consumption of sweetstuffs is, of 
 course, enormous; in three decades the per capita stint of 
 sugar rose from forty pounds to- over ninety. Dr. Eugene 
 Fisk, of the Life Extension Institute, advised American 
 girls to "Cut out candies and ice-cream sodas" if they 
 would carry good looks and elegant figures into middle 
 life. 
 
 As to motors, these are counted by the million in the 
 United States; quite humble folk will buy one, though it 
 entail a mortgage upon their home. And as John N. 
 Willys reminds us, "many refinements and conveniences 
 of the best cars are due to woman's demands." "The final 
 decision," this famous designer says, "often lies with a 
 man's wife, or sweetheart or sister; so the woman's favour 
 is a sovereign asset in the selling." For this reason the 
 mechanism must be simple, for my lady loathes any 
 "mussing or monkeying with the engine." All the adver- 
 tisements dwell upon this, and the delights which should 
 follow the touch of a button. ' ' xNo exertion, no uncertainty, 
 no bending over — an act which the well-groomed woman 
 will ever resent." She will, indeed, for her corset's sake, 
 rightly holding this garment as the basic truth of dress. 
 
 I have no doubt that American women are the best- 
 dressed of all, though they follow the caprice of Paris 
 with superstitious zeal. In the first flight I place the 
 cosmopolitan aristocracy of the Eastern States; these 
 are catered for by such artists as Jean Worth and Madame 
 Paquin; Paul Poiret, Doucet, and the great Felix, whose 
 salons in the Faubourg were thronged by the beauties 
 immortalized by Balzac and de IMusset. American women 
 of today have much to do with settling the current vogue 
 for the whole world. 
 
 At stated seasons, buyers of unlimited credit and keen 
 flair visit the grandes couturieres; and great are the pow- 
 >vows held in sumptuary cabinets round about the Opera. 
 
''AN HELPMEET FOR HIM'* 203 
 
 Here graceful manneqxdns parade upon a stage in splendid 
 raiment, with footlights to show night effects to professional 
 eyes of the New York and Chicago Dressmakers' Clubs. 
 These visitors are by no means easily awed. They have 
 minds of their own, and the caprice of millions to humour 
 when they get home. So they suggest alteration or modi- 
 fication. The Paris artist demurs, pleading inspiration 
 from a sunset, an exotic flower, or some lovely portrait 
 in the Uffizi or the Louvre. In this manner is the model 
 ** fixed," and with it a season's fashion for the United 
 States, with repercussion down as far as Rio and Buenos 
 Aires. 
 
 The say-so of Paris "goes" with American women of 
 every grade. I was amused to hear the forewoman of a 
 Baltimore factory testify in court that as skirts had 
 become so short she had to wall her girls round with 
 barrels so as not to distract the male operatives who 
 worked near by! I am here reminded that Beauty and 
 the Boss is a regular discussion in the New York papers, 
 varying with the season and the modes. Hot weather 
 brings out the famous "peekaboo blouse," a more or less 
 diaphanous affair, and the anxious theme of employer 
 and employed. "Does Docility go with Dimples?" is a 
 typical headline, and both sides state their grievances 
 and views. In other words, is the pretty girl a worth- 
 while servant? And just what relation does the vanity- 
 box bear to the pay-envelope at the week-end? Such 
 matters are quite gravely weighed in the United States. 
 
 Here also Dress is taken in the serious mood of the 
 French, only there is far more spent on it. A designer like 
 Lady Duff Gordon is struck with the aplomb and chic of 
 the office girls in down-town New York. "Nothing in 
 Paris can touch them, "'is the testimony of this modiste. 
 "They have plenty of money, as well as the spirit for 
 lYcaring delightful clothes." Home dressmaking is forced 
 
204 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 upon American women because skilled service is scarce 
 and dear. Besides, the individual is a clever contriver, 
 with all manner of aids at her disposal, as one speedily 
 learns in the Butterick skyscraper — an eightcen-store}^ 
 workshop of fashion papers and patterns which cover the 
 two Americas from Montreal to Montevideo. I will not 
 deny that these women lean to the bizarre in modes; they 
 follow ''the latest" with neuromimetic faith, whether in 
 dress, new dances, or pastimes. 
 
 The fact remains that they have a talent for adornment. 
 Long" ago discerning visitors like Rejane and Bernhardt 
 found this out, and took home with them trunksful of New 
 York creations. For many years American designers were 
 aggrieved at their patrons' devotion to the Paris label. 
 ''If an earthquake levelled the Opera Quarter we'd have a 
 chance," the Madison Avenue artist told me, with Cellini's 
 own acceptance of a mad, bad world that forced ugly 
 tricks upon the rarest craftsmen. "Our best people lay 
 down the immutable law that tourists and trousseaux 
 must cross each other on the seas. Right here in New 
 York the creative impulse has a poor show. Rich women 
 prefer to look a fright in a frock of Monsieur — without 
 any regard to line or style or colour — than appear as a lur- 
 ing and gracious figure in an American frock. It's really 
 sad." So the dressmakers said. 
 
 The great ladies maintained that New York was only 
 a copyist and adapter, lacking the artistic atmosphere of 
 Paris, and therefore obliged to import the models which 
 it multiplied with such cunning and success. Some years 
 ago Mrs. Stuj^vesant Pish declared for Home Rule in 
 Fashions, and war upon the French mark; the movement 
 made a great to-do, because of the lady's rank. "We're 
 like a lot of sheep," she declared abruptly. "We go over 
 in droves and buy everything we wear, from silk hose to 
 hats and frocks and jewels. Yet our own people have 
 
'^AN HELPMEET FOR HIM" 205 
 
 more skill and taste. IVe often shown a French fitter 
 how to pin a gown so as to get the best effects." . . . 
 American modistes and couturieres assuredly came into 
 their own during the war, reaping and sowing in the flush 
 time, and profiting — it may be permanently — by the stop- 
 page of ocean traffic. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 
 
 "Especially in your country does it exert immense influence on the 
 public mind." — Pope Benedict XV to his American intervieicer. 
 
 The front-page Person who sets out for America pre- 
 pares for a stiffish ordeal, as one does who embarks for 
 the Equator or the North Pole. But no vicarious hint, 
 no experience at second hand, can make real the endless 
 siege which a grand tour of the United States entails upon 
 the distinguished visitor. Three royal names occur to 
 me in this connection: Prince Henry of Prussia, Prince 
 Louis of Battenburg, and the Duke of Abruzzi. It is 
 safe to say these sailors will never forget New York, with 
 night and day assaults upon their peace and patience, 
 which baffled every known strategy. The stay of each 
 of these was an orgiastic whirl not to be conceived by 
 the European; an epos of stormy joy beyond the power 
 of sober words. Those bulky mail-sacks, with epistles 
 from soulful girls — and queer abuse from anarchist dives 
 in the Black Belt of Chicago ! Specimens of cigars and 
 ties that sought a sv/ell christening were sent along for 
 the Lord High Admiral's blessing. So was the Semi- 
 Ready suit, which was none the less ''personal as a billet- 
 doux; tailored entirely by hand, with intimate touches 
 and endearments of individual effort in each hidden stitch 
 and high-caste line.'* 
 
 There was a time when cynical and scandalous comment 
 in the press drove prominent Americans abroad and kept 
 them there. The ablest men were barred from a political 
 
 206 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 207 
 
 career through fear of the newspapers. The Trust magnate 
 saw his career dissected with frigid scorn; his 'cute law- 
 honesty and stock-watering; his Borgian virtu, and the 
 glorious villainies which had marked his rise to greatness. 
 At no time could the reporter be evaded. Nor was he to 
 be suppressed or censored, as the Government itself has 
 lately found, and therewith bowed to a puffing humour 
 which ''put it over" on George Washington himself in 
 the long ago. One day the Liberator attended a Council 
 with a copy of the National Gazette, a lewd and daring 
 sheet edited by Philip Freneau, who held a clerkship in 
 the State Department under Jefferson. ''That rascal," 
 said Washington to his colleagues, "has been sending mo 
 three copies of his paper every day, as if he thought I 
 would become the distributor of them." He probably 
 did — especially as the Father of his Country was vilely 
 abused in that day's issue! Freneau 's paper died an 
 appropriate death in the yellow fever outbreak of Phila- 
 delphia in 1793. 
 
 You cannot awe the American scribe. He pursues the 
 biggest game with a child-like trust in the due and license 
 which have never failed him; we saw these conceded in 
 the first two years of war, when "big things" rained upon 
 the American press until the veterans were sated. The 
 New Yorker chatted informally -witli kings, as none other 
 could do. Foreign Offices received him gladly, from 
 the Quai d'Orsay to the mysterious Bab-i-Ali above the 
 Golden Horn. Chancellors and Ministers gave exclusive 
 stories to the Yankee, leaving the native scribe to pout 
 with a sense of slight and chagrin. But New York was 
 in no way elated, accepting each prize as a matter of 
 course. In Berlin old Zeppelin was interviewed upon the 
 aerial raids. Von Tirpitz was America's authority for 
 the submarine exploits; at home Edison was asked about 
 electric cures for all the curses of a chemical war. 
 
208 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 It was to a Hearst man that the Crown Prince wept 
 over the havoc and slaughter he had seen. At the Sublime 
 Porte the Grand Vizier shook his hoary head over Veni- 
 zelos; and complained about the Sherif of Mecca who hid 
 the treasure of the Holy Places — a tidy sum, and one 
 sorely needed by the Porte in a hungry time. America 
 was bombarded with the sayings and sentiments of august 
 Persons who had never previously spoken for publication. 
 Newspaper envoys flitted back and forth in Europe with 
 a naive thirst for knowledge. As it happened, all the 
 belligerents were anxious to humour him; so from end to 
 end the firmament of war fairly blazed with American stars, 
 tackling jobs which in 1914 were not even office dreams, 
 but mere pia desideria too silly for editorial thought. 
 
 But of all the stunts, all the resounding scoops (how the 
 English language limps behind them!) none quite equals 
 that twenty minutes which the World man had with the 
 Pope 'Mn his magnificent private library on the second 
 floor of the Vatican": there a Maestro di Camera trans- 
 lated, as the Keeper of the Keys delivered his pra3Tr and 
 plea — ''that this terrible carnage with its attendant 
 horrors and misery may soon cease.'' That famous inter- 
 view gave rise to caustic comment abroad. The Papal 
 Secretary of State tried to explain ''misunderstandings"; 
 the Austrian prelate who arranged the audience was 
 censured and dismissed. Certain it is that the Vatican 
 was embarrassed by this Park Row feat. Dom Gasquet, 
 the Benedictine historian, found the Pope depressed over 
 the affair — and no doubt prejudiced against American 
 reporters. But how came this New York Worldling to 
 glide by the noble guards and arch-priests, the purple 
 monsignori and princes of the Curia, who fence the Sover- 
 eign Pontiff from the passing show? There was a prec- 
 edent, it seems, and the World man played it well. Leo 
 XIII (the American urged) had received Jim Creelman at 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 209 
 
 no fateful time; so Pope Benedict might well speak to a 
 hunded million neutrals through thirty thousand news- 
 papers, all the way from Tallahassee to Spokane. Now 
 what were the war-aims and views of the Holy Father? 
 
 To say that America believes in publicity is to state a 
 fact too feebly. Publicity is America's blood and breath. 
 The President is bound by it; a President's coffin cannot 
 escape it. I have before me a page advertisement of the 
 Springfield Metallic Casket, which at Canton, 0., keeps 
 the remains of Mr. and Mrs. McKinlcy ''from the viola- 
 tion of the earth." Never before have I seen coffins 
 flaunted in sevent\'-five styles, with hardv»^are to match, 
 and ''burglar-proof vaults," which are surely peculiar to 
 America. You will find all about them in a lavish cata- 
 logue called "The Final Tribute," which shows the funeral 
 pomp of all mankind, from that of a Kansas Senator to 
 the hairy Ainu of Yezo. This macabre business may be 
 in doubtful taste, but it is gleefully characteristic. Down 
 in Birmingham, Ala., I was handed an undertaker's card 
 with the gay-grim legend: "I'll get you yet!" On the 
 other side was this consolation: "But you'll have all the 
 attention you'd expect from a friend." 
 
 This matter of publicity, I must own, appals me at 
 the outset. The gleam of Liberty's torch, high over 
 Bedloe's Island, is somewhat dimmed, when I reflect 
 that a newspaper lit it, with the aid of Henry Doherty 
 and the Society for Electrical Development. A great 
 city like Baltimore takes space in the magazines beside 
 the breakfast cereal and the safety razor. And the text 
 tells you why. "Ask Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem 
 Works, who is spending $50,000,000 here to establish the 
 largest steel plant on the Atlantic seaboard." A smaller 
 town like Kenosha, Wis., makes a most modest bid for 
 your plant and personal energy. "She offers low freights, 
 lake transport, intelligent labour, and cheap electric 
 
210 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 power." All over the continent statesmen and society 
 leaders have their own halo-polishers in the press. A 
 Presidential election is the most colossal task of all 'for 
 the publicity expert. He has a cabinet of movie-men, 
 an army of orators in a dozen tongues, including Magyar, 
 Yiddish, and Greek. 
 
 He partly edits ten thousand papers by means of extra 
 matter supplied in plate, and matrix, and proof. He 
 inspires a corps of cartoonists day by day, till the whirl- 
 wind finish rings out a blast of challenge from the rival 
 camps. Then it is that the best writers open fire with 
 pile-driving boosts for either candidate. No wonder the 
 Campaign Headquarters is like a great post office gone 
 mad. The Boss of all is now firing salvoes with a range 
 of three thousand miles; his target is nine million votes, 
 scattered from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. America revels in the 
 strife which Success entails; the Edison formula for it is 
 *'two per cent, inspiration, and ninety-eight per cent, 
 perspiration." Repose seems to mean stagnation in this 
 vivid land. One must do and drive, if one is to rank 
 among the live wires of business ; how many American 
 figures of speech are drawn from electricity, railroads, and 
 mechanics ? 
 
 The same qualities are looked for in the man as in the 
 car — ''power and pep, pick-up and snap"; I quote from 
 an advertisement before me. "Life is too good to waste," 
 the American gloats — and wastes himself in the using 
 of it. ''If I can't make sixty-one minutes to the hour, 
 it won't be for want of trying!" It must be that extra 
 minute which the foreign visitor finds so wearing — even 
 the militant suffrage lady who never knew defeat before. 
 Poor Mrs. Pankhurst, hunted by reporters, hid from them 
 on the dock near the outward bound Saxonia, and went 
 on board at the last moment only to find the pressmen 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 211 
 
 waiting at her stateroom door! *'I am very tired, and 
 wish to lie down," was an appeal which even the sob- 
 sisterhood respected. 
 
 That great soldier, Marshal Joffre, must have felt like 
 that when he left New York for home : 
 
 **Un gros rus6 comp&re 
 Qui cachait bien son jeu." 
 
 He was a jusqu'au houtist in that American Press cam- 
 paign; temperamental calm sustained him, and the **I1 
 faut tenir bon," which one notes in his early letters; 
 that motto goes back to Colonel Joffre's trials among the 
 Touareg of Timbuktu. The Allied Missions were made 
 up of men who dislike publicity, yet they took naturally 
 to democratic ways. Witness Mr. Balfour sitting on a 
 box in the foc's'le of the Mayfloiver, chatting with the 
 sailors, and handing out cigars on the way up the Potomac 
 to Mount Vernon and Washington's Tomb. 
 
 The front-page Person is never allowed out of the public 
 eye; he must always be on show for anecdote, opinions, 
 and appraisal. "Not quite my type," was Walt Whit- 
 man's verdict on John Morley. "Not the letting-it-go 
 kind. Rather too judicial; still, quite a man." Visitors 
 nowadays show more tact and understanding than Dickens 
 did in 1841. His American Notes gave umbrage to his 
 inquisitive hosts — though Dickens did his best to placate 
 them during a second tour after the Civil War. The 
 famous Person is apt to become fogged with incense and 
 deafened with the feast of trumpets. Cocktails are named 
 after him; he eats and drinks too much, and gets very 
 little sleep. 
 
 The flashlight fiend will take even genius unawares. 
 There are shorthand scribes who report the statesman 
 falsely, leading olf with an Epictetus maxim, and winding 
 up with prize-ring praise of the orator, — "he carried a 
 
212 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 wallop like the kick of a mule!'* One of these days 
 perhaps Mr. Balfour will tell us of his pilgrimage with 
 penetrating play, and that charity of the mind which is a 
 sympathetic vision. It cannot be said of him, as it was 
 of Canning, that he was a ''ballroom failure"; a stingy 
 talker, and no ladies' man. I am always expecting some 
 Lucretian epicure to return from the United States and 
 write a classic book which shall be a joy to us all, alike 
 in the Old World and the New. Even Lord Bryce remarks 
 the noise and tremor which accompany American life. 
 He compares this people to a tree "whose pendulous 
 shoots quiver and rustle with the lightest breeze, while its 
 roots enfold the rock with a grasp which storms cannot 
 loosen." The rustling, at any rate, is demonstrable by 
 a mania for publicity, which is all persuasive and unique. 
 "Is church advertising as necessary and fruitful as it is 
 in business?" was a question put to seventy-eight factors 
 of all denominations. And seventy-five answered, "Yes, 
 it is." But Barnum methods are over, it seems; the 
 Religious Press Advertising Bureau warns its wire-pullers 
 against "aping the circus billboards." . . . "The Church 
 does not run a bargain counter; and in our judgment 
 she soon reaches the limit of legitimate publicity. Is it 
 not still true that regenerated men and women are our 
 best showing? After all, the real Gospel is our main 
 attraction; and we doubt whether any side lines will 
 bring us a nobler profit." The boomer of 1918 is a skilled 
 psychologist as well as an artist of Rossini's own exuber- 
 ance : "He could set to music a page of advertisements ! ' ' 
 Everything in heaven and earth, from the night sky to 
 Niagara Falls, has been pressed into selling service. 
 Landscape and mountain are made hideous with mammoth 
 "calls" from chewing gum and spotless cleansers. There 
 is a good deal of feeling, I must say, against this viola- 
 tion; it is passing in the new Day. Less odious, even 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 213 
 
 masterly, is the phrasing and display of advertisements in 
 the newspapers and magazines. Besides these, the trade 
 appeals of other lands look anaemic. 
 
 Great musicians who visit America are all the better 
 for eccentricity of person, however pure and perfect their 
 art may be. A great soprano will permit the boys to 
 invade her hotel suite; on Sunday morning the lady is 
 stupefied to read — not indeed an interview, but a signed 
 article by herself on ''Singing Shorn of Its Mysteries"! 
 As for the President, his "public" life is not so wearing 
 as it was. I have known Roosevelt retire to bed with a 
 bruised hand and aching neck after two thousand hand- 
 shakes at a garden fete. The White House of 1918 has 
 no more welcome for casual callers than Buckingham 
 Palace has, or the Elysee. But in Jackson's day a 
 reception drew ungovernable mobs to the Executive Man- 
 sion which *' belonged to all the people." Old Hickory 
 could never have foreseen the result of his first free 
 lunch. When he opened the doors his admirers surged 
 in and trod his cheeses into a greasy pulp on the East 
 Room carpet. The chipping of furniture for souvenirs; 
 the removal of statuettes, cutlery, cups, and glasses — 
 here was an enthusiastic vice which lasted up to Roose- 
 velt's term. The Colonel and his lady worked wonders 
 in White House reform. They put a stop to a traffic in 
 invitations which brought seven hundred guests to a sup- 
 per for three hundred, and drove a hungry President 
 to raid his wife 's larder for cold pie and pickles in the small 
 hours. 
 
 America was rather restive over the war-time sovereignty 
 which the Federal Government assumed. Thus a Press 
 Censorship clause was inserted in the Espionage Bill with a 
 view to ensuring reticence in regard to the plans and armed 
 forces of the nation. Most of the newspapers, the Presi- 
 dent was glad to say, put national safety before mere news. 
 
214 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 At the same time there were ''some persons who cannot be 
 relied upon, and whose interest or desires may prove highly 
 dangerous to the country at this time." The penalty for 
 indiscretion was a tine of $10,000 and ten years in gaol. 
 Here was a revolutionary move in a land where the Press 
 had unbridled power; it is not surprising that the Senate 
 added a proviso that: "Nothing in this section shall be 
 construed to limit or restrict any discussion, comment or 
 criticism of the acts or policies of the Government or its 
 representatives, or the publication of the same." 
 
 There were statesmen in that debate who had no illusions 
 about the sacred mission of the Press. Senator Pomerene 
 of Ohio quoted articles "so treasonable that had they been 
 published in other countries the editors would have been 
 shot." "Some people," mused Mr. Stone, the Chairman of 
 the Committee on Foreign Relations, "seem to think there 
 is something about a journalist which puts him above the 
 law. I cannot understand why these men should be allowed 
 to prowl at large after information." This is the view of 
 a new aristocracy ; it is by no means that of the masses, to 
 whom the Press is a mighty abstraction, a more than 
 Roman imperium, dancing through American history with 
 the large exuberance of Liberty herself. American re- 
 porters and men of letters enjoy greater favour and for- 
 tune. Every avenue of public life is open to them. Presi- 
 dent Wilson won early renown as historian and biographer ; 
 he also wrote for the papers in his Princeton days. 
 
 Roosevelt passed from the "White House to the office of 
 The Outlook; and among Foreign Ministers who were 
 writers too, I need only name John Hay and Mr. Bryan, 
 who has been a journalist all his life. Colonel W. E. Edge, 
 the Governor of New Jersey, was manager of the Atlantic 
 City Press, Governor Cox of Ohio was first a farmer's 
 boy, then a printer, and finally the owner of the Dayton 
 Daily Neius. Reporters, publishers, and poets are rated as 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 215 
 
 men of affairs, and appointed to important embassies and 
 legations abroad. Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who lived in regal 
 state among us, was for many years editor of the New York 
 Tribune. And I first met his successor, Mr. Walter Page, 
 in the office of The World's Work, which he directed, being 
 at the same time a partner in a publishing house of high 
 repute for the quality of its books and periodicals. The 
 Ambassador to Russia, Mr. David R. Francis, owns the 
 St. Louis Republic; Dr. Henry van Dyke, lately at The 
 Hague, is a poet and essayist of international renown. 
 The list could be extended surprisingly. 
 
 Enormous fortunes are made by men who own news- 
 papers and periodicals ; this is mainly due to the advertise- 
 ments, which account for nearly ninety-five per cent, of the 
 revenue. So cunning are these announcements, so artistic 
 and lavish in scale, that there can be no reasonable com- 
 parison with the advertising of any other nation. The 
 total sum spent in this way must exceed $500,000,000, yet 
 this is by no means the money-measure of American pub- 
 licity and salesmanship, which bring into play all the 
 wiles and guiles, all the faith and hope and vigour of the 
 national genius. 
 
 A million dollars is nothing for a breakfast-food cam- 
 paign or the launching of a new car. The New York 
 department stores contract for daily columns by the thou- 
 sand; and $5000 is no startling price to pay for the " posi- 
 tion '^ page of a magazine. The ability shown in advertis- 
 ing, the close watch upon results, the psychologic study 
 and high pay given for text and pictures — these are mat- 
 ters to amaze the foreign expert who scans the page with 
 knowledge of price and ''pulling power" — say in the Sat- 
 urday Evening Post or the Ladies^ Home Journal of Phila- 
 delphia. As literary properties, apart from the daily 
 papers, I consider these the most valuable in any country ; 
 and the last-named deserves special mention as a factor in 
 
216 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 the uplift of women's lot. I know no agency — political, 
 civic, or social — which is such a power for good as the 
 Ladies' Home Journal; though to understand this calls 
 for intimate grasp of rural and provincial life in the 
 United States. 
 
 The daily papers, with their overwhelming Sunday 
 supplements, have to a large extent dropped those ''yellow'* 
 features which made them so offensive to Americans of the 
 better sort. "It is the task of a live newspaper," one was 
 told, "to raise the devil in some way every day." Hence 
 the craving for stunts, for daring personals and prurience, 
 which the European could only survey with awe, seeing men 
 defamed and women mocked for the fleeting amusement of 
 the mob. This ugly phase belongs to the past. The 
 monthlies, too, have given up the so-called "muck-raking" 
 articles, of which the most notable was Miss Ida TarbelFs 
 history of the Standard Oil concern. To attack the Trusts 
 was once a paying vogue; to expose municipal graft and 
 big business grabs, as well as the careers of industrial kings, 
 their coups and counter-plots, which were cynical and 
 crooked reading in the literature of power. 
 
 This missionary zeal is an American tradition; it was 
 defined by Joseph Pulitzer, when he bought the bankrupt 
 New York World in May 1883, after its failure as a relig- 
 ious journal. 
 
 Government by the newspapers was of real use in Boss 
 Tweed's outrageous day; it is out of place in President 
 Wilson's, and that of State Governors of a new type. 
 Thus I find a fervid Churchman as Chief Executive in 
 Maine, a Socialist farmer in North Dakota, a Doctor of 
 Philosophy in Arkansas, and University men in Illinois and 
 Indiana. It was already a changed America w^hich took 
 up the Prussian challenge; and since that day the all- 
 absorbing theme has been Democracy's War, and the new 
 world-order that must come after it. 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 217 
 
 From the very first — three centuries ago, indeed — the 
 hunting of news was known for a prime sport. In 1680 
 Ben Harris of Boston resolved * * to furnish the Country- once 
 a month (or if any glut of Publick Occurrences happen, 
 oftener) with an account of such considerable Things as 
 have arrived unto our Notice. '* In Colonial days, the 
 papers had a lively time. There w^as British censure and 
 stern visitation upon offenders ; there were inter-office wars 
 and editorial duels wdth bludgeon and pistol and pen. The 
 famous Stamp Act killed manj^ aspiring sheets. Among 
 these the Pennsylvania Journal died with mournful glee — • 
 *'In the pious hope of Resurrection, having departed this 
 life on the 31st of October, 1765, through a Stamp in the 
 vital parts." There w^ere forty-nine of these casualties 
 before American independence w^as won. 
 
 I must pass over the journalism of Revolutionary days, 
 when the Boston bell-cart went through the streets collect- 
 ing rags (at 10/ a lb.!) which a primitive mill made into 
 paper for the Massachusetts Spy, Ink and type — any sort 
 of a press — these were hard to come by in the new Republic. 
 Moreover, readers were so few and shy that the seven dailies 
 of New York could only muster a circulation of 9420 
 between them. Yet it w^as always natural for the Press to 
 lead the nation. The big editor was already a political boss 
 who took himself very seriously. *^You must try to elect 
 the President without me," cried old Sol. Smith of The 
 Independent, with tears rolling down his massy cheeks. 
 Sol. was just then amalgamating a couple of papers, so for a 
 season America had to lose the guidance of her inky Tsar. 
 
 The birth of the Sun in 1833, the forming of the Asso- 
 ciated Press in '48, and the invention of Colonel Hoe's 
 machine are landmarks in the newspaper history of New 
 York. Sunday papers were long resisted in the Puritan 
 spirit; on the other hand, all attempts to establish a relig- 
 ious daily were foredoomed to failure. As a preaching 
 
218 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 sheet the Sun was a poor concern ; the original founders of 
 the World withdrew from an uplift venture with a loss of 
 $200,000. With sensational coups and headlong vying 
 for public favour — like that between the Herald and the 
 Sun — I have little space to deal. There was no such thing 
 as a dull season for news. When facts were few, reporters 
 eyed the moon itself with wistful impulse that begot a 
 monstrous yarn, which w^as fathered upon Sir John 
 Herschel, who at the time was out of the way in South 
 Africa. The astronomer was supposed to have viewed 
 the moon through a new and mighty telescope which 
 revealed weird valleys and forests, stupendous temples and 
 strange birds winging stranger way over rivers paved with 
 gold. It was Locke of the Sun who wrote the famous 
 Moon Hoax, and the watchful Herald demolished it. 
 
 I suppose the Herald is the richest of newspaper prop- 
 erties. Its founder, the elder Gordon Bennett, was a 
 humble proof-reader down in Charleston, S. C. How he 
 borrowed $500, and produced the first number in a Wall 
 Street cellar, at a desk made of bits of board upon two 
 barrels, is a classic instance of American hustle. Bennett 
 did everything himself. He secured advertisements and 
 financial news. He haunted theatres and clubs for social 
 stuff; at four in the morning he was writing leaders, or 
 else sweeping and dusting out his editorial cave. All 
 things were made to serve the Herald; an infernal 
 machine addressed to the editor, or an assault upon his 
 person by a visiting crank ; the first gold of the Californian 
 rush ; and episodes of the Civil War, with its corps of Her- 
 ald correspondents, who had $100,000 to spend. These men 
 wrote of Union victories on the backs of rebel State bonds 
 and Confederate scrip of enormous face value. So scarce 
 wa^ paper at that time, that more than half the Southern 
 journals suspended publication. Others used crude wall- 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 219 
 
 papers, with the news on one side and gaudy floral patterns 
 on the other. 
 
 Under Gordon Bennett's son the Herald attained a 
 wider renown, notably by the sending of Stanley to meet 
 Livingstone at Ujiji. But it is Horace Greeley who stands 
 out as the most powerful and truculent figure of the 
 American Press. It was the dream of his life to own a 
 newspaper; so far back as 1833 we find the man touring 
 New York and boring young editors with his views on a 
 one-cent paper of vast politico-social sway. Greeley was 
 laughed at, of course. He started the Morning Post on a 
 cash capital of $150, a promise of $200 worth of paper, 
 and an agreement with a cautious printer to settle for the 
 composing every week. After three stormy settlements 
 the Post died out amid general execration. Greeley was 
 now a precarious free-lance; he was also a Voice hired on 
 easy terms by shady politicians at the State Capitol up in 
 Albany. Yet this hack could bring out the Tribune on a 
 mysterious thousand dollars, and the moral backing of 
 petty statesmen who had faith in his stormy talent. The 
 first number was published in 1841 with a lofty flourish 
 which was not upheld. "No immoral or degrading police 
 reports" were to pollute Horace Greeley's page; the Tri- 
 hune was to reflect only "the virtuous and refined." 
 
 The famous pressman gloried in a fight and had recourse 
 to the queerest circulation methods. He "donated" 
 strawberry plants and steel engravings of himself, which 
 gave his rivals scope for the drollest scurrility. In the 
 summer of '63 the Tribune office was besieged by a mur- 
 derous mob, and Greeley took refuge in a refrigerator. 
 These riots were due to Lincoln's drafts for soldiers; and 
 they broke out afresh in the following year. But already 
 schooled in violence, the Times and Tribune now mounted 
 real artillery on their office roofs. There were editor-gun- 
 
220 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ners turning off real thunder, with ingenious hoists for the 
 ammunition. 
 
 Greeley 's fort was now stuffed with giant reels of paper ; 
 he poked Minie rifles out of loopholes, and had handy 
 openings for grenades to be thrown at storming parties. 
 Such was New York journalism during the Civil War. 
 Henry Raymond of the Times is a familiar type, akin to 
 Gordon Bennett and the rest. Here is Raymond writing 
 his first leader in a windowless loft by the light of a gutter- 
 ing candle stuck on three nails in a wooden block. "It'll 
 take five years," he said, "to put my bantling on its legs." 
 He was soon greeting Kossuth on Staten Island, and devis- 
 ing stunts that put the Herald in the shade, and eclipsed the 
 Sun itself. 
 
 It was the Times that shocked New York with revelations 
 of the Tweed Ring, giving figures from the City Comp- 
 troller's books to show the huge extent of the looting. 
 One item was $5,663,646 for "repairs and furniture for a 
 new Court-House." In vain was a bribe of a million dol- 
 lars offered to the Times; and so ingrained was graft 
 that Bill Tweed surveyed the whole exposure with a bored 
 indifference — ''Well, what are you going to do about it?" 
 was a classic question of the Boss. After Raymond of the 
 Times, comes Pulitzer of the World, who once slept out on 
 the park benches as a homeless hobo. It was this man's 
 "Yellow Kid" whose antics in the Sunday paper moved 
 Dana of the Sun to condemn "Yellow journalism" for the 
 first time. Pulitzer was in turn defeated by the rich 
 Calif ornian, W. R. Hearst, who coaxed away the World 
 staff, including the Yellow Kid artist, who was offered a 
 Presidential salary. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of Hearst and his chain of 
 papers — there can be no denying the skill and mob- 
 knowledge with which they are conducted. None others 
 approach them in circulation. None pay so lavishly for 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 221 
 
 pictures and stories, whether news of the day or science 
 and society features for tlie Sunday sections. The Hearst, 
 papers, as all Americans know, have their own code of 
 ethics, and upon this I need not dwell. Setting aside 
 questions of decency and taste, the Hearst journals are 
 marvels of popular appeal; it is absurd to ignore them 
 when considering the influences that sway the mixed peo- 
 ples of the United States. Moreover, it is incontestable 
 that Hearst motives and methods — political and social, 
 technical and professional — have moved certain of our own 
 papers to a discreet and pallid emulation of stunts and 
 hunts, adapted to our less impressionable people. 
 
 Press publicity is quite a modern weapon, one forced 
 upon the British Government like the flame-thrower and 
 the chlorine-cylinder. It went against our grain, yet 
 could not be ignored without serious disadvantages. So 
 at last we find our Foreign Office receiving the American 
 *'boys," as President Wilson does after the Friday Cabinet 
 in Washington. An interview with the British Prime 
 Minister, our Foreign Secretarj^ or First Lord was no 
 longer an impossible stunt, but a frequent fact, with big 
 headlines and editorial comment when the feature reached 
 New York. Even in Paris the rigid Protocol of the Quai 
 d'Orsay so far unbent as to form a "Comite de I'Etiort de 
 la France et de ses Allies," which was to counteract the 
 world-wide ferment which centred in Berlin. 
 
 This covert arm of the Kriegsamt was for many years 
 run by Dr. Otto Hammann, the supple tool of Hohenlohe, 
 von Billow and Bethmann-Hollweg. It was Hammann 's 
 work to create the "atmosphere of Victory" which should 
 go before the German legions like a cloud of tire, tinging 
 a timorous world with awe and admiration. Whether 
 Britain and her friends will ever equal or surpass that 
 Berlin Bureau is unlikely. 
 
 The stealing away of its ''atmosphere" is not to be 
 
222 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 denied. ** Sooner or later one succumbs to it/' is the 
 reluctant testimony of Professor F. Sefton Delmer, who 
 may be cited as an excellent witness. He is an Australian, 
 and was appointed English Lecturer at Berlin University 
 in 1901. "In Berlin I had constantly to remind myself 
 that these were German reports, and full of German guile. 
 The marvellous thing is that this subtle influence is felt 
 even by intellects which perceive its trend/' Judge from 
 this what its power must be where no bias exists, and 
 where German rumour calls from every cave to the untu- 
 tored masses. 
 
 Publicity is proven as a weapon of war. Here in 
 England we have seen it used to call armies into being 
 for the factory and field, to raise enormous loans and rally 
 the nation to economy and thrift for a long and wearing 
 fight. It is pre-eminently an American weapon, and 
 plays a compelling part in the polity of a land where 
 silence, dignity, and repose do not accord with the spirit 
 of youth welling in a restless people. A recent skirmish 
 between the Cabinet and the Press ended in official rout 
 and a letter of capitulation from the Secretaries of War, 
 the Navy, and Foreign Affairs. ''While there is much 
 that is properly secret," these Ministers said, ''in con- 
 nection with Departments, the total is small when com- 
 pared with the information which it is right the people 
 should have. America's present needs are confidence, 
 enthusiasm, and service; and these are not completely 
 met unless every citizen is given that feeling of partner- 
 ship which comes with full, frank statements relating to 
 the conduct of public affairs." This was the outcome of 
 the "news-gag" clause in the Espionage Bill, which had 
 been severely handled in both Houses. 
 
 At last President Wilson formed an Information Board, 
 with Mr. George Creelman in charge. The Press was 
 appeased and put upon its honour, with regulations on 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 223 
 
 the news-desk and hints from the Bureaux in each 
 reporter's heart. In a word, the Government Avas beaten; 
 the papers were self-censored indeed, but as free as ever 
 from **the dictation of superannuated majors who knew 
 no more about news than they did of giant ordnance in 
 the field.'' With this parting shot the Press withdrew 
 to engage in war-work and devise a Headline Policy 
 which should be common to them all. Here Columbia 
 University joined forces with them through the School 
 of Journalism founded by Joseph Pulitzer of the World. 
 A super-editor was soon instructing his colleagues from 
 academic halls on the Hudson heights. *'It is to a con- 
 sidered and continuous policy of news presentation that 
 we must primarily look for the keeping before the American 
 people of the importance of team-play, and of the fact 
 that we are today a member of a great team of nations 
 whose success is ours, and whose failure would alike be 
 ours. . . . 
 
 "Keep news of the fighting upon the front page. For 
 it is Our fighting. It is the reason why all our local 
 energies — the raising of troops, the training of men here 
 or there, the manufacture of munitions and the issuance 
 of billions of credit — are conducted. These activities can 
 be understood only in relation to the end for which they 
 are undertaken. . . . That end is the defeat of Germany, 
 which is being accomplished on the battlefields of Europe 
 and on the high seas." Such was the new policy which 
 the official "blacking-brush" might have brought to 
 angry damnation. At the same time, the Government took 
 care to issue a daily Bulletin of its own. This was dis- 
 played in all post-offices, and marked the stages by which 
 a pacific continent took on war-harness by a social revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Here publicity has a pride of place denied it in the 
 quieter lands. The University of Pennsylvania welcomes 
 
224 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 a congress of Advertising Clubs. ^ ' Sparks will be struck, ' ' 
 the advance agent said, "from the contact of keen minds, 
 new fires of optimism will be kindled, new courage and 
 understanding promoted among men." These live wires 
 were able to draw a letter from the most conservative 
 of Presidents. Dr. Wilson was glad to know that the 
 clubs sought ''to establish and enforce a code of ethics 
 based upon candid truth." This was an aim which showed 
 **good business judgment as well as a fine conception of 
 public obligation." That such a crusade was needed, I 
 will not attempt to deny. 
 
 But of late Truth has invaded even the Bargain Base- 
 ment, where sober values have superseded the merely 
 snatching legend : ' ' These 25 c. Handkerchiefs are a 
 trifle mussed, so we allow you 10 c. for washing them." I 
 know a mammoth store in New York, whose publicity 
 man began a Truth campaign which all but drove the 
 managers to mutiny. Yet the fellow persisted in his 
 heresy. ''Sincerity," quoth he, "is the biggest word in 
 the dictionary. Give me six months' run, and if I don't 
 double the sales, put me in the discard as a street sweeper." 
 He had his way, that revolutionary, and dollars followed 
 "like trained pigs" — the phrase is his own. It was per- 
 plexing at first to the startled staff. The devotee of 
 Truth knew that the average woman will refuse to buy 
 "five-dollar" hats at fifty cents, whereas she will readily 
 bite at $3.89. This tricky sj^stem was swept away, — 
 though for a while Truth stood unheeded in frippery's 
 halls, like the pedlar who sold golden sovereigns on London 
 Bridge at a penny apiece. 
 
 Nowhere is publicity so profoundly studied as in the 
 United States. I am willing to believe it is a "fascinat- 
 ing" art, since human frailty is its chief concern, and it 
 carries a shifty code. Ho\^'beit one must admire the 
 play which these mages make with words. What insinua- 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 225 
 
 tion equals the hand-camera hint: *'Your friends can 
 buy anything you can give them — except your photo- 
 graph!" Or what is quainter than the shaving-soap that 
 figures as a ''Big Stick" — one of suaver utility than Roose- 
 velt ever planned. "So husky to look at, so magical and 
 soft in application! The metal grip grows daily in your 
 affections as the Big Stick wears itself out in your defence." 
 
 In the underworld of advertising I came upon the letter- 
 broker, an agent unknown over here. He deals in names 
 and addresses; he rounds up and classifies inquirers of 
 all kinds, whether for patent medicines, or wild-cat 
 stocks and shares. The letters are rarely sold outright, 
 but let out on hire with a sliding scale of charges governed 
 by recency of date, by the subject-matter, and the number 
 of originals among each lot. A mail-order house will 
 pay from $5 to $10 for the loan of a hundred thousand 
 letters; but I have known $1500 given for the names of 
 fifty thousand possible victims in a crazy speculation. 
 
 It is curious to recall the stunts of other da3's, and 
 the itch for novelty which was never still. Even civic 
 science had its freaks and finds, and editors were glad to 
 get them for the Sunday supplement. Take the alliga- 
 tors of the Jacksonville (Fla.) Zoo. These idle saurians 
 were yanked out of the sun and set to clear the cit}^ drains 
 by crawling through them with ropes and chains. Who 
 could invent such things as these ? 
 
 The social firmament was combed for stunts — (there 
 is no escaping the word), and all classes responded eagerly. 
 At the zenith was my lady of Newport, who went to the 
 fancy ball as Aphrodite, with nothing on her but a wisp 
 of gauze — "you could lose it in your purse, my dear"! 
 And at the nadir was the felon in gaol ; he was tyranny 's 
 victim, I fear, in this democratic land. His terrors and 
 tortures in Trenton were exposed. So were drink and 
 drugs smuggled in to him at Auburn; and — worst of 
 
226 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 all — the ghastly preparations for the death-chair in Sing- 
 Sing*, a sizzling horror which I shall not describe. 
 
 These ugly themes cast wholesome light upon abuses; 
 for the vice and graft of American prisons, no less than 
 their crude philanthropy, were scandals that cried aloud 
 for reform. Of late years an official ban has been put 
 upon penitentiary yarns. Superintendent James M. Car- 
 ter, of the New York State Prison Service, warned his 
 staff against notoriety of this unbecoming kind. Legiti- 
 mate news might properly be given out, but ''the practice 
 of featuring convicts and advertising persons indiscrimin- 
 ately is not and cannot be helpful." 
 
 Aerial and cinema feats took a reckless toll of human 
 life, besides debauching the people who viewed them. 
 On the political side there was the ''Manless Special," a 
 famous train which brought Suffrage armies to besiege 
 the White House and the Capitol, and the liquor-loathing 
 Sheriff, who watered the streets of his home town with 
 hundreds of gallons of "blind tiger" whisky. 
 
 America loved spectacular news of this kind, but the 
 buzz of it ceased when ten million citizens marched to 
 register for Humanity's War. New Headlines now 
 appeared in the papers, and mere inanity was no more 
 seen. ''Old Glory in the Firing Line" was a front-page 
 feature. Or "The Hoe behind the Flag" — an exhortation 
 to the farmers: "Taking Stock of Our Resources," "The 
 Men who Get Things Done," and "Our Bridge of Ships 
 Across The Atlantic." "These United States," whose 
 lack of cohesion Washington him^self bewailed, were now 
 one indeed in that "privilege of self-sacrifice" which 
 President Wilson praised. "We may regard this as a 
 very happy Day," the Chief Executive told the veterans 
 of the Civil War. "A Day of Dedication, a renewal of the 
 spirit which has made us great." 
 
 A;inerica's millions were now in Democracy's War — 
 
PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS 227 
 
 ''With both feet," as General Pershing vowed: ''To the 
 last dollar/' as M,. Viviani testified after his memorable 
 tour with Marshal Joffre, "To the last man, and the last 
 beat of their hearts. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE *' PEOPLE OF NOW" 
 
 "Les anciens, Monsieur, sont Ics anciens; et nous sommes les gens 
 de maintenant." — (Moliere, Le Malade Imaginaire) . 
 
 The collapse in Russia and the military burden it threw 
 upon the Allies did much to deepen America's responsibil- 
 ity and reveal her own role in a critical liberation of forces 
 too evenly balanced for a speedy decision. Germany, as 
 we know, held her lightly as a possible enemy. The early 
 satires of journals like Kladderadatsch and Simplissimus 
 show Uncle Sam as a clumsy titan with a wooden sword: 
 
 *'Any centenarian can see 
 To ring a bull's-eye when he shoots at me!" 
 
 Another cartoon showed a Mexican peon on a bucking 
 bronco, throwing a lasso at the impotent President, who 
 was scolding Berlin from the far Atlantic shore. Ameri- 
 ca's aim to boss the world was desolate Hambvirg's theme: 
 *'Not of course by military means, for these people lack the 
 very rudiments of martial tradition. Their mentality is 
 essentially bourgeois, yet they assume lofty airs as keepers 
 of the world's conscience. This pose flickers through all 
 Ilerr Wilson's chameleon Notes." 
 
 Herr Wilson would do well to change his ways while yet 
 he was safe. For, lifted again and again from the dip- 
 lomatic saddle, he was now in danger of being blown out of 
 the military path. . . . And so things drifted to a rupture 
 which was quite calmly viewed in Berlin. Was it of much 
 more account after all than the break with Hayti or 
 
 228 
 
THE ''PEOPLE OF NOW" 229 
 
 Liberia? These opinions underwent a change. I find Pro- 
 fessor Jannasch debating the cost of war with ''the Land 
 of Limitless Kesources." He regrets the Pan-American 
 influence which can seize millions of tons of shipping, and 
 close markets from Vera Cruz down to Valparaiso — "the 
 result of our colonizing genius these ninety years." But 
 there could be no turning back. Dr. Jannasch kept the 
 Pan-German eagle flying because: "Our people have 
 poured out streams of blood! They have hungered and 
 shivered, and sacrificed their savings to the one Desire, of 
 which the halting fulfilment has proved bitter enough. Let 
 us push on to the decisive battle in which the Americans 
 can take no part." 
 
 Other writers, too, thought the New World too thickly 
 overlaid with Germanism to move an armed fist against the 
 Fatherland. And therewith they traced the sway of 
 Deutschtum in the United States, from the rabble of Valley 
 Forge which Von Steuben reorganized for Washington with 
 German marksmen of deadly fame, armed with bored rifles 
 made by German gunsmiths of Pennsylvania. 
 
 From first to last what was America without its Teuton 
 leaven ! It was Andreas Klomann, a Rhenish Prussian, 
 who founded the steel industry of Pittsburg, which Penn- 
 sylvania Germans like Henry Frick and Charles Schwab 
 carry on to this day. Busch, the famous brewer of St. 
 Louis; Havemeyer, the Sugar-man, Otto Kahn and Jacob 
 Schiff, those Wall Street princes — here was German genius 
 flowering in a bleak and graceless land. In the Civil War 
 187,000 hyphenates fought for the Union; their folks at 
 home put $600,000,000 into Lincoln's empty war-chest. 
 But what reminding should America need of all this aid? 
 German soldiers in bronze and marble stood in mute 
 reproach in every well-kept park from Boston to San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 By this time America sliook from sea to sea with armed 
 
230 AMEMCA'S DAY 
 
 upheaval, and Berlin pedants were dwelling upon new facts. 
 This world-war was more scientific than any which had 
 gone before. But it was also a machine-made war, and 
 men were drilled for it with an ease and swiftness which 
 confounded precedent and opened up disturbing possi- 
 bilities. America's Day of Registration showed an enor- 
 mous muster. Secretary Baker was talking of six-figure 
 armies raised by selective drafts which favoured no class. 
 And Joffre's appeal was being answered. *'Led by her 
 President," said the Marshal through the State Depart- 
 ment, ''this mighty people has entered the war. And by 
 the side of France, in defence of mankind, the place of 
 America is marked. France, to whom American valour is 
 known, cherishes the thrilling hope that the flag of the 
 United States will soon be unfurled in our fighting line. 
 This is what Germany dreads ! ' ' 
 
 That dread was spreading as the President got to work 
 and training camps appeared, each one with a city's popu- 
 lation, and all intent upon the business of slaughter. Soon 
 there was an Expeditionary Force in France, an American 
 Staff established in the Rue Constantine near the Paris Min- 
 istry of War, and whole divisions of pupils were at lethal 
 games behind the lines under the veterans of Ilaig and 
 Petain. Fabulous loans were offered to the Allies. There 
 were steel rails and rolling stock for Russia, fleets of ships 
 on the stocks for Britain, that she might defeat the sub- 
 marine. For home defence America had a program 
 involving billions of dollars, and a rally of power — per- 
 sonal, industrial, and agricultural — which must change the 
 continent for all time. 
 
 The navy was transformed; a loose system of coast 
 defence was pulled to pieces and reconstructed in the light 
 of ballistic lessons. Science and invention were enlisted on 
 a vast scale. All things lacking — torpedoes and shells, big 
 gun^ and mines and explosives — were forthcoming in truly 
 
THE ''PEOPLE OF NOW* 231 
 
 American profusion. So were skilled hands for the bases 
 in France; engineers, electricians, and road men; dock- 
 masters of Hoboken, Fifth Avenue chauffeurs and lumber- 
 jacks from the far North- West. The submarine service 
 began a headlong race for proficiency. It had a long way 
 to go, I am bound to say; yet the pace of it exceeded the 
 utmost hope of men who knew America's resources. Here 
 Henry Ford deserves a tribute. He enlisted his own indus- 
 trial armies, which number scores of thousands ; he offered 
 machinery quite unique in scope and scale and ingenuity. 
 
 But it was above all in aircraft that supremacy was 
 planned. The eyes of the German armies were to be 
 blinded by American squadrons, so machines were talked 
 of in ten thousands. For this purpose a first appropriation 
 for $64,000,000 was no sooner passed than Congress tabled 
 another for $600,000,000. The German war-aims were 
 often expounded by the President. The Kalipha.te of 
 Berlin was dissected by him with its implied dominion of 
 Europe and Asia from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. 
 ''The great fact that stands out," Dr. Wilson explained, "is 
 that this is a peoples' war for freedom, justice, and self- 
 government among all the nations. . . . And that it rests 
 with us to break through these hypocrisies — the patent 
 cheats and marks of brute force— and help set the world 
 free; or else stand aside and let it be dominated by sheer 
 weight of arms, and the arbitrary will of self-constituted 
 masters. ' ' 
 
 "To do this great thing worthily and successfully," the 
 President pointed out, "we must devote ourselves to service 
 without regard to profit or material advantage, and that 
 with an energy and intelligence that rise to the level of the 
 undertaking." But would this efficiency be forthcoming? 
 The Germans doubted it, and fell back on a survey of past 
 American wars. All was different now, however; con- 
 fusion was stilled like the twitter of birds in a rising storm. 
 
232 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt's offer of an independent levy was 
 politely declined. He was a gallant man, a fine public 
 servant, but . . . "the business now in hand," declared 
 the President plainly, "is practical and undramatic, 
 scientifically definite and precise." There was no scope 
 here for the beau sahreiir; rough-rider methods, well 
 enough in Cuba, were sadly out of place in the fields of 
 France. "I shall act at every step," Dr. Wilson declared, 
 "under expert advice from both sides of the water." 
 
 Even Germany began to see that this leader was carrying 
 his people with him. "It is not an army we have to train 
 and shape for war," the President told Congress when he 
 moved the Conscription Act; "it is the entire American 
 nation." And that miracle was growing; the States 
 "United" in a sense that Washington never saw, nor that 
 Lincoln left when his task of Reconstruction was completed. 
 "What our country needs," said Dr. Murray Butler, Presi- 
 dent of Columbia University, "is an intellectual hero, an 
 outstanding poet or a seer, to move hearts and heads as 
 Emerson did our fathers." America was sure she had such 
 a man at the White House in this her Day, and German 
 thinkers were inclined to agree. 
 
 It is curious to follow the Berlin process of giving the 
 devil his due. What astonished friend and foe was the 
 personal ascendancy of the President, his fixity of purpose 
 and supple grasp to which men in Congress who opposed 
 him paid unstinted homage. "Wilson may have a one- 
 track mind," they conceded, "but it seems to have ample 
 switching facilities!" 
 
 His role was the pontiff's, his word infallible in American 
 faith and morals. "Why have our people changed over- 
 night?" asked Congressman Byrnes of South Carolina. 
 In this case an opponent of the Conscription Bill went 
 home to face constituents who favoured it as by an abrupt 
 caprice; it was bewildering. "Simply because the papers 
 
THE ' 'PEOPLE OF NOW 233 
 
 urge them to back up the President. Whatever he asks 
 for he gets by an overwhelming vote." And indeed his 
 sagacity had won. Now for the first time one heard 
 business men agreeing with Martineau that: ''Reverence 
 for human life is carried to an immoral idolatry when it is 
 held more sacred than juvStice or right, and when the 
 spectacle of blood becomes more horrible than the sight of 
 desolating tyrannies and triumphant hypocrisies." 
 
 The forty-eight States ranged themselves behind their 
 chosen leader ' ' with plain heroic magnitude of mind. ' ' In 
 New York the German Liederkranz serenaded Mayor 
 IMitchel with "The Star-Spangled Banner." Southern 
 negroes marched to the booths with martial song ; in 
 Western deserts the Indian braves went on the war-path — 
 not indeed in plumes and paint, but in the latest caper of 
 Kirschbaum togs, with dandy hats and loud shirts of ultra 
 design. 
 
 It is no skin tepee that houses the Indian chieftain of 
 today ; that saddle-coloured savage draws thousands a year 
 from gas and oil lands leased to the big Standard or 
 some other interest of the East. The Osage lord rolled 
 up to the Agency in a Ford car and registered as an 
 American soldier. Then he drove back to a line house, 
 with fauteuils and parquet floors, and a costly gramophone 
 in which Gounod and Verdi were followed by ragtime airs 
 from the Broadw^ay musical shows. 
 
 I must say there are less "civilized" specimens than 
 these. In Colorado the Utes were unwilling to serve, 
 the remote Navajos of Arizona would not "fight in 
 Germany," and w^ere therefore tactfully excused. Other- 
 wise all the races of the Melting-Pot rose at their Presi- 
 dent's appeal. The Hungarian of Chicago wrote patriotic 
 letters to his native paper, the Amerikai FigijelO, whose 
 leading article was a p^ean to the Day. It was the same in 
 Lowell (Mass.) — "our vest-pocket Athens" — where the 
 
234 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Greek Erevna gave stirring news to the native coffee-houses. 
 Registration was also explained in Italian, Spanish, Yid- 
 dish, and Norse. Even hyphenate journals turned upon 
 the Fatherland with regret, recalling its furtive strokes 
 at Uncle Sam. These began with the Samoan affair, and 
 passed to the Ilayti intrigue of 1914, not forgetting Herr 
 Zimmermamrs bait to Mexico and Japan. 
 
 Every sort of citizen hailed the privilege of service, 
 which the President hoped would receive the widest pub- 
 licity. And the press responded with a "Wake Up!" cam- 
 paign which spoiled the farmer's picnic on the Kansan 
 plain. It was for sluggish rural centres that the Com- 
 mittee of Public Information prepared a national booklet, 
 How We Came Into The War. Propaganda swept the 
 continent with tireless ingenuity and zeal. It pierced 
 the prairie apathy; it struck sparks from the dullest, and 
 set Great Britain in a new light. An official order was now 
 issued deleting the offensive third verse of "The Star- 
 Spangled Banner." And a typical Western newspaper 
 summed the situation in these words: "j\lr. Balfour's 
 reception by Congress ought to convince the English 
 that we are willing to forget George HI — if they can!" 
 So at long last President Wilson was rewarded for that 
 patience which Pitt defined as the first virtue of states- 
 manship. 
 
 I have called America a continent of contradictions. 
 That "all men are created equal" was set down as a self- 
 evident truth in the classic Declaration. Yet a Rockefeller 
 may amass a thousand millions, whilst the "poor white" of 
 Tennessee drags out a life of savage squalor on his lonely 
 rocks. Then Jefferson, in his first Inaugural Address, 
 laid down the principles of democracy, which as a "bright 
 constellation has gone before us and guided our steps." 
 A particular star of that galaxy was "Justice for all men 
 
THE ''PEOPLE OF NOW" 235 
 
 of whatever persuasion, religious or political." Yet the 
 State laws jar strangely on this Jeffersonian latitude. Last 
 year a citizen of Olympia, Wash., was sent to gaol for 
 calling George Washington a drinker. And three thousand 
 miles off — in prosaic Waterbury, Conn. — a Lithuanian 
 freethinker was tried and convicted for "blaspheming the 
 Bible," making light of its miracles and the divinity of 
 Christ. The Free Speech League of New York took up 
 this case, pointing out that the law went back to 1642 
 and was coupled with witchcraft, entailing the death pen- 
 alty. 
 
 How are such vagaries possible among the People of Now 
 — the ''common people" whom Lincoln said God loved 
 because "He made so many of them"? The sovereignty 
 of the people is the first principle of Americanism, and no 
 leader has stated it more forcibly than Woodrow Wilson. 
 "I take it," he says, "to be a necessity of the hour to open 
 up all the processes of politics and public business — open 
 them wide — to public view: to make them accessible to 
 every force that moves, every opinion that prevails in the 
 thought of the people : to give society command of its 
 own economic life again — not by revolutionary^ measures, 
 but by a steady application of the principle that the 
 people have a right to look into such matters and to control 
 them. . . . Wherever political programs are formulated 
 or candidates agreed, over that place a Voice must speak, 
 with the divine prerogative of a people's will, the words, 
 'Let there be light !' " Here is the antithesis of Kaiserism! 
 And in similar vein was the message which Mr. Gompers 
 sent to revolutionary Russia on behalf of the Federation 
 of Labour. 
 
 Meanwhile, from Madrid to Prague, from Calcutta to 
 Quebec, "the silent mass of mankind" for whom Dr. Wil- 
 son spoke, were raising voices louder than the guns. And 
 America showed the way with growing determinatioa. 
 
236 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 * ' At one bound, ' ' our Prime Minister told her Pressmen in 
 Downing Street, ' ' the United States became a world-power 
 in a sense that she never was before. ' ' Her President was 
 hailed by France as the eloquent interpreter of outraged 
 right and civilization. All Europe rang with homage. The 
 halls of the Sorbonne were full of American praise, so were 
 illiterate barracks of the Ukraine, where the mujik blinked 
 in the new light of freedom and extravagant hope. 
 Marshal Joffre was a pilgrim to that sacred grove on the 
 Potomac, where he laid a palm-spray of bronze upon "Wash- 
 ington's tomb, with the wistful hope that America would 
 soon sound a trumpet-call like his own classic Order of 
 the Day: ' ' L 'off ensive va se poursuivre sans trcve et sans 
 relache ! ' ' 
 
 Courage, self-mastery, and continuous effort — here is 
 the formula that sustains the American soul in the great 
 game of life. ^'O' counse," as the darkie explained to 
 the learned German, "ef you sho'l^^ hunt Trouble, an' stay 
 ter shake ban's an' ask how's all de lil' Troubles at home 
 — w'y den ye can't blame Joy ef he take ter de woods wid 
 his banjo !" To think pink and look prosperous are factors 
 extolled and favoured as conducing to Success. On the 
 other hand, the grouch — he who croaks and kicks — ^is known 
 and damned at sight, like the movie villain who flickers to 
 a lurid end in the last picture of a popular reel. 
 
 Therefore preparedness for the battle of life is a forceful 
 affair. To begin w^ith, it involves many experiments in 
 education ; the President of Columbia bluntly declares that 
 "Our present system is worn out." For this reason 
 the General Education Board, backed with thirty-five 
 millions of Rockefeller money, began to remodel elemen- 
 tary and secondary education on lines laid down by Dr. 
 Eliot of Harvard, and by Dr. Abraham Flexner, who 
 would cut out all the trimmings of the Platonic ideal and 
 get down to the brass tacks of today: ^'Nous sommes les 
 
THE '^PEOPLJE OF NOW" 237 
 
 gens de Maintenant!'^ The Mexner plan lays stress 
 upon science and industry. It would abolish that formal 
 discipline which moved the humorist to remark with 
 reminiscent sadness, ''It makes no dif'rence pMoat ye 
 shtudy, 's long^s ye hate it!" Mathematics of the utili- 
 tarian type are to be taught; the training is to be largely 
 vocational and on strict business lines with little regard 
 for the larger humanities. 
 
 Of course the intellectuals opposed this scheme, citing 
 the wisest sage of antiquitj', who turned from the physical 
 sciences and gave himself to the life of man. The contest 
 between the two schools still rages sharply, as it does 
 among ourselves. But the Greeks ma}^ have to give way, 
 with all their allies from Ignatius Loyola to Heiurich von 
 Treitschke, who defended the classics as a guide to intellect 
 and taste. ''Imagination will be cramped and stunted," 
 American scholars mourned as they surveyed the Flexner 
 scheme. "Knowledge and enlightenment will be abridged 
 and shorn of those delights which have made them so rich 
 a possession." The experiment is therefore assailed as a 
 disastrous stroke — "the opening wedge of a frankly sordid, 
 materialistic education which will make of us a race of 
 efficient Hottentots. ' ' 
 
 On the other hand, American parents raise a counter- 
 plea for their twenty million boys and girls. "Give our 
 children a practical education," thc}^ urge. "AVe want 
 them fitted for the fight." So the system of 1898 must go; 
 it is already out of date, although hailed in its day as the 
 heritage of all the ages. Secretary McAdoo of the Treas- 
 ury would have the teaching of Spanish made compulsory 
 in the common schools ; two-thirds of America 's youth leave 
 these at the age of fourteen, and never return. In this day 
 of plain speaking hard things are said of the mental and 
 moral equipment they take with them into the busy 
 American world. After all, the high-brow was a poor 
 
238 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 enough citizen for war-time — unless indeed he knew 
 something of the Science of Slaughter. Even conservative 
 England had found this out. Had she not now a Chair 
 of Aviation at Oxford? There was at Leeds a Depart 
 ment of Tinctorial Chemistry, at Liverpool a School of 
 Tropic Medicine, and at Sheffield — that home of high- 
 speed steel — a Professorship of Metallurgy, as well as a 
 Chair of Russian, endowed by the armament firm of Vick- 
 ers. Surely these were significant signs of the times? 
 
 Colonel Shirley, Director of Military Studies at Cam- 
 bridge, was aghast at the ignorance of high-brow English 
 boys. *'Is it not absurd,'' he asked — for all the world as 
 Dr. Flexner might! — '*to make a boy do Latin verse before 
 he can express himself clearly in his mother tongue ! ' ' 
 So there w^as vigorous blowing in Britain upon the Latin 
 cinders and Greek dust ; a floundering out of blind alleys 
 and buffalo-tracks of learning into the broad American 
 way, and the workshop of a brighter and better world. 
 
 The college man in business is often debated in New 
 York, where tradition and the facts go steadily against 
 him. An industrial prince, like Charles M. Schwab, will 
 take the high-brow for his theme in get-ahead talks with 
 slum lads over on the East Side. Mr. Schwab — no college 
 man himself — favours Science in a general way, because 
 it tends to eliminate chance from the material affairs of 
 men. The cultured youth, Mr. Schwab is afraid, has 
 inflated notions of his own worth; he seeks to capitalize 
 at once his costly years of study. Hard slogging on the 
 up-grade, the steel-master believes, goes against the college 
 grain. The high-brow gets a disagreeable jolt in his new 
 job; his own superiority is a standing bar, with all its 
 top-hamper and unnecessary sail. It is quite otherwise 
 with the poor lad, hammered night and day in ambition's 
 forge. He pores over books when others are in bed; he 
 
THE ''PEOPLE OF NOAV" 239 
 
 foregoes the usual pleasures, he does menial tasks in the 
 summer months to pay for his technical tuition. 
 
 Mr. Schwab made out a plausible case, and American 
 life fairly bristles with the proof of it. That brusque 
 giant and patron of the arts, John G. Johnson, of Phila- 
 delphia, was a blacksmith's son who scampered through 
 a suburban board school. lie became the leading corpora- 
 tion lawyer of America, and two Presidents pressed high 
 office upon him. 
 
 Another poor boy was James A. Farrell, President of 
 the U. S. Steel Corporation, the master of 270,000 men and 
 a business worth a thousand millions a year. Jim Farrell 
 is the incarnation of American drive; no man's advice is 
 more eagerly sought on the all-absorbing topic of Success. 
 He has a memory of abnormal grasp, as the greatest of 
 advocates found when heckling him in a Government suit 
 against the Trust he controls. 
 
 The lives of these men, paragons of energy and shrewd- 
 ness, have long allured the American masses and inspired 
 the arid literature of efficiency schools. Forging Ahead 
 is a typical title. How to Figure Fast is a ready reckoner 
 which is described as The Book That Counts! Another 
 is Wealth in Waste; it deals with potential gold from the 
 factory smoke, with potash from seaweed, paper from 
 sugar-cane stalk, silk from sawdust, and valuable nitrates 
 from the atmosphere. Was not War Secretary Baker 
 building a four million dollar plant for this "crazy"' pur- 
 pose? 
 
 These books have an immense sale. There are get- 
 ahead periodicals, too, like ISuccess and System and the 
 American Magazine; this last is conducted on novel lines. 
 Here we have inspiring yarns, with real heroes and real 
 names. Here is Jim Hill driving his dog-sled over the 
 Canadian rivers in mid-winter — the Cecil Rhodes of the 
 
240 AMEllICA'S DAY 
 
 United States, of whom a spell-bound reader wrote, 
 *' Hill's adventures make fiction seem vapid stuff. I have 
 never hung by the eyelids to any climax as I did to this 
 man's battle with the Hudson Bay Company for the Red 
 River Trade." Equally moving (to the American reader) 
 was Hill's exploit with the St. Paul and Pacific. The 
 American titan took that road in hand when it was but 
 *Hwo streaks of rust and a right of way," and with the 
 derelict he built an empire in the North-West. 
 
 But the Great War is shaping other heroes. America's 
 Hall of Fame has now shifted from University Heights to 
 the battle-fields of France, with expectanc}^ of new leading 
 Worthy of more spacious times. This feeling was voiced by 
 President Butler in the halls of Columbia, when he con- 
 ferred degrees upon Marshal Joffre and Arthur Balfour, the 
 envoys of a new Holy Alliance for security and peace. Big 
 gaps in the graduates and Facultj^ spoke of Columbia's 
 contribution to the new Day. Five hundred students were 
 at Plattsburg, Newport or Fort Myer, training for Army 
 and Navy commissions. 
 
 *'The American youth who pass out today," Dr. Butler 
 said, ''enter a strange world at a crucial hour of history. 
 Time will soon tell whether man has crossed the Great 
 Divide and begun his decline, or whether he is still ascend- 
 ing to universal freedom. It is more than a world at war — 
 it is a world in social revolution. From the Russian steppes 
 clear across Europe, and the United States round to Japan 
 and China, men and nations are not only locked in fearsome 
 grappling, — they are also examining, readjusting, and reor- 
 ganizing their olden habits of thought and action, private 
 as well as public." 
 
 Hence the need for new leading; for larger vision and 
 devotion such as the people perceive in Woodrow Wilson, 
 who "reigns" as no President ever reigned before. "It is 
 an Jiieroic age," says another American thinker, Dr. Eliot 
 
THE ^'PEOPLE OF NOW 241 
 
 of Harvard — *'an age that prompts the question: 'What 
 do I love? What do I live and work for? And for what 
 am I ready to die?' Quite naturally the answer comes: 
 'For justice, for freedom, for the increase of natural human 
 joy, and the fairer distribution of the legitimate fruits of 
 labour.' " Here is Americanism defined; the laic religion 
 of tomorrow's reconstruction to which all the democracies 
 subscribe. 
 
 Meanwhile, an epic stage is set in the United States with 
 mute beckoning to unknown players. What manner of 
 man will the stress and strain bring forth, as tlie Revolution 
 brought forth George Washington as patriot, soldier, and 
 statesman? It is strange, America muses, how war dis- 
 covers genius in unlikely quarters. Andrew Jackson 
 stepped from the Bench to the battle-field in the chaos of 
 1812. It was an obscure failure, Ul3^sses Grant, who was 
 destined to lead the Union Army to victory at last. The 
 splendour of Lincoln has a background of blood and flame, 
 and imminent ruin. It was the rough-rider charge up San 
 Juan hill that gave Roosevelt a glimpse of the White 
 House and future renown. Therefore the flush-time idols 
 are neglected. The standards of Success have shifted, and 
 citizens rally for service as they did when the farmers of 
 Concord Bridge fired "the shot heard round the world." 
 *'The whole nation," the President ordained, "must be a 
 team in which each man shall play the part for which he is 
 best fitted." 
 
 Achievements once thought great were forgotten now. 
 The Panama Canal is America's greatest "short cut," yet 
 the man who made it — General G. W. Goethals — had a 
 prouder task in the Emergency Fleet which was to foil the 
 German submarine. The crowning work of Edison's career 
 is being done in war-workshops of the Westinghouse 
 concern. Herbert Hoover forsook his mines for the ration- 
 ing of nations. Julius Rosenwald, the Selfridge of Chicago 
 
242 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 — a man rich enough to give away $687,000 on his birthday 
 — left his mammoth store to join the Council of National 
 Defence. And Daniel Willard turned his back on railways 
 to organize American industries for war. 
 
 As for the women, I could fill pages with their practical 
 work. "Stop passing resolutions," a shrewd lady advised 
 a very exclusive Society. ' ' And go home and plant some- 
 thing!" It was pointed out by the Department of Agri- 
 culture that housekeepers control eighty per cent, of 
 America's food expenditure; they could therefore do great 
 service by eliminating waste. Secretary Houston was 
 informed by his experts that poor cooking and over-lavish 
 provision at table dumped in $700,000,000 a year into the 
 garbage-cans. This vast sum was now to be saved, and as 
 much more added to it by the children, whose ''door yard 
 gardens" were soon a national feature, full of vegetables 
 and small fruits with hygienic space on the side for chickens 
 and rabbits, pigeons and ducks. The U. S. Commissioner 
 of Education, showed that by intelligent direction a twelve- 
 year-old boy or girl could easily grow $50 worth of food in a 
 garden of five hundred square feet. There need be no 
 interference with regular school work, nor too much time 
 taken from the hours of play. Moreover, the new hobby 
 had an educational value ; it added to health and strength, 
 and filled the child with wholesome pride as a helper of 
 the State. 
 
 Then a million women were asked to do men's summer 
 work on the farms. To all volunteers the Department of 
 Agriculture sent a concise and simple primer of instruc- 
 tions. For the first time economy and thrift were Govern- 
 ment themes, urged upon homes where these virtues had 
 never been known. The women were told it was possible 
 for them "to aid our economic preparedness when the 
 Great War summons an immense Army to the colours." 
 With a good team, and a riding-cultivator equipped with a 
 
THE ''PEOPLE OF NOW" 243 
 
 sun umbrella, ploughing corn was a more pleasing job than 
 washing clothes. The spring seat of a binder was con- 
 trasted with the useless piano-stool, and ''few household 
 chores are more fun than riding a hay-rake." 
 
 It need hardly be said that the Red Cross had feminine 
 armies of its own, as well as funds to the extent of 
 $100,000,000, and as much more as might be desired. 
 Never, surely, was money so profuse in flood. Only the 
 Quakers were exempted from combatant service, and these 
 took up works of utility and mercy. "No Friend will fail 
 in his duty at a time when the world is torn and bleeding. 
 We must show by our example that we love America in 
 very deed and truth." 
 
 It is a long way from the Quakers of New York and Ver- 
 mont to the Filipinos of the Asiatic Archipelago, yet here 
 also the same signs were seen. Fifty thousand islanders 
 answered America's call, and marched to the Malacang 
 residence of Governor Harris, who rules in the President's 
 name. "We take our stand," said island chieftain Manuel 
 Quezon, "on the democratic principle that he who will not 
 aid his country as a soldier in the hour of need is unworthy 
 of citizen privilege." 
 
 Such was America's will to war; it came with a bracing 
 sense of shock and the awed perception of a sterner Day. 
 No man voiced this more earnestly than General John J. 
 Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the First Expeditionary 
 Force. "This is the beginning of a wonderful era," the 
 veteran declared when both Houses of Congress passed the 
 Conscription Bill with great majorities. "I would rather 
 live now and have my share in today's events than have 
 lived in any past period of the world or witness any devel- 
 opment which the future may have in store." 
 
 The upheaval in America was more foreign to habit than 
 in older nations of homogeneous race and traditions of war. 
 It is hard to convey the sensations of a New York matron, 
 
244 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 when shopping in Sixth Avenue and suddenly faced by a 
 big efiigy of Liberty, with minatory finger and the startling 
 legend below: ^^You Buy a Bond, or I perish!" One of 
 these days a native humorist will write a droll book on the 
 *'Wak3 Up" campaign which President Wilson waged to 
 ensure an effective war and to imbue the Central West and 
 South with martial incentives. For it was in these sections 
 that the farmer scratched his head, irresolute over the 
 many scientific recipes for the ''bread bullets" which he 
 was to provide for the Allied peoples. Rube cheered with 
 the rest, of course; j^et in his heart he was afraid the 
 Executive ran too fast and was over-autocratic in Free- 
 dom's war. Witness the new regulations for the produce 
 markets, the bossing of railroads and factories and mines. 
 Mr. President, the farmer feared, was filching more and 
 more power from Congress until that body bade fair to 
 become a war-time rubber-stamp. Nor were signs lacking 
 that Congress itself felt that way too. 
 
 "We're shooting democracy into the Germans," said the 
 caustic Socialist of Milwaukee. "We've a Tsar of our 
 own over here, so let Nicholas send us his cast-off crown." 
 In this way were the rueful and truculent, the remote herds 
 of brotherhood and peace, as well as artful traitors and 
 duty-dodgers worked upon with auras of conflict and con- 
 fusion. It would be absurd to say that the Great War was 
 "popular" in the jingo sense, as war was when petty vic- 
 tories over Spain shrieked from the New York Journal in 
 monstrous type made up of Stars and Stripes. America's 
 War called for patient education. The Council of National 
 Defence called a conference of all the States, and Secretary 
 Lane spoke plainly to the delegates. Germany, he declared, 
 was not to be starved out ; she would put up the greatest 
 fight the world has seen. ' ' But whatever the size of the job, 
 we must be equal to it." The envoys present should there- 
 fore impress upon their home folks the need for immediate 
 
THE ''PEOPLE OF NOW" 245 
 
 action, and lay plans for a long and obstinate struggle. 
 
 Secretary of Labour Wilson made a personal appeal to 
 the workers. Mr. McAdoo, of the Treasury, toured the 
 country with his wife on a ''Why We Fight" mission. He 
 dealt also with the national penalty: "If Germany wins 
 . . . she would come here and set the conqueror's heel 
 upon us all ! We might have to pay an indemnity amount- 
 ing to half our total wealth, which is $250,000,000,000. 
 You would have taxation upon your shoulders for a 
 hundred years to come." There were also lectures on the 
 Chautauqua system which brought home to the masses how 
 vital was victory in this far-off light. 
 
 But if "Business as L^sual" was an early obsession of 
 our own, is it any wonder that the Melting Pot — a con- 
 tinent thousands of miles off — should be slow movers in 
 a universal war? Americans find life hard enough in 
 normal times. "Our toll of industrial deaths," said the 
 Director of the Museum of Safety, "equals fifteen full 
 Armj^ regiments every year. Over three hundred regi- 
 ments of toilers are so seriously hurt as to be laid off' for 
 four weeks." "America at peace," said another authority, 
 "lost in two years and a half of death, mutilation, and 
 lowered production, the $3,500,000,000 first asked of Con- 
 gress on the eve of our entry into the war." 
 
 At home and abroad today there are nobler interests 
 for America's gilded youth who at one time aspired to a 
 De Maupassant leisure of parties and veiled ladies, prac- 
 tical jokes and games in the vicious ephebia of Broadway 
 glare and tumult. A Thaw of Pittsburg became the senior 
 American flying officer in France. Alan Seeger, the Har- 
 vard poet, gave his life for the cause like our own Rupert 
 Brooke. Vernon Castle, the famous salon dancer, had 
 America "at his feet," yet he hurried over to take part 
 in sky quadrilles against the Bodies. Young Marshall 
 Field, a lad of enormous wealth, became a trooper in the 
 
246 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Illinois Cavalry; young Vanderbilt joined the ammunition 
 train as a private soldier. 
 
 There was a time when the rich youth sought to outshine 
 all the dandies, since Alcibiades went out to supper with 
 golden grasshoppers in his hair. This folly can never 
 quite regain its tinsel glory. The mermaid feast, the hectic 
 play at Palm Beach tables — all the staggers and lapse of 
 moneyed license — these belong to America's isolated past, 
 when young Hotspur made a torch of his purse to light 
 his narrow round — Las de toucher tou jours mon horizon du 
 doigt. The American youth of 1918 has the world for a 
 field. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 
 
 "I call a new testimony — ^yea, one better than all scripture, more 
 discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications. . . . 
 bland forth, Soul!'" — (Ieutullian) . 
 
 When Henry James returned to New York after years of 
 absence he had much to learn about his native land, its 
 joyous growth and clamorous aims. "Perhaps you'll write 
 us the Great American Novel," was the hope of a friend, 
 who guided the weaver of words through the noisy maze. 
 But the artist demurred. "I'm afraid I can't," he said, 
 "for I don't know the American world of business." 
 
 Now my survey of a pink and practical outlook must go 
 back to a time when the anima munch of these people was 
 not duty or sacrifice, but mainly Success, and that of rather 
 a barren kind which left the winner unfulfilled. 
 
 To compare the present American aspect with that of 
 pre-war days is like setting the Britain of 1918 beside the 
 England of Ascot Week in 1913, when our "week-end 
 habit of mind" was a German taunt. America as well as 
 Russia has known the throes of revolution. The uprooting 
 of tradition, the adventure overseas and its reaction upon 
 life at home — these are already reflected in American life 
 and letters. The Great American Novel, it is felt, may 
 after all be written in blood, like Draco's law. And haply 
 by some exiled Ovid, like young Norman Prince who died 
 for France, or Alan Seeger, the poet-soldier, whose reverie 
 called up Love and pillowed ease: 
 
 "But I've a rendezvous with Death 
 At midnight in some flaming toAvn!" 
 247 
 
248 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 It is the voice of America's new-found soul, a nobler 
 note than that of the petty trader who "couldn't pass a 
 bank without raising his hat and walking on his toes." 
 This waggish worship of the money-shrine has been 
 appreciably chilled. Dollars are become as dirt to be swept 
 in billions into the maw of war. Therefore a sober 
 journal like the Sun can now say, ''We are reading 
 seriously. ' ' The reviewer glanced at ' ' this Season 's books, ' ' 
 and sighed as one who knew them by heart. How could 
 the public swallow the old stuff in this new day? But it 
 was not the old stuff; there was here less of the milk for 
 babes and more strong meat, such as belongeth to them 
 that are of full age. Books of broader vision lay on the 
 critic's table. Something of Mazzini's flame in '63 — 
 ''Nationality is an end, a collective mission from Above." 
 "Writers were harking back to the fervour that lifted the 
 North in '65 when the security of the Union had been 
 assured by the sword. And men pointed to France, 
 quoting the Parnassians of Fort Vaux and Douaumont: 
 "Notre race ton jours a su reverdir!" Over American 
 literature a change had come, as it had over industry itself. 
 There were now merchant fleets to build, and U-boat 
 destroyers; aeroplanes in thousands, sea and land harness 
 for millions of men. The steel plants of Pittsburg were 
 turned from the ways of peace. So were the motor-shops of 
 Michigan, the rubber-shops of Ohio, lumber-camps of the 
 North-West; the farms and ranches, the stock-yards, oil- 
 fields and mines. 
 
 The wholesale jeweller was busy with periscopes, the 
 sash-chain man making cartridge-clips; and from under- 
 wear factories came bandages in ribbons that would reach 
 to the moon. Machine-gun aid was expected of the cor- 
 set people. Cash-register plants and makers of infants' 
 food were also in the killing or curing line. Thirty thou- 
 sand firms had asked for a share in the Big "Job, and Uncle 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 249 
 
 Sam was doling out ''practice orders" of an educational 
 kind. Thus a threshing-machine man got a contract for a 
 hundred six-inch shells, and with it Government guidance 
 in the necessary jigs and tools and gauges. There was room 
 for every citizen in Democracy's war — for the Wyoming 
 cowboy as well as for commercial lords who were on the 
 AVashington pay-roll at one dollar a year. 
 
 It was this upheaval which accounted for the new books 
 on our reviewer's table. Of course there were pamphlets 
 on physical condition. "In this world-crisis," said the 
 dope-and-diet ad. of a health-culture course, ''you must 
 be a national asset, and not a liability." Even the fiction 
 promised, by title or puff, to illumine matters — that 
 swayed the new American thought. There was still pink 
 reading, of course, but its pride of place was gone. The 
 novels were less exuberant; minor poets had more flints 
 than flowers in their little triolet offerings. 
 
 Strangest of all, here was naval and military science — • 
 a work on Trench Warfare, for instance, by Major James 
 A. Moss, U. S. A. This author was concerned with 
 obstacles and ditches, mining and countermining; bayonet- 
 fighting, the use of grenades, and bombs and liquid fire. 
 
 At the same time there were a few w^orks that reflected 
 peace-time interests w^hoUy given to war. The cottage 
 spinster still gabbled from her cabbage-patch with a back- 
 ground of hollyhocks and hens. The small-town parson 
 told of business methods in the local church. He took 
 space in the paper to advertise his spiritual wares. There 
 were bulletin boards at the cross-roads, and Barnum par- 
 ades to boost the Sunday School — that problem of a stormy 
 day when Christ ethics were decried with Nietzschean 
 ferocity. 
 
 There are Western yarns in the Season's list — "fine, big 
 novels of simple sweetness and virile strength," with 
 corresponding heroes on the coloured wrappers, and pri- 
 
250 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 vate guidance from the publisher to the reviewer. Here 
 is ''a ten-strike in fiction, a miracle of mental cleanness, 
 and that rarest of all achievements — a really pure love- 
 story, mined from the grand old moral bed-rock." Of 
 one novel we are told that ' ' not a man in it wears a collar. ' ' 
 It is a tale of gold-seeking, with the Arizona desert for a 
 scene. Life on the ranch and range has always been a big 
 seller ; simplicity makes a strong appeal to the sophisticated 
 of this land. Fanatics of the speed-up are allured by 
 languor under the giant tree-ferns of Hawaii, where the 
 heart's thirst is satisfied by the hand's thrift, • and 
 unwedded lovers eat frugally of taro and dried fish. It is 
 a standing marvel to the New Yorker what a dollar can do 
 in these cradled nests. lie pays a dime for each egg 
 in the restaurant caviare ; three children at private schools 
 run him into nine thousand dollars a year. 
 
 But the best seller of all is the Wholesome in fiction. I 
 know a man who sold seven million copies by virtue of a 
 God-given secret which was defined by his Chicago publisher 
 in a special brochure of boosting. In this pamphlet, 
 ministers of religion pay generous homage to this maze of 
 letters. Had they not preached from the Big Seller's 
 text? So great a man was in more than one sense a 
 handful for his publisher. That lucky tradesman jour- 
 neyed 2500 miles into the waste with his contract. For 
 genius held that the heart of the great reading public 
 could only be touched from a hermit hut in the sage and 
 sand far away from all distraction. The source and fount 
 of big sales was duly pictured in the booklet ; it was a dinky 
 abode, eighteen by thirty-five, thatched with arrow-weed 
 and furnished with Socratic severity. Here prose epics 
 for the million were turned out. Here the Big Seller 
 played upon America's soul — "soft and low," as Chicago 
 tells us, "like a magnificent organ is played." 
 
 Pre-war America had no great love for heavy reading; 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 251 
 
 it held with Byron that the end of all scribblement is to 
 amuse, or at any rate to point a rosy moral. ''I haven't 
 read a serious book for fourteen years," President Wilson 
 owned in one of his rare moods of intimacy. *'I read 
 detective stories for fun, but very little modern fiction. 
 It concerns itself with problems, and I have enough of 
 these," So the war-time President falls back upon his old 
 favourites. *' There are things of Tennj^son which have 
 comforted me," he owns. *' Where will you find the theory 
 of popular government so finely expounded as in The 
 Princess?" 
 
 "A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — 
 Some sense of duty, something of a faith, 
 Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 
 Some patient force to change them when we will. 
 Some civic manhood firm against the crowd." 
 
 There is much Americanism here, with aspiration 
 towards the ideal State; a benign democracy in which 
 sorrow and evil are but calls to valour and dignity, that 
 these things may cease. "I intimate in a hundred waj^s," 
 is a Walt Whitman impulse, "that man or woman is as 
 good as God!" Yet Secretary Harlan could oust that 
 whimsical poet from a humble clerkship as "the author of 
 an indecent book!" It is a fact that realists have never 
 been popular over there. * ' The stream of events which we 
 call actual" was to Thoreau an abominable mess — "a sort 
 of vomit in which the unclean love to wallow." There 
 was another and sweeter stream which hurried the spirit 
 into the flowery way. Edgar Allan Poe was long classed 
 as a wallower; it was not until 1910 that he was admitted 
 to America's Hall of Fame. Poe was among the dis- 
 reputables — an outcast from clean-living America when 
 he returned from Philadelphia with a sick wife and four 
 dollars fifty in his wastrel pocket. Yet respectable authors 
 were doing well at this time — witness Hawthorne and his 
 
252 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Puritan themes of sin and the soul. He had a fine home in 
 the Emerson parsonage at Concord, where Mosses from 
 an Old Manse breathed the New England note that ''God's 
 in His heaven ; all's right with the world." 
 
 Or there was Lowell, Professor of Belles-Lettres at 
 Harvard; abolitionist, diplomat, poet of The Cathedral, 
 surveyor of a well-made world from ' ' My Study Windows. ' ' 
 Lowell could haggle over terms with that magazine harpy, 
 Sarah Josepha Hale, who was paying the unfortunate Poe 
 fifty cents a page, and receiving grateful letters from 
 him. "The price you mention will be amply sufficient," 
 the pariah wrote to her. Would Mrs. Hale keep five 
 dollars' worth of space for a special feature, "which I will 
 endeavour to adapt to the character of The OpaV'f So 
 the way of the transgressor was hard, the way of a Longfel- 
 low serene and smooth, with fear of God and the love of 
 man to commend "A Psalm of Life" such as that which 
 America loved. 
 
 It is curious to consider Columbia as the Britomart of 
 purity, hailed as such by all her poets from Bryant to Bliss 
 Carman. The moral tap must be kept running, the arts 
 can only defy its cleansing at their peril. In some of the 
 States Shakespeare has been banished from the schools : a 
 production of Antony and Cleopatra was raided in Chi- 
 cago, where culture and civic pride are peculiar obses- 
 sions. The Heine fountain in New York was fiercely 
 assailed; paintings in Denver and Kansas City have been 
 slashed with the axe of an outraged proletariat. Tess and 
 Jude were withdrawn as improper books. 
 
 The successful American writer will resent comparison 
 with European realists, however great their fame. Thus 
 the late 0. Henry was aggrieved when an admirer called 
 him "the De Maupassant of the United States." ''I never 
 wrote a filthy line in my life," this author protested to 
 Professor Alphonso Smith. "And I won't be classed with 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 253 
 
 bawdy writers." America's foremost periodical is proud 
 to claim that its stories ''strike twelve^ but not sex o'clock!" 
 The welter of State laws have at least this in common — that 
 they reveal authority "smelling for smut" with the pro- 
 fessional zest of a wheat-inspector in ]\Iinneapolis. There 
 are as many censors of the movies as there are religious 
 sects. The lavish Birth of a Nation was banned in Ohio on 
 the ground that it stirred up hatred and racial strife. Nor 
 will Ohio allow snakes to be shown on the screen ; the bandit 
 may flourish through a five-reel crime only on condition 
 that he comes to a bad end. 
 
 In Iowa the clubwomen censored a €tory that showed a 
 bride at breakfast in a sumptuous home. Her husband, it 
 was pointed out, was "only on a salary." Therefore 
 modish gowns, fine silver, and parquet floors set a danger- 
 ous example to the young women of the community. Down 
 in Missouri the State is severe upon the amorous motorist. 
 His car, it seems, is all too apt to pull up at night with 
 all lights out, to the peril of joy-riders behind him, who 
 come hurtling through the dark to certain wreckage. The 
 man at the wheel, jMissouri maintains, may forget himself, 
 but he should at least remember the lives and limbs of 
 others. Why should the love-god fare forth in a high-pow- 
 ered car, and use it as a man-trap in the gloaming? So 
 Sheriff Bode and Attorney Ralph declared war upon the 
 "one-armed" driver — that public terror whose soul was 
 centred on the girl beside him, and not on the road or the 
 joyous traffic of it. 
 
 Now and then a literary rebel will scathe all this Puritan 
 peering. Thus Theodore Dreiser breaks a lance with the 
 vice crusaders; it is only fair to say that he speaks as one 
 of the vetoed and forbidden, involved in public odium and 
 pecuniary loss. "The average American," this novelist 
 complains, "is intellectually bounded by the canons of 
 church and Sunday School, as well as by the conventions of 
 
254 .^^ AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 bis native town. The darkest side of democracy is that it 
 permits the magnetic, the cunning, and unscrupulous to 
 sway our masses — not so much to their own undoing as to 
 the curtailment of natural privilege, and the ideas w^hich 
 they should be allowed to entertain if they could think at 
 all." ]\Ir. Dreiser is verj^ severe on the intellectual poverty 
 of ''a land so devoted to the material, though dedicated by 
 its Constitution to the Ideal." 
 
 Another realist whose name carries weight is Abraham 
 Cahan; and he also spoke his mind about **our divorced 
 life and literature." It was only in the newspaper, Mr. 
 Cahan said, that the cultured reader could get a faithful 
 reflex of the American scene. Life was faced squarely 
 enough in business, in politics, and in the home; yet the 
 ablest writers continue to produce little but fluff and 
 prettification for that terrible tyrant, the average reader. 
 In this discussion professors and critics took a hand; so 
 did publishers, novelists, and moralists of the Comstock 
 Society — these last concerned to protect ''female readers 
 of immature mind." 
 
 Mr. R. W. Chambers drenched the debate with common 
 sense, scathing American literature as he passed. "What 
 is read and criticized as such reflects nothing but the self- 
 consciousness, ignorance, and impotency of those who dili- 
 gently produce it." Another forceful critic answers the 
 self -set question: "What are the judicious to do?" 
 "They will do what they have always done — read the lit- 
 erature of less pious countries. Why should I bawl and 
 beat my breast because Dr. Ilowells has written nothing 
 comparable to The Revolt of the Angels, or The Nigger 
 of the Narcissus? It is much more polite and comfort- 
 able to heave Ilowells at the cat — and read Anatole France 
 and Joseph Conrad " ! 
 
 However, Americans are not easily shaken from their 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 255 
 
 sense of well being. They do love the literature of rosy 
 thought; they savour goodness — 
 
 "As one who stays the sweet wine in his mouth, 
 . Murmuring with eased lips, and is most loath 
 
 To have done wholly with the sweet of it." 
 
 There is wide agreement to ignore ugliness and evil, and 
 let laughter drown the surge of cosmic mystery and the 
 cruelty of things. The ''ostrich-literature" is more than 
 a tradition: it is the national symbol of huge endeavour, 
 and the brave Bossuet-faith which sees our tangles as so 
 many golden chains that meet beyond mortal sight at the 
 conventional Throne. There are too many people, as 0. 
 Henry reminds us, who wear life as ''a reversible coat, 
 seamy on both sides." America has no use for these dole- 
 ful fellows. They are nearly always high-brows, like John 
 Caspar Brannef, Professor of Geology at Leland Stanford 
 University in California. Let this scientist tell us of the 
 ostrich pose, in so far as it relates to earthquakes on the 
 Pacific Coast. 
 
 Here was a group of problems which nature had left at 
 the door of a lovely and favoured land. Surely the rail- 
 roads would encourage research, and the collection of data 
 that might help ? Or what of the telegraph and telephone 
 concerns — the electric power and water companies whose 
 dams and mains were in constant danger? Insurance 
 offices, too, were puzzled over rates and risks. Yet the 
 policy of hush ''put it over" on them all. Only two con- 
 .cerns in a land three times the size of England showed any 
 interest in Professor Branner's quest, which was the 
 rational study of earthquakes. 
 
 "It seems incredible," this bold man avers, "that the 
 business interests of our State should willingly and weakly, 
 year after year, allow a permanent threat to hang over their 
 
256 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 industries, their transportation-lines and public utilities, 
 without making an intelligent effort to investigate the sub- 
 ject, or to help those who are willing and anxious to do 
 it. Yet such are the sad facts. The result w^as that the 
 great 'quake of 1906 caught us unprepared. Water-mains 
 were broken when the city of San Francisco became a rag- 
 ing furnace; we were fairl}^ trapped in snares of our own 
 weaving. ' ' 
 
 In a word, California prefers to take her chances and go 
 on thinking pink. This was America's chosen outlook till 
 the world flamed with war. For two j^ears and more she 
 surveyed the wide anguish with expectancy worthj^ of a 
 bench of bishops. The battle-field of France looiricd as a 
 new Sinai, to be watched afar as from a sanctified camp. 
 On that i\Iount of thunder new laws were being graved for 
 the wiser ruling of the race in years to come. America 
 lent a sympathetic ear to the Primate of All England, 
 preaching in Westminster Abbey on a task of reconstruc- 
 tion that glowed through the smoke of ordeal like a pillar 
 of fire. . . . ''Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's 
 good pleasure"! So the blood of sprinkling spake better 
 things than that of Abel. A portent of this time was the 
 insistence upon universal slaughter as a panacea for spir- 
 itual and social ills and the ultimate betterment of human- 
 ity. Rainbows of Christ were seen gleaming from green 
 clouds of the poison-gas. Nests of new-born sweets were 
 found in the shell craters; the perfect man would yet be 
 gathered from horrid fragments that swung from the 
 barbed wire. 
 
 Certainly America, in her neutral day, was kindled with 
 shining prophecy of quenched tears. To her the dreadful 
 blast was 
 
 "A trumpet in the distance, pealing news 
 Of better; and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 
 , Above the unrisen morrow." 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 257 
 
 I know nothing stranger than the buoyant alchemy 
 whicli turned our shame and torment to new grace in this 
 rosy way. It was not confined to Americans — though I 
 know no people more nimble in transmuting woe into joy, 
 or sublimating boons from the ashes of dread. 
 
 That spirit smiles at us in the work of Mr. W. D. Ilowells, 
 the dean of American letters, whom the whole nation 
 honoured on the celebration of his eightieth birthday at 
 the National Arts Club in New York. All his life Ilowells 
 shrank from moral disease with the pudor of Jane Austen. 
 He disliked violence, and rarely dwelt upon unpleasant 
 themes. In his early days he renounced a tidy job as a 
 reporter, though he knew the value of this ''school of 
 reality," and ''the many lessons in human nature it could 
 have taught me." "My longing," this typical American 
 tells us, "was for the cleanly respectabilities." After all, 
 the goodly outside of life was best. Why stray into gloomy 
 recesses where silly gnomes hammer out of their own hearts 
 the seeds and sparkles of new misery? This was America's 
 view. Je me prcsse de rire de tout, she confesses, with 
 Beaumarchais' hero . . . de peur d'etre ohliger d'en 
 pleurer! 
 
 Nowadays the old pink thinking is less ebullient. 
 America is a conscript nation; her cities are armed camps, 
 with slackers in gaol or fled over the Border into Mexico. 
 The continent of peace is converted to force of arms and 
 war's philosophy — surely a German triumph of peculiar 
 poignance ? 
 
 "We must begin with a fresh sheet of paper," President 
 Wilson said, as he removed General Goethals from the 
 Shipping Board. "And we must do the things that are 
 most serviceable." Here we have the bustling motive 
 which America imports into all activities, from the church 
 to the slaughterhouse. Even her religion is business-like, 
 and one must examine it if her spirit and literature are to 
 
258 AMERICA ^S DAY 
 
 be understood. There is no mutiny against a heedless 
 God, no tears in eyes that fail with looking upward; no 
 murmur of baffled breath, but only the practical prayer 
 of Heine — ''Give me health, Lord, and a sufficiency 
 of money — 'tis all I ask ! ' ' 
 
 America has no quarrel with any cult, from the Quietism 
 of Laotze to the devil-dance of Billy Sunday and his pulpit 
 slang. An industrious reporter counted a hundred and 
 fifty faiths between Mormonism and Christian Science. 
 Some of them were winners in a worldly sense. Look 
 at John Dowie, who made millions of money in Zion City, 
 and came to grief wrestling w^ith sin in New York w^here 
 no sin is (they say), but only will and gratification. Or 
 consider Elijah Sandford, the penniless madman who 
 began to build a temple on the sandhills of Maine wdth no 
 other possessions than a w^heelbarrow and a spade. Soon 
 men were selling their farms to support a rascal of whom 
 his dupes at last declared that he ''hadn't enough religion 
 to grease a gimlet." Sandford claimed to raise the dead; 
 he talked with the Deity in aisles and minarets where at 
 length the rats swarmed in eerie desolation. In his 
 decline this man and his Holy Ghosters set seaward in a 
 crazy fleet bound for Beirut and the Way of the Cross in 
 Palestine. 
 
 The Holy Rollers were ruled by hell-fire and fear ; their 
 antics surpassed the contortions of an Indian village mela. 
 The Brotherhood of Light left the grosser communities, 
 and took to the desert four hundred miles south-west of 
 Denver, where they lived on apple sauce, dates and water. 
 There is no end to these eccentrics. 
 
 "Religion," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is the flag 
 under which the world sails, but not the rudder that steers 
 its course." And America has very many rudders. Here 
 religion adapts itself with all the elasticity of Hinduism 
 and the rugged wisdom of Islam. 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 259 
 
 Hence all the drastic editing of the Bible ; the restating, 
 rearranging, and transvaluing of outworn theologies. The 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, in General Convention at 
 St. Louis, laid cas}- hands upon the Ten Commandments. 
 Clauses that were meaningless or turgid were cut out, 
 since the spirit of the age called for brevity and sense. 
 Both the marriage and burial services were altered. The 
 word *'obey" was undesirable, the commendation of St. 
 Paul redundant as the wedded loyalty of Isaac and 
 Kebecca. 
 
 And at funerals, why should not more cheerful Psalms be 
 chosen? The Twenty-Seventh, say — the Forty-Sixth, 
 and Hundred and Twenty -First ? That gruesome thought, 
 *' Though after my skin, worms destroy this body," must 
 come out altogether. Why depress dutiful citizens at the 
 graveside? So the elements of 'fear and fuss are elimi- 
 nated; they are out of place in the New World Prayer 
 Book, as they would be in a balance-sheet or a prospectus. 
 In short, the American is a radical in religion. Like 
 Holmes, he aspires to a wnder, more humane and modern 
 interpretation of Christianity. 
 
 American intellectuals do not mince their words in this 
 matter; let me cite Professor G. Stanley Hall, President 
 of Clark University. *'Two millennia under the Prince 
 of Peace," says this psj^chologist, ''have not prevented 
 this colossal and atrocious war. And the Church of Christ 
 cannot fail to incur reproach and neglect unless it be relaid 
 from the foundations. It stands by; it looks on — aimless, 
 helpless, paralysed ; convicted of faihire to a degree that 
 all the heresies in its history could not have caused. 
 True, it mitigates suffering hy beneficent ministration ; but 
 it did nothing to prevent the nations from flying at 
 one another's throats, and has been impotent in all its 
 efforts to restore peace. Time was when the Church made 
 and unmade wars. Today it is a proven bankrupt, an all 
 
260 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 but negligible factor. And we have in Christianity, as at 
 present understood, very little guarantee that the world 
 may not at any time lapse into the barbarism and paganism 
 of a war of extermination." 
 
 It is common knowledge that this * 'failure" has been 
 canvassed throughout Europe, from Lambeth Palace to 
 the Holy Synod of Moscow. The American Churches have 
 felt it keenly, and are striving for unity with a view to the 
 brotherhood of nations and the prevention of future strife. 
 Thirty communions, with eighteen million adherents, now 
 form a Federal Council, with committees of wide range 
 from the liquor-laws to relations with Japan. The immi- 
 grant is taken in hand; so are divorce and labour condi- 
 tions, farm life, home and foreign missions, corrupt poli- 
 tics, the Lord's day, slum tenements, and the physical 
 and moral well-being of America at large. Yet somehow 
 these efforts lack "punch" — to use an expressive American- 
 ism. Or if they have it, the country is too huge, too busy 
 with doing, to straighten up and reflect upon ghostly 
 things. After all, to get ahead is the principal goal; and 
 the greatest of sins is the Greek one of missing the mark. 
 
 No complex philosophy sways this people ; no hierarchal 
 dogma of life and death, destiny and evolution. American 
 clerics are in no way dismayed by the spectacle that met 
 Newman as he considered the world, its various history 
 and the races of men. ''Their mutual alienation, their 
 conflicts . . . the disappointments of life, the defeat of 
 Good, the success of Evil ; physical pain, mental anguish, 
 the prevailing intensity of Sin — all this is a vision to dizzy 
 and appal, and inflicts upon the mind a sense of profound 
 mystery which is absolutely without solution." 
 
 The American saint has no such worry, for his primary 
 concern is with social salvation here and now. Quite 
 likely, his church has a library and a gymnasium ; a swim- 
 ming-pool too, with billiard and card saloons — even a 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 261 
 
 ''spoonmg parlour'' where a lad may woo bis sweetheart 
 under the smiling eyes of the parson's lady. There is 
 music and laughter over ail ; the oxygen of good fellowship 
 is here infused, and the church community rejoices in it. 
 The perfect pastor of such a flock is Dr. Henry M. Edmonds 
 of Birmingham, Ala. — a fearless hustler with a world of 
 sympathy in his glance. Differing with the Presbyterian 
 Board on Old Testament tales, on Sunday games, and the 
 question of drink. Dr. Edmonds founded a church of his 
 own, which even the negroes may attend. Here local min- 
 istry reaches out to the mines and gaols, as well as to the 
 roaring industrial plants of this great steel city of the 
 South. 
 
 A trained nurse instructs poor mothers in infant care, 
 and milk is supplied by the church funds. The men of the 
 congregation have in their minister a business friend and 
 adviser. On certain days Dr. Edmonds sits in a down- 
 town office as the father confessor of traders in trouble. 
 And the city pays tribute to his skill in freeing people 
 from financial toils. It will therefore be seen that Ameri- 
 can religion has little interest in wingy mysteries or omens 
 of terror come down to us from far-off times. Supersti- 
 tion is largely confined to the alien and coloured races; it is 
 also a pastime in the more lavish ''native" circles. For 
 the Newport cottagers have ''recourse to them that have 
 familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter." 
 No modish gathering is quite complete without its Eastern 
 mage installed in a tent on the lawn. 
 
 The masses display a mild interest in theoretical science. 
 Sunday supplements of the newspaper will have an astro- 
 nomical feature in which this earth of ours is belittled as a 
 speck of cosmic dust, with joys and woes too insignificant 
 for words when considered sub specie cetemitatis. How 
 the sun is a million times bigger than our globe. How 
 Arcturus is fifty thousand times greater again, and so 
 
262 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 remote that light takes two hundred years to reach us, 
 though travelling at a speed equal to the New York-Ijon- 
 don journey and back in the twentieth part of a second. 
 This is excellent high-brow stuff, and fetches an aijpropriate 
 price from the Sunday editor. 
 
 In one corner of the page are vague creepy-era wlies ; 
 in the other a portrait of the cheerless Haeckel, or even 
 Sir Oliver Lodge, whose views upon Death and Survival 
 provide the American ghost story of today. The higher 
 physiology sets out soundy thfses on '* Vitalism," "Mate- 
 rialism," and the like. It accounts for everything: pre- 
 senting a surgical case in the Crucifixion of Christ, Who 
 is said to have died "from pericarditis with effusion, 
 accelerated by the javelin-wound." Or again, here are 
 ingenious bridges built by science between the microscopic 
 amoeba and the higher man, represented by Dr. Wilson 
 and Mr. Edison. The gap is abysmal, of course, but the 
 Sunday caterer is equal to it. Prom the ape to Plato is 
 conceded to be a long, long way ; but is it any longer than 
 that from Clausewitz to William Jennings Bryan? 
 
 A palaeolithic fashion-page will show the flounced robes, 
 the jackets and jewels and sashes, of faded ladies painted 
 ffions ago in the Cretan caves. There is also a column of 
 sanitary science, with diagrams from the palaces of Minoan 
 priest-kings. All this makes first-rate reading in the Sun- 
 day American, whose editor draws the salary of a Cabinet 
 Minister. The secular religion of these people reacts upon 
 their literature, and the two must be considered together. 
 It is the religion of that scientific inquirer who recently 
 stated his aim as follows: — *"'To make discoveries which 
 shall, bit by bit, add to the interpretable, subtract from 
 the incomprehensible, enlarge the practicable, and thus 
 improve our estate upon earth— that is, if we have the good 
 sense not to employ our invention to worsen it.'' 
 
 The scientist may tell quaint tales of men's arboreal 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOIC 263 
 
 ancestry. It is quite possible, he will declare in the Sunday 
 paper, that the primate stock came of Therapsid reptilians 
 which had become bipedal, and perhaps arboreal. Now 
 here is a dandy opening for the write up man of Mr. 
 Hearst's papers. That artist makes ready an impressive 
 page which appears in a whole chain of journals from 
 Boston to Chicago and thence to Los Angeles on the Pacific. 
 
 "Arboreal uprightness came first," — the ingenious 
 writer makes this his foundation. And he builds as he goes, 
 boosting the half-human monster who is already three 
 parts Man in column four of the yarn and is still growing 
 — like the giant at the fair. 
 
 The arboreal climber is hunted through a?ons of time, 
 and the reader's imagination aided in the process by photos 
 of baboons from the Bronx Zoo. The creature's fore-limb is 
 soon a mobile arm, his hand a plastic instrument for 
 grasping, hanging on, reaching ahead and catching hold. 
 Thus early in human history does acquisitiveness appear; 
 and from this stage to the portraits of Carnegie and Eocke- 
 feller is only a matter of a column and a half. There is a 
 big public for pseudo-scientific stuff of this kind. But 
 the moral is America's unfaltering faith in man. It 
 inspires all the pink thought and the philosophy of smiles; 
 it is the secret of impatience with nescience and pessimism 
 of every shade. No doubt the world-war has jarred this 
 fond belief. America herself is plunged into the orgy with 
 armed establishments on the grand scale such as will not 
 pass when Peace reigns again in a sore and smoking world. 
 
 For all that, the United States is slow to put off her 
 rosy glasses. She finds comfort in the optimism of Spen- 
 cer that, in some way or other, a future race of men will 
 become automatically moral. Among the foremost think- 
 ers one finds a soul-state of agnostic stoicism. They pick 
 to pieces the older Christianity ; they examine dogma by the 
 glare of guns, and recite in No Man's Land the sublime 
 
264 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 paradoxes of Christ. Their demand is for a lowlier cultus, 
 one more in accord with human suffering and sin ; a religion 
 of mutual aid and earthly understanding, to be clasped and 
 woven into the day's work, and not writ in the starry 
 unattainable. *'I have the sense of these things," the 
 American says with Saint-Beuve, "but not the things 
 themselves. ' ' 
 
 They are not other-worldly, these high-brows of the 
 United States; they hold, with the late William James of 
 Harvard, that "true ideas are those we can assimilate, 
 validate, corroborate, and verify." There is the same 
 pragmatist appeal to experience and the individual, the 
 same self-abandonment to life and the experiment it entails 
 in contact with reality. Not long ago Professor J. H. 
 Leuba, of Bryn Mawr College, sent out test questions upon 
 religion to a thousand men, all more or less distinguished 
 in physical science as well as in sociology, history, and psy- 
 chology. The results were published in Dr. Leuba 's work: 
 The Belief in God and Immortality; and the effect on 
 the reader 's mind is to persuade him that American leaders 
 are in the main freethinkers, or at all events unorthodox 
 and various to a degree. 
 
 The sombre Haeckel of Jena preaches the beauty of 
 resignation to the hap of chance — a brave acceptance of 
 the unavoidable in a scheme of things where heedless 
 Nature for ever makes and breaks with a futility which 
 eludes our scrutiny. To the American mind this is mon- 
 strous. The scientist that counts over there is the "sen- 
 sible" man. Why should the electrician waste his time 
 chasing the positive ions w^hen he could send high voltage 
 to the Californian vine and kill the costly blight of 
 phylloxera ? 
 
 It is now asked of Science that she leave ineffable pro- 
 blems, and fall in for service at home or abroad. Let the 
 cheiAist drop his molecules and try to abolish famine by 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 265 
 
 laboratory research. Let the inventor abandon liquid air 
 and solar heat, to get busy with farm tractors, and a 
 mechanical cotton-picker which shall catch the lint and 
 leave unripe bolls on the uninjured plant. Such gear as 
 this might be the making of the South, and free her from 
 economic slavery to the negro whom she abhors. 
 
 I may say that bodily soundness has a literature of its 
 own; the present year will see six hundred books on 
 medicine and hygiene published in the United States. IIow 
 is a sick man to go on thinking pjnk in the traditional 
 American way? Systems and theories are set out for him 
 by experts like Professor Irving Fisher of Yale, Chairman 
 of the Hygiene Board; Dr. Eugene Fisk, of the Life 
 Extension Institute; Dr. G. W. Crile, of the Cushman 
 Laboratory; and Dr. Robert Morris, whose Microbes and 
 Men tells how bilious folks are despondent because the 
 *'sad" germs — the colon bacilli — are too well fed and 
 swarming in the intestine. "I never think of Nietzsche or 
 Schopenhauer as philosophers,'' Dr. Morris saj^s, ''but only 
 as afflicted men expressing the toxins of anaerobic bac- 
 teria. ' ' 
 
 There are books and pamphlets against dope and drugs; 
 stoke-up counsel for the high-speed job, with a few words 
 from Edison at the start, and much about Mithridates — a 
 hero who, it seems, had Jim Farrell's memory, the stamina 
 of a Texan jack, and the devil's own flair for dodging 
 poisons in his food. The foreigner wilts at last under this 
 literature of health, with its fusillade of Do's and Dont's 
 from every department of life; baby's bottle and the gar- 
 bage-can, the papering of rooms, the licking of postage 
 stamps, the swatting of flies, and the cuspidor or spittoon, 
 which is hj no means banished from America in 1918. 
 
 There are national laws about food ; State laws, the laws 
 of towns and cities and private concerns. The New York 
 Department of Health scatters far and wide free booklets 
 
266 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 in English aud Yiddish ; there are lectures and movie-shows 
 on eugenics, genetics, and dietetics. Sickness, one gathers, 
 will soon be a crime ; a clear century of active life is claimed 
 as the birthright of every citizen. 
 
 With all this incitement it is no wonder that quackery 
 flourishes, from the Park Avenue palace to a shack in the 
 Kentucky hills; from the New York surgeon of costly 
 stunts down to ' ' ole Aunt Lize, ' ' the herbal witch, with her 
 dog-fennel and weird roots, her toads and snake-skins, 
 cobweb-pills, and charms beyond the Chirurgia Magna of 
 Paracelsus. No civilized nation that I know is so intent 
 upon mending and moulding, training, dosing, and fortify- 
 ing the horse-power of man. Here in ximerica the drug- 
 store is become a saloon in disguise — one already known 
 as an agency of mischief. It is to the chemist's shop that 
 the citizen turns for free treatment when grit blows into 
 his eye on the gusty street. Here also he can buy stamps, 
 or use the telephone while his wife and the girls sip iced 
 drinks at the soda-fountain. But Congress has no illusions 
 about the drug-store, its tonics and bitters, its remedies, 
 cordials, elixirs and compounds. Many of these contain 
 a high percentage of alcohol, and sell the more freely as 
 prohibition laws are pushed to fanatical extremes. 
 
 Representative Meeker of Missouri shocked the Lower 
 House with a list of 746 patent medicines that warmed the 
 cockles of the heart, if they did nothing else. More than 
 half of them were twenty per cent, alcohol ; a few were as 
 high as ninety per cent. It is not to the ailing, but to 
 tipplers that these nostrums appeal, and the rogues who 
 sell them manoeuvre skilfully between the vast complex 
 of State laws. Then the question of drug addiction grows 
 more and more serious, apart from the bracer and pick-me- 
 up of the business man. I refer particularly to the craving 
 for morphine, heroin, and cocaine which is found among 
 all classes, from the rich fldneuse of Newport and New 
 
THINTCING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 267 
 
 York to the "bad nig<,'er" of New Orleans: his whisky 
 trade vanished when a raid on the fruit-storer disck)sed 
 quart bottles of rye inside noble pumpkins priced at $1.60 
 each. 
 
 I began to fear, after residence and research in the 
 United States, that pink thinking is not so much a native 
 trait as a defensive armour for life's battle — that it was, 
 in fact, no spontaneous aura, but a rather hard exaction ; 
 an implicit law punished in the breach and favoured in the 
 observance. 
 
 It is true, as Bacon noted, that ''the pencil of the Holy 
 Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of 
 Job than the felicities of Solomon." But such pencils are 
 gaily edited in this New World. Even its early Puritan- 
 ism, as Professor Channing reminds us, was not so much 
 a system of theology as an attitude of mind. It was 
 ''idealism applied to the solution of contemporary prob- 
 lems." No doubt the war, with all its attendant change, 
 will modify this passion, though to what extent it is yet 
 too early to determine. Up to now, religion, philosophy, 
 and literature have all been tinged with betterment and 
 the uplift of man ; the elimination of pain, of unnecessary 
 labour and those tiresome chores which swallow up the good 
 time and cloud our little span of life. In America the 
 greatest doctors, psychologists, and men of science seek the 
 limelight as popular writers, and contribute their quota 
 to the Greek "full" of joy which is the national goal. 
 
 Here a familiar theme is the triumph of great men over 
 physical infirmities. These range from the stomach 
 troubles of John Rockefeller to the fatness of Roscoe 
 Arbuckle, that merry monster of 320 pounds, who makes 
 $100,000 a year as a movie-star. Fatty Arbuckle 's grin 
 lights up the billboards for three thousand miles; and the 
 secrets of success were wrung from him for the benefit 
 of lesser men. "If work and worry could have made me 
 
268 AIMERICA'S DAY 
 
 thin," he told the sympathetic reporters, **I guess you'd be 
 hunting for Fatty this minute with a microscope!" 
 
 Or here again is An Autohiography by Edward L. 
 Trudeau, M.D. Certainly the American spirit shines 
 throughout. At two and twenty this man broke down 
 with tuberculosis. He fought hard for every day he lived, 
 ** contemplating the ceiling" from his bed for twenty years. 
 At sixty-three Dr. Trudeau died, after saving thousands 
 of lives and building the greatest open-air sanatorium in 
 the West. His Antohiography is pink unto shrillness, with 
 insistence upon ever}^ page that your true con(iueror is he 
 who fights with a broken sword. *'The fellow who's fully 
 equipped," the author maintains, *'has no battle on his 
 hands, but only a walk-over." 
 
 Here is the religio poetoe of the United States. This is 
 the laughing mask with which America covers the sinister 
 face of things. Every singer warbles the ' ' Excelsior ' ' note. 
 No vicious panders of the Martial type are these poets ; no 
 bitter Juvenals, no doleful bards in the sombre black of 
 Tasso, but blithe zealots like Willard Wattles of Kansas, 
 who hails a new constructive Christ amid the rippling 
 leagues of wheat and green-bannered corn of the Sunflower 
 State: 
 
 "Who art thou, Carpenter, 
 
 Of the bowed head? — 
 
 .And what buildest thou? 
 
 'Heaven,' He said." 
 
 One must know these regional poets if the real America 
 is to be gauged. I consider Vachell Lindsay of Illinois 
 a more ''American" voice than any Anacreon of New York 
 who only sings of love. Lindsay is a truer index to the 
 seething of the giant Pot than all the mannered vers 
 lihristes of the East. Sectional poets now confine their 
 fancy to homely themes, as Edgar Lee Masters did in his 
 Spoon River lyrics. The prairie town now glows with 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 269 
 
 unwonted splendour. In his ''Springfield Magical," Mr. 
 Lindsay finds mystery and glamour in prosaic streets; 
 the American city is to the poet what Florence was to 
 Dante, or Shiraz to the rosy hedonism of Ilafiz : — 
 
 "In this, the City of my Discontent, 
 Sometimes tliere comes a whisper from the grass, 
 'Romance — Romance is here!' No Hindu town. 
 Is quite so stran^^e. No citadel of Brass 
 By Sindbad found held half such love and hate. 
 No picture-palace in a picture-book 
 Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed, and Hate." 
 
 Turn where you may in the United States, the desire for 
 sweetness and light is seen. 
 
 The uplift is veiy loud on the Chautauqua platform — that 
 orgy of instruction which may begin with Iroquois tales for 
 the children at ten in the morning, and go on till eight at 
 night, when a lecture on the torpedo's gyroscope winds up 
 an overflowing day. A mushroom city of three hundred 
 souls will have its culture-club. In due time the Browning 
 cult appears, to flower at last into a Shakespeare celebration 
 under the Drama League of Chicago. This is a nation- 
 wide concern, affiliated with hundreds of libraries, universi- 
 ties, and civic societies for both sexes and all America's 
 races. 
 
 Today the levelling-up of taste extends from the child's 
 book to the crusade against ugly hoardings which threaten 
 to spoil the new national roads which are being laid from 
 sea to sea. There is the Lincoln Highway, in which twelve 
 States are interested ; it will be 3284 miles long, linking 
 New York and San Francisco for the motorist in a direct 
 line. The South plans a Dixie Highway, w^hich will be 
 longer still ; the West has more than one such road, notably 
 the scenic stretch known as the Columbia, which runs for 
 two hundred miles through the Cascade Mountains of Ore- 
 gon. 
 
270 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 It was here that the billboard man was warned off. A 
 new race of aesthetes will have no giant cows shrieking 
 somebody's milk on the sky-line. No Heinz cans should 
 disfigure the glorious landscape, no monstrous babe calling 
 for a favourite food, or forty-foot Fatimas lolling on the 
 bluffs to boom a famous cigarette. To their credit be it 
 said that most of the advertisers agreed. A few rebelled, 
 of course, and set up claimant horror by lake and hill and 
 torrent. But the Oregonians were not to be triifled with. 
 They turned out in force with flame and violence; more- 
 over, there was to be a boycott of these offending wares. 
 Tar and feathers haunted the billboard man till he agreed 
 that Beauty was best — at any rate in the Grape and Apple 
 State. 
 
 I cannot deal at any length with the American stage, 
 which was so well guarded for forty years by the late 
 William Winter, the famous critic of the New York Tribune. 
 When this man frowned a play was damned; his favour 
 had the ''Broadway appeal" in it, and fat bank rolls alike 
 for author and producer. Mr. Winter could be very pru- 
 dish; he was nearly always pugnacious, loathing ''immoral" 
 themes and scathing them in terms that shocked his milder 
 brethren. This despot had a horror of Ibsen; he set his 
 face against most of the translations — French, German, 
 and Russian. Not even the acting of W. II. Crane could 
 save a comedy of Octave Mirbeau, though it bore the 
 promising title Business Is Business. Here the play itself 
 passed the Puritan muster, but it was a sombre theme 
 of bitter un.joyous aspect, therefore success was impossible. 
 
 Everybody knows that men of genius are appreciated in 
 the United States. The famous painter is made much of 
 there; so is the tenor of lyric passion, the pianist of rhap- 
 sodic fireworks, the Wunderkind who takes the town by 
 storm with a Guarnerius violin and a Tourte bow that 
 woiild tame the devil himself. 
 
THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK 271 
 
 It is curious how these high priests of art take to the 
 dollars, however dreamy and unworldly they may be at 
 home : America has no illusions upon this score. A pictur- 
 esque alien of renown was offered $40,000 for eight concerts 
 at which none but the So and So piano w^as to be used. Did 
 the musician accept it ? He did, although none too gladly. 
 The great man's face, we learn from the cynics, fell ''like a 
 cook-book cake," for he thought the fee was to have been 
 bigger, ' ' He 'd play on a tin kettle if you made it worth his 
 while," the agent confessed with shocking frankness. No 
 wonder the American humorist considers music "the most 
 expensive of noises. ' ' But even he agrees that America will 
 hire the world 's foremost artists at any price — the sculptor, 
 the designer of dress ; the Slav boy -fiddler with a left hand 
 of flawless magic, such as draws tears down the iron cheek 
 of Success and raises to life the spiritual death which is 
 Vulgarity. 
 
 A generation ago Matthew Arnold gave high-brow counsel 
 to the United States where he perceived an inveterate 
 drift towards commonness. "What the Americans most 
 urgently require," their superior visitor said, "is a steady 
 exhibition of cool and sane criticism." In this matter 
 Arnold himself led the way, quoting Goethe's warning 
 against mob-movement and excessive homage to King 
 Demos and his noisy train: the Americans, our apostle of 
 culture found, had too much esteem for the average man 
 and deferred unduly to his wishes. Their Press was "an 
 awful symptom," their education of the "brisk and flour- 
 ishing" variet}^ which the critic feared was "more than 
 doubtful" in results. 
 
 Matthew Arnold praised Em,erson for his roseate views, 
 but he was afraid they went too far. Nor did the English 
 visitor agree with the Ohio lad}^ who found Syrian roses on 
 each common bush, and excellence in lavish riot. On the 
 contrary, Arnold held that "excellence dwells among rocks 
 
272 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 hardly accessible, and a man must always wear out his 
 heart before he can reach her." That is the lesson which 
 is being driven home today. And as the old illusions 
 wither, a new hope grows that the reconstructed world will 
 find in American ideals that ''moral equivalent for war" 
 which William James desired. 
 
 *'Each one of us literally chooses," the American philo- 
 sopher said, ''by his ways of attending on things, what sort 
 of a universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. ' ' From 
 the first America's choice was a goodly Eden which no 
 serpentry could wholly spoil. It is unlikely that pink 
 thinking will easily pass or that this people will be quickly 
 convicted of error in its radiant creed. You may demon- 
 strate the futility of it; you may point to ravening war as 
 a proof of incurable evil. But America will always cut 
 you short with her eager Browning outburst: "Ah, but 
 a man's reach should exceed his grasp — or what's heaven 
 for?" 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 
 
 *'By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make, 
 Be sure, be sure we're going to do some splendid things!" 
 
 It is in no flippant vein that I set down these lines of Kipling. 
 Every American knows how well they express the hub-bub 
 and friction of official Washington in the time of Prepara- 
 tion for war. The fervid clamour for Congress and its 
 advisers, the prodding and protest of newspapers, the 
 shrilling of cranks and patriots in conflict with wiser 
 counsels; the efforts of willing or wilful men, no doubt 
 in earnest, but still a real hindrance, no less harmful 
 than the plot and rumour of German agents and tools. 
 There was uproar everywhere; a cheery tumult in which 
 everybody fed the flames with such fuel as he had, until 
 responsible men called a halt in the anxious riot. ''Less 
 shindies and more ships," was the shrewd appeal in this 
 distracting season. 
 
 America groped and staggered after splendid things with- 
 out regret for the unfamiliar mists enfolding them. An 
 unmartial people was now rough-hewing Armies and 
 equipping Navies of the sea and air for service abroad 
 against the most warlike people of all. These things 
 democracy must do in its own way, imbibing discipline in 
 doubtful gulps as it floundered into battle. This is natu- 
 rally the way of blunders ; our own Prime Minister hinted 
 as much when he drew America's attention to Britain's 
 unready record and the lessons it afforded the latest cham- 
 pion of our cause. 
 
 In all ages leaders have complained about Liberty's 
 
 273 
 
274 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 legions; they are hard to handle, and apt to become 
 tyrannous in a crisis. History teems with instances of 
 this, from the city-State of ancient Greece to the Ireland of 
 Sinn Fein and the tragi-comic violence of revolutionary 
 Russia. The trials of Cromwell and Washington come 
 back to us now with new force. Danton's struggle with 
 the Girondins and Lincoln's with his *' Copperheads" have 
 a parallel in Kerensky's stand against the Bolsheviki that 
 overthrew him. 
 
 As for America, it is plain that the early Fathers put no 
 great faith in the common people. Richard Henry Lee 
 was all for a ' * regulated liberty, so that the ends and prin- 
 ciples of society may not be disturbed by the fury of 
 the mob." Jefferson was anxious to curb the supremacy of 
 the new Legislature. ''One hundred and seventy-three 
 despots," the famous democrat was afraid, "would surely 
 be as oppressive as One." It was to guard against these 
 perils that the State Constitutions were provided with 
 elaborate checks based upon the division of power favoured 
 by Montesquieu. Hence a curious distinction between Con- 
 stitutional and Statute law, such as is unknown in our own 
 polity; it has given peculiar authority to the Judges, who 
 replaced the Legislatures as the ultimate guardians of 
 popular liberty. 
 
 In 1911 President Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, 
 spoke very plainly on this subject. "If we felt," he said, 
 "that we had genuine representation in our State Legis- 
 latures, no one would propose the 'Initiative' and 'Refer- 
 endum' in America. They are now being proposed as 
 a means of bringing our representatives back to the con- 
 sciousness that what they are bound in duty and policy 
 to do is to represent the sovereign people whom they pro- 
 fess to serve, and not the private interests which creep into 
 their councils by way of m,achine orders and committee 
 conferences." 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 275 
 
 The past few years have seen astonishing reforms. Thus 
 the Non-Partisan League swept North Dakota with a 
 Socialist demand for public utilities under State control — 
 grain-elevators and milk supplies; markets and slaughter- 
 houses, with hail-insurance for the farmer and rural credits 
 on a new ingenious basis. So drastic a program called 
 for alteration in the State Constitution, but this has already 
 become a mania with the Commonwealths. 
 
 This appetite for change, together with the lingering 
 sectionalism of the continent, accounts in part for the 
 war-time confusion that raged in "Washington. Certainly 
 the men in authority were aware of the peril of this 
 tumult; witness the humorous inversion of President Wil- 
 son's dictum by Governor ]\IcCall of Massachusetts — ■ 
 "Democracy must be made safe for the world!" Lidivid- 
 ualism was well enough in the abstract ; it was mere suicide 
 when face to face with the German Wille zu Macht, intent 
 upon conquest and exploration. Here the collapse of Rus- 
 sia, was cited, and America's millions rallied to militancy 
 for Freedom s sake. At one time the Eastern States 
 rebuked the West for an alleged war apathy — which was 
 said to put the Mississippi Valley "behind the field-kitch- 
 ens" of the battle-line. The}^ were a flabby folk, out there, 
 provincial and pacifist, sodden with selfishness and mate- 
 rialism; pro-Germans, flush-timers, and the like. I quote 
 the ironic comments of the West when the recruiting records 
 had turned the tables upon those censors of the Atlantic 
 coast. 
 
 It was Alfred Zimmicrmann, the German Foreign Min- 
 ister, who stirred the trans-Alleghany farmers to vivid 
 wrath with the egregious letter he wrote to Von Eckhardt, 
 his envoy in IMexico City. In this it was suggested that 
 President Carranza should seek the aid of Japan, and 
 then with German backing make an onslaught upon the 
 United States with a view to the reconquest of "lost 
 
276 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 territory in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas." America 
 was staggered at this. Her irrepressible humorists fell 
 mute in the face of a perfidy that jarred the nation into 
 vengeful unity overnight. 
 
 That letter was in President Wilson's hands when 
 Bethmann Hollv/eg was cooing about those "friendly rela- 
 tions with the United States Vvhich have come down as a 
 heritage from Frederick the Great." Zimmermann dates 
 his letter January 19, 1917. And twelve days later 
 Johann von Bernstorff handed Mr. Lansing a Note in which 
 the following appears : * ' The German people repudiate all 
 alliances which serve to force the nations into a com- 
 petition for power, or to involve them in a net of selfish 
 intrigue. ' ' 
 
 The Zimmermann letter was the most dramatic discovery 
 of the war, so far as America was concerned. 
 
 It was a God-send to President Wilson, for it grappled 
 the West to him as nothing else could have done. For 
 the first time. ' ' America 's war ' ' lov/ered up on ranch and 
 prairie with searching blast. It was Prussian intrigue 
 that stiffened Wilson's Reply to the Pope's Note. "We 
 cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany 
 as a guarantee of anything that is to endure. . . . Treaties 
 of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to 
 set up arbitration in the place of force ; territorial adjust- 
 ments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the 
 German Government, no man, no nation, could now 
 depend on." When was a great Empire so branded and 
 sham,ed? And how startling was the confirmation found 
 in those "Willy-Nicky" telegrams of 1904, published by 
 the Neiu York Herald. In them was a plot aimed by the 
 Kaiser at "the Anglo-Saxon group." 
 
 Next came the frigid orders for wholesale murder sent 
 by Count Luxburg from Buenos Aires with secret Swedish 
 aidi There was also Baron von Rautenfels. This man 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 277 
 
 arrived at Christiania with two hundred bombs in his 
 baggage, and Foreign Office seals to ensure their use in 
 sinking ships and drowning non-combatants at sea. 
 America was bewildered. So the German Emperor, his 
 envoys abroad, his officers on land and afloat— what were 
 they all but a gang of callous Thugs for whom the rope 
 and shot-gun of the lynching party were altogether too 
 mild a fate? The Republic was awake at last; aware of 
 her own danger too, and very angry indeed. 
 
 Her first Army in France represented every element in 
 the United States, from the alien volunteer to the million- 
 aire conscript. The students of Yale were there with The 
 Bowery toughs, Virginian planters, Rocky Mountain min- 
 ers, and lumber-men of the North- West. There were stock- 
 riders, and stockbrokers; there were Red Indians — like F. 
 W. Riches, a full-blood Cherokee of Oklahoma, who was 
 already a decoree of France and a noted flier since 1914. 
 Lieut. 0. Loft, in charge of the redskin Forest Service in 
 France, was himself a chief of the Mohawk tribe ; the Sixth 
 Wisconsin Regiment had whole platoons of Chippewas from 
 the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation. 
 
 So the revolution was complete, confounding the prophets 
 and politicians. There was no frothy rage or red fire. 
 "We go into it gravely," said the Neiu York Times. "Our 
 mood of 1917 is not that of 1898 (the Spanish-American 
 War). Yet America's mood in 1917 is that of France in 
 1914: our enemy can take no comfort from the fact." 
 There is no desire to impress unwilling soldiers, the ideal of 
 a consecrated army was emblazoned on the first recruiting 
 banners — ' ' Be a Went, Not a Sent ! " In his hints to the 
 Exemption Boards President Wilson defined the delicate du- 
 ties entrusted to them, between "the most sacred rights of 
 the individual and the untarnished honour of the nation." 
 "Our armies at the front," he felt, "will be strengthened 
 and sustained if they be composed of men free from any 
 
278 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 sense of injustice in their mode of selection.'' And to this 
 end the draft system was altered again and again. 
 
 The .margin of man-power was immense. There are in 
 the United States 22,000,000 males of militia age— that is, 
 between eighteen and forty-five. No more than five per 
 cent, of these were to be called until the establishments were 
 ready for more. Objectors who quoted the ''involuntary 
 servitude" clause of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Con- 
 stitution were reminded that this did not apply to soldiering 
 in time of national stress. There were Exemption Boards 
 for every 30,000 of the population, with the right of appeal 
 to a Board of Review in each Federal District. Civil serv- 
 ants and divinity students were excused. So was the con- 
 scientious objector; the sailor, the artificer, and all indus- 
 trial and agricultural hands. No man with a wife and 
 child, or other dependents, was enlisted; neither was the 
 resident alien who had not yet taken out his first papers of 
 citizenship. 
 
 Of these drifters the last Census showed two and a quar- 
 ter millions, many of them subjects of Germany, Austria, 
 Turkey, and Bulgaria. A special Act of Congress raked in 
 the Allied nationals for service under their own flags ; but 
 on the whole America was disgusted with her sans-patries, 
 and pressed for drastic measures against them. ' ' This is a 
 poor time," the shirkers were reminded, "for a man with- 
 out a country." Freedom was tossing and straining upon 
 stormy seas, so the alien was asked to "bail, row, or go 
 ashore." 
 
 I must also mention political influence in the working of 
 the P]xemption Boards. Congress was stirred with rancour 
 over the assignment of local quotas according to population. 
 The most startling allegation came from the Northern 
 States. Their spokesmen declared that the Draft Census 
 had been so juggled as to throw a disproportionate burden 
 of service upon them, with a corresponding immunity south 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 279 
 
 of the Mason and Dixon line.. So hotly was this grievance 
 pressed that Mr. Samuel Rogers, Director of the Census 
 Bureau, was summoned to the Senate to explain how he 
 arrived at his estimates for 1917, ba^sing them on the re- 
 turns of 1900 and 1910. 
 
 But all this sectional stress — this ''oppression" of the 
 North by a Democratic administration — melted away when 
 the President appealed for unity with incomparable dig- 
 nity and tact. Human freedom was at stake ' ' to be wholly 
 won or meanly lost," as Lincoln said when he stood alone 
 among betrayers, resisting them all. This was no season for 
 fruitless talk. ''We have a chance to show," Dr. Wilson 
 urged, "that the principles we profess are living principles; 
 we are glad to pour out our blood and treasure to vindicate 
 these things." 
 
 No one in this country, and not many in the United 
 States, have a clear idea of the forces arrayed against the 
 Federal Government in its task of waking the nation 's war- 
 will and developing and maintaining its power. For a 
 hundred years America has been a land of refuge, an asylum 
 where Liberty was given extravagant interpretation. And 
 this was treated with lenience till the Da}^ of trial came. 
 
 The anti-American forces may be divided into pacifism, 
 Socialism, Irishry, Germanism, indifference, and downright 
 anarchy. All of these — apathy alone excepted — v/ere very 
 noisy; each had its own press and hordes of adherents 
 intent upon clogging the war machine by every known 
 means, from sabotage to wholesale matrimony. The cause 
 of Peace so multiplied its labours as to become unwieldy. 
 Therefore a Clearing-House was formed to co-ordinate the 
 activities of the Emergency Peace Federation, the Church 
 Peace Union, the American Union against Militarism, the 
 Neutral Conference Committee, and the Woman's Peace 
 Party. To the last named that veteran social worker, 
 Jane Addams of Chicago, lent her strenuous aid. 
 
280 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Peace at any price had a backing in the Senate among 
 that ' ' little group of wilful men representing no opinion but 
 their own, ' ' whom the President declared had left America 
 * 'helpless and contemptible in the midst of a crisis of ex- 
 traordinary peril." I recall this episode as one of the 
 many milestones on the via dolorosa of Preparedness. For 
 at last that stormy way grew thick with unlooked-for con- 
 verts and devotees. There came a time when the mildest of 
 pilgrims preached a Pacifist War against Prussianism. 
 Had not Hoover and Gerard trailed the vileness of it from 
 the slave-pens of Wavre in Brabant to the drear typhus- 
 hell of Wittenberg, where British prisoners died obscenely, 
 crawling with lice and torn by savage dogs ? It was a holy 
 and wholesome thing to war with an organized terror which 
 seventy million people backed so long as it promised them 
 power. 
 
 Gerard's account of the lawless Kaiser eclipsed that of 
 Ambassador Dana in 1781, when Frederick the Great was 
 flaunting his brazen guns as the last reasoning of force and 
 fraud. Dana considered Frederick "as complete a despot 
 as hath ever been sent into this world for a curse to man- 
 kind." It was Frederick's successor who told Gerard that 
 no laws of war existed between the nations — ''and to this 
 statement the Chancellor agreed. ' ' 
 
 To America, therefore, it grew clear that Kaiserism must 
 be stamped out if Freedom was to survive the calculated 
 pounce of 1914. It was a reluctant lesson; but Woodrow 
 Wilson — the "Princeton Professor" of the Berlin satirists — • 
 had ten million men in his class when the application of it 
 became an imperious need. 
 
 Then was the new America born. Then it was that 
 Bryan himself preached war from the Chautauqua platform 
 — that peculiar vehicle of bourgeois culture in the United 
 States. ' ' The more any one favours peace, ' ' the Nebraskan 
 orator said, "the more loyally should he support the Gov- 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 281 
 
 ernment." In Chicago — that stronghold of hyphenism — 
 Mr. Bryan went much fvirther. ^'I've been a pacifist all 
 my life," the ex-Foreign Minister owned in a famous apol- 
 ogia; ''but the sort of peace I'm after is one that lasts. 
 There's only one way to attain it now, so we should all get 
 together and fight the devil ! ' ' Here also was Henry Ford, 
 of peace-ark fame, ''prepared to go to the limit in this 
 struggle. ' ' 
 
 But the unlikeliest of all belligerents was surely the Peace 
 Society, which rallied to ''the cause of humanity at large"; 
 its placid organ. The Advocate, was now hailed as a good 
 loser by the laic press. "If our members," The Advocate 
 said, ' ' can conscientiously engage in active service they will 
 do so ; if not, they will lend their efforts behind the firing 
 line. . . . We must all help in the bayoneting of a normally 
 decent German in order to free him from the tyranny which 
 he at present accepts as his chosen form of government." 
 
 This change of heart was mainly a domestic process. It 
 owed little or nothing to Allied suasion, and a great deal to 
 American pacifists employed on relief work in all the zones 
 of havoc from the Danube to the Meuse. This is not the 
 place to speak of benevolence which covered Europe and 
 crossed over into Asia at Beirut to keep the Syrians from 
 starving. American Jews heard the Kadish or prayer of 
 mourning from the Polish provinces. They replied with 
 millions of dollars, as well as with foodstuffs and warm 
 clothing, doctors, nurses, and business administrators. 
 The same work went on in stricken Serbia, in Albania and 
 Montenegro, in Flanders and Northern France, where "the 
 kiddies" were crying; their cries reached the Iowa prairie, 
 where the Farmer's Acre was soon sacred to their wants. 
 
 Americans engaged in relief work took dreadful testi- 
 mony home with them, when they went to report or appeal 
 for funds on the lecture platform. Take Vernon Kellogg, 
 Director of the Belgian Commission in the two neutral 
 
282 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 years of war. He is Professor of Biology at Leland Stan- 
 ford University, and as fervid a peace-man as his colleague, 
 Dr. David Starr Jordan. No man living has seen Prussian- 
 ism in the raw as Victor Kellogg has, from Warsaw in the 
 East to Great Headquarters at Charleville, where he was 
 the guest of German officers of all grades — the veteran gen- 
 eral and the subaltern of eighteen straight from Heidelberg 
 with sabre-slashed face. Here, then, was unique oppor- 
 tunity to seize the German point of view, the perverted 
 ^Y eltanscliaiiung which had strewn the earth with corpses 
 and now skimmed the baby's milk for exjplosive glycerine. 
 
 ''The discussions," Dr. Kellogg says, "would begin at 
 dinner and last far into the night. As we talked we tried 
 to understand each other." But Deutschheit, the Ameri- 
 can concludes, "will never allow any land controlled by it 
 to exist peacefully beside a people governed according to 
 our ideals." The guest perceived in his hard-drinking 
 hosts "a whole-hearted acceptance of the worst of neo- 
 Darwinism — the Allmacht of natural selection rigorously 
 applied to all human life, society and Kultur. " . . . * ' I was 
 convinced that this war must be fought to a finish which will 
 determine whether or not the German system is to rule the 
 world. ' ' It was for this reason that the Director of Belgian 
 Relief went home a converted man — ' ' an ardent supporter, ' ' 
 he was careful to say, "not of war, but of this War." It 
 w^as a distinction that spread like a flame. Not without pro- 
 test, however, from "those dangerous elements," as Presi- 
 dent Wilson called them, ' ' who hide their disloyalty behind 
 a screen of specious and evasive words." 
 
 So numerous were these, so reckless and determined in 
 anarchy, that I can only outline their malignity. The 
 draft-resisters of Central Oklahoma called themselves the 
 Working Class Union. They were a serious trial to Gov- 
 ernor R. L. Williams of the Wonder-State, for they en- 
 listed ' ' bad niggers, ' ' Indians, and alien tenant farmers, in 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 283 
 
 a league of terror that flashed through three of the wilder 
 counties. It may be well to remind the reader that in the 
 United States a regular police force is unknown outside the 
 larger cities; sO that sparsely -settled regions have to rely 
 upon the Sheriff and his civilian posse, who are too often a 
 law unto themselves. This is one of the root causes of 
 lynching. 
 
 Cranks of a tamer breed invaded Minnesota under Louis 
 Lochner, of Peace-Ark notoriety; this man claimed to 
 speak for two million workers. Lochner 's convention was 
 vetoed by Governor Burnquist, who declared "it would 
 have no other effect than to aid and abet our enemies." 
 So all facilities were denied. Herr Lochner 's train — the 
 "White Rabbit Special" — rolled back and forth in vain 
 quest of asylum for the so-called People's Council. The 
 hotelkeepers of Milwaukee and St. Paul closed their doors 
 against the party. At last Lochner 's followers were asked 
 to bring their own tents, as well as pots and pans, for a 
 desert meeting far from the tyrannous crowd. 
 
 The Socialists were truculent and shrill tilPthe Federal 
 Government handled them roughly. Their bosses were 
 Morris Hillquit (born in Russia), Victor Berger (born in 
 Austria), Julius Gerber, and Boris Reinstein — the delegate 
 to Stockholm whose passport was at last rescinded. The 
 passing of Conscription caused disruption in the Socialist 
 ranks. Real Americans like Upton Sinclair, Allan Benson, 
 and J. S. Phelps Stokes broke away from the party. A very 
 able member, Charles E. Russell, was expelled for going 
 to Russia with Elihu Root's Mission. Therefore little was 
 left but a cultus of pro-Germanism upon which the Depart- 
 ment of Justice descended with a heavy hand, because of 
 its treasonous propaganda. Irish-American editors were 
 now ordered to refrain from attacks upon England, whom 
 the United States had joined in Democracy's war. The 
 Irish also were divided. Patrick Egan, a former Minister 
 
284 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 to Chile, charged John Devoy, the editor of the Gaelic- 
 American, with plotting the Dublin Rebellion with thv. 
 aid of German money, as well as exporting arms and 
 ammunition in defiance of American neutrality. 
 
 It is certain that Anglophobia of this kind passed decent 
 bounds. The "flag of the Irish Republic" was presented 
 to Lieut. Wacker, of the U-53, who sank ships in American 
 waters. "We shall hoist this flag in honour of Ireland," 
 the assassin said as his boat left, "when we sink the next 
 English ship." Folly of this kind added to President 
 Wilson's burden. The Clan-na-Gael orators cried "Death 
 to England!" from a soap-box at the street corner. The 
 Irish-American press preached open sedition ; at a hyphen- 
 ate meeting in New York, an officer of the Irish Volunteers 
 struck a reporter with his SAVord because the man refused 
 to rise when "Die Wacht am Rhein" was played by the 
 orchestra. 
 
 All this faction was unanimously condemned; American 
 common sense would have none of it. "It is incompre- 
 hensible to me," the President said, "how any frank or 
 honest person can doubt or question my position with 
 regard to this war and its objects. ... I can conceive 
 no purpose in seeking to becloud the matter, except the 
 purpose of weakening our hands and making the part we 
 are to play in this great struggle for human liberty an 
 inefficient and hesitating part." 
 
 Mayor Mitchel of New York, himself the grandson of an 
 outlawed Irish patriot — forbade anti-Ally speeches, and 
 refused police protection to Jeremiah O'Leary and other 
 firebrands of the Clan-na-Gael. Of course, mob fights 
 endued. An Irish captain of police gave an order to his 
 Irish squad — and the New York streets beheld civil war 
 of a new kind, with citizen "Vigilantes" aiding the forces 
 of order against the Clan-na-Gael mob. Mr. T. P. O'Con- 
 nor poured oil upon these troubled waters. Ex-Ambassador 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 285 
 
 Gerard (whose life was threatened in Chicago) told the 
 Irish that their pro-German leaning would change to fury 
 if they could but see the camp at Limburg w^here ''Irish 
 prisoners are dying of starvation and tuberculosis." . . . 
 He got secret news that the Prussian Guards were shooting 
 and killing their Irish captives. One prisoner was killed 
 whilst Mr. Gerard was inquiring into the murder of an- 
 other. ''There is no telling how many were shot down by 
 their custodians." This was after the fiasco of Roger Case- 
 ment's recruiting visit. 
 
 IMeanwhile "America first" was a national watchword of 
 rising sternness. Again and again the President insisted 
 upon unity of aim; the gigantic conflict he was directing 
 ^vould (he declared) not only remove the last vestige of 
 difference between North and South, but also "any lines, 
 of race or association, cutting athwart the great body of 
 the nation." lie met hindrance still, however, from the 
 Senate Chamber to far Viatka in Russia, where returned 
 emigrants were abusing America and a democratic regime 
 which, these renegades vowed, was more cruel and tyran- 
 nical than any Tsardom. These Russo- Americans did much 
 to nullify Mr. Root's jMission ; the Bolsheviki were told it 
 was nothing but "a Wall Street venture conducted by the 
 Chief Tory of the country." 
 
 Impatient people in Paris and London knew little of the 
 dark forces with which President Wilson was battling. 
 He had the Press on his side, however. The intellectuals 
 hailed him as America's Man of Destiny; the ideal Execu- 
 tive whom Lowell pictured years ago — "so gently guiding 
 public sentiment that he seems to follow it; so instinctively 
 grasping the temper and prejudices of the people as to 
 make them gradually conscious of his own superior wis- 
 dom." Wilson's opportunity was now declared greater 
 than that of Washington or Lincoln. The saviour of the 
 Union, it was pointed out, was at first thought a White 
 
286 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 House misfit by reason of his rough exterior and backwoods 
 breeding. On the other hand, it was as a high-brow that 
 Wilson was mistrusted. How should a book-worm steer 
 fortj^-eight rugged and striving Commonwealths through 
 the storms ahead? What sort of President should an his- 
 torian make when the world was aflame ? — a man of letters, 
 a fine gentleman, and no mob-orator at all? Yet hearken 
 to his voice in the thunder's mouth: ''Woe be to the man 
 or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this Day 
 of high resolution, when every principle we hold dearest 
 is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of 
 all!'^ 
 
 The foes at home were more difficult to deal with than 
 any foreign enemy. Their tactics changed from day to day. 
 Their tools and catspaws were Protean shadows sheltered 
 by State laws; it was impossible to disentangle motives in 
 treason's twilight zone. The German Embassy, we know, 
 was the headquarters of a dynamite diplomacy. It was 
 efficient in its way and spent tens of millions in wicked 
 work ranging from alarmist rumours to infernal machines. 
 Three thousand miles off, in San Francisco, Consul-General 
 Bopp and the Saxon Attache, Von Brincken, were hiring 
 bombers at $300 a month and a bonus on each successful 
 job — say a ship bound for Vladivostok or a train-load of 
 horses for the Allies, bridges and tunnels on the railways ; 
 munition works, warehouses, and docks. The forces of 
 Deutschtum were at one time blatant, at any rate in the 
 German-American journals, of which there were not less 
 than four hundred and fifty in the United States. I fancy 
 these misread the average hyphenate; he was wary and 
 prudent throughout, and sat on the fence, mindful of his 
 stake in the richest of countries. Ninety per cent, of him 
 came down on the American side, leaving a band of plot- 
 ters, incendiaries, and strike-fomenters upon whom Chief 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 287 
 
 Justice Covington moved with all the might of the Federal 
 Government. 
 
 The fact should not be forgotten that America is partly 
 German, and that, however loud hyphenate loyalty may be, 
 there remains an alien menace of great boldness and sway, 
 shifting with the fortune of war and current feeling in the 
 Fatherland. There were spies in the White House itself, as 
 the leakage of the Wilson Peace Note showed. The Naval 
 Affairs Committee of the Senate were told by Secretary 
 Daniels that important letters had been stolen from confi- 
 dential files of the Ordnance Bureau. Senators Tillman 
 and Chamberlain, men high in the War Council, admitted 
 the daring and success of traitors; no military or industrial 
 secret could be hidden from them. The German hope — as 
 Secretary Lane expressed it — ''of mastering the world by 
 high explosive and low intrigue," was luridly pursued in 
 America, which offered unique scope and immunity. 
 
 The hyphenate danger was complicated by the dual 
 allegiance sanctioned by Paragraph 25 of the German 
 Citizen Law, passed by the Bundesrath and Reichstag and 
 made effective on January 1, 1914. This measure — semel 
 Germanus semper Gernianus — superseded the old law of 
 1870, whereby nationality was lost after ten years' residence 
 abroad, or by declaring fealty to a foreign State. The new 
 Bill was framed by Baron von Richthofen, who explained 
 that "it permitted Germans who, for motives of an eco- 
 nomic kind are compelled to acquire a foreign nationality, to 
 retain at the same time their ReichsangeJioerigkeit." Of 
 course this duality nullifies the Bancroft Treaty, and es- 
 tablishes a conflict which, as Senator Lodge pointed out to 
 State Secretary Lansing, ' ' is contrary to American law and 
 incompatible with our oath of allegiance." 
 
 The President was also troubled by labour violence of an 
 anarchic type, and by the high-handed methods of State 
 
288 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Governors in suppressing it. I refer especially to that out- 
 lawed body, the Industrial Workers of the World, whose 
 organ declares that: "Property, whether material or in 
 the form of specialized labour, has ceased to exist for the 
 proletariat. ' ' 
 
 The I. W. W., as this singular body is called, works with 
 bomb and torch and terrorism. ''They can't stop us," was 
 the boast of Boss Hey wood. ''We — the rough-necks of the 
 world — will go on till we take control of all production, 
 working how and when we please. The man who makes 
 the wagon shall ride in it himself. ' ' Another leader hoped 
 the I. W. W. "would keep the soldiers so busy in the indus- 
 trial centres of the West, that they'll have no time to fight 
 the Germans." There was warfare in the Desert States, 
 and it is worth while to consider it if one is to grasp the 
 bewildering complexity of American conditions. Twelve 
 strikes were engineered in the anthracite coal regions. 
 Anti-conscription literature was freely circulated, together 
 with pamphlets urging riot and gaol delivery for the men 
 who had refused to register for military service. In South 
 Dakota vast grain-fields were mapped out with a view to 
 burning the crops; and Food Controller Hoover had the 
 grain-elevators of the State protected with barbed wire 
 and armed guards. 
 
 "There's the devil to pay out here," came across the 
 Eockies to New York. "Strikes reasonable and unreason- 
 able occur, and they spread and multiply. Fires have been 
 started, and wells poisoned. Helpless workers are stoned 
 and beaten. Treason is openly preached. Our Army is 
 reviled; and soap-box orators, foaming with anarchy, are 
 bedevilling the cow-town communities." Federal officers 
 conferred with Samuel Gompers, of the Labour Federation, 
 and it was proved that German money backed the wickedest 
 designs. At seditious meetings a portrait of Karl Marx 
 would be displayed, with his favourite motto in many Ian- 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 289 
 
 guages: "Workers, unite! You have only your chains to 
 lose and a world to win." 
 
 There was never at any time a genuine Labour movement 
 against the President's plans. On the contrary, Labour 
 stood behind the Government ' ' like a stone wall, ' ' as James 
 Duncan said, ' ' in its fight against autocracy. ' ' 
 
 Meanwhile the President, radiant in summer garb, and 
 carrying a big flag, led his early conscripts from the Peace 
 Monument to the White House. Here he addressed them 
 from the reviewing-stand with his usual sense of fitness and 
 felicity. "The eyes of all the world," Dr. Wilson said, 
 "will be upon you, because you are in a special sense the 
 soldiers of freedom." The first half million were soon 
 housed in sixteen model townships, each with 40,000 recruits 
 in training. These and other specialized camps rose as it 
 were miraculously in their chosen sites. At Quant ico the 
 Potomac flats and Virginia hills had a new Aldershot set 
 in their midst. Dense woods disappeared, roaring war 
 opened in the tranquil spaces with French and British ex- 
 perts directing it. 
 
 At Dayton, O., great farms were obliterated by thousands 
 of teams, and by workmen both black and white. Six 
 weeks saw an aviation camp laid out here, with miles of 
 hangars, acres of machine-shops, barracks, lecture-halls and 
 offices. For the aerial arm alone Congress appropriated 
 $640,000,000. It was in tens of thousands that maehines 
 were ordered so as to ensure that "crushing superiority" 
 which the French High Commissioner declared would break 
 the trench deadlock and end the war. Under General 
 G. O. Squier (a formed Attache in London) aerodromes 
 were built at Mineola, L. I., at Newport News, Pensacola, 
 Detroit, Champaign, and San Diego. Admiral Peary took 
 charge of the Aerial Coast patrol, with its sentinel cordons 
 and squadron stations. The Mexican Border was soon to 
 be made safe in this way. Had not Pershing praised the 
 
290 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 wings of war that carried his mails over the Sierra Madre 
 from Sonora, and awed the bandit troops of Pancho Villa 
 with a sight of "yellow hawks that dropped flame from the 
 skies!" One machine, the General testified, ''was worth 
 more to me than a whole division of infantry." There were 
 Allied advisers at Headquarters in Washington — Colonel 
 Rees, R. F. C, a noted English pilot; Lieut, de la Grange, 
 an aerial champion of France, and other aces of renown. 
 The docility of America in all her efforts was a sign to be 
 remarked ; her willingness to learn war methods impressed 
 all her foreign teachers, as well as her aptitude in grasping 
 the novel conditions of war. 
 
 As for the Navy, President "Wilson pointed to vast defen- 
 sive areas in both oceans, and urged a suitable program 
 with all speed in contracts and construction. A single Bill, 
 passed unanimously by the Lower House, voted $1,500,000,- 
 000 for this purpose alone. It called for capital ships of 
 over 40,000 tons; these include new types like the electric 
 California, and giant cruisers of 35 knots mounting 16-in. 
 guns. There are also scout cruisers and coast patrols, 
 submarines of 1000 tons, swift U-boat chasers, as well as 
 seaplanes and dirigibles. New dockyards and naval sta- 
 tions are designed ; powder, shells and armour plants, as well 
 as underground oil-tanks at Guantanamo, Pearl Harbour, 
 Puget Sound, San Diego, Mare Island, and Narragansett 
 Bay. An energetic drive is being made to bring the naval 
 personnel — ever a weak point — up to 150,000 men. One 
 may soberly say that money is being poured out like water ; 
 the first year of war cost America over twenty billion dol- 
 lars. Merely for destroyers Secretary Daniels has asked 
 Congress for $1,000,000,000. 
 
 But money alone will not produce modern warships and 
 trained crews at short notice. Naval construction has up 
 to now been slow and costly in the United States — at all 
 events when compared with British, or even German sources. 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 291 
 
 From the time Congress authorized the Dreadnought 
 OklaJwma until she joined the Atlantic Fleet, nearly five 
 years and a half elapsed. Four years were allowed for the 
 battle-cruisers, and $16,000,000 for the hull and engines 
 alone. In many cases private bids from concerns like the 
 Fore River, the Newport News of Quincy, and Cramps' of 
 Philadelphia fell through altogether, and Secretary Daniels 
 had to lay do^^n the ships in the national yards. Then 
 Hadfield's of Sheffield secured a $3,000,000 order for 14-in. 
 and 16-in. armour-piercing shells. Their bid was no less 
 than $200 each below that of the Bethlehem Steel Company 
 of Pennsylvania. And these Sheffield shells passed the 
 severest test of the Ordnance Bureau, when fired at plates 
 turned at an angle of ten degrees, so as to deflect the 
 striking force. 
 
 Of course in these matters it is war-experience that wins. 
 But America is fast learning on the naval as well as the 
 military side, adapting and developing her industries and 
 resources in a style that amazed the foreign missions. The 
 Japanese Plenipotentiary was greatly impressed by the 
 titan efforts which America was making ' ' against the insane 
 despoiler of our civilization." . . . America's will would no 
 longer be expressed in words alone. To frustrate the sub- 
 marines, emergency fleets of merchant vessels were put in 
 hand by the Federal Shipping Board. For this purpose 
 Congress voted $750,000,000, but the purchase of new 
 vessels and the commandeering of others took the total 
 estimates to $1,134,500,000. All the great steel plants- 
 all the lumber of the South and the North-West, as vvell as 
 new armies of skilled labour, were pressed into service under 
 Admiral W. L. Capps and Mr. E. N. Hurley of Chicago, new 
 nominees of the President, after inevitable disputes and 
 delay. 
 
 This colossal program was to do more than defeat the 
 trump card of the Von Tirpitz policy. It would also 
 
292 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 revive America's merchant marine, which may be said to 
 have passed with the Civil War. The Confederate raiders 
 wrought havoc among the clipper-ships of that time, and 
 left the nation with no zest for changed conditions of the 
 sea, brought about by the introduction of steam and iron, 
 for which America's ''wooden" yards were not adapted. 
 Therefore capital was withdrawn from maritime invest- 
 ment and turned to the exploitation of natural resources, 
 as well as the building of railroads and the development of 
 industries which promised a rich and speedy return. 
 
 In this way America fell off as a seafaring nation. 
 Sailors and their sons now took to the land out in the 
 Middle West. They went into the factories, they engaged 
 in coastwise or fishing trades. In world-commerce the 
 United States became more and more dependent upon 
 the bounty-fed and cheap-wage vessels of other nations. 
 She was at last paying $300,000,000 a year to alien owners 
 for the transport of her own products. 
 
 After the Civil War a few subsidies were granted to 
 shipowners, but these new lines failed, partly through 
 unskilful management, and partly owing to economic con- 
 ditions beyond any owner's control. The Pacific Mail was 
 rescued by strong financial interests, but this concern also 
 went out of business owing to the Seamen's Act which the 
 President signed in 1914. Primarily a labour law, forced 
 through Congress by an autocratic Union, this measure 
 added seriously to shipping costs, which were already the 
 bane of American owners. The trans-Pacific lines could 
 only live by employing Chinese, Japanese, and Lascars, at 
 $10 or $15 a month. "Safety at sea" was the watchword 
 of a new Bill which, radically altered the sailor's status. 
 The foreign provisos were so complex that American Con- 
 suls required the modification of thirty-seven Treaties and 
 Conventions in order to carry them into effect. 
 
 Thus it was that the Pacific became ' ' a Japanese lake ' ' ; 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 293 
 
 and in two years 405 American vessels, totalling 351,000 
 tons, were transferred to foreign flags. A steamer manned 
 by Asiatics would cost only $777 a month to operate; tlie 
 same ship with an American personnel cost $3270; the offi- 
 cers' pay alone was more than double. The new Act liad 
 orders about the seaman's food and quarters, his freedom at 
 home and abroad, and his ability to understand orders in 
 English — a rule which applied to seventy-five per cent, of 
 the crew. Therefore the outbreak of war in 1914 saw 
 maritime enterprise at its lowest ebb ; the last grudging aid 
 to builders and owners quenched in apathy or downright 
 opposition. No wonder the American flag had become a 
 rare sight in foreign waters, and the native sailor a still 
 rarer sight. A recent Government estimate showed but five 
 men seeking sea employment from every hundred square 
 miles of continental America, as against forty-three in Ger- 
 many and two hundred and forty in England. 
 
 This dwindling was especially regretted in regard to the 
 South American trade, and statesmen quoted remarkable 
 figures to drive the lesson home. Elihu Root instanced the 
 port of Rio de Janeiro, Thither in a recent year came 
 120 steamers and sailing-ships under the Austro-Hungarian 
 flag. Norway sent 142, Italy 165, Argentina 264, and 
 France 349. Germany was represented by 657 vessels, and 
 Great Britain topped the list with 1785. But not a single 
 steamer had flown the Stars and Stripes! Seven sailing- 
 ships was xVmerica's contribution to Rio's teeming trade, 
 and of these, as Mr. Root remarked, two were in distress. 
 
 Four years ago there was little enterprise in the Ameri- 
 can yards. In August, 1914, ship-plates were selling at 
 Pittsburgh at $26.66 a ton, and in Middlesbrough at $34. 
 Yet a 5000-ton steamer, costing $40 a ton in the English 
 yard, cost at least $60 in the American — a difference of 
 $100,000 on this small vessel alone. The price of labour 
 too was far higher; there was also the comparative in. 
 
2M AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 experience of American builders, due to the long decay and 
 national discouragement. 
 
 Shipping was a neglected, even a discredited industry, 
 beset with disability and penalty. Yet such are the re- 
 sources of America that all obstacles went down before 
 the wand of war and the beckoning freights, which were a 
 thousand per cent, higher. The present year will see 
 America with a merchant fleet of over 1600 ships, trebling 
 the tonnage of 1917, and including enemy vessels in opera- 
 tion by the U. S. Government; these aggregate 700,000 
 tons. A grand total of 10,000,000 tons is said to be in 
 sight. 
 
 America felt the full force of the w^ar-time shipping 
 boom. There were stories of steamers paid for by a pros- 
 perous maiden voyage. An old tub that went begging 
 a decade ago at $72,000 now fetched half a million. The 
 German tramp, Walkiire, sunk by Con Spec in the shallow 
 harbour of Papete (Tahiti), was fished up and patched. 
 Soon the rusty wreck rolled into San Francisco under her 
 own steam, and there, after further repairs, she was sold 
 for $700,000. Anything that floated was the surest gold 
 mine, for the shadow of scarcity lay upon the world through 
 the Prussian policy and the economic pinch it brought. 
 Here, then, was America's chance to foil the German aims. 
 She could strike a blow for Freedom with the shipwright's 
 tool, at the same time setting up a new marine of her own 
 with Government aid — belated indeed, but now with no 
 stint of capital or national energy. Six million tons is 
 America's promise for the current year. 
 
 Hence the clattering orgies of construction. Hence the 
 steel ships of 8000 tons launched in a little over two 
 months, and freighters of 3000 tons built on the Great 
 Lakes, and brought down through the locks of the Welland 
 Canal to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. The whole 
 continent soon crashed with this work from the old-world 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 295 
 
 yards of Maine, westward to the inland seas, and down to 
 the Delaware flats and new Florida slipways at Jacksonville 
 and Pensacola. 
 
 Shipyards sprang up overnight round the white rim of 
 the Mexican Gulf. Likewise in Louisiana bayous, in re- 
 mote Texan ports, and up and down the Pacific Coast 
 from San Diego to Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma; here 
 virgin forests are at hand and the steam saw is never silent. 
 America's crop of ships is an astonishing portent, the 
 most timely of the many harvests intended for a world 
 besieged and menaced with hunger. New legions of labour 
 were called for and drilled, standard parts assembled 
 and uniform types designed, as in the motor-shops of 
 Detroit, where motor-cars are turned out by progressive 
 magic. In this way it was possible to produce ocean-going 
 vessels in a few weeks — ships with a fair turn of speed and 
 a variety of uses; cargo-boats and tankers, transports, 
 wooden auxiliaries, coastwise tugs, lighters and harbour 
 craft. The one aim was to create the carrying fleets with 
 ever-increasing speed, to confuse and whelm the German 
 submarines with the sheer number of possible victims until 
 naval invention and counter-measures should check the 
 underwater weapon, and once more adjust the balance be- 
 tween attack and defence. 
 
 The automobile torpedo is a delicate weapon, and each 
 target missed increases the cost and risks of a destructive 
 cruise. It was America's aim still further to reduce the 
 U-boat's chances. Better five little vessels of 3000 tons, 
 it was argued, than one big ship of 15,000, which a single 
 shot might sink. Such was the motive of the Shipping 
 Board's energy. On seven hundred launching-ways, it 
 roused workers of all degrees, from the Pennsylvania steel- 
 king to the riveters of a lonely sand-pit on Puget Sound, 
 where ships were launched for the new Vladivostok service 
 which served Russia in her hopeful days. 
 
296 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 But what of navigating officers and men, say for a thou- 
 sand ships ? New schools appeared, afloat and ashore, under 
 public and private auspices. Henry Howard of Boston 
 started classes at Harvard ; these spread through New Eng- 
 land and thence down to Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, 
 and New Orleans. Recruiting stations were opened on the 
 Great Lakes, as soon as the ice formed and the big freight- 
 ers tied up for the winter. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, 
 and Buffalo soon had their academies. Commodore Frank 
 Hastings, the New York banker, began tuition at Green- 
 wich (Conn.), and gave likely men a fair knowledge of 
 theory in six or eight weeks. There were also calls for 
 marine engineers, and many a chauffeur responded, leav- 
 ing luxurious service for the fearsome lure of a war-time 
 sea. 
 
 Let me say in passing that the chief engineer of a Stand- 
 ard Oil tanker was paid up to $5000 a year, with a bonus 
 of fifty per cent. The Navy Department gave the cruiser 
 Newport to the State of New York as a school for officers 
 of the merchant marine. ]\Iassachusetts equipped the 
 Ranger under Captain Emery Rice, who in the Mongolia 
 fired the first shot of America's war at a German submarine. 
 The coastwise States — Pennsylvania on the East, Oregon 
 and California in the West — passed laws establishing sea- 
 schools with the support of the Federal Board. As for 
 deck hands, cooks, stewards, and firemen — ''We shall pro- 
 vide them," was the pledge of Andrew Furuseth, the ruling 
 spirit of the Seamen's Union; he fell into line at the Presi- 
 dent's appeal for unity and aid, and he sent through the 
 Central West the stirring slogan — ' ' From farm to f o 'c 'sle ! ' ' 
 which brought thousands of recruits for the new ships. 
 
 The war-spirit of the United States drew remarkable 
 tribute from British statesmen of ripe experience and 
 measured speech. "It is a theme which absorbs my 
 thoughts day and night," Mr. Balfour told a crowded House 
 
WORLD MUST BE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 297 
 
 of Commons with unwonted force and fervour. ''It is a 
 theme which moves me more, I think, than anything- con- 
 nected with public affairs in all my long experience." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 
 
 "... son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the House 
 of Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear the word at My mouth, and warn 
 them from Me." — Ezek. xxxiii. 7. 
 
 For two memorable years Woodrow Wilson was torn be- 
 tween the bandits of Mexico and Teutonic Thugs in Wash- 
 ington and Berlin. These last had unlimited funds and 
 Imperial license. No law restrained them, no scruples 
 of decency or humanity. They found willing tools among 
 the German- American millions whose attitude in the mass 
 no man could predicate, since they were confronted with a 
 dilemma as novel as it was unexpected. The President, 
 in his Declaration of War, thought it well to draw dis- 
 tinction between the German people and their autocratic 
 Government, whose Avarfare was against mankind. To- 
 wards the German race America had ''no feeling but one 
 of sympathy and friendship." In the face of all the facts, 
 and fierce avowal of the contrary by the Berlin press, 
 President Wilson was sure the German masses had not 
 backed the militarists in this calamitous war. ' ' It was not 
 with their previous knowledge or approval, ' ' the President 
 declared. 
 
 Of course high reasons of State prompted this distinc- 
 tion; it was more than once set out with ostent and evi- 
 dent anxiety. For if Germans do not form the backbone 
 of America— as hyphenate leaders claimed in their trucu- 
 lent time— they do play a leading part in the economic 
 and industrial life of the United States. 
 
 Now the hyphenate position was obscure and delicate 
 
 298 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 299 
 
 to a degree. Moreover, the forty-eight States were far 
 from being '^United" in a foreign policy. The East was 
 chafing under humiliation at sea and at home; the West 
 sang paeans to the President who "kept us out of war.'^ 
 State Secretary Bryan handed minatory Notes to Bern- 
 storff and Dumba, at the same time assuring them that 
 America's eagle screech was not to be taken seriously, 
 since its purport was mainly to impress sentiment at home. 
 It is quite clear that as Foreign Minister at such a crisis 
 the Nebraskan orator was a misfit, if not a national mis- 
 fortune. His nods and becks and smiles, his incurable pink 
 thinking and Jeffersonian views, did America the gravest 
 disservice. The State Secretary was played with as a child 
 might be in a brigand 's den ; his geniality encouraged the 
 Central Powers to a course of outrage which could only 
 have one result. 
 
 On his way home in 1915, Constantin Dumba reviewed 
 America's attitude with a sort of naive wonder. Was it 
 really possible, the ex- Ambassador asked one of "these 
 idiotic Yankees" who was a fellow-passenger, that the 
 President and his State Secretary thought the Central 
 Empires bound by any international law in a fight for 
 their very existence? If so, it was too grotesque. As for 
 American mediation, it had a fair chance at first. Dr. 
 Dumba thought — "if Wilson had been big enough for the 
 job." 
 
 Mediation was certainly in President Wilson's mind at 
 first, and — the disgraced Ambassador notwithstanding — 
 he was as "big" a man in 1915 as he afterwards proved. 
 But he had first of all to educate and rouse his people. 
 
 Wilson's heart was set upon peace, despite his own 
 growing fears and doubts; this is evident from his public 
 utterances. His intimate friend, Secretary Lane of the 
 Interior, saj^s with perfect truth that "the President sees 
 the world, not as so much money, land, and machines, 
 
300 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 but as so many men, women, and children." However, 
 apart from Wilson's inclination, we must also consider 
 America's military weakness, and the tradition of moral 
 suasion which State Secretary Bryan urged, even when 
 the Lusitania crime thrilled America with wrath and horror. 
 
 Officially, at any rate, Dr. Wilson set his face against 
 war, and began the long watch and wait which the angry 
 East styled ''Government by periscope." Three months 
 after his ' ' Strict accountability ' ' Note, and three days after 
 the hugest atrocity in the sea's annals, the President made 
 his unfortunate "Too-proud-to-fight" speech at Phila- 
 delphia. At that moment the bodies of American women 
 and children were being washed ashore on the Irish coast. 
 The whole continent was stirred, and *'big" leadership at 
 home lost a rare chance. But the President was confused 
 with the surge of threats and motives; he was for a time 
 distracted and overwrought — "rattled" is the American 
 word. Indeed, his long ordeal, had we but known the 
 facts, Avould have earned our loyal support instead of the 
 note of satire which our editors took from colleagues in 
 New York who ought to have known better. For if 
 France and Britain were unprepared for the German 
 onslaught and the web of craft that went with it — what 
 of America, to whom war of any kind was a shameful 
 nightmare which the oceans and her own ideals had alike 
 combined to render impossible? 
 
 In February, 1915, the Berlin Reichs-Marine-Amt or- 
 dained the " Sink-at-sight, " and all neutral vessels were 
 warned from a certain zone around the British Islands. 
 This drew a Note from the State Department, claiming for 
 citizens and ships "the full enjoyment of their acknowl- 
 edged rights on the high seas." Any violence "would be 
 very hard to reconcile with friendly relations," and the 
 Imperial German Government was thereby held to "strict 
 accountability" for any lawless acts of its naval officers. 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 301 
 
 On 29th March the Falaha was destroyed, and on May 1 
 the Gulflight. Six days later came the immense tragedy 
 of the Lusitania. This was followed by the Nchraskan 
 on May 24, the Arabic on August 19, the Hesperian on 
 September 4, the Persia on December 30, and so on to the 
 Silius and Sussex in March of 1916. In all these cases 
 American citizens were drowned or injured. The list is not 
 complete, but it shows the German disregard for successive 
 protests from Washington. ''What can America do?" 
 asked the Berlin press, as the President's Notes grew stiffer. 
 To the German mind it was a purely academic discussion, 
 tinged with mild amazement. For here was a nation of a 
 hundred millions whose Chief Executive confessed he could 
 not even police the Mexican Border, so small and ill- 
 equipped was the Federal Army ! 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt inveighed against ''the Pontius Pi- 
 late neutrality" of Washington, and the milk and water 
 of America's reply to the blood and iron of the German 
 Wille zic Macht. Elihu Root shot many a rankling shaft 
 which inspired the most caustic cartoons. "A Govern- 
 ment," the ex-Senator said (he has a large and influential 
 following), "that shakes first its fist — and. then its finger — 
 is bound to fall into contempt." Indictments of the Wilsoii 
 policy were published by diplomats like David Jayne Hill, 
 and by historians like Franklin H. Giddings, Professor of 
 Sociology and Civilization at Columbia. The White House 
 was a target for angry theorists, yet all of them ignored 
 two cardinal facts: (1) That the continent was not 
 unanimous, and (2) That if it were, the military means 
 to enforce its will were wholly lacking. 
 
 Moreover, the flush time and the Golden Year had done 
 much to blunt the nation's sensibility. The fall of 1916 
 saw money raining in billions and New York herself em- 
 barrassed by the deluge. At this period President Wilson 
 gave a cryptic hint of his own position in a letter to the 
 
302 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 late Seth Low, a civic magnate and philanthropist of note. 
 Mr. Low was referred to the first few verses of Ezekiel 
 xxxiii., wherein is laid down the duty of a Watchman to a 
 rather heedless flock: "But he that taketh warning shall 
 deliver his soul." Of course, so long as unity was lacking, 
 and adequate force remained a pious wish, the President 
 could only ensue peace, whatever his private judgment 
 might have been. He professed to ignore the root causes 
 which had set the world ablaze ; he was still concerned with 
 moral issues only, at the same time giving a subtle lead 
 to Western apathy, which continued to block the way. 
 **You are looking for some cause," he told the Nebraskans 
 at Omaha, ''that will make you raise your spirit and not 
 depress it ; a cause in which it seems a glory to shed human 
 blood if need be, so that all the common compacts of Lib- 
 erty can be sealed with the blood of free men. ' ' 
 
 The Speech with which the President opened his Second 
 Term prepared his people for the upheaval that was at 
 hand. They now stood firm in armed neutrality, but might 
 be drawn still further into uncontrollable currents which 
 shook the earth with passion and apprehension of organized 
 wrong. It was a wistful, reluctant address. There was 
 much to do at home. Dr. AVilson reminded his hearers, but 
 these things were shelved; there were still mightier ends 
 to achieve "with the whole world for a stage." The Chief 
 Executive was above all things anxious to be America's 
 authentic Voice, the instrument of her considered will. 
 
 This is the role he praised in Grover Cleveland in 1897, 
 and again in 1913, when writing to Mitchell Palmer about 
 "the most delicate dealings of the Government with for- 
 eign nations." There should be no knight-errantry on a 
 President 's part, no ebullition of feeling, but swift and loyal 
 interpretation of the country's desire. "America first," 
 was Wilson's concept, as it was Lincoln's in 1862. 
 
 It was Wilson's hope to settle the Mexican welter and 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 303 
 
 keep out of the European war. This was the period of his 
 abstract posing which puzzled the Allies and confirmed 
 the Germans in their estimate of America's impotence in 
 war. 
 
 The President's views sprang from the complex of a 
 statesman and a man of letters engaged in political tasks 
 at once delicate and huge. He was profoundly influenced 
 by the teaching of Immanuel Kant, for, as lecturer on in- 
 ternational law, Wilson often expounded the well-known 
 Kantian theories of Permanent Peace. The German phi- 
 losopher considered war a degrading barbarity. ''Seek 
 above all," he urges, ''the domain of pure practical rea- 
 son." Kant agrees that a violation of Right may be felt 
 throughout the world, but he does not argue from this that 
 recourse to war is necessary. He appears to go further 
 indeed, and to deny that international wrong has any 
 objective character. States are entirely independent of 
 one another. They have no superior, therefore who shall 
 decide between the just and the unjust? 
 
 Still less can States judge of their own cause. The two 
 concepts of Justice and War do not touch at any point. 
 That does not mean that the rights of one State cannot be 
 violated by another. But when war breaks out, who shall 
 say which of the parties has Justice on its side ? Two moral 
 forces are in conflict. Each may subjectively believe in 
 the virtue of his cause. There is no judge, therefore no 
 law. 
 
 Yet even in Wilson's academic day, belaboured by all 
 belligerents and by many of his own as well, it is plain 
 that he had America's war in mind and was shaping the 
 people's will to it. "God forbid that we should be drawn 
 in," he told a training-camp of nurses. "But if we are, 
 we shall shake off our dreams and stand up for humanity." 
 His domestic schemes were now fading in the battle-smoke, 
 military weakness dogged his larger aims with shadov/y 
 
304 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 indecision. This was glaringly seen in the Mexican chaos, 
 to which I must here allude. It is none too clearly real- 
 ized that Mexico marches with the U. S. border for two 
 thousand miles, much as Scotland marches with England. 
 In the towns of Nogales and Naco the main street is the in- 
 ternational boundary. Now border conditions have for 
 many years disgraced America's name, and roused a real 
 hatred for the "Gringos" in the Republic of the south. 
 
 It is also well to point out that States ' Rights have time 
 and again hampered the Federal Government in this Border 
 affair; much of the blame must lie with Texas, Arizona, and 
 New Mexico. Here the Sheriff and his posse ; the raid, the 
 feud, the ''bad man" and his pocket artillery are still 
 familiar features. And the lex talionis still has a wide 
 sway. 
 
 I may not linger over this Border life. At its worst it 
 surpassed the wildest flights of a Western movie-play, with 
 cattle-thieving and wholesale homicide ; the smuggling of 
 arms, the train-wreckers and masked bravos, the plots and 
 frauds, all the terror and reprisals which strew the chap- 
 arral with dead peons and desperadoes, as well as with in- 
 nocent victims of American greed. How Mexican ranchers 
 and farmers have been squeezed out of land and stock 
 by the white men of the Border is a squalid tale. From 
 1910 onwards refugees fled from the fire and sword of the 
 pelados in the Mexican States of Sonora, Chihuahua, and 
 Tamaulipas. iMany of these settled in the strange No- 
 man's Land of the Rio Grande, between Laredo and the 
 Gulf, where the river plays erratic pranks and offers shifty 
 problems to the Boundary Commission in Washington. 
 
 Now in neither Republic had the hapless peon any po- 
 litical existence. His treatment on the Border stung him 
 to revenge, and kept alive the hatred, contempt, and mis- 
 trust of both races. The bandit Villa spoke for the Bor- 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 305 
 
 der serfs when he swore he would raise a wall of terror 
 which the Americanos would never cross. 
 
 Wilson's attack upon Vera Cruz, Pershing's punitive 
 mission and the persistent talk of intervention, all served 
 to fan the flame and unite rival factions against America's 
 wavering dictation. Ahajo los Gringos! became the watch- 
 word of all. ''Mexico for the Mexicans!" was another 
 patriotic cry, potent as the iron sway of old Diaz in healing 
 feuds and closing the ragged ranks of outlaws, from Manuel 
 Pelaez in the oil-belt to Lower California, where Cantu 
 reigned as king with a comic opera army in full song. 
 
 As Venustiano Carranza gained in power, defying Wil- 
 son and forcing recognition on the United States, a new 
 IMexican Constitution was coming into force, with anti- 
 foreign clauses so sweeping as to exclude missionary work, 
 as well as ownership in lands and mines. There is, of 
 course, historic warrant for Mexico's mistrust. This goes 
 back to the Texan War of Independence and the confusion 
 it entailed. In 184:7 the frontier troubles caused armed 
 conflict with the United States. The troops of General 
 Winfleld Scott reached the Mexican capital; they scaled 
 the heights of Chapultepec, imposing America's terms in 
 the Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo, as a tablet on the Cas- 
 tle wall reminds the citizens of today. 
 
 The long Border remains a problem, especially with a 
 weak, unstable Mexico ruined by bandit chiefs and played 
 upon by Germany — as the Zimmermann letter showed, and 
 the record of Franz von Rintelen, who was paymaster-in- 
 chief of the plotters south of the Rio Grande. So much for 
 the Border, which President Wilson tried to police with the 
 State Militia in 1916. 
 
 To the south of it lies a State which Humboldt called the 
 treasure-house of the earth. Mexico is larger than the 
 German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, with France 
 
306 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 added to them. Nearly one-third of the world's silver 
 comes out of this land. Her mineral riches are incalcu- 
 lable ; her petroleum a precious asset of the Grand Alliance 
 in a universal war to which oil is a vital need for new 
 engines of ever-increasing power and number. American 
 oil supplies are running short, owing to the increased de- 
 mand of a pleasure-loving generation which has millions 
 of cars. California's output rose from four million barrels 
 in 1900 to a hundred millions in 1916. Oklahoma's in- 
 creased from six thousand barrels to sixty-five millions, 
 yet the shortage grows more and more acute. 
 
 Therefore it was more than ever necessary that dis- 
 order should cease in Mexico, where the Tampico belt 
 alone bids fair to equal or surpass the oil production of 
 the world. These great fields follow the Gulf for three 
 hundred miles, and extend sixty miles inland. Experts 
 say there are signs of oil all down the coast as far as the 
 Guatemailan border, and that borings on a wider scale 
 will have astonishing results. The whole yield of the 
 United States for last year was 307,000,000 barrels. Fif- 
 teen Tampico wells had a capacity of 250,000,000 barrels. 
 A single gusher at Poturo del Llano gave a hundred thou- 
 sand barrels a da^^, another could fill an ocean tanker over- 
 night. 
 
 It was thought well to maintain armed guards against 
 the ever-present German incendiarj^ ; for her ten million 
 barrels may go up in smoke, as happened at the Dos 
 Bocas gusher in the Tampico region. I need hardly say 
 that Mexican brigands levied tribute on this wealth. The 
 armed gang of Candido Aguilar demanded $10,000 from 
 each producing concern. Only Lord Cowdray's syndicate 
 refused; the result was that pumps were stopped, and 
 great leaks caused. Then surface fires broke out and 
 lasted four months, involving a far greater loss than 
 Aguilar 's proposed blackmail. 
 
THE WA^TCHMAN AND THE SWORD 307 
 
 Before the Terror — which dates from the decline of the 
 Diaz regime in 1910 — there were 40,000 Americans in 
 Mexico, handling property worth over a thousand million 
 dollars. Of Mexico 's imports fifty-five per cent, came from 
 the United States; of all that Mexico had to sell, her big 
 sister took seventy-seven per cent. 
 
 In Victoriano Huerta's day, President Wilson was anx- 
 ious over American prestige, which was then at a low 
 ebb. It is clear that the Washington Bureaux had a 
 fair inkling of German designs in the fall of 1915. Ger- 
 man reservists were crossing into Mexico and directing 
 petty ''wars" too bewildering to follow. German ships 
 were stealing into lonely ports with lethal cargoes hidden 
 in cases of hardware, typewriters, pianos, and ice-cream 
 freezers. 
 
 Mexico under Huerta offered a German vantage-ground 
 of unique scope. For this reason the Mailed Fist was 
 soon stirring the hell-broth, and Von Rintelen poured 
 millions into it through the Deutsche Bank. ]\Ieanwhile 
 Huerta's manoeuvres — the Vera Cruz affair and the abor- 
 tive pursuit of Villa — gave the ignorant peon a low opin- 
 ion of American might. Thus the too-tame bull that re- 
 fused to fight in the crowded ring — the tawny Longhorn 
 or red Hereford of massive and kindly mien — was now 
 hustled out by angry chulos to the contemptuous shrieks 
 of the mob: Toro Americano! — Why, it was a Yankee 
 beast that turned to nibble straw when the picadors spurred 
 on top of him, dropping their lances and stooping to slap 
 his stupid snout ! 
 
 It cannot be denied that the Mexican mess was badly 
 handled by the U. S. Government. In 1914 Huerta, a 
 Mixtec Indian of pure blood, was ruling well enough when 
 President Wilson resolved to break him. Huerta's sway 
 was, of course, desipotic — like that of his master, Porforio 
 Diaz. The American Fleet, under Admiral Mayo, was 
 
308 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 sent down to Vera Cniz to compel this tyrant to salute 
 the flag. Huerta haggled for a return salute; the result 
 was that none was given on either side. Mayo's squadron 
 sailed away after a pitched battle ashore, in which there 
 were many casualties. 
 
 Meanwhile Wilson was pointing out to Congress that 
 **if we are to accept the tests of its own Constitution, 
 Mexico has no Government." It was ar^^ued that Huerta 
 was a usurper who had overthrown with treachery and 
 crime the previous regime; but then, that has been Mex- 
 ico's way since the Constitution of 1857 went into force. 
 
 Carranza was favoured by the Washington Cabinet — 
 though it also leaned to Pancho Villa, a free-lance who 
 had hopes of the precarious ''throne" in the National 
 Palace. But Villa's aims were blighted by Wilson's final 
 choice after Huerta 's resignation. Thereupon the bandit 
 chief took a bloody revenge by invading American terri- 
 tory and "shooting" up the border town of Columbus, 
 N. i\I. This was the outrage which called for the Pershing 
 expedition, and an outlay of $200,000,000, which was worse 
 than fruitless. ''Get Villa, dead or alive," was the order 
 given to the American General. But he came back empty- 
 handed, his retreat hastened by the minatory tone of First 
 Chief Carranza, who now threatened a national war. Such 
 was the problem confronting Wilson in his neutral time; 
 and Prussian devilry in both Republics heaped fuel on the 
 flames. 
 
 Mexico was now exhausted; one of her railways with 
 a gross revenue of $34,000,000 earned but $22,441 in paper 
 money of more than doubtful value. Claims on Carranza 's 
 Government soon climbed to a billion dollars. At long 
 last President Wilson drew out of this political morass. 
 He reinstated Ambassador Fletcher in Mexico City; he re- 
 ceived Carranza 's envoy, Seiior Ignacio Bonillas, who had 
 been a member of the Joint Commission that settled terms 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD .309 
 
 between the two Republics. Mexico now settled down to 
 business as the Border itself does when the tide of woe 
 has turned and the* good time smiles again. Railroads 
 and mines were dug out and repaired. There was re- 
 construction everywhere on the old familiar lines. The 
 native press began to change its tune, and was quite polite 
 to America. Anti-Gringoism was bad form in this brighter 
 day. The State mints were working overtime; so were 
 the theatres and cafes of the capital, where Americans 
 left the club and strolled up to Sanborn's drug-store for 
 ice-cream, and pastries and tea. Oil sont les neiges d^an- 
 ianf Where were the bandits and butchers of yester- 
 year? 
 
 President Wilson was well aware of the geographical 
 and political importance of IMexico, but he mistook the 
 mass of peons for a people, which they certainly are not. 
 No accurate census of the country has been taken, nor 
 shguld we accept the official estimates and classification 
 of 1900. There are, perhaps, 15,000,000 souls in the Re- 
 public, and of these fewer than 2,000,000 are of Caucasian 
 race. The number of half-breeds is rather larger; the 
 rest are Indians, belonging to fifty tribes speaking as 
 many dialects. Mentally, morally, and physically the peon 
 of today is what he was centuries- ago. '^ There can be 
 little doubt," says Senator Beveridge, ''that, speaking by 
 and large, he is far below the culture of the ancient 
 Aztecs." An American protectorate appears to be the 
 sanest solution of the Mexican question upon all counts. 
 And the next upheaval will find the United States equipped 
 to make an end of endemic anarchy at her door — the 
 desolation of a State which is unique among the prizes 
 of Latin America, and therefore a standing lure to arro- 
 gant Powers trained in war and forced to territorial ex- 
 pansion. 
 
 Mexico commands the Gulf, which is at once the outlet 
 
310 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 and approach to the southern harbours of the United 
 States. It has been the dream of American statesmen 
 that this sea should one day be wholly American — the 
 more so in that it now controls the Panama Canal. More- 
 over, as Mexico dominates the near Pacific, this turbulent 
 State has a bearing upon America's Western Coast. A 
 modern army landed there could invade the Border at 
 many points where fortification is impossible or prohibitive 
 in cost. Therefore its integrity, stability, and internal 
 order are prime factors in the policy of the greater Re- 
 public. 
 
 Wilson's dilemma, when the Great War came, was a 
 repetition of history — that of April, 1793, when the First 
 President declared America's neutrality in the French 
 wars and sought ''to gain time to our country" which 
 was quite unfitted to play its part. The ''suitable estat)- 
 lishments" which Washington urged upon the infant Re- 
 public were still ignored; even the "respectable defensive 
 posture" which was his minimum was not yet in sight. 
 For this reason he steered clear of entanglements and 
 pursued the "different course" which "our detached and 
 distant situation" appeared to render possible. 
 
 Washington had not been dead twenty years before 
 America was faced with entirely new conditions which en- 
 tailed a radical change. Monroe, Madison, and Jefferson 
 were already counting upon British sea-power as a barrier 
 against European intrigue. Aloofness was even then 
 known for a myth, and the Two Americas closed their 
 ranks, resolved to exclude any and every Old-World domi- 
 nation. So the problems of the Fathers were in part re- 
 peated by the issues which Wilson faced in his neutral 
 day. The Farewell Address of Washington is not more 
 unruffled than Wilson's Message to Congress a few weeks 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 311 
 
 after the German onset broke. "We are at peace with all 
 the world. . . . We mean to live our own lives as we 
 will." So said the Pilgrim Fathers when they set sail 
 from Plymouth in 1620, weary of the homeland and its 
 religious persecution. 
 
 America has always been a place of dreams, and no 
 dollar-hunt has ever quite dispelled them. No less a wit- 
 ness than Henri Bergson has lately testified to this. ''He 
 who has lived in America," the philosopher told the intel- 
 lectual peers of Paris, "comes to realize that in no nation 
 does money mean less; it is only a certificate of efficiency. 
 The American soul is saturated with idealism — even with 
 mysticism. Their history shows that abstract thoughts of 
 morality and justice have always held first place." This 
 is the plain truth. Pacifism split the House of Deputies 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church when new prayers for 
 the National Army were to the fore. Thus the God of 
 Hosts was asked "to strengthen and protect the soldiers of 
 our country; to support them in the day of battle, and in 
 time of peace to keep them from all harm. " " If we adopt 
 this prayer," said Dr. J. H. Melish of Brooklyn, "we shall 
 be doing irreparable injury to the youth of our land. It 
 is impossible for soldiers — as the Prayer asks — to 'serve 
 without reproach. ' Moreover, it is not a Christian prayer, 
 but one addressed to the iron Deity whom Joshua invoked 
 when he set forth to invade." 
 
 Pacifism was carried to queer extremes; its apostles in 
 all ages were cited, from Buddha to Mr. Bryan. Non- 
 resistance was expedient, the fanatics said; it was also 
 economically wiser than war. It was quite workable too, 
 according with the Christ ethics, teaching humanity and 
 justice as well as conserving men's energy for sane con- 
 structive labours. America should, therefore, adopt the 
 peace-ideal and act upon it until the older nations, led 
 by this example, should pass into Emerson's "region of 
 
312 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 holiness," where no ignoble passion marred the social 
 serenity. This was the counsel which Theodore Roosevelt 
 decried for three years or more as "the diluted mush of a 
 make-believe morality." 
 
 This Utopian land has had many wars, and muddled 
 through them all with no great zest for the business. The 
 Revolutionary War lasted seven years, the War of 1812 
 three years, the Florida War seven years, the Mexican 
 War two years, and the Rebellion four j^ears — to say 
 nothing of frontier affrays with the Indians during the 
 whole of this period. In 1898 came the clash with Spain, 
 thirty-three years after the surrender of Lee to General 
 Grant at Appomattox. America was wholl}^ unprepared 
 for the war with Spain, but it would be a graceless task 
 to recall the scandal and confusion which marked it at 
 home and abroad — the sea affair as well as the land cam- 
 paign. The navy was in a bad way; its gunnery record 
 at Santiago was exposed by the late Professor Alger, a 
 leading American authority. '*At 2800 yards," this sci- 
 entist states, ''nearly half the shots fired went wide of the 
 mark." Service powders, the discipline of crews, battle- 
 practice, co-ordination, and construction all were unsound 
 at that time. Yet Congress was unmoved at each revela- 
 tion. 
 
 Nevertheless reforms were stirring. Young Sowden Sims 
 was bombarding the Bureaux and the Senate Naval Com- 
 mittee, thereby imperilling his own career. "When we 
 launched the Kentucky/' Sims declared, "we ought to 
 have shed tears over her instead of breaking a bottle of 
 champagne." This was the battleship of open turrets and 
 unprotected guns, a design that was soon officially con- 
 demned. But if Sims spoke plainly in those days (he 
 became an admiral, and worked with our own fleet in 
 European waters), what shall be said of candid friends 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 313 
 
 who are today rewriting America's school books till the 
 military record glares with crudity? 
 
 It is a wholesome sign, this banishing of mythical exploit ; 
 the spread-eagling of minute-men and rustic heroes who 
 could *'lick creation" with a pike and gun snatched from 
 the farm-house wall when the drums began to beat. The 
 Unpopular History of the United States is a piquant nov- 
 elty of our time, and a token that the great democracy is 
 building from the depths in order to cure the Prussian 
 madness. 
 
 ''Why," asks the new historian, **has the sovereign voter 
 of America remained so heedless? I was a grown man of 
 thirty, hoeing my beard with a safety razor, ere it dawned 
 upon me that the fighting record of our country had not 
 been one long, unbroken record of star-spangled victories. 
 Like other boys, I'd been fed upon Fourth of July ora- 
 tions. ... I believed that one lone, grey-haired farmer 
 with a drum, a bloody rag round his head, and a son and 
 a grandson behind him, had chased the British Army 
 from our sacred continent. I believed that — did you? 
 I thought that a single American patriot, with a muzzle- 
 loader and both hands tied behind him, could beat any 
 horde of foreign hirelings that ever marched down the 
 pike. I had no doubt of it — had you? I was sure the 
 Redcoats outnumbered the Colonials. Yet in that glorious 
 year of '76 we mustered 89,600 men against the British 
 20,121! I didn't know that— did you?" Much of this 
 ''Unpopular History" has lain perdu in General Emory 
 Upton's Military Policy of the United States. The late 
 Homer Lea's Valour of Igyiorance carried the truth a step 
 further, and General Leonard Wood, a former Chief of 
 Staff, rounded off the peril of reliance upon moral force 
 in a sullen world of torn-up treaties and rattling swords. 
 
 But a prosperous and easy-going America had long for- 
 
314 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 gotten the famous Draft by which the Colonies filled their 
 fighting quotas in Revolutionary days. In the 'Sixties 
 both the Union and the Confederacy used the Draft, and 
 the courts of North and South upheld its validitj^ Con- 
 scription does indeed raise the sharpest issues in a modern 
 democracy: we saw this in Australia, where Mr. Hughes 
 put a Referendum to his people. Yet he lost by a narrow 
 margin because Labour and the women electors were against 
 him. 
 
 In Canada the cleavage was more serious, led by the 
 Catholic hierarchy under Cardinal Begin of Quebec and 
 Mgr. Bruchesi, Archbishop of Montreal. 
 
 In the United States conscription came as a real shock. 
 The example of Quebec was quoted by one set of partisans ; 
 another pointed to ''a military Canada, with veteran le- 
 gions trained in the sternest school and contemptuous of 
 their unmartial neighbours." When President Wilson de- 
 livered his War Message every point was cheered till he 
 came to the first levy of half a million men — ''who should, 
 in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal 
 liability to service. ' ' Congress was taken aback. Staunch 
 supporters of Wilson demurred, and there was resolute 
 opposition for a time. 
 
 Southern Congressmen were against the arming and 
 training of negroes, who were all too prone to run amuck, 
 as they did at Houston, Tex. Here coloured troopers shot 
 up the town, killing seventeen and wounding twenty more 
 before they could be disarmed. Senator Vardaman of 
 Mississippi was quite justified in his earnest warning of 
 this danger. Then American Labour looked askance at 
 conscription; influential newspapers attacked it as ''un- 
 necessary, undemocratic, conducive to militarism, and a 
 violation of that 'involuntary servitude' which the Consti- 
 tution forbids." 
 
 President Wilson stood firm throughout this agitation; 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 315 
 
 he was supported by the Federal Army Staff, by most of 
 the Eastern Press, and all the intellectuals. "No one can 
 hate militarism more than I do, " said Dr. Nicholas Murray 
 Butler of Columbia in his Allocution to the University. 
 "None would resist more actively and emphatically any 
 movement to change the peace-loving industrial temper and 
 spirit of our people for any of the older forms, which are 
 now slowly going to their death — let us hope never to be 
 resurrected — on the battlefields of Europe. But there is a 
 call to national service and a preparation for it which, so 
 far from sharing the Prussian motive, is only the voice of 
 Democracy conscious of obligation and duty, as well as of 
 rights and opportunities." This is the voice that pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 German folly and frightfulness helped it in surprising 
 ways, till at length America was roused, from the school- 
 girl to the negro surgeon ; from the Polish mechanic to the 
 Wall Street millionaire. James Wood the Quaker was now 
 on constructive work. Thomas Edison was at sea, study- 
 ing anti-submarine devices; Frank Vanderlip, America's 
 foremost financier left the greatest of banks to enlist in 
 War Loan service. Conscription w^as an accepted fact; it 
 brought in State quotas of men that filled the camps to 
 overflowing. And with it came the iushido code of loyalty 
 which Americans have so long admired in the Japanese. 
 The sons of Cabinet Ministers — Daniels, McAdoo, Houston, 
 Lane — were now serving with the humblest lads. "Con- 
 scription," as young Rockefeller said, "is the one thing 
 needed to abolish class distinctions among us." Judge 
 Gary of the Steel Trust, welcoming the Japanese Mission, 
 put America's military resources at fifteen million men and 
 a hundred billion dollars, without seriously crippling the 
 country. 
 
 These are stupendous figures, but the record of the Sixty- 
 Fifth Congress confirms them. In six months' session an 
 
316 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Army of a million and a half was mustered, besides over- 
 seas forces which were transported with little loss. Fif- 
 teen million hands were mobilized for industry. The Navy 
 was trebled, the Regular Army modernized, vast aerial 
 forces planned, together with mercantile shipping on a 
 great scale. 
 
 Admiral W. L. Capps, of the Emergency Fleet Corpora- 
 tion, promised 2100 ships by the end of 1919, or 14,500,000 
 tons in all. This includes enemy and commandeered ves- 
 sels, as well as new construction and ships from the Great 
 Lakes, which are cut in two and brought down through 
 the Welland Canal. Twenty thousand million dollars 
 were voted by Congress in direct appropriations, includ- 
 ing seven thousand millions in loans to the Grand Alli- 
 ance. In the same half-yearly session the President ac- 
 quired unique prestige. Men marvelled at his ''despotic " 
 powers, asserted in such measures as the Selective Draft, 
 the Espionage and Embargo Bills; Priority, Transport, 
 War Revenue, the Food Control, and Soldiers' and Sailors' 
 Insurance. 
 
 ''Give us victory," wrote Lincoln in a famous letter to 
 General Hooker, ' ' and I will risk the Dictatorship ! ' ' Dr. 
 "Wilson made up his mind that if war came he would avoid 
 Lincoln's anguish and insist upon conscription at the out- 
 set. 
 
 The long-drawn chaos of the Civil War should have 
 settled this matter, but democracy has a short memory 
 for things that ruffle its ease. 
 
 "The real difficulty," says Sherman in his Memoirs, "was 
 to get an adequate number of good soldiers. We tried 
 every sj^stem known to modern nations — voluntary en- 
 listment, the draft, and bought substitutes." Yqyj re- 
 luctantly did President Lincoln sign the Draft Act on 
 July 11, 1863 ; it pressed unfairly upon poor men, and gave 
 exemption to any recruit who could produce $300. Two 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 317 
 
 days later fierce riots broke out in New York, and the 
 casualties exceeded those of many an American battle. 
 So abhorrent was military service that out of 77,862 names 
 drawn from the wheel in the metropolis, only 2557 joined 
 the Northern xVrmy. 
 
 We may be sure that Lincoln's ordeal was in Wilson's 
 mind as early as the panic winter of 1914-15. It was of 
 course the submarine campaign which hurried him into 
 war — the reckless German gamble which was to humble 
 Britain, and give naked Maclit a vindication that would 
 silence every protest and establish the Prussian code. 
 Now this U-boat bid was simple enough, and by far the 
 bravest menace ever aimed at civilization. The last shred 
 of law was to be dropped, every ship afloat destroyed, 
 whether belonging to neutral or belligerent. Red Cross 
 vessels too, argosies of food for the starving Belgians, 
 steamers full of refugees, the Dutch fishing-boat, Spanish 
 liners and coasting vessels — all the tonnage that sailed the 
 seas — was to be sunk for a complex of reasons, military, 
 political, and economic. The invisible craft could not 
 conduct a cruiser warfare according to established rules. 
 Of its very nature it could only strike and disappear. It 
 used torpedoes as the mad Malay uses a kriss in the 
 crowded bazaar, with no regard for victims or his own 
 fate. 
 
 Such was the German plan for breaking British might 
 and planting the Trident in the Mailed Fist with appro- 
 priate flourish. U-boat ''warfare" was to give the Father- 
 land a flying start when a German peace was signed and 
 other nations, crippled for ships, faced a shortage of food 
 and raM^ materials. This was the plot which unfolded be- 
 fore America. She was slow to grasp it, even with U-53 
 doing fell work in her own waters. It was an over- 
 prosperous America of many views and voices. Moreover, 
 the German element had great sway; German efficiency 
 
318 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 {TiicJitigheit) was the pattern of all, as the President him- 
 self reminded a Labour audience. "As a university man, 
 I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, be- 
 cause nowhere else could they get such thorough and 
 searching training, especially in the principles of science, 
 and those which underlie modern material achievements." 
 The German farmer was known for a wizard who produced 
 ten pounds of pig-meat from a bushel of corn. Where the 
 American got thirty bushels of oats from an acre, the 
 German got fifty-eight; the potato-yields were respectively 
 ninety-five bushels against two hundred and five. 
 
 However, this business friendship was cooling fast as 
 the two ideals of government fell asunder with glaring 
 cleavage. Germany watched the process with unconcern, 
 confident of her own ''strong position" {Machstellung) 
 and America's sprawling hugeness which no war-danger 
 could ever arouse in time. Germany was sure of this — 
 Hindenburg himself explained it; parrots of the press 
 played scornful variants on this theme for a season. The 
 Americans were "a naive colonial-like people," led by a 
 dreamer who talked daggers with a bodkin in his hand. 
 
 So matters drifted until January 31, 1917. On that 
 day Alfred Zimmermann handed Mr. Gerard the "ruth- 
 less" Note which caused President Wilson to sever rela- 
 tions. He could do no less in view of his own threat 
 after the sinking of the Svssex, and the pledge which his 
 v/arning extorted from Berlin. That pledge was now 
 voided for the sake of "tortured mankind." The trou- 
 bled conscience of the German Government could leave 
 no means untried "to hasten the end of the war." . . . 
 "It must therefore abandon the limitations which it has 
 hitherto imposed upon itself in the employment of its fight- 
 ing weapons at sea. ' ' 
 
 I have said that America was slow to realize a purpose 
 60 monstrous, Even in his address to Congress, announc- 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 319 
 
 ing the rupture, President Wilson renews his '' inveterate 
 confidence" in "the sobriety and prudent foresight" of 
 Kaiserdom. ... "I refuse to believe that it is the inten- 
 tion of the German authorities to do, in fact, what they 
 have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. . . . Only 
 actual overt acts on their part can make me believe this 
 even now. ' ' 
 
 The night crime of the Laconia was such an act, and 
 thenceforth the United States was committed to war, 
 though little or no preparation had been made for it. 
 That the Watchman in Washington was perplexed is evi- 
 dent from the Notes he sent between the Lusitania and the 
 Sussex. He took each German quibble seriouslj^: the lia- 
 bility (with blood-mone}^ offered) in the Lusitania case; 
 the ''regrettable mistake" of the Arahic, the proposed "in- 
 quiry" into the Persia, and the conditional "concessions" 
 which followed the Sussex affair in the Channel. 
 
 Merchant vessels (the German promise ran) were not 
 thenceforward to be destroyed without warning, and the 
 saving of human lives — provided that America insisted 
 upon the freedom of the seas as laid down by her in 
 Notes sent to Great Britain on December 28, 1914, and 
 upon the freedom of the seas as laid down by her on 
 November 5, 1915. Should American pressure fail in this 
 respect (as German catspaw for sea "freedom"); should 
 Great Britain continue to violate "the rules of Inter- 
 national Law universally recognized before the war," then 
 "the German Government would be facing a new situa- 
 tion in which it must reserve for itself complete liberty of 
 decision. ' ' 
 
 More than once the Imperial Chancellor asked Mr. 
 Gerard how America could protest against the submarine 
 without equally resisting Britain's tyranny at sea? The 
 diplomat was not posed at all, but ready with a shrewd 
 reply, "If two men entered my grounds," said he, "and 
 
320 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 one stepped on my flower-beds, whilst the other killed my 
 sister, I should first pursue the murderer. ' ' 
 
 In his Message to Congress declaring war (April 2, 1917), 
 Dr. Wilson defined the cause for which he led this "great 
 and peaceful people into the most terrible and disastrous 
 of all wars." 
 
 "We shall fight," he said, "for the things we have al- 
 ways carried nearest our hearts. For democracy, for the 
 right of those who submit to authority to have a voice 
 in their own government; for the rights and liberties of 
 small nations, for the universal dominion of Right by such 
 a concert of free peoples as will bring peace and safety 
 to all nations, and make the world itself at last free." 
 
 Years ago, as Governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wil- 
 son laid down his creed, declaring himself "enlisted for 
 life" against all reactionary systems thrown athwart "the 
 triumphant hosts of the great Democracy. . . . We must 
 move forward," the Governor told an audience at Ho- 
 boken, after a three-thousand-mile tour of the West as 
 Presidential candidate for the first time, "and any man 
 who blocks this concerted movement of humanity will be 
 swept aside." America, he said, was no longer choosing 
 leaders because they were fine fellows, but because they 
 understood the best interests of the nation at a critical 
 juncture in her history. 
 
 It is absurd to suppose that this born leader was at any 
 time an advocate of peace-at-any-price, or that he carried 
 the doctrine of non-resistance to visionar3^ extremes. But 
 he knew, as none other did, the full complexity of the 
 many problems before him. As historian of George Wash- 
 ington 's epoch. Dr. Wilson pictures the anguish of the 
 First President, with an unruly rabble as the only avail- 
 able force and a victorious enemy in the land. "He found 
 neither the preparations nor the spirit of the army to his 
 liking. His soldierly sense of order was shocked by the 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 321 
 
 loose discipline, and his instinct of command by the free- 
 and-easy insolence of that irregular levy. And his au- 
 thority grew stern as he laboured to bring the motley host 
 to order and effective organization." Wilson little 
 dreamed, when he wrote this Life of his fellow-Virginian, 
 that he was himself destined to create a colossal militarism 
 among the masses he loves so well. "Let the result be 
 so impressive and emphatic," he urged upon them on Lib- 
 erty Day, ''that it will echo through the Empire of our 
 enemy as indeed what America intends to do — to bring 
 this war to a victorious conclusion." 
 
 That enemy styled Wilson the greatest "despot" of all, 
 and truly history repeats itself in the strangest way. Less 
 than ten years ago Woodrow Wilson was immersed in 
 books; his greatest battle was fought in University affairs 
 in the Gothic halls and tree-shaded campus of Princeton. 
 Today he sways, with unprecedented power, an armed 
 democracy which may well prove the decisive factor in 
 the most stupendous of wars. In his college days Wil- 
 son wrote A History of the American People, and in the 
 chapter dealing with Lincoln's second term he gives a 
 picture of dictatorship which is closely applicable to his 
 own. 
 
 "The war had not run its extraordinary course without 
 touching the Government itself with revolution. The Con- 
 stitution had been framed with no thought to provide 
 for such days as these, when States were breaking away 
 from the Union, and the Government was struggling for 
 life itself. And with unlooked-for exigency had come 
 unlooked-for and arbitrary acts of power. The whole 
 authority of the nation seemed to be concentrated in the 
 Executive without restraint of law. . . . Many an un- 
 doubted principle of the Constitution seemed as if for the 
 time suspended in order that the executive and military 
 powers might move supreme to meet a supreme necessity. 
 
322 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Individual rights seemed for a time in abeyance. Even 
 politicians of his own party thought the President unsafe. 
 . . . Fortunately the rank and file had caught the spirit 
 of the war. . . . They looked confidently to see all things 
 restored, as of course, to their old poise and balance when 
 the storm of war had passed." 
 
 But the turmoil of the 'Sixties was a small affair com- 
 pared with the present effort; its conscript service and 
 control of the railroads, its authority over food production, 
 distribution, and prices; its embargoes and taxes and 
 censorships. There was at first much carping at these 
 ** surrenders to Kaisertum and Tsarism." All this inter- 
 ference, the dubious were afraid, would set America on 
 the road to Marxian Socialism — or even to the Fourier 
 ideal of communal happiness, with "home" in a vast bar- 
 rack under the watchful eye of impersonal sovereignty. 
 
 The power of the President has grown enormously since 
 the time of Washington and the elder Adams. Chief 
 Executives of the early school concerned themselves with 
 laws, the appointment of officials, and the direction of 
 foreign affairs which were mainly formal. Formal also 
 were the White House relations with Congress; and the 
 Constitution was rigidly observed. It is Jackson, Lincoln, 
 and Cleveland who are chiefly associated with the broaden- 
 ing of Presidential sway. Officials were now abruptly re- 
 moved, the veto power was used, the national policy 
 moulded, and legislation led along bolder lines. 
 
 It was felt that Congress needed skilful handling if it 
 were not to split into regional elements and cross-purposes 
 fatal to any real national progress. Roosevelt took a vig- 
 orous hand in this control; Taft v^^s of the laissez-faire 
 school, and consequently left the T/Iiite House with his 
 political fortunes ruined. In 1913 AVilson inaugurated 
 a "reign" so sagacious and strong that the whole con- 
 tinent rallied to him. Even the Eastern press, in its most 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 323 
 
 impatient moments, could review the Prussian affronts 
 with unshaken faith in the Chief Executive. "We're be- 
 hind you, Mr. President," was a timid assurance of this 
 time. ''Only, for God's sake, don't step on us!'' 
 
 The high Wilson note was sounded on Inauguration Day. 
 ''This is not a day of triumph," he told America, ''but 
 a Day of Dedication. Here muster, not the forces of 
 Party, but of Humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; 
 men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon 
 us to say what we will do. ' ' Yet it is as a militarist that 
 this Apostle of Peace will live, and not as the social and 
 political reformer. 
 
 The President has power to lead the country into war, 
 though the formal declaration is left to Congress. A case 
 in point was President Polk's despatch of General Taylor's 
 force to the Mexican Border in 1846 ; it was a step which 
 made straight for war. Another instance is Cleveland's 
 bellicose message to Great Britain in 1895 over the Vene- 
 zuela-Guiana boundary. And three years later, when Mc- 
 Kinley sent the Maine to Havana, he knew it meant a 
 war with Spain. Wilson's Note to Germany after the 
 sinking of the Sussex committed America in the same 
 irrevocable way. 
 
 When war breaks out the President becomes Comman- 
 der-in-Chief of Army, Navy, and State Militias. Men, 
 money, and ships are voted by Congress, but thereafter 
 the Chief Executive is an autocrat. He can make or 
 break commanders; he can move troops and plan and di- 
 rect campaigns, as well as dictating matters of life and 
 death to the civilians at home. I relate these things be- 
 cause opinion in Europe is unaware of any precedent 
 for the stern paternalism of the Wilson regime. Even the 
 America of today knows little of the "Tsarism" which 
 Lincoln, the country attorney of Illinois, assumed in three 
 tragic months of the Civil War. And in the words of the 
 
324 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 historian Rhodes : ' ' Never has the power of Dictator fallen 
 into safer and nobler hands." 
 
 It was loudly asserted in Central Europe that Americans 
 were incapable of that selfless discipline without which all 
 their strength would be frustrated. 
 
 Yet under Wilson the miracle was achieved. It culmi- 
 nated in ''Garfield's Day" — an order from the Fuel Ad- 
 ministrator which shut down all industries (save those of 
 war) east of the Mississippi River. Millions of workers 
 stood at ease. The theatres were closed, there were can- 
 dles in skyscraper offices; and in the Stock Exchange 
 the brokers shivered in a freezing atmosphere wearing 
 greatcoats, sweaters, and ear-muffs. The object of this 
 order was to relieve congestion on the railroads, and get 
 waiting ships away to France. At one stroke the distilling 
 of whisky was stopped, and 40,000,000 bushels of grain 
 added to the available food. 
 
 The sovereignty of the State was steadily encroaching, 
 and loyal acceptance of its rule was mainly due to the 
 personality of the President. Business men submitted 
 with grace to unexampled dictation. They agreed to the 
 Government price for copper and steel and ships. The 
 coal retailer was obliged to sell at the 1915 margin plus 
 an increase of thirty per cent. Priority in railway trans- 
 port was insisted on; men saw their own goods lying 
 derelict in warehouse or siding, whilst material of war 
 went swiftly forward. Huge taxes were paid, costly plants 
 turned over to the Government, unnecessary products cut 
 down arbitrarily. 
 
 Boards and Committees innumerable now bossed the 
 man of affairs. They criticized his cost-accounting; he 
 was told he must standardize his output on a model which 
 his rival had evolved. Or he handed over his factory 
 entire ; he built or manufactured according to Board ideas 
 of price and labour conditions. The head of a Produce 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 325 
 
 Exchange had to warn his members against speculation 
 in futures, lest that hydra-headed Board shut down upon 
 trading in that particular commodity. 
 
 The new paternalism was helped by propaganda such 
 as impressed the lessons of America's War upon many 
 races dwelling in a continent of three million square miles. 
 In these appeals every language was used, from Czech to 
 Chinese. The issues were set out in the Greek Atlantis of 
 New York, and all the polyglot journals of that city: the 
 Russkoye Slovo, the Italian Progresso, the Yiddish For- 
 ward, the Magyar Figyelo, the Polish Dziennik Zwiazkoivy. 
 For America is a very Babel of newspapers. This work 
 was decentralized, with State Governors and civic leaders 
 on their mettle to devise ways and means of reaching every 
 home — even in the desert sage-brush, the mining camps of 
 Colorado, and forest clearings of the lone North-West. 
 ''Save a shovelful of coal every day,'' Mr. Garfield told 
 the housewife, "and we shall have fifteen million tons to 
 show for it at the year's end." 
 
 Mr. Herbert Hoover wrote novel theses about food econ- 
 omy for the schools. "We have in our abundance and in 
 our waste an ample supply to carry them and ourselves to 
 Victory. There is no royal road to food conservation. It 
 can be accomplished only through whole-hearted co-opera- 
 tion in the 20,000,000 kitchens and at the 20,000,000 tables 
 of the United States." 
 
 Foreign Minister Lansing drew upon his unique knowl- 
 edge of Prussian evil, and addressed millions of citizens 
 through the daily and weekly press. It was a tale to move 
 the most lethargic: "Yet — God help us! these things have 
 come to pass, and Iron Crosses have rewarded the perpe- 
 trators of these crimes." . . . Pulpits and "the pictures," 
 aerial bombs full of leaflets, methods spectacular and se- 
 date — all were enlisted with unresting brio and purpose. 
 Veteran soldiers had a hand in the educative game. "We 
 
^26 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 must finish it on the other side," General Leonard Wood 
 warned America. "Otherwise they will finish it over 
 here." 
 
 This propaganda succeeded. Apathy was slowly fired 
 with love of country ; the hostile elements were stilled, the 
 hyphenate millions forced into lip-service at least to the 
 great American mission. Even the Irish began to warn 
 their brethren overseas not to expect sympathy for anti- 
 British ebullitions. 
 
 All this suasion can be traced to President Wilson. He 
 sat alone in his study on the second floor of the White 
 House, tapping an old typewriter whose peculiar script is 
 a token of confidential communication. In this sanctum 
 was the slogan born: "Food will win the war!" Here, 
 in Lincoln's Cabinet Chamber, Wilson wrote his famous 
 Notes; his historic Messages to Congress, too, and less 
 formal exhortation to the care-free people whose guardian 
 he was. "We are upon a war footing," he urged, when 
 supporting his Fuel Controller. "And I am confident that 
 the people of the United States are willing to observe the 
 same sort of discipline which might be involved in actual 
 conflict itself." Sitting here alone (always alone), the 
 Chief Executive expounded the Prussian drift with per- 
 fect grasp of its pervasive devilry. 
 
 This moral preparation took a long time, and little was 
 done on the material side until the President could say, 
 "The eyes of the people are opened, and they see." Fac- 
 tion and conflict faced him everywhere. He had "big" 
 men to choose — and to dismiss, as he did Chairman Den- 
 man and General Goethals when they fell out over the 
 details of emergency ships. Most difficult of all, there 
 was the froth of sedition and pacifism of every hue to whip 
 from the Melting Pot of races. 
 
 This Dr. Wilson did with due severity. "I hear the 
 voices of dissent," he owned — "Who does not? I hear 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 327 
 
 the criticism and clamour of the noisily thoughtless and 
 troublesome. ... I hear men debate peace who know 
 nothing of its nature, nor the way in which we may at- 
 tain it with uplifted e^^es and unbroken spirit. But I 
 know that none of these speak for America, nor do they 
 touch its heart. They may safely be left to strut their 
 uneasy hour and be forgotten." He spoke more plainl}^ 
 to the Federation of Labour at the annual Convention in 
 Buffalo. ''Any man in America, or anywhere else, who 
 supposes that free industry and enterprise can continue 
 if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power 
 fastened upon the world, is as fatuous as the dreamers 
 of Russia." So did the self-styled Watchman of the White 
 House "blow the trumpet and warn the people" of the 
 coming Sword. 
 
 Perhaps one day, in his lettered leisure, this scholar- 
 statesman will tell us how he kindled a mixed continent 
 to the Pacifist War of the world, so that in his Thanks- 
 giving Proclamation he could say at last — "In this Day 
 of revelation of our duty" . . . "there has been vouch- 
 safed to us, in full and inspiring measure, the resolution 
 and spirit of united action. We have been brought to one 
 mind and purpose. A new vigour of common counsel 
 and common deed has been revealed to us all. ' ' 
 
 The President had tussles with Congress after he came 
 before the Joint Session to asks for credits and extraor- 
 dinary powers. More American ships had been sunk ; the 
 position was very critical. A request had been made for 
 the co-operation of neutral Governments — "But I fear 
 none of them has thought it wise to join in any common 
 course of action." 
 
 The War Revenue Act passed the House after the cot- 
 ton-tax of $2.50 a bale had been violently rejected by the 
 solid South. The Food Bill was tangled up with prohi- 
 bition; for in this measure extremists saw a heaven-sent 
 
328 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 opportunity to make the continent ''bone dry/' and abol- 
 ish strong drink for ever. Here again the President took 
 a hand, urging a speedy decision in view of food specula- 
 tion and rising prices, due to over-eager bidding from 
 Allied agents to the detriment of the American people. 
 
 The Senate resented this constant forcing of its pace; 
 behind closed doors there was hot retaliation upon the 
 Cabinet, who were said to thrust important measures upon 
 Congress without due form or consideration. 
 
 The fact is, the U. S. Constitution is out of date; the 
 Great War will overhaul it drastically. Every intelligent 
 American is aware of this; therefore Lord Northcliffe was 
 on safe ground when he said that in many ways the Re- 
 public was today much as she was in 1776. 
 
 For many years the executive branch of the Govern- 
 ment has been gaining upon the legislative in. actual power, 
 and it is the separation of these two which is now re- 
 vealed as a serious disability. Close association with 
 France in Revolutionary days brought the Montesquieu 
 theory to America, and it was written with fervour into 
 the State and Federal Constitutions. 
 
 A generation ago Woodrow Wilson himself described the 
 baleful effects of this system upon the Government. It 
 was also decried at the Constitutional Convention of 1915 
 by men like Elihu Root and Henry L. Stimson. "I be- 
 lieve," said the last-named statesman, *'that by far the 
 greatest part of the inefficiency and corruption from which 
 we suffer in our Federal and State Governments can be 
 directly traced to that venerable heresy which keeps the 
 influence of our Executive out of our halls of Congress 
 and assemblies. That this is a political heresy has been 
 long and abundantly proven. ... It lingers on in the 
 United States, however, as the fount of most of our -trou- 
 bles, although cherished like a veritable Ark of the Cove- 
 nant. ' ' 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 329 
 
 But rude bands are being laid upon tbat ark in an era 
 of militarism and anti-cultural expenditure. Already Sec- 
 retary iMcAdoo bas warned tbe nation tbat "tbe future 
 bolds a less roseate prospect for Government finance." 
 Senator Martin, Cbairman of tbe Appropriations Com- 
 mittee, urged a closer scrutiny of tbe prodigious sums 
 wbieb Congress was voting witb sucb entbusiasm. Five 
 montbs of war sbowed appropriations totalling $20,000,- 
 000,000. "We are compelled to sbut our eyes," Senator 
 Martin feared, ''ratber tban bamper our men on tbe battle- 
 field ; but our duty to trim tbese estimates grows more 
 imperative every day. Impoverisb tbe country if you 
 will, so tbat victory be ours; but, for God's sake, let us 
 not lavisb money blindly, or we sball drift at last into peril 
 and panic." 
 
 In tbe Lower House yet anotber committee was pro- 
 posed to cbeck tbe vast appropriations and — as tbe vet- 
 eran Senator Aldricb binted — to save tbirty cents on tbe 
 dollar, wbilst getting tbe same results. 
 
 Here tbe two "divided" brancbes of Government clasbed. 
 Tbe President protested, as be bad done before over tbe 
 Amendment to bis Food Control Bill, and later over Sen- 
 ator Cbamberlain's suggested War Cabinet and Ministry 
 of Munitions. Dr. AVilson bas no illusions about tbe Con- 
 gressional Committee. "Tbere is a very ominous prece- 
 dent in our bistory," be pointed out to Cbairman Lever 
 of tbe Lower House, "wbicb sbows bow sucb a supervision 
 would operate. I refer to tbe Committee on tbe Conduct 
 of tbe War, formed by Congress during tbe administra- 
 tion of Mr. Lincoln. It was tbe cause of constant and 
 distressing barassment, and rendered tbe President's task 
 all but impossible." Tbat Inciuisition became tbe censor 
 of botb Army and Ministers for four years following its 
 first inquiry into tbe disaster of Ball's Bluff. It sum- 
 moned statesmen and soldiers before it, questioning tbem 
 
330 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ''like refractory schoolboys," and overruling the military 
 judgment of Generals Grant and Meade. 
 
 It will therefore be seen that, as historian of the United 
 States, Woodrow Wilson had significant lessons before him. 
 And from the first he joined issue with fussj^ amateurs and 
 well-meaning meddlers who had no grasp of America's war 
 or the efforts it would entail. 
 
 In three months sixteen cantonments were built, each one 
 of them housing an Army Corps. On the mechanical side 
 were devices like the Liberty motor for high-powered 
 planes; a standard lorry, trench-diggers, motor batteries, 
 and new appliances for poison-gas, liquid flame, and lachry- 
 matory fumes. Congressional appropriations leaped to ten 
 or twenty times the sums normally voted, and contained 
 items never seen before, such as $277,000,000 for aero- 
 bombs. For the fiscal year ending June, 1918, the huge 
 sum of $8,911,000,000 is required for the Army alone. 
 
 It was the same with the Navy, which was to have a 
 personnel of a quarter of a million men. Yards are en- 
 larged, or new ones built, with shipways for vessels of all 
 grades. There are new naval foundries and machine-shops, 
 new piers and warehouses ; seaplane shops, operating bases, 
 and training camps for a further 85,000 seamen. The new 
 armour-plate and projectile factory at Charleston, W. Va., 
 is the first to be erected west of the Alleghany Mountains. 
 An inland site was chosen for this naval forge in view 
 of attack from the air, with hostile warships as a possible 
 base. 
 
 These are official facts from the Bureaux of Secretaries 
 Baker and Daniels ; but it would be misleading to suppose 
 that America geared herself for so vast a conflict without 
 serious lapse and error. ''Democracy," says Secretary 
 Lane of the Interior, "is not so efficient as Autocracy." 
 The fact was shown before the Senate Committee on Mili- 
 tary Affairs when unpleasant stories came from the Na- 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 331 
 
 tional Army. "In no camp," declared Senator Wads- 
 worth, "are there small-arms for half the men, so they 
 are drilling* with broomsticks ! At Camps Meade, Fulton, 
 and Spartanburg', I talked with machine-gunners who had 
 never laid eyes upon a machine-gun. Many of our boys 
 have no overcoats; thousands wore light summer under- 
 wear in the bitterest of weather." The Governor of Ore- 
 gon complained that his guardsmen were housed in floor- 
 less tents, and there was an alarming shortage of blankets. 
 Three years ago General Leonard Wood attacked the AVar 
 Department for its inertia in such matters, and became a 
 target of persecution for his pains. 
 
 The Committee of Inquirj^ called before them General 
 Crozier, the Chief of Ordnance, and Quartermaster-General 
 Sharpe, whose evidence showed the American war-machine 
 overtaxed and borne down. General Crozier confessed 
 that no American artillery could appear in the European 
 Held before the summer of 1918, and even then only 6- 
 inch guns, "middle-heavies" and lesser pieces. There was 
 vacillation and delay over rifle manufacture; details of 
 rechambering and interchangeability of parts were badly 
 confused. 
 
 But when all is said, these are familiar stories in the 
 militarization of democracy. In America, as with us, 
 there was drastic house-cleaning in bureaucratic circles. 
 President Wilson is perhaps over-loyal to his Cabinet staff ; 
 he selected them in 1912-1913, when America never 
 dreamed of the cataclysm at hand, with all it involved of 
 politico-social revolution. His War Minister was once the 
 Pacifist Mayor of Cleveland, 0. — a civic reformer con- 
 cerned with three-cent tram-fares, and to "safe" the dance- 
 halls for exuberant youth. The First Lord of Wilson's 
 Admiralty was the editor of a country paper; and Mr. 
 Daniels' ideals of discipline in a democratic Navy were 
 too f^eiiial to last, The Presidential Council of Ten was 
 
332 . AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 chosen on strict party lines. All regions were represented 
 with due bias towards the South, to which Dr. Wilson 
 owed his victory. So far as Congress is concerned, Cab- 
 inet appointments are purely personal to the President, 
 and therefore apart from the Legislature, in which the 
 Ministers have no seats. 
 
 This curious aloofness has been debated for fifty years, 
 and is now known for a flaw in the Constitution. Jefferson 
 never spoke face to face with Congress as Wilson does 
 today ; written Messages were sent by a White House clerk 
 to give the lawmakers '' information of the staie of the 
 Union." The Ten Executive Departments, though within 
 a stone 's-throw of the Capitol dome, might as well be in 
 Paris or London so far as Congress is concerned. The 
 result is a diffusion of energy which makes for delay and 
 muddle to a lamentable degree. Of course it cannot last. 
 President Wilson himself is in favour of seating Cabinet 
 officers in Congress for the better expedition of affairs, 
 particularly at a time like this. 
 
 It is at least possible that the present Watchman of the 
 White House will see the passing of the Prussian Swofd, 
 and some attempt to establish that League of Nations 
 which is the prior and fundamental feature of his endur- 
 ing peace, and not — as the German Chancellor would have 
 it — a matter to be considered ''after all the other ques- 
 tions in suspense have been settled." Wilson's second 
 term expires in 1920. Alread}^ America is scanning the 
 political horizon with no great hope of finding a successor 
 to the ablest Executive who ever led her to the vindication 
 of her ideals. At this writing the United States is still in 
 ' ' her honeymoon of the war, ' ' but her Allies need have no 
 fear of her fortitude in the hap ahead, with its seesaw of 
 calamity and triumph, its test and trial of endurance on 
 the part of civilians as well as soldiers. "We are out to 
 win,^* is the Wilson note. And if I know anything of 
 
THE WATCHMAN AND THE SWORD 333 
 
 America, each set-back will only burn her purpose deeper 
 to make an end of that German curse which the President 
 has branded as ''the enemy of mankind." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 GERMANY AJSTD AMERICA IN THE *'eM 
 
 *'So soon as we communicate and are upon a familiar 
 footing of intercourse, we shall understand one another. 
 And the bonds between the Two Americas will be such 
 that no influence the world may produce in future will 
 ever break them." (President Wilson to Delegates of the 
 Pan-American Financial Conference at Washington.) 
 
 The United States has three foreign problems which are 
 peculiarly her own: — (1) The integrity and stability of 
 Mexico, (2) the inviolability of the Latin Republics in 
 Central and South America, and (3) the policy of the 
 ''Open Door" in China, which involves the question of 
 relations with Japan. The matter of Mexico is of the 
 first importance. So far back as 1826 Daniel Webster 
 laid stress upon this fact in the Lower House of Congress, 
 pointing out that whilst a foreign landing, say in the 
 River Plate, might be only a matter for diplomatic pro- 
 test, a similar attempt in the Mexican Gulf would call for 
 drastic action on the part of the United States. 
 
 But the factor of distance has shrunk since those days; 
 the hidden hand of Germany has raised afresh the spectre 
 of foreign aggression which alarmed Jefferson, Monroe, 
 and Calhoun. Germany's expansive policy, coupled with 
 pacific penetration in Central and South America (espe- 
 cially Brazil), has of late years roused the Washington 
 Government to a decisive course. The German aims were 
 plainly stated to the Imperial Reichstag by Bethmann- 
 
 334 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT'* 335 
 
 Hollweg on March 30, 1911 — the^ear of the Agadir coup 
 and imminent world-war. 
 
 ' ' The condition of peaceableness is strength, ' ' the Chan- 
 cellor laid down. ''And the old saying still holds good 
 that the weak shall be the prey of the strong. . . . We 
 Germans, in our exposed position, are above all bound 
 to look this rough reality in the face. . . . Therefore the 
 world, and especially the weaker countries, should take 
 this warning to heart. For it implies more than passive 
 recognition of a fact; it is the declaration of a policy — 
 the policy of expansion which we consider indispensable 
 to the cause of world-peace and the existence of the Ger- 
 man Empire." 
 
 Here was the brigand code set forth in the twentieth 
 century. "Gentlemen," said the same high spokesman to 
 the same assembly three and a half years later, "we are 
 now in a state of necessity (Notwehr). And necessity 
 knows no law." Such was the Chancellor's apologia for 
 the martyrdom of Belgium which Germany was sworn to 
 protect. AA^hat wonder, then, that the Monroe doctrine 
 of "Hands off the New AVorld" became an urgent concern 
 of President AVilson in his second term? America had 
 had her own Agadir alarms due to the dira necessitas of 
 expansive Deutschtum. There was the. Samoan dispute 
 in 1889; the menace of A^on Diederich to Admiral Dewey 
 at Manila in 1898; Roosevelt's ultimatum to Von Holleben 
 in the Venezuelan affair of 1902. And there were German 
 efforts to get a foothold in Haiti, and to acquire the 
 Danish islands in the Caribbean with a view to estab- 
 lishing a naval base on St. Thomas or St. John, and with 
 it a great entrepot for Central and South American trade 
 which should command the eastern entrance of the Panama 
 Canal. 
 
 Already the harbour of Charlotte Amalie was an ap- 
 panage of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. la 1902 Roose- 
 
336 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 velt and John Hay could have bought the Danish group 
 for $5,000,000, but the German ''hand" nipped all nego- 
 tiation, and the treaty was defeated in the Copenhagen 
 Landsting by only one vote. By 1917 the price had risen 
 to $25,000,000; and on April 1 Mr. Lansing handed a 
 cheque for that amount to the Danish Minister in Wash- 
 ington, thus closing a deal which had been vaguely debated 
 for fifty years. 
 
 That Germany has long looked upon Latin America as 
 her Promised Land admits of no doubt; the evidence is 
 overwhelming, apart from the intrigues published by the 
 Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. The design 
 is naively stated by all the Pan-German apostles. Wilhelm 
 Sievers points out that the ''Empty Continent" is the only 
 white man's territory left — "therefore we must hasten to 
 take possession of it." Ludwig Riemer proposed an ex- 
 peditionary force of "technicians and engineers, scholars, 
 business men, and managers," who might effect the blood- 
 less conquest of this prize by the push-and-go of Prussian- 
 ism. Von Liebert was for concentrating Deutschtum in 
 the Argentine, Uruguay, and Brazil, so that "a powerful 
 body, united to the Fatherland by every tie, might organ- 
 ize that Greater Germany of which the Emperor spoke to 
 us in 1895." 
 
 The Pan-German Atlas of Paul Langhans, published at 
 Gotha in 1900, shows three-quarters of a million Germans 
 in the Latin Republics. And 'of all ' ' our Antarctic Col- 
 onies," the most flourishing and cohesive were those of 
 Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina, and Parana in South- 
 ern Brazil. 
 
 These settlements owe their origin to an invitation from 
 the Brazilian Government in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century, with a view to developing vacant provinces of 
 vast extent and potential riches. In 1849 the Hamburger 
 Kolonisationverein was formed, and the following year a 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" 337 
 
 barber named Blumenau founded the Brazilian colony 
 wliicli bears his name today. It contains 40,000 Germans, 
 isolated like the rest from ' ' inferior ' ' Latin elements around 
 them. German schools and traditions foster the ideals of 
 Deutschheit in this land. Visiting merchants who use 
 the ports of Pelotas and Sao Pedro scout and scorn all 
 things Brazilian. Lutheran pastors come and stay for 
 years as politico-social missionaries; they are maintained 
 from the homeland, and preach the divine right of Kaiser- 
 dom and the doctrine of Allmacht on the usual biological 
 lines. 
 
 There are associations in Germany which support the 
 teaching of German in these colonies; substantial grants, 
 up to half a million marks, figure in the Imperial Budget 
 for the same purpose. On their part the colonists have 
 their Vereine and patriotic clubs, as well as the ritual of 
 the Bierkomment to foster the sentiments of the Father- 
 land in remote highland pastures, in the ranches and coffee- 
 fazendas. The Federal Government in Rio is prevented 
 by the Constitution of 1891 from interfering with public 
 instruction in the States; here is another parallel with the 
 hyphenate problem in North America. The Brazilian au- 
 thorities have, however, closed the German shooting clubs 
 and confiscated over 100,000 rifles belonging to exuberant 
 colonists who talked of armed insurrection and complete 
 independence ( Unhahhaengigkeit) . 
 
 Long before she severed relations with Berlin, Brazil 
 was aware of her hyphenate embarrassment. Herr von 
 Pauli, the German Minister in Rio, played the part of 
 plotter which Count Bernstorff played so long in Wash- 
 ington. Strikes and riots were fomented so as to hinder 
 and discourage the Government. Arms were smuggled 
 down the coast, wireless stations were discovered, witli 
 crafty ramifications north and south. The State Govern- 
 ment of Rio Grande moved Loyalist troops to Porto 
 
338 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 AUegre in view of a German rising. Uruguay took similar 
 steps on the frontier; she had news of a projected raid, 
 and took official counsel with Argentina with this event in 
 view. 
 
 Meanwhile the destruction of Brazilian ships (the Macao 
 was the fourth) with every circumstance of horror — espe- 
 cially in the case of the Parana — roused native feeling to 
 a dangerous pitch. Deutschheit was declared a national 
 danger to Brazil. The Germans were assailed by mobs in 
 Curitaba. Three hundred German buildings were burned 
 in Porto Allegre alone ; and Colonel Schmidt, the Governor 
 of Santa Catharina, was denounced as a traitor and a spy. 
 The Brazilian press was very bitter indeed; it assailed 
 its own Foreign Minister, Dr. Lauro Miiller, because of 
 "the terrible doubt of Brazilians as to the predominance 
 of Germanism over his nationality." Dr. Miiller resigned, 
 and was succeeded by Senhor Nilo Pecanha, a former 
 President of the Republic. 
 
 There was in this huge land the same awakening that 
 America felt; the same alarm over unpreparedness, for 
 there were barely 25,000 soldiers to defend a country as 
 large as Europe. But there was also a patriotic surge, 
 led by poets like Olavo Bilac, and statesmen like Senator 
 Ruy Barbosa, the author of the Brazilian Constitution, 
 and a leading figure at the Second Hague Conference in 
 1907. 
 
 "The juridical questions of the present war," declared 
 Barbosa in the Municipal Theatre of Rio, "and the burn- 
 ing problems of neutrality, afford common ground for all 
 America, and especially for South America, where is found 
 upon Teutonic maps a Southern Germany. ... If the 
 Central Empires are victorious in this war, the German 
 nation, intoxicated with pride and with Europe prostrate 
 at he.r feet, will not hesitate to settle accounts with the 
 United States; and then, violating the doctrine of Mon- 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" 339 
 
 roe, which our great neighbour is not yet strong enough 
 to uphold, she will proceed to seize in South America 
 those regions which the cartography of Pan-Germanism 
 has so often claimed as the natural seat of its sovereignty. 
 Such is my mature and profound conviction. ' ' 
 
 It is common knowledge in Latin America that Teuton 
 settlers despise their hosts and seek to dispossess them. 
 The notorious Karl von Luxburg warned the Berlin For- 
 eign Office, from his Legation in Buenos Aires, that "our 
 easy-going good nature ' ' was a poor policy in South Amer- 
 ica — ''where the people are only Indians under a thin 
 veneer." So the advocate of "Sink without a trace" fa- 
 voured an occasional flourish of the Mailed Fist if "our 
 political aims in South America" were to be successfully 
 achieved. As these included "the reorganization of South- 
 ern Brazil," it is clear that the excitement in the big Re- 
 public was amply justified. 
 
 It is this shadow of Prussianism which accounts for the 
 "continental solidarity," which Seiior Francisco Tudela, 
 Foreign Minister of Peru, announced in a Note to Secre- 
 tary Lansing in Washington. Grave duties confronted 
 Peru, and the "necessity of defending her rights against 
 the new form of maritime warfare set up by Germany." 
 So Dr. von Perl was handed his passports, and he made 
 tracks for Ecuador, to which Republic he was also accred- 
 ited. The Foreign Minister in Quito promptly telegraphed 
 to his Legation in Lima, saying that the German Minister 
 would not be received in Ecuador. Cuba and Panama de- 
 clared war; Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras, Nicarajjua, Bo- 
 livia, and Uruguay broke off relations. Chile and Argen- 
 tina swayed back and forth, a prey to German influence 
 and intrigue — though in the last-named State poets, peo- 
 ple, and the press were all but unanimous for war. The 
 vote in the Senate at Buenos Aires was twenty-three to 
 one in favour of a rupture ; Dr. Romulo Naon, Argentine 
 
340 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Minister in Washington, resigned his post in protest 
 against the neutral policy of President Irigoyen. 
 
 The Anti-German demonstrations following the Luxburg 
 expose were very violent, but the President continued to 
 block the people's will, as the Constitution permits him to 
 do. German interests in this Republic are exceptionally 
 strong; the Hamburg- Amerika Line has a steamer on the 
 stocks (the Cap Polonio) of 40,000 tons, intended for the 
 Argentine trade alone. In German hands are the most 
 thriving electrical concerns, banks, breweries, and meat- 
 packing plants, as well as a large share of the sugar, wine, 
 and quebracho industries. Many prominent Germans, 
 among them the present Under-Secretary for Foreign Af- 
 fairs, Baron von dem Busche-Haddenhausen, have married 
 into wealthy Argentine families. German nobles and in- 
 dustrial magnates own immense lands, one of the largest 
 holders being the Kaiser's brother-in-law, Prince Adolf of 
 Schaumburg-Lippe. Other great estates belong to com- 
 mercial concerns in Berlin, Diisseldorf, and Hamburg. 
 
 German designs upon Latin America took a new turn 
 after the Spanish-American War, when all other Powers 
 had acquiesced in the Monroe Doctrine. In October, 1900, 
 we find the Emperor laying the foundation-stone of the 
 Roman Museum at Saalburg and outlining his grandiose 
 scheme: ''May our German nation in future, aided by 
 princes and people, their armies and citizens, become as 
 powerful, as strongly united and unique in sway, as 
 Rome's universal empire!" In this year also the new 
 Navy Bill was introduced to the Reichstag, and the Pre- 
 amble plainly stated that ''Germany must have a fleet of 
 such strength that a war, even against the mightiest naval 
 Power, would involve risks threatening the supremacy of 
 that Power. ' ' The indiscreet Hohenlohe put this into plain 
 English when he said in his Memoirs that the new Navy 
 was meant for purely offensive purposes. 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" * 341 
 
 The position was simple enough in Teuton eyes. Britain, 
 the Saxon historian declared, was "a decrepit Power living 
 in lucky aloofness on a wealthy island." And Germany 
 was the bold inheritrix {Rechtsnachfolger) of her world- 
 dominions. No wonder, then, that the ' ' ]\Ionroeismo ' ' took 
 a new turn in this baleful light. Secretary Lansing told 
 the Latin delegates in Washington that it was now the 
 national policy of the United States, and Pan- Americanism 
 the prior principle of her international policy. 
 
 ' But until the Great War revealed Prussian methods, it 
 cannot be said that the Latin Republics hailed their north- 
 ern protector with any great enthusiasm. Brazil alluded 
 to this fact in a Note to her envoys abroad on the revoca- 
 tion of her neutrality and her new alignment with the 
 United States. ''If there has hitherto been a lack of reci- 
 procity among the South American Republics, it is be- 
 cause the Monroe Doctrine permitted a doubtful interpre- 
 tation of their sovereignty." Current events now ranged 
 the greatest of all the Latin States beside her powerful 
 sister, since the foreign policy of all had a practical orien- 
 tation towards the common end of liberty and develop- 
 ment. The minor Republics followed the lead of Brazil. 
 President Tinoco of Costa Rica- discovered German intrigues 
 to overthrow his Government. Guatemala unearthed sim- 
 ilar plots "aimed at the safety and independence of the 
 whole of Central America." Even erratic Haiti had her 
 citizens slain by German torpedoes; and as her demands 
 "in the name of humanity" were ignored, the negro State 
 severed relations — to the great amusement of Berlin. 
 
 The predominance of the United States in the Western 
 Hemisphere may be said to date from the close of the 
 South American War of Independence, which lasted nearly 
 fifteen years and closed in 1824. 
 
 At that time Spain still had powerful armies in South 
 America; and the reconquest of her colonies was the 
 
342 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 avowed purpose of the crowned conspirators of the Holy 
 Alliance who, at Verona in 1822, secretly vowed to destroy 
 representative institutions and uphold the preposterous 
 principle of the Divine Right of Kings. At any rate this 
 is the version taught in the United States. 
 
 British aid, military as well as financial, was felt in the 
 Empty Continent from the earliest days of its independ- 
 ence. And compared with Britain's commercial and in- 
 dustrial development, that of other nations is relatively 
 small. In listed securities today British investments total 
 at least £700,000,000, and to this must be added immense 
 sums in trade credits and private enterprise. From Mex- 
 ico to Chile British capital financed the Governments, built 
 railways, ports and harbours, opened up new lands, tilled 
 the soil, established plantations, worked the mines, raised 
 flocks and herds, and furnished banking facilities for do- 
 mestic and foreign use. European rivals came on the 
 scene only when the pioneer work was done. So that our 
 prestige has always been great; the ''palabra de Ingles" — 
 the Englishman's word — is still a respected bond from 
 Vera Cruz to Valparaiso. 
 
 On the other hand Monroeism, with the implied trustee- 
 ship of the United States, has never been welcomed in 
 Latin America, which is extremely sensitive where sover- 
 eignty is concerned. This was very noticeable after the 
 Mexican trouble, when President Wilson claimed to act as 
 censor moriim and to lead the lesser Republics, by force if 
 need be, along the path of constitutional reform. It is 
 pointed out that America herself has long outgrown the 
 Monroeism and become an Imperial Power, by virtue of the 
 Washington Treaty of Dec. 2, 1899. This gave her certain 
 islands of the Samoan Group; there was also the annexa- 
 tion of Havv^aii and the Philippine Islands after the war 
 with Spain. So far back as 1826, when Bolivar wished to 
 liber at e.X!uba and Puerto Rico, America vetoed the project 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" 343 
 
 and it collapsed. In 1848 the United States expanded at 
 Mexico's expense, and at Colombia's in 1903. 
 
 So the Big Sister, it was said, was by no means free from 
 those designs of conquest which were thought peculiar to 
 the Old World. An alliance of the so-called A. B. C. 
 States (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) was at one time 
 widely mooted for preserving the balance of power; and 
 Koosevelt's tour in 1913 was mainly intended to allay these 
 alarms and preach a new and modified version of Monroe- 
 ism. But the U. S. policy in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mex- 
 ico left the Latin nations more suspicious than ever. Pres- 
 ident Wilson's statement that America would not tolerate 
 any financial or industrial control of these States was openly 
 denounced in the Brazilian Chamber. It was taken to 
 mean ''that under pretence of emancipating our Repub- 
 lics from the highly fanciful peril of European Imperial- 
 ism, the United States would simply submit them to its own 
 control. ' ' 
 
 Awkward evidence on this score was Secretary Olney's 
 assertion in the Venezuela-Guiana boundary dispute with 
 Great Britain. "Today," Cleveland's Foreign Minister 
 declared, "the United States is practically sovereign upon 
 this continent; and its fiat is law upon the subjects to 
 which it confines its interposition." All authorities agree 
 that this claim is void unless America can back it with 
 armed forces commensurate with her imperial duties. To 
 an historian like Hiram Bingham the Monroe doctrine is 
 "an exploded shibboleth." To Roland Usher even the 
 Pan-American movement is a sentimental dream by reason 
 of racial barriers, language, religion, civilization, and in- 
 frequent intercourse. It is not Europe that Latin Amer- 
 ica fears. Professor Usher tells us, but the United States 
 with its new schemes of political and commercial aggran- 
 dizement. 
 
 The emergent fact is America's continuous growth since 
 
344 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 the precarious day of James Monroe; hers is no exception 
 to the rule of nations, and she must needs adapt herself to 
 her changing destiny. So early as 1821 she showed a de- 
 sire to expand; the following year Florida was ceded by 
 Spain and organized as an American Territory. In 1825 
 and 1829 attempts were made to acquire Texas by pur- 
 chase ; Louisiana had been bought in 1803 for $15,000,000. 
 And so the process went, with Indian, Mexican, and Civil 
 wars, and steady expansion westward till Alaska was ac- 
 quired from Russia in 1867. As a profession of chivalry 
 and defence of the weak, Monroeism was left behind; it 
 was never an international treaty, and became at last a 
 purely American policy, based on the welfare and con- 
 venience of the United States. 
 
 The Inter-oceanic Canal marked a new era of Imperial- 
 ism. In 1902 Congress empowered President Roosevelt to 
 acquire the derelict French ditch for $40,000,000. The 
 Spooner Act called into being the six-mile strip known as 
 the Isthmian Zone; and next emerged the new Republic 
 of Panama, shorn from Colombia by native rebels, backed 
 by the armed forces of the United States. The lesser Re- 
 public was bitterly aggrieved; and though the Colombian 
 Pact, drawn by Mr. Bryan in 1914, bound America to pay 
 $25,000,000 as a douceur, mutterings of German intrigue 
 continued to reach the U. S. Senate, and delayed the ratifi- 
 cation. ^'We are told," declared Senator Lodge, ''that 
 Colombia will furnish submarine bases in order that Ger- 
 many may assail our shipping and the Panama Canal. 
 Therefore we must buy off this Latin State and make 
 apology!" . . . 
 
 I may not stay to consider so gigantic an undertaking as 
 the Canal ; it was the grave of many American reputations, 
 and has disappointed the American people. Admittedly it 
 was a mistake to build a lock canal in a precarious region 
 of earthquake and tropic floods. The choice is all the 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" 345 
 
 stranger, seeing that the engineers of five nations (includ- 
 ing our own) were called into consultation, and favoured 
 the sea-level system. 
 
 M. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a man of unique authority — 
 he was chief engineer of the Second Panama Company — 
 points out how this essential artery of military navigation 
 is now at the mercy of aerial bombs. And the wrecking of 
 gates and walls might separate for months the fleets of the 
 Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Moreover the Canal, as at 
 present constructed, could not give passage to those capital 
 ships of 110 ft. beam and 200,000 horse-power which 
 America has in view. It is therefore suggested that the 
 famous ditch be further excavated for 100 ft. and turned 
 into ''the Strait of Panama." This would, of course, be a 
 sea-level affair, and its completion need not seriously inter- 
 fere with the working of the existing Canal — into which, by 
 the way, our Minister beheld two ranges of hills sliding with 
 uncanny persistence. Howbeit, America has a second 
 string to her bow in the Nicaragua route, which unofficial 
 estimates showed would be cheaper than the constant re- 
 moval of land-slides from the Culebra Cut of the Panama 
 Canal. The Nicaragua venture was suggested years ago 
 by Senator Morgan and Admiral J. G. Walker. Work w^as 
 begun, but the project failed through lack of funds in 1893. 
 
 "We need all the friends we can attach to us in Central 
 America, ' ' President Wilson wrote to Senator Stone, Chair- 
 man of the Foreign Relations Committee. Yet the touchy 
 Latin States continued to find affronts. Costa Rica com- 
 plained that her territorial claims in the Nicaragua Canal 
 option had been ignored. Salvador, Honduras, and Guate- 
 mala lodged protests over the new American naval base 
 in Fonseca Bay, on the ground that their approval had 
 not been sought. Then Colombia put in a shadowy claim 
 to the two islands in question, asserting that the King of 
 Spain had awarded them to her 113 years ago. But enough 
 
346 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 has been said to show the mistrust with which the Yanqui 
 was viewed in Latin America before the Great War broke 
 out. His moves were disconcertingly abrupt. A lack of 
 punctilio marked them all, a certain want of simpatia which 
 the Germans were not slow to emphasize. 
 
 For years before the war, official America was puzzled 
 at the mysterious antagonism of many of the Latin Re- 
 publics. This is now known to have been due to German- 
 owned newspapers printed in Spanish and edited on anti- 
 American lines. The new Militarismus of America — an 
 Imperial America with the habit of war and great offen- 
 sive establishments — was artfully presented to the Latin 
 States as that of a new Colossus from whom everything 
 was to be feared. Sinister motives were ascribed to each 
 visit of the U. S. fleet : * * To put the fear of big guns into 
 little countries," was how the Latin- American patriot, 
 Chavero, described it. Peru took offence when the cruiser 
 Tennessee called at Callao, and Secretary McAdoo refused 
 to land: there was rumour of bubonic plague in the port. 
 This touchiness was kept alive by a host of German 
 leagues and clubs from Mexico City, where the Society of 
 the Iron Cross was busy, down to Valparaiso; here the 
 central Deutsch-Chilenischer Bund is affiliated with forty- 
 four branches in as many towns. The aim of all intrigue 
 was to inflame public opinion in the Latin nations and 
 present German influence as a counterbalance to the new 
 "Monroeismo" and the growing aggression of the United 
 States. Hence the trouble in Cuba — in Honduras, Sal- 
 vador, and Nicaragua, too, with Lehmann, the German 
 Minister to Guatemala, as chief plotter and master mind. 
 
 These plans were periodically published by the State 
 Department in Washington, and also by the Foreign Re- 
 lations Committee of the Senate. The process of "tun- 
 nelling the Monroe Doctrine" was plainly shown all the 
 way from Paraguay to Haiti, where Germany had her eye 
 
IN THE ^' EMPTY CONTINENT" 347 
 
 on a naval base* at Mole St. Nicolas. Hidden schemes were 
 now brought to light — the cancelling of Allied contracts 
 in South America, the stirring of sedition and resentment, 
 as well as the chain of wireless stations which played so 
 fatal a part in the destruction of Admiral Cradock's 
 squadron. In Nicaragua, German agents were outbidding 
 the American Treaty offer for a new Canal route, offering 
 two million dollars more. 
 
 All these moves were supported by a native press, by 
 local German Chambers of Commerce, too, and by ener- 
 getic bodies in Germanj^, such as the South American 
 League, of which Herr Dernburg is President, and Gustav 
 Schmoller, of Berlin University, the most eloquent advo- 
 cate. "South America is the land of the future," this 
 economist declared. "There is more for us in the Empty 
 Continent than in any part of Africa." Schmoller pic- 
 tures a new German Empire in the Western Hemisphere 
 when the Great War is over, and the formidable forces of 
 Deutschtum are once more loosed in industry and trade. 
 
 Hamburg has its Iberian- American Union, with a review 
 of its own published in Spanish — the Cultura Latino-Amer- 
 icana. There are also pamphlets and guide-books for com- 
 mercial houses interested in the ambitious program "when 
 we build up afresh in South America on the lines of Han- 
 seatic tradition and experience." The vast web of Ger- 
 man propaganda, closely linked v/ith Weltpolitik and the 
 military machine, called for counter-efforts on the part of 
 the United States. Long ago Director-General John Bar- 
 rett, of the Pan-American Union in Washington, warned 
 his Government that such measures were urgently needed 
 in view of swarming German agents, whose efforts might 
 "completely nullify all the apparent advantages of Pan- 
 American co-operation and support in the war. ' ' 
 
 As the war progressed and Wilson's leadership was 
 weighed, a notable change came over South American 
 
348 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 opinion. It is a fact that German methods of war shocked 
 all these nations, however lurid their own histories might 
 have been. No denunciation of the Kaiser equals in fury 
 the ''Apostrofe" (''To a Crowned Assassin") which the 
 Argentine poet, Almafuerte, published in La Plata. Nov- 
 elists, essayists, classical scholars, and men of science were 
 soon pleading the Allied cause with less invective and much 
 more cogent reason : Dr. Luis Drago, who brought a South 
 American doctrine of his own to The Hague ; Paul Groussac, 
 Director of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires, Jose 
 Enrique Rodo, the Uruguayan writer, and Professor de 
 Medeiros e Albuquerque, who spoke for Brazil. 
 
 These intellectuals laid stress upon the impassable gulf 
 between Deutschheit and their own material interests, their 
 racial affinities and cultural traditions. "The psychology 
 of the Brazilian people," Professor de Medeiros pointed 
 out, ''is radically and fundamentally opposed to that of 
 the German people. Their mutual antipathy is not a senti- 
 ment such as newspapers may inflame one day and quench 
 the next. It is a profound and essential antagonism, mor^ 
 deeply seated than that of any European people, not ex- 
 cepting even the French." This writer reviewed the re- 
 peated German efforts in Brazil, beginning with the 
 military mission which the Kaiser proposed, and Marshal 
 Hermes de Fonseca was cajoled into backing, as a means 
 of reorganizing the Brazilian Army. The next offensive 
 was against the native press. Newspaper debts were 
 bought up, and skilful moves set afoot to compel embar- 
 rassed journals to espouse the German cause. After that, 
 pro-Germanism raised its head in the Rio Congress; but 
 national feeling ran too high, for Brazil was too well aware 
 of the Prussian danger in her midst. 
 
 Gradually the influence of President Wilson began to 
 reassure these Latin nations. Pan-American Congresses 
 were called to Washington, one of them with the specific 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" 349 
 
 object of improving financial relationships. And in out- 
 lining his policy, Dr. Wilson implied that domestic peace 
 between the Latin States was a condition precedent to 
 the new era of Pan-American co-operation and prosperity. 
 First of all, the political independence and territorial in- 
 tegrity of every Republic should be guaranteed. All out- 
 standing boundar}^ and other disputes were to be handled 
 by patient investigation, and settled by friendly means. 
 No State should abet or permit the equipping of revolu- 
 tionary expeditions against the Government of any other 
 State, nor allow munitions of war to be exported for that 
 purpose. 
 
 America now had millions to lend for the development 
 of her sister nations. Her merchant marine was being 
 restored; and as an earnest of it a new freight and pas- 
 senger service was started from New York to Valparaiso 
 by way of the Panama Canal, which saves four thousand 
 miles over the old Magellan route. 
 
 But when all is said, it is impossible to forecast the drift 
 of this Pan-American movement. The lesser Republics are 
 quick to resent any interference. Canada is not interested 
 at all. There are, moreover, foreign colonies and islands — 
 British, French, and Dutch — v/hich Pan-American zealots 
 would purchase or "restore," as the Falklands to the Ar- 
 gentine Republic. This is the view of IMr. Charles H. 
 Sherrill, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of 
 the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. Another 
 ambitious scheme is the Pan-American Railroad from New 
 York to Buenos Aires, a distance of 10,471 miles. Many 
 links are already in existence, but 3309 miles remain to be 
 built, and it is doubtful whether the project will ever be 
 completed. 
 
 Other thinkers believe that time and fate will bring an 
 American Protectorate over all the territory between the 
 Rio Grande and the Isthmian Zone. The late Admiral 
 
350 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Mahan was for limiting the Monroe doctrine to the defence 
 of the Canal itself. No foreign Tower should be allowed 
 a foothold within striking distance of that strategic water- 
 way. Mahan thought that Monroeism, applied to the whole 
 South American Continent, would impose a weightier bur- 
 den than the Great Republic could bear. In any case it 
 is clear that President Wilson's first concern is to ensure 
 peace among the Latin States and to sublimate good from 
 the Great War by drawing the two continents together as 
 ''an example to the world in freedom of institutions, free- 
 dom of trade, and intelligence of mutual service." 
 
 It is more than doubtful, however, whether peace can be 
 indefinitely kept among the Latin Republics. Chile is 
 especially feared, as an oligarchy with a truculent record. 
 In the war of 1879-83 she attacked and defeated both Bo- 
 livia and Peru, taking from the latter the nitrate fields of 
 Tarapaca and the provinces of Tacna and Arica. The 
 Chilean Army is German-trained, the country poor, but 
 undeniably ambitious. In 1898, over disputed goldfields, 
 she mobilized for war against Argentina; but British 
 arbitration went against her, awarding her rival valuable 
 lands in Southern Patagonia. High up in the Andes the 
 two nations erected a dramatic statue of Christ, the Peace- 
 maker, and a bronze tablet below records the vow : ' ' These 
 mountains shall crumble to dust ere Chile and Argentina 
 break the solemn pact which they registered at the Saviour 's 
 feet." 
 
 Bolivia desires an outlet on the sea, and would no doubt 
 take over Tacna and Arica in case of further trouble be- 
 tween Chile and Peru. Colombia has a grievance of her 
 own against the last-named State; Venezuela could be 
 relied upon to invade Colombia and seize lands which are 
 likewise in dispute. Lastly, Paraguay has territory to 
 redeem from the Argentine, and believes that she might 
 count upon Brazilian aid in the attempt in view of yet 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" 351 
 
 another long standing feud. He is indeed a pink thinker 
 who imagines perpetual peace among these proud and 
 primitive Republics. Their finances are still chaotic, and 
 caste is glaringly marked. Beside a small and lavish aris- 
 tocracy is a politico-military party, variable as the moon 
 and freaked with lawless "dictatorships," like those of 
 Cipriano Castro in Venezuela and Jose Santos Zelaya in 
 Nicaragua. Below* these ranks are the masses, commonly 
 sunk in ignorance and squalor, and all too easily led by the 
 loudest pretender. Illiteracy in Guatemala reaches 92 per 
 cent. Therefore the new armed might of the United States, 
 well and wisely used as it will be in defence of Democracy 
 and Right, cannot fail to be a blessing to the South Ameri- 
 can peoples, whose delegates President Wilson greeted in 
 Washington with no formal welcome, but one "from the 
 heart as well as from the head. ' ' 
 
 The Empty Continent, as it is called, contains one-eighth 
 of the land-surface of the earth, and has barely the popula- 
 tion of the British Islands. Argentina alone is almost as 
 large as our Indian Empire. Roughly speaking, Brazil has 
 the same area as the European continent ; a single province 
 of Peru (Loreto) is larger than Austria-Hungary b}^ 40,000 
 square miles. It is a mistake to suppose that Spanish and 
 Portuguese are the only languages spoken. In Tierra del 
 Fuego, a country no bigger than Scotland, three distinct 
 dialects are used, and five or six in the Paraguayan Chaco. 
 It is no wonder that Germany mapped out an Empire in 
 these parts, for there is no limit to the riches of this un- 
 developed world. 
 
 Since food has proved a vital factor in the Great War, it 
 is worth while to consider South American supplies — al- 
 ways bearing in mind that not one-tenth of the area suit- 
 able for the raising of such products is at present under 
 cultivation. Countries bordering on the Caribbean and 
 the Mexican Gulf alone stand ready to supply 300.000 head 
 
352 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 of cattle every year. Three-fourths of the Latin States 
 have in recent years become exporters of food-animals or 
 meat; and foremost among these are Argentina, Uruguay, 
 Paraguay, and Venezuela. Mexico sends the United States 
 4,000,000 lbs. of meat each year. Of beef, Latin America 
 exported la^it year 340,000 metric tons, valued at $104,000,- 
 000. This came largely from Argentina and the south; 
 but the immense plateaus and uplands of Central America 
 and northern South America are perfectly adapted for the 
 raising of flocks and herds on a huge scale. 
 
 Of wheat, maize, and other grains the export was 6,000,- 
 000 metric tons, worth $160,000,000; of sugar, 3,236,000 
 tons, worth $271,000,000 ; of coffee, 18,000,000 bags, worth 
 $191,000,000; of cacao, 126,000 tons, worth $35,000,000. 
 Coco-nuts and pines represented $3,500,000; every week 
 saw 116,000,000 bananas delivered to the United States 
 alone. These products are capable of indefinite expansion, 
 and in this work America is now taking an energetic hand. 
 
 Apart from meat, Latin- American exports for last year 
 totalled $774,000,000. Special efforts are now being made 
 to grow sugar. Suitable areas in Brazil are thirty times 
 greater than those of^Cuba, which last year produced three 
 million metric tons. Peru and San Domingo could increase 
 ten-fold their present cane cultivation, and great tracts of 
 Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecua- 
 dor are likewise suitable for this valuable crop. 
 
 Three-fourths of Latin America can easily furnish sub- 
 stitutes for the staple grains. Yams, for instance ; manioc 
 and banana-flour, rice, beans, figs and coco-nuts. On both 
 sides of the Equator are lands with extraordinary climatic 
 advantages. Even in waste places valuable products are 
 found, like the stunted tagua-palm, whose big seeds yield a 
 vegetable ivory for which Hamburg devised special ma- 
 chinery of manufacture. Three corn crops a year are often 
 possible in Latin America; and Washington is now send- 
 
IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT" 353 
 
 ing agricultural chemists and experts into the sister States 
 to demonstrate new ways of farming and marketing. jMr. 
 C. H. Townsend, of the Bureau of Entomology, points to 
 the State of Amazonas, in Brazil, as by far the richest on 
 earth in regard to possible human subsistence. Every 
 conceivable food-stuff could here be grown. Yet the cap- 
 ital city of Manaos, and other important centres, are 
 actually compelled to import supplies, such is the lack of 
 development in a peerless State more than three times the 
 size of the German Empire, though with a smaller popula- 
 tion than the city of Bradford. 
 
 Pan-American advocates point out that up till 1914 
 almost all the Government and private loans of the Latin 
 States were raised in Europe. This supply has been cut 
 off, and is unlikely to be renewed for many years after the 
 war. Therefore the financing of Latin America is become 
 a matter for the United States, and must in every way be 
 beneficial on the prudent lines laid down by President 
 Wilson. It is thought that if $500,000,000 were invested 
 in the twenty Republics during the next five years, it 
 would result in an increase of Pan-American trade to a 
 like amount. 
 
 But first of all, the banking interests of the L^nited States 
 and their bond-buying constituencies must be educated in 
 Pan-American possibilities. Nor should this be difficult, 
 thanks to the impetus given to bond-buying by the famous 
 Liberty Loans. One of these was taken up by four million 
 investors, whereas less than 300,000 Americans had previ- 
 ously owned Government bonds ; they preferred municipal 
 issues at home, and mining, railroad, and industrial stocks, 
 which were subject to erratic fluctuation and market 
 manipulation. Unfortunately the Latin States are asso- 
 ciated in the American mind with periodic revolutions and 
 political instability. Cartoonists have long pictured the 
 bravo who seizes the reins of government with no larger 
 
354 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 following than a few ragged peons and a mule. Pan- 
 American apostles now point out that this comic-opera 
 regime is over, and the United States intent upon the eco- 
 nomic soundness of the whole hemisphere. 
 
 In round figures, American trade with the Latin States 
 for 1917 showed an increase of three hundred per cent, over 
 the figures for 1914. Nine months' imports (especially cop- 
 per) from Chile were greater by $53,000,000 than they 
 were two years previously. Those from Peru were $17,- 
 000,000 up, and so in proportion with Uruguay, Colombia, 
 and Ecuador. The increase in exports from the United 
 States was equally large. Peru is extending her cotton 
 production, Brazil is exporting five times more beef cattle 
 than she did in 1916; Argentina is striving to make up 
 for Australia's restricted export of wool. 
 
 It is the belief of Director Barrett of the Pan-American 
 Union that five years after peace is declared, Latin 
 America's commerce will reach five billion dollars, 
 evenly divided between Europe and the United States. 
 The National City Bank of New York, America's most 
 powerful financial concern, has inaugurated the new era by 
 opening branches in Rio and Buenos Aires, in Santos, Sao 
 Paulo, Bahia, Montevideo and Santiago. This is but a 
 beginning. The same bank publishes a magazine called 
 The Americas, and this contains valuable information for 
 traders who wish to enlist in the new ' ' economic offensive ' ' 
 which the United States is planning after the war on both 
 Government and private lines. 
 
 Meanwhile the Pan-American Union in Washington has 
 taken a fresh lease of life for the coming Day. This is an 
 International Bureau of Information, maintained by the 
 twenty Latin Republics and the United States. It is 
 housed in a very handsome building, which Mr. Carnegie 
 gave at a cost of a million dollars. American diplomats 
 like Mr. C. H. Sherrill, a former Minister in Buenos Aires, 
 
IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT^' 355 
 
 and consular agents like Mr. E. B. Filsinger write books 
 and pamphlets to promote the growth of Pan-American- 
 ism. The last-named was president and commissioner of 
 the Latin-American Trade Association. These prudent 
 guides explain the tariffs and customs laws, the perils of 
 unstable exchange and the peculiar tastes and prejudices 
 of South American importers, with whom Yankee hustle 
 may be grievously out of place. Therefore stress is laid 
 upon the social side of business deals; the value of cour- 
 tesy and tact, which ''cut so little ice" north of the Mex- 
 ican Line, where goods and price are the most appealing 
 factors. 
 
 The whole of this trade offensive — it is by no means 
 confined to Latin America — has shrewd backing from the 
 American Government and its bureaucracies. Gone for 
 ever is the shirt-sleeves diplomacy and "political" Con- 
 sular Service of the United States; both were overhauled 
 during the four terms of Roosevelt and Wilson. The Re- 
 organization Act of April 5, 1906, graded all the American 
 consuls. It provided for inspection and supervision, it 
 required all official fees to be accounted for and turned 
 into the Treasury, at the same time providing adequate 
 salaries, and thoroughly Americanizing the service by in- 
 sisting that all officers of over $1000 a year should be citi- 
 zens of the Republic. 
 
 As usual, unlimited power in this matter was vested 
 in the President. With these reforms went a new merit 
 system devised by Secretary of State Root. This consisted 
 in an efficiency-record of each consul: his ability, prompt- 
 ness, and diligence; his personal conduct whilst in office, 
 and the character of his trade reports to the Department. 
 These records are consulted by the Secretary of State, 
 and brought to the President's notice with a view to pro- 
 motion, transfer, or retention in office. In this way a 
 good man was assured that his work would not be for- 
 
356 xYMERICA'S DAY 
 
 gotten by a new Administration; and his service to the 
 nation's commerce was made independent of the ebb and 
 flow of party politics. The Department of Commerce 
 and Labour publishes a daily brochure of Consular Re- 
 ports and Foreign Trade Opportunities. Here is a college 
 in Buenos Aires asking for school and laboratory supplies. 
 A Dutch house inquires about maple rollers for making 
 wall-paper; the Chilean Government is about to invite 
 tenders for seventy-nine miles of railway (with important 
 bridges) from Asorno to Puerto Montt. 
 
 Shoes for the Balkan States, horses for British artillery, 
 motor-cars for India, a meat-packing plant for Serbia; 
 trams for Salonica, water-pipes for Tsing-tau, candles for 
 Uruguay, cheap jewels for Korea, with hints on packing 
 and pilfering en route, together with sad reflections on the 
 Turk and the guileful Chinee. These reports, acute and 
 terse, are extraordinarily interesting. They tell of markets 
 for all goods, from a gramophone to a case of chewing- 
 gum ; orange-wrapping machinery, street sprinklers, and 
 portable houses for Central and South America. More- 
 over, the consuls take note of every foreign institution 
 likely to be of service; and from the frequency, variety, 
 and intelligence of these remarks, a man is judged and 
 weighed. Of course the great staples sell themselves — 
 cotton, petroleum, grains, and ores. It is in finding mar- 
 kets for manufactured goods that the American consuls 
 are so clever ; and due meed is properly given them in State 
 Papers when the Government deals with the huge increase 
 of trade which recent years have seen. 
 
 In the Latin States the rivalry between American and 
 German consuls became intense before the Great Republic 
 declared war and gave a lead to her sister nations, grap- 
 pling them to her with new ties — **now that all trust in 
 treaties and international loyalty is gone." I quote from 
 Brazil's regretful Note to the Holy See. 
 
IN THE ''EMPTY CONTINENT" S57 
 
 It was America's task to attack the net of commerce 
 and finance with which Germany had covered the Empty 
 Continent. A start was made with a "black-list" of 
 nearly two thousand enemy firms — banks, business houses, 
 merchants, public utility concerns, and the like. America 
 never thought she would have a black-list; her President 
 and State Secretary had said as much. Had she not al- 
 ready protested over similar measures taken against her 
 own firms by the British and French Governments? But 
 war is a great teacher. In July, 1917, Washini>ton began 
 to black-list the largest and most dangerous combinations 
 of German capital in Latin America; billions of dollars 
 were here represented. Exports to these concerns were for- 
 bidden by law or made subject to license. Imports from 
 them were only permitted in liquidation of American 
 debts. 
 
 In this work the War Trade Board was assisted by 
 commercial attaches and consuls, who, in order to minimize 
 inconvenience, furnished the names of non-enemy firms as 
 substitutes for the proscribed concerns. The latter had 
 been politically active, aiding German raids and plots, fo- 
 menting strikes in the familiar style; furthering German 
 aims and paying for propaganda which had reached amaz- 
 ing proportions. The new theory forced upon England 
 and the United States by the German patriotismus was that 
 an enemy was an enemy — not only in his own country, but 
 wheresoever he was found. To what extent German in- 
 terests in South America will recover after the war, it is 
 not yet possible to say. Certain it is that the United States 
 will use her opportunity to the utmost — not in mere trade 
 alone, let me hasten to say, but also in firm and tactful 
 leading of these nations towards political stability and 
 reconstruction. 
 
 As a belligerent Power on a great scale, America's mi's- 
 sion has often been stated by President Wilson. "It is 
 
358 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 for us a war of high principle," he claims, *' debased by 
 no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation. Our object 
 is to vindicate Peace and Justice in the life of the world 
 . . . and to set up among the really free and self -governed 
 peoples such a concert of purpose and action as will hence- 
 forth ensure those principles." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 *'OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION'* 
 
 ("There had undoubtedly arisen between the peoples of 
 Japan and the United States an unfortunate misconcep- 
 tion of each other's motives in regard to China. . . . The 
 tendency to mistrust spread to such an extent as to as- 
 sume alarming proportions. 
 
 "We know now that it was fostered by a campaign of 
 falsehood, secretly carried on by agents of the German 
 Government, which, as part of its foreign policy, thought 
 it well to alienate America and Japan, hoping, in the event 
 of trouble with either Power, to have in the other at least 
 a friend, and possibly an ally. . . ." — Secretary of State 
 Robert Lansing.) 
 
 Looking into the future, America is a little anxious 
 over her military transformation. Is it likely to be per- 
 manent? Will the times return to their primitive gold 
 when this era of blood and iron has passed ; or is the 
 divine precept, "Bear ye one another's burdens," to be 
 carried out indefinitely with bayonet and bomb? The 
 veteran. Dr. Eliot of Harvard, is afraid the great Lesson 
 will leave untouched the unholy feud which Lucretius 
 saw in the fiercely battling forces of the world. Already 
 Bills have been brought into Congress to fasten military 
 service upon the United States. War Secretary Baker, 
 in his annual report, soothes a pacific people by deferring 
 policy in this regard until peace comes again, and perhaps 
 with it a rational measure of disarmament and guarantees. 
 
 .359 
 
360 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 This is also the President's view, and that of the masses in 
 the main who are content to wait and see, bearing in mind 
 the old racecourse maxim, ''When it's wet, do not bet." 
 
 There still lingers in the United States a body of opinion 
 which dreads preparation for war, and would somehow 
 compromise with the monster of militarism, lest Force come 
 to be regarded as the sole hope of liberty in the twentieth 
 century as it was in the seventeenth. It is worth while to 
 notice this wistful sentiment as I pass, for although quies- 
 cent now it is likely to reassert itself at the first opportunity. 
 The military machine, these pacifists contend (they are 
 found in Congress as well as out of it), is a dangerous 
 possession — explosive, impersonal; responding to the light- 
 est touch, as the avalanche moves to the perching bird 
 or the slam of a cottage door in the Alpine valley. It is a 
 feeling of this kind which Congress has always opposed to 
 the arming of the United States, quoting the desideratum 
 of "William James with inveterate hope. ' ' One hears, ' ' the 
 philosopher said, "of the mechanical equivalent of heat. 
 What we now need to discover in the social realm is the 
 moral equivalent of war — something heroic that will spread 
 to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as com- 
 patible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be 
 incompatible." 
 
 Of this wordy stuff and the hindrance it entailed. Gen- 
 eral Crozier, of the Bureau of Ordnance, spoke quite 
 frankly in his evidence before the Military Committee of 
 the Senate. For years, the witness pointed out. Congress 
 had cut down the appropriations for artillery until they 
 were "absolutely inadequate." The result was that the 
 work of years had to be crowded into a few hurried months, 
 with the inevitable ' ' difficulties and present partial delays, ' ' 
 to which the President alluded in his reply to Count 
 Hertling and Count Czernin. The American Press passed 
 all the errors and muddles in angry review — the personal 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 361 
 
 friction and resignations; the absurd red tape, the disap- 
 pointments and failure to accomplish enormous programs 
 in hand. Blame for these things, as the Washington Star 
 pointed out, should not be laid upon present-day officials, 
 but upon "past Congresses, acting under the influence of 
 ranting spell-binders and dreaming millennialists. " 
 
 It must be said that these are today a shrinking band — 
 especially since Viscount Ishii sprang his Japanese ''Mon- 
 roe Doctrine for Asia" on the United States in 1917. 
 This supplements the Root-Takahira Agreement of 1908, 
 which in turn reaffirmed Secretary Hay's policy of the 
 Open Door in China to which the Powers agreed in 1900. 
 The text of the Ishii-Lansing Memorandum is in part as 
 follows: "In order to silence mischievous reports which 
 have from time to time been circulated, it is believed by us 
 that a public announcement once more of the desires and 
 intentions shared by our two Governments is advisable. 
 
 *'The Governments of the United States and Japan 
 recognize that territorial propinquity creates special rela- 
 tions between countries, and consequently the United 
 States recognize that Japan has special interests in China 
 — particularly in the parts to which her possessions are 
 contiguous. 
 
 "The territorial sovereignty of China, nevertheless, re- 
 mains unimpaired, and the Government of the United 
 States has every confidence in the repeated assurances of 
 the Imperial Japanese Government that, while geographical 
 position gives Japan such special interests, there is no de- 
 sire to discriminate against the trade of other nations, 
 or to disregard the commercial rights heretofore granted by 
 China in treaties with other Powers. ^ 
 
 "The Governments of the United States and Japan d'feny 
 that they have any purpose to infringe in any way the 
 independence or territorial integrity of China; and they 
 declare, furthermore, that they always adhere to the prin- 
 
362 - AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 ciple of the so-called 'Open Door,' or equal opportunity 
 for commerce and industry in China." 
 
 Now the good faith of America in this matter is beyond 
 dispute, whereas the record of Japan is one of aggression. 
 Her Twenty-One Demands, put forward by the Okuma- 
 Kato Ministry in 1915, were calculated to destroy the 
 sovereignty of China altogether. The notorious "Group 
 V" of these demands aimed at complete control by Japan 
 of the public life of China, together with its army and 
 munitions of war. So that American opinion, especially on 
 the Pacific Slope, was far from pleased with the new Eastern 
 Monroe Doctrine, which the "yellow Prussian" put for- 
 ward at a time when the white Powers were locked in 
 deadly conflict. 
 
 Let me say at once that I deal first of all with America's 
 version, passing later to that of Japan, and explaining 
 friction and mistrust of long standing over the great world- 
 markets of awakening Asia. For China is a land of in- 
 calculable riches; it comprises one-twelfth of the earth's 
 surface, and has a population of 400,000,000 souls. With 
 Japan in possession, the pessimists say, she would in time 
 become a menace to the world. She would realize her 
 Pan-Asiatic dream, with industrial wealth beyond com- 
 pute; an immense navy, and an army of possibly twenty 
 million men recruited chiefly from her Chinese vassals, 
 whose fighting quality, given modern weapons and scien- 
 tific leading, have been proved in many fields. Unhappily 
 this martial spirit has been mainly shown in civil wars. 
 
 The break-up of China, so long expected, may well be at 
 hand by some coup de main, such as these lawless days have 
 made familiar to us all. For China is a loose chaos of 
 many tongues, with no national spirit informing it. A sin- 
 gle province — silken Sze-chuan — is larger than France, 
 and in its red basin lie the largest coal-fields in the world. 
 Food crops grow twice, and even thrice ,in a year. Here, 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 363 
 
 then, is an unexploited world — a derelict which expansive 
 Japan, through all her statesmen from Hayashi in 1895 to 
 Terauchi in 1918, has marked as the proper sphere of an 
 economically poor and cramped, though proud and ambi- 
 tious people. 
 
 The late Sir Robert Hart, who gave his life to China's 
 service, was for ever haunted by the fate of his adopted 
 land. "The ship may go down in the night," he would 
 say, as he paced the floor^in the small hours. Assuredly 
 the night of world-war has not bettered China's chances 
 of weathering the storm. Nor has America any illusions, 
 as she reviews the history of the past twenty years, culmi- 
 nating in Viscount Ishii's mission, which was a portent of 
 momentous change. Precisely what pressure and promise 
 were brought to bear upon the United States in this matter 
 is a diplomatic secret, and must remain so for a time. 
 ''None of us doubt," writes the typical American humorist, 
 "that Japan has Pacific intentions!" 
 
 Calif ornian papers were more downright, reminding their 
 readers of Korean "scraps of paper," now added to the 
 historic heap. Three of these guaranteed the "integrity 
 and independence" of that debased and wretched State. 
 The last of them was made only two years before the total 
 absorption of the Hermit Kingdom by Japan. The very 
 name of Korea was then blotted from the map ; it was 
 rechristened Chosen, and became a province of the expan- 
 sive Empire by reason of that same propinquity which 
 America now concedes as a ground of special interests. 
 And so with Manchuria, wrested from Russia a few years 
 later under public promise of its restoration to China. It 
 is now a Japanese sphere. So also is Eastern Inner Mon- 
 golia, together with Fukien and the Shantung promontory 
 — this last taken over with the conquered German zone, 
 including perpetual rights, and the railway from Tsing-tao 
 to Tmjianfu, the provincial capital. 
 
364 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 America complains that propinquity and special interests 
 appear to be links in an endless chain which, with avowed 
 purpose, Japan is pursuing into the very heart of helpless 
 China. Before the war, the Yang-tse Valley was regarded 
 as a British sphere, even as Fukien was Japanese. But the 
 Twenty-One Demands included joint ownership of the 
 Han-yeh-ping holdings near Hankow. 
 
 After forty centuries China remains a nebulous welter 
 with no Government as we understand it; the main street 
 of her heedless capital is today policed by foreign soldiers. 
 It is impossible to convey the lack of nationhood which 
 this Asiatic prize presents — ''the only country on earth," 
 as one of her intellectuals said, ''which finds it necessary 
 to give compensation for the withdrawal of wholly un- 
 tenable demands." 
 
 Has China any disinterested friend? Undoubtedly she 
 has in the United States, which, on John Hay 's recommen- 
 dation, remitted half the yearly indemnity payable on ac- 
 count of the Boxer havoc of 1900. This money — nearly 
 $12,000,000 — was devoted to the education of Chinese boys 
 in academics and technical schools of the first rank in the 
 United States. It would take too long to instance all the 
 goodwill manifestations of America for the Chinese peo- 
 ple. In June, 1900, when the Allied ships opened fire on 
 the Taku Forts, it was the U. S. commander, Admiral 
 Kempff, who alone refused to take part in the bombard- 
 ment, warning his colleagues that it would unite and in- 
 flame all factions against the foreigners. 
 
 That China was mindful of this friendship is seen by 
 the vote in the Pekin Parliament to erect a monument 
 to John Hay, who, in 1899, gave a practical turn to 
 America's concern over the impending break-up of the 
 Empire. The war with Japan, five years before, had 
 demonstrated China's military impotence in the face of a 
 foreign foe. And now the Powers of Europe were plainly 
 
'^OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 365 
 
 bent on spoliation. Japan had seized Formosa and im- 
 posed a fine of $185,000,000 on her late enemy; the orig- 
 inal demand was much larger. Russia had taken Port 
 Arthur, and was extending her influence in Manchuria. 
 Germany had occupied Kiao-chau, Britain had appropri- 
 ated Wei-hai-wei, France added to her Asiatic domains 
 certain Chinese territory in the south. Concessions for 
 railways, mines, and special privileges were being extorted 
 month by month; and the nineteenth century closed with 
 the dissolution of the Chinese Empire predicted on all 
 sides. 
 
 It was on September 19, 1899, that John Hay, then 
 Secretary of State, addressed his Open-Door Note to tlio 
 predatory Powers. It was an adroit move, and, for a 
 time at least, stayed further encroachment as well as en- 
 hancing American prestige. Hay was trying to develop 
 an alternative to those "spheres of influence" which bade 
 fair to devour the Asiatic domain. Replying to him in 
 an exchange of Notes, the Powers agreed to base future 
 policy, not upon individual spheres, but upon the common 
 interests of all. Nevertheless the military might of Japan 
 — already proved against a great European Power — her 
 pressing needs, and trade energy were soon assailing the 
 "Open Door." 
 
 So far back as 1895, when peace with China was con- 
 cluded, Count Tadasu Hayashi stated the conqueror's plan 
 in these words: "AVhat Japan must now do is, remain 
 quiet for a while in order to lull the suspicion of her which 
 exists. Let her meanwhile strengthen the bases of her 
 national power; let her watch and wait for the oppor- 
 tunity which will one day surely come to her in the Orient. ' ' 
 It is plaintive America's case that the Great War has fur- 
 nished this opportunity; and the Manufacturers' Export 
 Association said as much to Secretary of State Lansing 
 in a notable letter, written in 1916. All indications, the 
 
366 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 members declared, ''pointed to the fact that Japan, taking 
 advantage of the occupation of other world-Powers with 
 their own affairs, was about to take strong measures in 
 carrying out her designs in China, and that in a manner 
 which may seriously affect the interests of American trade, 
 and promises to nullify the 'Open Door' policy to which 
 Japan, in common with other Powers, is committed." 
 
 The Association did not confine itself to vague fears, 
 but reminded the Foreign Minister that "the history of 
 Japanese activity in Manchuria is the history of an all 
 but complete extinction of American commerce." The 
 weapons used were preferential rates and vexatious hold- 
 ups of foreign goods. Here was a sphere in which a trade 
 of $24,000,000 speedily dropped to below $3,000,000, and 
 is still on the downward grade. So far as America was 
 concerned, Manchuria was another Korea. In 1907 the 
 trade in grey cotton shirting and sheetings for that State 
 was evenly divided between Great Britain and Japan. 
 Six years later our share was eight per cent., and that of 
 Japan ninety per cent. In the same interval American 
 trade with Korea fell off seventy-five per cent. Here 
 again were special freight rebates for the Japanese, spe- 
 cial customs dues to their own people at Au-tung, and 
 loans from the Yokohama Specie Bank at four and a half 
 per cent., which was much below the prevailing rate. 
 
 Another element which disturbed America was the se- 
 cret Treaty between Russia and Japan, signed on July 3, 
 1916. This appears to have had a definite military aim in 
 keeping China free from the influence of a third Power. 
 Manchurian railroads and munitions of war were also in- 
 cluded in a deal which may well have conflicted with Ar- 
 ticle III of Great Britain's own alliance with Japan, re- 
 newed five years previously. Plere the high contracting 
 parties declare that neither shall enter into another agree- 
 ment without consulting her partner. 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 367 
 
 It is well known that secret diplomacy of this kind is 
 very repugnant to the United States, whose love for above- 
 board methods and popular assent have been so often 
 set forth in President Wilson's speeches. It will be re- 
 membered that the Bolsheviki of Petrograd published all 
 the secret treaties they could lay hands upon in the Rus- 
 sian archives. These embarrassing papers dealt with the 
 fate of the Dardanelles and Persia, the future of Asiatic 
 Turkey and the left bank of the Rhine, as well as induce- 
 ments to Greece, Rumania, and Italy. In the latter case 
 the whole Dalmatian coast was added to the Trentino, 
 South Tj^rol, Trieste, and Istria. Thus the Adriatic was 
 to become an Italian lake, with Austria-Hungary cut off 
 from her seven strategic gulfs and naval bases. President 
 Wilson referred to these furtive bargains, warning states- 
 men not to ignore the wide-awake opinion of democracy, 
 nor to attempt ''any such covenants of selfishness and 
 compromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna. 
 The thought of the plain people, here and everywhere 
 throughout the world — the people who enjoy no privilege, 
 and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of 
 right and wrong, is the air all Governments must hence- 
 forth breathe if they would live." Only upon that basis 
 was there a promise of stability beyond that of the bad 
 old order — "the arbitrary decisions of a few negotiators 
 striving to secure, by chicanery or persuasion, the inter- 
 ests of this or that dynasty or nation. ' ' 
 
 It was this passion for the square deal which led to 
 publication of the Ishii-Lansing Agreement last year. Its 
 reception, I must say, was rather mixed, and many Amer- 
 ican thinkers sided with Chinese publicists at home and 
 abroad who posed an awkward parallel. "We feel you 
 have departed from your traditional friendship," these 
 last complained, "in conceding the Japanese demand. 
 China is an independent nation and ought not to be made 
 
368 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 the subject of negotiation between foreign countries. Now 
 suppose Japan and the United States signed another agree- 
 ment — with 'Mexico' substituted for 'China.' Do you 
 think that would improve Mexican- American relations?" 
 
 German comment on the Ishii Agreement was that it 
 deferred indefinitely ''that war between Japan and the 
 United States which has become a fixed idea with the aver- 
 age German, and a definite element in our Government's 
 political calculations." Another expert thought that Ger- 
 many would have Japan to deal with at the peace-table 
 as regards Tsing-tau, and that place in the Orient sun 
 which divine right had decreed to the Herrenvolk, as the 
 Kaiser so often declared in his character of seer and 
 prophet. "Who can foresee," Wilhelm put to his peo- 
 ple, "what events may take place in the Pacific in days 
 to come — days not so far distant as some believe, and for 
 which we must steadily prepare?" 
 
 The Frankfurter Zeitung had an able article from its 
 former correspondent in the Far East, and this may be 
 taken as typical of German trade aims. "China is the land 
 of the future for the industry and enterprise of the world ; 
 we must allow no blocking of our road in that spacious 
 quarter. After the war we shall see fierce vying in the 
 Asiatic field, and we Germans will face not only individ- 
 ual competition, but also State-aided concerns, like the 
 American International Corporation." The Cologne Ga- 
 zette went over the same ground, and then turned to a 
 grander theme — a German-Russian- Japanese coalition 
 which was "a syndicate for the division of the world," 
 with promising partners for the German job, which was 
 of course to secure the lion's share. 
 
 It may be recalled that Mr. Gerard, as U. S. Ambassador 
 in Berlin, heard a good deal about this Teuto-Russo- 
 Japanese offensive. Financiers and members of the 
 
"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION'' 369 
 
 Reichstag assured him that Germany ''would be forced" 
 into such a pact if America threw her weight into the Allied 
 cause, and thus brought about what Von Tirpitz called 
 "the Anglo-Saxon tyranny." It was Germany's wish that 
 the United States should "stay at home," as Bismarck 
 thought Russia ought to do. All the world knows how 
 German intrigue worked to keep America "at home." 
 She was constantly reminded that she now had Imperial 
 problems of her own, including an Eastern Question in 
 which her Teuton "friend" took an extraordinary inter- 
 est. ^Ir. Gerard himself tells of a strange talk with the 
 Kaiser at the New Year's reception of Ambassadors in 
 1914, six months before the outbreak of war. The Diplo- 
 matic Corps were lined up like dragoons, six feet apart, 
 in one of the palace halls when the Emperor entered with 
 his staff. "He stayed longest with the Turk and myself, 
 thereby arousing the curiosity of the others, who suspected 
 that the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the com- 
 pliments of the season. And he did. What the Emperor 
 said to me is of interest to every American, for it shows 
 his subtlety of purpose. The Kaiser talked at length about 
 what he called Japan's designs upon the United States. 
 He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and 
 an army of Japanese colonels." America must be kept 
 at home, and at all costs prevented from joining hands with 
 Great Britain in an "Anglo-Saxon domination." Later 
 on the German press took up the theme, and dealt simul- 
 taneously with this new menace to the Fatherland. For 
 it might well offset the European system where docile 
 States were to be ranged like satellites around the central 
 German sun. In this connection a certain telegram of 
 the Kaiser to Tsar Nicholas should be recalled. It was 
 dispatched after the Dogger Bank affair, and made use of 
 the term "Anglo-Saxon," as if to show that even then 
 
370 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Wilhelm pictured Britain and America united against 
 him on his trampling march from Antwerp to the marts 
 and strongholds of Eastern Asia. 
 
 Evidence was also published in revolutionary Russia — 
 that enfant terrible of the chancelleries — showing that the 
 German Emperor made overtures to Japan. The latest of 
 these was on the eve of the fall of Tsing-tau, when a sep- 
 arate peace was mooted on the Mikado's own terms; the 
 only stipulation being that Japan should attack Russia 
 as a preliminary to the Pan-Asiatic scheme which Okuma's 
 Government was supposed to cherish. This proposal was 
 scornfully rejected, and the Kaiser's message turned over 
 to the British Ambassador in Tokio. For German intrigue 
 in the Far East, especially with a view to commercial 
 rivalry after the war, had been throughout inimical to 
 Japan. Propaganda was carried on in the right Chinese 
 quarters, which is to say among Pekin officials; merchants 
 of the Treaty Ports who handle foreign trade, and Young 
 China representatives in Parliament and the Provincial 
 Assemblies, where Western thought is developing. 
 
 It is not to be denied that German prestige stood high 
 with the Chinese military caste. Great play was made 
 with the war-map; subsidies were granted to native jour- 
 nals which were supplied with German news by the Ost- 
 Asiatische Service. Nor was there any lack of agents 
 drilled in what America calls "the gimlet ways of a spy- 
 and-bully system." Witness the two years' tour of Otto 
 von Hentig from far Yarkand back to the security of the 
 German Consulate in Hankow, leaving a trail of slaughter 
 and confusion behind him. Something like $15,000,000 a 
 year was paid by the Chinese Government to the Deutsch- 
 Asiatische Bank: this included Germany's share of the 
 Boxer Indemnity, and also interest on the two Anglo- 
 German loans. So there was plenty of money available for 
 evil work against the Allies; for support of the Manchu 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION '^ 371 
 
 movement (there were German gunners in that coup 
 d'etat) and above all for the fertilization of future com- 
 mercial fields. ''German}^ looks ahead," as the Emperor 
 remarked in his ''far-stretching horizon" speech. It is 
 therefore clear that the elimination of such a rival was 
 a necessity for Japan, and she set about the task with 
 rare vigour. 
 
 When Marshal Terauchi's Government saw America com- 
 mitted to war, it was decided to send a Plenipotentiary who 
 should state in clear terms the new Asiatic policy of Japan, 
 and at the same time dispel the mistrust and irritation of 
 years between the two nations. For this mission the ablest 
 of envoys was chosen — Viscount Kikujiro Ishii, a man of 
 extraordinary fluency and grace, trained under Komura, 
 who was the father of Japanese diplomacy. Ishii was 
 Ambassador to France in 1912, and three years later he 
 became Foreign Minister under Okuma. "Our message 
 this day," he declared on landing in San Francisco, "is 
 that, through shadow or shine, America and Japan are 
 bound together for the same goal. Your sons and ours 
 must have good neighbourhood assured. We must live 
 so that the word or deed of neither may be viewed aslant; 
 that venomous tongues, hired slander, and sinister intrigue 
 such as has victimized us both, can only in future serve to 
 draw us closer together for mutual protection and the 
 common welfare of all." 
 
 At the same time there was throughout this envoy's 
 speeches a quiet insistence upon prior rights. "Circum- 
 stances for which we are in no sense responsible give us 
 special interests in China. . . . Our Chinese friends," 
 Ishii explained at a banquet on his return to Tokio, "tell 
 us that China and Japan are like the two wings of a bird, 
 the one indispensable to the other." I saw cartoons in 
 California showing that bird in mocking flight, leaving 
 Uncle Sam completely in the lurch ! Meanwhile Viscount 
 
372 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Ishii, by reason of his success, was appointed Ambassador 
 in Washington, replacing Aimaro Sato, who was barely 
 established in his post — the graduate of an Indiana Uni- 
 versity and but recently hailed as the ideal Japanese en- 
 voy. 
 
 Sixty-five years have passed since the Roosevelt of his 
 day, President Fillmore, sent Commodore Perry to open 
 relations with the shy Twilight Children whom Francis 
 Xavier had long before found ''very desirous of being in- 
 structed." But Japan of the Shogunate days had no zest 
 for foreign ways or creeds; nor can it be said that her 
 visitors, whether traders, missionaries, or naval officers, 
 made a pretty showing in that mysterious land. They 
 were all cleared out in 1637, and Christianity was put un- 
 der a ban. Then followed two centuries of seclusion, when 
 Japan was fenced in a feudal world untroubled by sophists, 
 economists, or calculators. Of course it could not last. 
 Rumour of Russian encroachment began to reach those 
 lovely islands. England's Opium War in China caused a 
 faint stir; the French and Dutch gave warning that the 
 Christian nations were looking eastward for new marts of 
 trade. But it was America who led the way, after abortive 
 attempts on the part of whalers and castaways to obtain 
 concessions. 
 
 As early as 1846 official Washington took a hand — always 
 be it noted with an ' ' armed prayer ' ' to the mediaeval Sho- 
 gunate. Yet Commodore Biddle could get no more than 
 an anchorage in Yedo Bay for his ninety-gun ship ; the 
 intruder was plainly told there was "nothing doing." By 
 1850 American interests were more clamorous. There 
 were sailors marooned in Japan at this time, and Cali- 
 fornia's gold had turned men's eyes to the Pacific and 
 alluring isles beyond. Two years later President Fill- 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 373 
 
 more's Cabinet arranged the Perry Expedition with elab- 
 orate care. Books were bought, scientists and interpreters 
 selected ; charts to the value of $30,000 were procured from 
 Holland, and American wares got ready on a tempting 
 scale. It is curious that the United States should have 
 taken such a step at this time, for there was trouble in 
 Cuba, and feeling was very bitter between North and 
 South over the slavery question. 
 
 Perry's mission wore a minatory look. He sailed from 
 Norfolk with a squadron of four warships, nor did he 
 "speak softly," as Roosevelt advised America should do 
 when she carries the ''Big Stick." On the contrary, the 
 message sent to the Mikado spoke of a still greater armada 
 which was ''hourly expected." The Commodore explained 
 that, "should it become necessary," he would return the 
 follovv^ing spring "with a much larger force. But it is 
 hoped that the Government of Your Imperial Majesty 
 will render such return unnecessary by acceding at once 
 to the very reasonable and pacific overtures contained in 
 the President's letter." This last ran as follows: "These 
 are the only objects for which I have sent Commodore 
 Perry, with a powerful squadron, to pay a visit to Your 
 Imperial Majesty's renowned city of Yedo — Friendship, 
 commerce, a supply of coal and provisions, and protec- 
 tion for our shipwrecked people. 
 
 Millard Fillmore. ' ' 
 
 Having thoroughly shaken up the Shogun, together with 
 the Emperor and his people. Perry sailed away and went 
 back again in February, 1854, with an imposing fleet of 
 ten warships. The result was the first Treaty with Japan 
 — America's earliest "Open Door" in the Far East. Eng- 
 land, Holland, Russia, and France were soon elbowing 
 each other in that door. 
 
 But Japan herself was by no means unanimous over the 
 
374 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 passing of her ancient order. Friction arose between the 
 Shogun in Yedo and the Mikado in Kyoto — a shadowy 
 figure who dwelt apart, leaving mundane rule to his 
 hereditary lieutenant. The feudal lords and warriors were 
 in favour of continued isolation: the Liberals urged inter- 
 course and compromise with pushful nations overseas. 
 Ten years of rancour and civil strife drove the division 
 deeper; and in 1863 the Shogun issued an order expelling 
 all foreigners. The arrogance and greed of these intruders 
 recall the righteous blaze of St. Francis Xavier, the apostle 
 of India and also of these '^ Islands in the Hope of God." 
 ''Every one here," said the sixteenth-century Jesuit, ''takes 
 the same road — rapio, rapis. And I am terrified to see 
 how many moods and tenses of the wretched verb those 
 who come this way can invent." 
 
 New envoys and Treaty Rights called upon the Mikado, 
 under threat of war, to rescind his deputy 's decree. Then, 
 at the suggestion of Sir Harry Parkes, the Powers took 
 steps to eliminate the Shogun altogether; in 1868 the 
 Emperor Mutsuhito abolished his alter ego, and became 
 the actual as well as the formal head of the Government. 
 The capital was now moved to Yedo, which was renamed 
 Tokio or "the Metropolis of the East." Four years later 
 the feudal lords, together with their Samurai retainers, 
 gave up their rights in order that Japan might be brought 
 into line with modern progress. How effectually this has 
 been done may be seen in any picture-book of today. 
 For the pretty people are no longer concerned with ex- 
 quisite trifles and cherry-blossom festivals, but with fac- 
 tory and forge; with skyscrapers and docks, department 
 stores, and mushroom fortunes, like that of Shinya Uchida 
 of Kobe, who made five million jeii in a single year of 
 war, chiefly out of shipping, which returned him a divi- 
 dend of six hundred and fifty per cent. The narikin, or 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 375 
 
 *'man turned into gold," is an envied figure in the indus- 
 trial Empire of today. 
 
 Japan 's assimilation of Western ways, her rise to power, 
 with armed assertion and suave diplomacy — here is a 
 portent without parallel in the drama of history. No 
 sooner was the so-called Restoration complete than the 
 Mikado took a public oath "to seek for wisdom in every 
 quarter of the earth." Gradually a Parliament came into 
 being ; a new bureaucracy, a system of education, and mili- 
 tary service on the French and German lines. 
 
 Meanwhile the lesson of force — first taught by American 
 ships and guns — was quietly developing. The quarrel 
 with China over Korea revealed a new Power schooled in 
 modernity to the alarm of her teachers and those who 
 had broken into her feudal life. Eight months of war 
 saw China overwhelmed and suing for a peace of terri- 
 torial cession and indemnity. Korea was cleared by the 
 "toy people," who now loomed as alarming warriors. 
 Manchuria was invaded, the Liao-tung peninsula occu- 
 pied, together with its stronghold, Port Arthur. The 
 Japanese were preparing to advance upon Pekin when 
 China gave way and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki on 
 April 14, 1895. 
 
 Here the Powers of Europe stepped in — especially Rus- 
 sia, whose concern for Far Eastern peace pressed upon 
 the upstart conqueror the return of Liao-tung to humili- 
 ated China. There was no course open but submission 
 to this demand ; it rankled keenly, however, and sowed the 
 seeds of a new war, for which Japan prepared by sea and 
 land, as well as by industrial activity. The five years 
 that followed showed the European Powers scrambling 
 for rights, leases, and naval bases in China. Port Arthur 
 itself was now acquired by Russia, who had forced Japan 
 to restore that fortress to its rightful owner. Then came 
 
376 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 the Boxer Rebellion with its national motto : * ' Uphold the 
 dynasty and drive out the foreigners." 
 
 It was at this time that America moved in the matter 
 of China's ''Open Door." Japan was watching Russian 
 moves in Manchuria, where railways were being laid, 
 troops poured in, and defences strengthened. The little 
 men, nursing resentment and conscious of growing 
 strength, began to fear for theiu mainland markets, so the 
 hour of challenge was very near. 
 
 In 1902 Japan received a momentous lift through her 
 alliance with Great Britain; for the first time an Asiatic 
 nation was received in the European comity on equal 
 terms. Thus fortified, Japan fixed a period for the Rus- 
 sian evacuation of Manchuria. But Russia quibbled, and 
 put forward demands of her own. For two years di- 
 plomacy did its best, and then the sword was drawn — 
 with disastrous results for the Tsar's forces by sea and 
 land. When all was over, President Roosevelt was ap- 
 pointed mediator between the belligerents. They met on 
 American soil, at Portsmouth, N. H., where Count Witte 
 and Baron Rosen faced Komura and Takahira in a ''rea- 
 sonable ' ' bargain. From that day Japan advanced by leaps 
 and bounds. Her imperial progress made little noise in 
 the Western world: it had for its goal the hegemony of 
 the Far East, and recognition of the "little people" as a 
 very great people indeed, with a future of splendid sway. 
 
 Before the war with Russia, Count Okuma laid down 
 the new law as a hint to the United Sates: "A Japanese 
 must be respected wherever he goes, for we jdeld to none 
 in our citizen pride." Now the Sage of Washeda is the 
 Bismarck of Japan — the idol of the nation and supposedly 
 of anti-American bias: this was seen when the sale of 
 the Philippine Islands was mooted in the Washington Con- 
 gress by Senators with little grasp of foreign affairs. 
 
 Okuma remains a Samurai of the Ages, revering the 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 377 
 
 Emperor and upholding the sword. He can recall a Japan 
 that was impotent as Siam; he has watched her exports 
 grow from next to nothing to $800,000,000 a year. The 
 aged statesman has seen the native junk replaced by home- 
 huilt Dreadnoughts, like the mighty Fuso from the Kure 
 Yard, and her sisters the Yamashiro, Ise, and Hiuga re- 
 spectively from Yokosuka, Kobe, and Nagasaki. Each of 
 these great ships carries twelve 14-inch and sixteen 6-inch 
 guns. In Vice-Admiral Kondo the Empire has a naval 
 architect whose pioneer designs are watched with pro- 
 fessional interest by foreign experts. It is Japan's desire 
 that all structural work and equipment of her navy shall 
 come from domestic sources. Therefore the Government 
 foundry at Wakamatsu supplies the steel. From the Kure 
 arsenal come armour plates, with forgings and castings, 
 which are also made by private concerns, of which the 
 largest is in Kobe. Guns are made at Mormoran, in the 
 Hokkaido. 
 
 Okuma's life-span has also witnessed a railroad miracle, 
 of which the Korea-Manchuria Express is perhaps the 
 most impressive sj^mbol. There is no more luxurious train 
 in the Old or New Worlds. At Fusan pier it connects 
 with the channel steamer service of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment Railways. The train runs to and from Chang-chun 
 by way of Mukden and the South Manchuria sj^stem, cross- 
 ing a stately swing bridge over the historic Yalu River, 
 and thus offering the safest and quickest route between 
 Japan and Chosen (Korea), Manchuria, China, and Eu- 
 rope over the Trans-Siberian Railway. No wonder Amer- 
 ica views with concern this ''social climber among the 
 nations, ' ' who moves without haste or rest to her appointed 
 goal. For in her own sphere Japan can now defy the 
 world, hedged about as she is by the stormiest seas, and 
 armed with natural features which lend themselves to im- 
 pregnable defence. 
 
378 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 Yet observe this infant Power in 1870, when, as it were, 
 hat in hand, she tried to borrow a paltry million in the 
 money market of London. It was grudgingly given her — 
 at twelve per cent, interest. As security the Customs 
 revenue was pledged, and the loan rigidly earmarked for 
 specific purposes. Even so, our leading financial paper 
 poured derision upon credulous capitalists who could lend 
 money to a people whose national bankruptcy and in- 
 dustrial incapacity were notorious. We are today over 
 £30,000,000 in Japan's debt; and the little people now 
 have an export trade of 1,600,000,000 yen, or £160,000,000 
 a year. The war has indeed brought Japan unprecedented 
 prosperity. Her "flush-time" dates from the spring of 
 1915, when Allied orders were first placed and the Island 
 Empire began to profit b}^ the universal dislocation of 
 trade, and the absence of German and Austrian competi- 
 tion. Electric wire and appliances, antimony and sheet 
 glass, paper and toys, celluloid, matches, and raw silk — 
 these are but a few of the commodities for which the 
 nations turned to Japan. 
 
 The Government's policy of State initiative and direc- 
 tion is being anxiously watched in the United States. 
 Japanese commissioners have been sent abroad to study 
 local trade conditions, and inform the authorities at home 
 on scientific lines. Root-and-branch elimination of Ger- 
 man and Austrian trade is aimed at in the Far East; 
 but it is absurd to suppose that this campaign will make 
 no effort to supplant British and American interests of 
 long standing. 
 
 The transformation of Japan is complete, her genius 
 for colonization demonstrated during Marshal Terauchi's 
 seven-year clean-up in decayed Korea. Nothing that 
 America ever did in Cuba, Panama, or the Philippines can 
 eclipse that orgy of social, administrative, and agricultural 
 reform, which the Mikado himself inaugurated with a gift 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 379 
 
 of seventeen million yen from his privy purse. Mean- 
 while Japan's Army was growing fast; it is today at 
 double divisional strength, armed and staffed with Prus- 
 sian foresight and skill. Her military strength is but 
 dimly apprehended by outsiders, even those who have 
 seen this marvellous race pass from the Stone Age to the 
 Flying Age in their own time. 
 
 Whether this material progress is a good thing is open 
 to doubt in our present mood of disillusion. ''Hitherto," 
 says Mill, "it is questionable if all the mechanical inven- 
 tions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any hu- 
 man being. They have enabled a greater population to 
 live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an 
 increased number to make fortunes." The war-million- 
 aire of Tokio; stock speculators of the Kabuto-cho, the 
 narikins of shipping and dye-stuffs, iron and steel — these 
 have lavish mansions on the Ginza, with gorgeous cars 
 and works of art: they will pay five thousand dollars for 
 a single Nabeshima plate. But the working girl remains 
 a slave; the Japanese printer, if paid at the American 
 rate for a fortj^-eight hour week, would draw no more 
 than a dollar for his labour. A cotton-mill doctor of the 
 Nagano prefecture found forty per cent, of the young 
 girls affected with consumption. They worked fifteen 
 hours a day; they were poorly fed, with only five minutes 
 for a meal. "These hands dwell promiscuously in tiny 
 rooms which scarcely know the sunlight. And at night 
 they sleep face to face, two girls on each six-foot mat. 
 . . . Employers are too engrossed in their own profits to 
 pay heed to these terrible conditions of labour." 
 
 The Japanese wage-scale bears no comparison with that 
 of Europe or the United States. A female silk-spinner 
 gets 15 cents a day, a male weaver 21 cents, a dyer 25 
 cents, tailors 27 cents, shoemakers 30 cents, carpenters 
 36 cents, stone-cutters 50 cents. Here I approach the eco- 
 
380 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 nomic and social problem, of the yellow man, which has 
 for many years made bad blood between Japan and the 
 United States. 
 
 The position is stated by Viscount Kentaro Haneko, a 
 Privy Councillor and former Minister of Justice; he is 
 also an LL.D. of Harvard University. ''Had we remained 
 a China or Korea," this statesman says, ''the clamour of 
 this race question would never have reached so acute a 
 pitch. As it is, Japan emerged from her foreign wars 
 with a splendid organization, and as civilized as the fore- 
 most nations of Europe and America, imposing respectful 
 consideration upon them all, and breaking — to the resent- 
 ment of some — the tradition that the white peoples are 
 essentially superior to Asiatics." 
 
 It is well to remember that we are here dealing with a 
 proud and energetic people, acutely sensitive to foreign 
 criticism and desirous of admiration and praise. During 
 the Russo-Japanese War, American feeling favoured the 
 "little men," but the signing of the Portsmouth Treaty 
 brought about a change. Japan, it seemed, was no longer 
 docile or submissive. She declined the proposal of Secre- 
 tary of State Knox that she should hand over the South 
 Manchurian railways (which had cost a hundred thousand 
 lives), and accept instead a settlement in money. The 
 implied threat of insistence was this time ignored; for 
 Japan was no longer to be browbeaten by the older Pow- 
 ers, one of whom she had just humbled by force of arms. 
 
 Once again, then, America saw the "Open Door" in 
 China closing, and markets of vast potential value in the 
 shadow of a new Oriental sword. Japan protested there 
 was room for all — with herself as the dominant partner. 
 "It is a great mistake," said Kikisahuro Fukui, one of the 
 Empire's foremost merchants, "for any nation to do busi- 
 ness in the Far East without considering Japan's commer- 
 cial and geographical advantages. She should be regarded 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION'' 381 
 
 as a colleague rather than a competitor. The Germans 
 are already aware of this ; and the General Electrical Com- 
 pany of Berlin entered into successful co-operation with 
 the Shibaura Engineering Works of Tokio. For we have 
 need, and long shall need, the technical skill and genius 
 of the Western world. ' ' 
 
 As for America, she wanted the yellow man's trade, but 
 not the yellow man himself. Hence many years of fric- 
 tion, with newspaper ''wars" and jingo flourishes in 
 Tokio, as well as in New York and San Francisco. For 
 Japanese settlers were all too successfully competing with 
 the white man in the three Pacific States of Washington, 
 Oregon, and California. Still farther north is British 
 Columbia, which also has its yellow problem. Here the 
 Chinese Exclusion Act shut out the earlier intruder unless 
 he possessed £100; but the question of Japanese immi- 
 grants is much more delicate because of the power behind 
 them, the racial pride, and growing vehemence of Govern- 
 ment claims. Australia, too, has a jealous eye upon her 
 Asiatic neighbours. "It is well known," says the Frank- 
 furter Zeitung, "that Japanese longings are directed to 
 the Northern Territories which a dog-in-the-manger atti- 
 tude cannot indefinitely withhold from colonization." A 
 "White Australia" is undoubtedly the Commonwealth's 
 ideal ! 
 
 Here the Immigration Act of 1901 blocked all Hindus, 
 Chinese, and Japanese, for it ordained a literacy test of 
 fifty words' dictation "in a European language." Which 
 one was not specified, so the failure of the most cultured 
 Asiatic is a foregone conclusion. Early in the war, Ger- 
 man New Guinea and Samoa fell to expeditions from 
 Australia and New Zealand respectively. Japan disposed 
 of Tsing-tau and the Marshall Group, so that "Das 
 Deutsche Siidsee Schutzgebiete" was soon a thing of the 
 past, buried wdtli due honours by the Berlin press. Jap- 
 
382 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 anese warships were policing the Pacific lanes, and escort- 
 ing the transports and food-ships of Australasia. Great 
 Britain was much beholden to the little people — but Aus- 
 tralia was still entirely White, and quite unmoved by 
 hints of expediency and concessions. 
 
 For example there was German New Guinea, a rich land 
 which the Japanese could develop amazingly. But noth- 
 ing could induce Australia "to bring the Asiatic menace 
 to our back door. ' ' The other alternative— colonization of 
 the Northern Territories by the Japanese — was still more 
 dreaded, and the mere idea rejected with scorn. 
 
 I allude to Australia and the opposition of her Labour 
 Unions, because the analogy with Western America is com- 
 plete in this regard. Both democracies accept the black 
 man because he is there and does not count; it is grotesque 
 to suppose that the negro has equal rights with the white 
 man in the United States whatever be the Constitutional 
 theory. But at all costs the ''yellow streak" must be kept 
 from spreading. Labour has always been a precarious 
 commodity on the Pacific Coast of America. An unlimited 
 source of supply was closed in 1882, when Congress passed 
 an Act prohibiting Chinese immigration. This was in re- 
 sponse to a demand from the three States affected. Asiatic 
 labour, it was pointed out, lowered the standard of living. 
 What decent American could hope to compete with the 
 ten-cent standard of the "Chink"? 
 
 After the Exclusion Act the price of labour rose, and 
 fruit farmers were at their wits ' end for season pickers and 
 packers of enormous crops which called for rapid handling. 
 In 1887 four Japanese appeared in the Vaca Valley region 
 of California: These were the pioneers. Between 1890 
 and 1900 twenty-five thousand came — nimble, intelligent 
 fellows, who moved in gangs under clever bosses, and solved, 
 as it seemed, the labour problem of a rich land. Death and 
 departures were soon reducing the proscribed Chinese. 
 
'^OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 383 
 
 There was no law against the new yellow men, who were 
 not long in finding their American legs. They began to 
 buy up land, to form unions and demand larger wages. 
 And they had a passion for tenantry, these quiet invaders 
 of the Coast. 
 
 If the owner of a farm or citrus orchard would not sell, 
 he was faced with a labour boycott, and gave way at last 
 perforce. That was the beginning of Japanese colonies. 
 White neighbours moved away; new homeseekers would 
 not settle in a yellow region. Orchard displacement in the 
 Vacaville and Newcastle sections was soon on a sweeping 
 scale, and in time most of California's strawberry crop was 
 in Japanese hands. They also controlled the celery output 
 of the south, and the great market gardens which supplied 
 the cities of Los Angeles and Sacramento. And the Japs 
 were uncannily efficient with prehistoric tools which, ap- 
 plied to unlikely swamps bought for a song, presently 
 yielded a huge harvest. Meanwhile in the towns the Jap- 
 anese invasion was causing alarm, not only in common 
 white and semi-skilled labour circles, but also among the 
 small traders — barbers, cook-shop men and storekeepers. 
 
 The white laundry folk formed Anti-Japanese Leagues; 
 the yellow men met these with protective unions, and won 
 the day with their steadfast resolve to "do it for less." 
 Economic defeat deepened racial prejudice into downright 
 hate, and the Japanese was ostracized with penal restric- 
 tions which he was quick to resent. Thus the little men 
 were excluded from the public bathing places of San 
 Francisco. Their children were segregated in Asiatic 
 schools; and at last the Pacific States, led by California, 
 proposed a Federal Law shutting out these Asiatics alto- 
 gether. This was very embarrassing to the Washington 
 Government, because there was a definite treaty permitting 
 the Japanese to come and settle in the United States like 
 any other race of the Melting Pot. 
 
384 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 However, there was no arguing with California, where 
 riot and disorder, arson and murderous outrage were di- 
 rected against the yellow men, despite grave warning from 
 Tokio, and protests from the Ambassador in Washington. 
 California pleaded her State Rights as a sovereign com- 
 monwealth of the Union. This was exclusively her affair. 
 She must settle it in her own way, and threatened Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt with secession if he insisted on coercing the 
 Coast people in a matter which concerned them alone. 
 After all, was not the naturalization law limited ' ' to aliens 
 being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity 
 and persons of African descent"? Here was the last straw 
 in heaped-up injury. Japan was debarred from a citizen 
 privilege which the lowest negro could claim in a huge de- 
 mocracy where equal opportunity for all was the first 
 commandment of the national creed ! After many alarums 
 and excursions, including the dispatch of sixteen warships 
 round the Horn into the Pacific, Roosevelt and Root made 
 a bargain with Japan that no more passports should be 
 issued to labourers. 
 
 In 1913 the Californian Parliament passed the Anti- 
 Alien Land Bill, a vague measure which limited Japanese 
 tenure to a three years' lease. Four other States passed 
 similar laws, to the growing anger of the Tokio Foreign 
 Office and a clamorous native press. "We must have room 
 to grow," these papers pointed out. "More than seventy 
 per cent, of our people get a living on the land — poor 
 enough land at that. We have a population of 357 to the 
 square mile, as against America's 31 and California's 17. 
 Our excess of births over deaths is 600,000 a year. Then 
 where shall we turn?" Ernst Haeckel, the German, was 
 right when he predicted wars of dispossession, with crowded 
 nations struggling for existence in a pegged-out world, 
 "where the strongest and most resourceful will alone sur- 
 vive." J 
 
'^OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 885 
 
 It is well to state both sides of the case. That of Japan 
 is a claim to peaceful expansion in quest of the raw ma- 
 terial so vital to her manufactures. ' ' What wrong has she 
 done America?" she asks. Six thousand miles of sea sep- 
 arate a poor group of islands, containin^^ over fifty million 
 souls — only sixteen per cent, of whose Jands are arable — 
 from a fabulously rich people of over a hundred millions, 
 owning a fertile continent as large as Europe. And Amer- 
 ica's national wealth, when compared with Japan's, is 
 like John Rockefeller's billion beside the coppers of a gut- 
 ter newsboy. Japan insists that the maintenance of peace 
 is a cardinal principle in her development of new Asiatic 
 spheres, now opening to her beneficent sway. She rests 
 upon her proven quality in war, and points to the patience 
 with which she has endured years of insult from the United 
 States, who in turn regards a solemn treaty as a scrap of 
 paper, and shuts out the Japanese as though they were 
 felons of the Black Hand or the Camorra, 
 
 "When we strike," the little man informs America, "we 
 do it without counting the cost, in the true hushido spirit. 
 And when our heroes fall in battle, their families do not 
 droop in mourning, but put on gala dress to receive the 
 visit of friends who congratulate them on the high honour 
 which their sacrifice has brought. A formidable outlook, 
 it may be, judged by Western standards; it is one to be 
 reckoned with in the continual baiting and thwarting of 
 Japan. It is only economic pressure that drives us from 
 home. We produce the finest rice, but we can't afford to 
 eat it. We ship it abroad, and import inferior ntuff for 
 our own people. China was our last chance — 'the oppor- 
 tunity of ten thousand years,' as Okuma called it. We 
 shall do there on a vast scale what Terauchi did in Korea, 
 what Lord Cromer did in Egypt, what Governor Taft did 
 in the savage Philippines. Supremacy in China is nat- 
 urally ours, because of racial affinity with the people and 
 
^S6 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 geographical contiguity. We shall not close your Open 
 Door, but only set our watchmen in it — the sturdy little 
 fellows you despise and reject because they are better 
 farmers than your own. Consider Kinj^a Shima, of Stock- 
 ton, Cal., who cornered the potato market with a million 
 dollar deal, out-manoeuvring his American rivals. An- 
 other of our people hired some land near Los Angeles, 
 at a cash rental of twelve dollars an acre. The owner 
 had offered it rent free to the poor of the town, yet there 
 were no takers. Soon the j^ellow man's trucks were creak- 
 ing cityward with produce, and your people stood sourly 
 by. 'Look at that damned Japanese,' they muttered, 'tak- 
 ing the bread from our children 's mouths ! ' 
 
 ''San Francisco started the Japanese Exclusion Leagues. 
 Reckless mobs, inflamed by the Labour Unions, ran amuck 
 in the yellow quarters. Now mark the difference between 
 the Asiatic peoples in your midst. The Hindus wept help- 
 lessly when assailed. The Chinese ran away and hid, but 
 the Japanese stood their ground and fought, leaving their 
 mark upon the ruffian horde, which outnumbered them 
 a hundred to one. It is well to remember that we are of 
 the warrior caste; you can ignore this only at your peril. 
 'Scratch a Japanese,' as Inazo Nitobe reminds us, 'and 
 you will find a Samurai. ' ' ' 
 
 For years the Japanese peril figured in American news- 
 papers and magazines. "In May, 1913," Captain Hobson 
 told the House Committee on Naval Affairs, ' ' and for weeks 
 afterwards, our gunners on Corregidor Island were busy 
 day and night. The harbours were mined. Federal troops 
 were dispatched. Our warships were got ready for the 
 Pacific Coast. Secretary Daniels is present. Does he deny 
 the imminence of war with Japan at that time?" There 
 were also rumours of preparation in Manila, where a 
 Japanese descent was feared, with transports convoyed by 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 387 
 
 a great fleet for the seizure of the Philippines group, which 
 Dewey called ''the key of the Pacific." 
 
 When Rear- Admiral Yashiro was at Pasadena, and a ball 
 was arranged at the leading hotel, the Californian belles 
 were heard to say "They would just as soon dance with 
 niggers. ' ' That festivity was cancelled ; so was the visit of 
 school children to the Japanese fleet, all dressed in their 
 best and carrying the flags of both nations. A curt tele- 
 gram from the "nigger" Admiral, and his sudden depar- 
 ture, added another unpleasant episode to the long list. 
 At this time the press of Japan was rehearsing them all, 
 and calling upon its rulers in a fashion which could not 
 be ignored. Apology and redress — or war with America 
 was the popular Japanese demand. It was not alone voiced 
 by "yellow" journals like the Yorozu ChoJio, but by sober 
 organs like the Asahi of Osaka, and the Hochi of Tokio, 
 which reflects the views of the Doshikai party, of which the 
 Marquis Okunia is the leader. The Newspaper Law of the 
 Restoration was invoked to restrain this newspaper fury. 
 It subsided somewhat, in view of the Gentlemen's Agree- 
 ment which shelved the immigration question, without de- 
 ciding it at all. "If as a result of this visit," Viscount 
 Ishii said at the Japan Society's dinner in New York, "the 
 two peoples will but believe that their mutual distrust, sus- 
 picion, and doubt are the result of careful German Kultur 
 during the past ten years, then we shall have done much 
 for ourselves and for you." 
 
 But America fancies that the Prussian name has seen 
 too much service in this connection. She found nothing 
 German in the repugnance which her Pacific States dis- 
 played towards the yellow man. And she got a great shock 
 in 1915, when the Twenty-One Demands were sprung upon 
 China, and at the same time concealed in part from Eng- 
 land, France, Russia, and the United States. China her- 
 self hastened to supply the omissions, and the discrepancy 
 
388 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 in the two versions created a very bad impression which 
 no subsequent ''conversations" quite removed. 
 
 America draws a parallel between German designs upon 
 derelict Eussia and Japanese encroachment upon China's 
 weakness. Both victims are dangerous, the Americans 
 think. Both have enormous reserves of strength, despite 
 their seeming looseness; each of these patient races may 
 gird themselves afresh in the vast interior of their country, 
 so as ultimately to smother the invader. The Chinese are 
 a long-suffering folk, with no love for foreign wars. They 
 are well aware of their own lack of nationhood; they are 
 ready and willing to co-operate with others in the work of 
 their own guidance and regeneration. But if Japan denies 
 China a controlling voice in her own destiny, then indeed 
 there is danger ahead. "Better be dashed to fragments as 
 a jewel of jade than held together as a lump of brick," so 
 said Liang Chi-chao, the reformer of Canton, when Japan 
 declared war in 1894. 
 
 Since the war began, the diplomacy of Japan has been 
 carefull}^ watched in Pekin and Washington, where Tokio's 
 act and deed are taken as sounder guides than the melli- 
 fluence of political missionaries. Japan's ''extra-textual" 
 readings have long worried China, who believes with Kung 
 Fu-tze that "sincerity is the beginning and end of all 
 things. ' ' Japan has throughout protested the peacef ulness 
 of her aims — provided her expansion is not blocked. For 
 this reason America carries the parallel with Prussia a 
 step further. Undoubtedly Japan is now a military power 
 of the first rank — formidable, scientific, and precise. Here, 
 as in Germany, loyalty to the State and the sacred person 
 of the Emperor is erected into a religion. That able 
 writer, lichiro Tokutomi, editor of the Tokio Kokumin, 
 defines the cultus as a "centripetal Mikadoism." "The 
 Mikado is the centre of our nation," this author says in his 
 work, Japan to America. "Considered as a body politic 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 389 
 
 it has him as its sovereign. Considered as a race, it has 
 him as leader; and as a social community it has the Em- 
 peror for its nucleus." 
 
 It cannot be supposed that ecstasy of this kind wakes 
 any sympathy in Republican China or the United States. 
 Neither does the Prussian worship of force which is en- 
 shrined in the imperial psyche of Japan. " Bushido/' says 
 Professor Inazo, the foremost authority on the subject, 
 ' ' made the sword its emblem of prowess and power. When 
 Mohammed declared the sword to be the key of heaven and 
 hell, he was but echoing a Japanese sentiment." America 
 remembers that the German sword has a monstrous statue 
 of its own — surely the only one extant — a broad blade 
 reared skyward in a mailed fist on the lake at Friedrichs- 
 hafen, where Zeppelin built his gas-bags for civilian mur- 
 der in the night. It may be well that President Wilson's 
 war-aim — to ''make the world safe for democracy" — ap- 
 plied equally in the East as it does in the West. 
 
 The intellectuals of Japan admit that Germany is ad- 
 mired in their country, as it is among the military cliques 
 in China, who block and blight every prospect of unity and 
 reform. According to Professor Anesaki, who was ex- 
 change lecturer at Harvard in 1913-15, many leaders of 
 Japanese politics and industry sympathize with Germany's 
 aim to win a place for herself in the sun. "The only rem- 
 edy for Pro-Germanism among us," the Professor thinks, 
 "is to convince our people of the futility of Teutonic 
 methods. To do this the Allies must be successful — not 
 only in the naval and military way, but also in social, 
 moral, and educational reconstruction after the war." In 
 other words, the Allies must produce a superior Kultur 
 of their own. 
 
 Another witness is Motosada Zumoto, proprietor of the 
 Japan Times, of Tokio. ' ' It is natural, ' ' says this alert and 
 able man, "that the scientific mind and thoroughness of 
 
390 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 the Teuton should appeal to us Japanese. Moreover, Ger- 
 many's martial efforts move Japan through the hiishido 
 ideal of blooming and falling quickly; of heroic effort at 
 any cost — the Weltmacht oder Niedergang! — even though 
 it be foredoomed to defeat." It was this affinity of the two 
 Powers, coupled with the mention of Japan in the Zimmer- 
 mann-Eckhardt plot, which suggested to the United States 
 the peril of a possible German-Japanese Alliance, in which 
 disintegrated Russia might figure as a passive tool. On 
 their part the Germans respect Japan, and warn her that 
 her chance is passing "to conquer the great unmilitary 
 America in a short surprise war." 
 
 "One must admit," we read in the semi-official press of 
 Berlin, "that Wilson is wise in harnessing his man-power 
 and industry at this time. It is an extraordinary oppor- 
 tunity, and, of course, only half aimed at Germany. 
 Moreover, once accomplished, Japan's advantage will be 
 over. Therefore America's moment is skilfully chosen. 
 She puts off her weakness without the reproach of militar- 
 ism at home and abroad. Nor can Japan protest, but 
 only clasp the new friend to her heart. Hence all the 
 palavers and understandings. Hence the sending home 
 of Ambassador Guthrie's body on a warship and the mis- 
 sion of thanks on the part of America's Asiatic squadron, 
 with the Mikado lunching with Admiral Knight, and mak- 
 ing the usual pretty speeches." 
 
 The Germans maintain that it was Guthrie's successor 
 in Tokio, Dr. Paul Reinsch, who persuaded the Chinese 
 Government to declare war. The President, Li Yuan- 
 hung, was convinced that Germany would be victorious. 
 Vice-President Feng was of like mind for a time ; Premier 
 Tuan and the conservative generals were undecided. But 
 Young China followed America's lead — first in protest, 
 then in severance of relations, at last in open hostility, 
 with all-it entailed of repudiation and confiscation; of 
 
"OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 391 
 
 dismissal of German officials and general elimination of 
 Teutonic influence. In this way was Japan outwitted, for 
 she had announced her intention of speaking for China 
 at the Peace Conference of the Powers. 
 
 It must be owned that since 1914 the affairs of China 
 present a tangle which defies unravelling. There were 
 coups and counter-coups, mandarin plots, and continuous 
 strife between the radical South and a reactionary North. 
 And always in the background were the ant-like millions 
 leading the same old life in Asiatic spaces, knowing little 
 of the political game, or the very meaning of a Republic. 
 "We are like cabbages with our roots in the air," explained 
 the illiterate despot, Chang Hsun, the "Butcher of Nan- 
 king" and feudal lord of Hsu-chow-fu; once a mafu, or 
 groom, he became a king-maker in this topsy-turvy land, 
 with a following of forty thousand men. 
 
 Through all the turmoil America's voice was raised in 
 earnest exhortation; her efforts were unceasing to restore 
 order in the chaotic "cabbage-field" of Asia. It was the 
 "sincere hope" of the State Department, officially ex- 
 pressed to the Chinese, "that factional disputes may be 
 set aside, and that all parties will work to re-establish and 
 co-ordinate the Government and secure China's position 
 among the nations." I need only refer in passing to the 
 attempt to restore the Manchu dynasty in the person of 
 the eleven-year-old boy, Hsuan Tung, who was hauled 
 from his bed in the small hours to mount the most pre- 
 carious of thrones. His sponsor, the bandit chieftain 
 Chang Hsun, was soon denounced as a traitor, and fled 
 for shelter to the Dutch Legation with a price upon his 
 head. 
 
 But Chinese politics are too bewildering to follow. That 
 strong man, President Yuan, himself plotted for the throne 
 for twenty years, and at last passed a hundred days as 
 uncrowned Emperor — losing his nerve in the interval, and 
 
392 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 at last dying miserably of Bright 's disease. That was 
 the end of the Hung Hsien, or Era of Brilliant Prosperity, 
 in which Yuan's American adviser, Dr. Frank J. Good- 
 now of Baltimore, had a professional — or rather a profes- 
 sorial — hand. 
 
 America is a long way off: Japan is at China's door, 
 and now committed to exploitation — if possible with Amer- 
 ican money, as Baron Shibusawa's mission showed in the 
 autumn of 1915. Japanese expansiveness is by no means 
 a new policy; it goes back to the dream of conquest cher- 
 ished by the great dictator, Ilideyoshi, at the close of the 
 sixteenth century. It was urged in 1859 by Yoshida 
 Shoin, the Choshiu Samurai, who may be called the 
 Treitschke of awakening Japan. It was from this phi- 
 losopher that Kido, Ito, Inouye, and the rest of the ''Meiji 
 Heroes" learned their earliest lessons in statecraft and 
 national destiny. "The foreign policy of Japan does not 
 change with the Cabinet," Marshal Terauchi said, when 
 he succeeded Okuma as Prime Minister. The soldier- 
 statesman spoke very curtly about the charges of ''mili- 
 tarism and territorial aggrandizement" which had been 
 bandied about in Europe and the United States. ''It is 
 unnecessary for me to assure any one of Japan's good 
 faith, or to waste words in contradicting and denying the 
 mischievous rumours and unwarranted presumptions of 
 those who misinterpret my motives, or forecast my future 
 actions." 
 
 Will Japan realize her project of a protectorate over 
 China, with all that it entails of f)ower-politics and change ? 
 Who can say with any certainty? The boldest prophets 
 have been confounded in the course of this war. Even 
 the cock-sure German is often subdued, and talks of the 
 Incalculable in human affairs — the folly of forecasting the 
 fate of nations, or measuring their drift by nicely reckoned 
 laws of more or less. "It is part of probability," says 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION ^^ 393 
 
 Aristotle in the Ethics, ''that many improbabilities will 
 happen." Who could have predicted the heroic stand of 
 little Belgium or the collapse of mighty Russia in the 
 face of the same foe — with millions of men, in the latter 
 case, flatly refusing to fight, and lynching their own ad- 
 mirals and generals? As for China, no two opinions, na- 
 tive or foreign, coincide about its future; though many 
 observers who have spent their lives in the land detect a 
 new sense of unity — a definite transition from the "family" 
 to the national staue, such as may portend the fusion of 
 four hundred million people into a polity which no alien 
 race could ever hope to control. 
 
 Meanwhile China's millions live in a state which Amer- 
 ican travellers describe as "only half a hop ahead of hun- 
 ger." The currency is a maddening thing; in Pekin alone 
 nine imaginary taels are in circulation, yet accounts are 
 actually settled in dollars. The measure of silk varies with 
 the city in which you bought it. Language, polities, and 
 problems, all are provincial rather than national. And 
 China remains a roadless laud, with each journey an ad- 
 venture, and many perils in the way. 
 
 It is true that change is astir; but can these hordes 
 be roused before the domination of Japan is complete? 
 Here is America's fear; this is her own Eastern Question. 
 It should be remembered that the Panama Canal, by de- 
 veloping the Western Seaboard of the United States, has 
 opened immense prospects of Asiatic trade. America is a 
 Pacific as well as an Atlantic Power, with strategic bases 
 of imperial reach in both oceans. 
 
 She has hitherto been weak in a military way, unable 
 to help the helpless nations save by moral means whicli 
 are now seen to be worse than ineffectual. America's 
 treaty with Korea, signed at Seoul on May 18, 189:j, could 
 only offer "good offices to bring about an amicable ar- 
 rangement ... if other Powers deal unjustly or oppres- 
 
394 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 sively with Kcysea." Yet America was the very first na- 
 tion to express approval of Japan's decree of suzerainty 
 over that crumbling kingdom. Again, the United States 
 was committed to protest on China's behalf when Tsarist 
 Russia began to absorb Manchuria. No such protest was 
 made, for it could have nothing behind it but a pious 
 wish: the champion of Liberty was always without helm 
 or sword. "If you can't protect your own citizens in 
 Mexico, ' ' said a typical Chinese intellectual in Washington, 
 "how can we expect you to stretch across the Pacific to 
 protect usf" 
 
 So it came back at last to brute force and the Big Stick, 
 which no nation may neglect save at the risk of ruin, as the 
 Russian visionaries found when it was too late. Senator 
 Chamberlain of Oregon brought out this fact in a three- 
 hour speech which moved the Upper House profoundly, 
 and reverberated from sea to sea among a resolute people 
 arming for Democracy's War. "From Washington's Let- 
 ters," Mr. Chamberlain said, "from Bunker Hill to the 
 Mexican Border affrays of 1916 — throughout our whole his- 
 tory — we have never had a military organization or a mili- 
 tary policy. Nothing but luck and aloofness have saved 
 us, and now we must save ourselves. ' ' 
 
 War Secretary Baker put up a brave defence of his 
 Department; but it is clear the machinery broke down in 
 all directions under unexampled strain. "It was like try- 
 ing to run a British tank," one heard in the Senate lobbies, 
 "with the engine of a Ford runabout!" Sober historians 
 like Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard rehearsed again the 
 unreadiness of 1775, 1861, and 1898. In all cases "mate- 
 rial had to be made ready after the war began." . . . "In 
 April, 1917, we went to war with the most powerful 
 oligarchy the world has ever seen, on the basis of a fairish 
 Navy and a Regular Army of a hundred thousand men. 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION" 395 
 
 But there was not a single aeroplane. Not one battery of 
 big guns, not enough rifles for the first Army, no regiment 
 of them trained to the trench, wire, and bomb methods of 
 the new warfare. That is why we now pour out men, 
 money, and munitions to erect the proper engine of war and 
 catch up with our own enthusiasm." 
 
 Japan also is a student of war by sea and land and air. 
 As early as September, 1914, her cruisers and destroyers 
 left Yokosuka to search the Marianne, Caroline, and Mar- 
 shall Groups for our common enemy. When Tsing-tau fell, 
 after a ten weeks' siege, Japanese naval activity widened. 
 It patrolled the Pacific; it co-operated with us in the 
 Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Important missions 
 were undertaken at the Straits; over transport routes of 
 the South Seas, in the South Atlantic too, and lastly in 
 the Mediterranean under Admiral Tetsutar Sato, whose 
 destroyers rescued British troops and nurses from the tor- 
 pedoed Transylvania. 
 
 The Mediterranean squadron brought with them sea- 
 planes, which were soon scouting for submarines with all 
 the scientific elan which we take for granted in this race, 
 to whom no Western miracle comes amiss. Japan had her 
 own aviators aloft over the German fortress of Tsing-tau 
 in China. Riddled with bullets, the machines continued to 
 observe, and sailed away when their w^ork was done. I 
 need hardly emphasize the professional zeal with w^hich 
 Japanese attaches follow the colossal struggle on land, and 
 communicate its lessons to the Supreme War Council in 
 Tokio. ^leanwhile the Japanese Army was re-armed with 
 a new rifle, the invention of Colonel Kijiro Nambu, a pro- 
 fessor of ballistics of international repute. This weapon 
 is a nota])le improvement upon the Murata rifle, which it 
 has now superseded. In all directions the machinery of 
 war was improved. *'The world will be astonished," said 
 
396 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 Baron Hayashi, now Japanese Ambassador in Rome, 'Svhen 
 it learns all that we have done, and shall do in the future." 
 This significant hint no doubt referred to the projected 
 operations in Eastern Siberia, with Vladivostok as a base. 
 
 Both Japan and the United States will therefore emerge 
 from the war as great military Powers. Their future 
 relations depend upon the fate of China and Pacific prob- 
 lems bound up with it, political, economic, and strategic. 
 Earnest efforts, following the Ishii Mission, are being made 
 to improve these relations. Thus Japan has her ' ' East and 
 West News Bureau," an association for promoting cor- 
 diality between the two nations. Its director is Dr. lye- 
 naga, who is also linked with the University of Chicago 
 as a lecturer. Mr. Samuel Gompers of the American Fed- 
 eration of Labour now cables fraternal greetings to Presi- 
 dent Suzuki, of the Workers' Friendly Society of Japan: 
 *'The most important duty of our movements is to main- 
 tain frank and friendly terms between our respective coun- 
 tries, and endeavour amicably to solve vexatious prob- 
 lems." 
 
 Asked whether America would fight for the Open Door 
 in China, President Roosevelt declared that she would. 
 His successor, Mr. W. H. Taft, held the contrary opinion, 
 doubting whether Americans were sufficiently interested 
 in Far Eastern affairs to make any substantial sacrifice for 
 them. The present Administration sent Notes of great 
 vigour to Tokio and Pekin over the Twenty-One Demands. 
 President Wilson's Government confessed itself "greatly 
 disturbed" over the further Japanese aggression which 
 followed the squabble in Chen-chia-tun. But those were 
 the days of America's "wooden sword," when protests from 
 her were filed or ignored as a matter of course. With the 
 habit and harness of war she will receive a very different 
 hearing. America will in future have something stronger 
 than "good offices" to offer her Allies and proteges, whether 
 
''OUR OWN EASTERN QUESTION'* 397 
 
 Britain or Belgium ; France, China, Mexico, or the Latin- 
 Republics,— to whom by the way the Monroe Doctrine was 
 become a somewhat threadbare mantle of protection from 
 foreign foes. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 
 
 **WiLL you not convey to His Majesty my appreciation 
 of his sentiments, my confident expectation that the great 
 principles of truth, liberty, and honour, which the people 
 of this country hold so dear, will increasingly serve as a 
 broad, solid foundation upon which the friendship and 
 cordial relations of the two Governments may rest and 
 develop ? 
 
 ''I believe that the righteous cause we are now prose- 
 cuting will bind more closely the people of the United 
 States to the people of Great Britain." — (President Wil- 
 son to Earl Reading, British High Commissioner in Wash- 
 ington.) 
 
 The above speech is a momentous break with tradition. 
 Before the Great War there was no European nation which 
 America esteemed so highly as Germany; there was but 
 one nation in all the world for which America had an 
 hereditary dislike, and that was England. The Scotsman 
 escaped this feeling. As for the Irish, whether as citizens 
 or as an ''oppressed" people overseas, they Avere, of course, 
 viewed with peculiar sympathy. Were they not living sym- 
 bols of that "absolute Tyranny" which is impressed upon 
 every American child in the Declaration of Independence, 
 with its scathing indictment of King George the Third as 
 a prince who **is unfit to be the ruler of a free people"? 
 
 The fallacy of "cousinship" with the United States was 
 persistently held in this country in the face of all the 
 facts, and the irritation it roused, by reason of the implied 
 
 398 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 399 
 
 condescension of which Lowell complained. War with 
 America was stoutly declared to be unthinkable by British 
 writers — as though it had not loomed again and again 
 since 1814, when John Quincy Adams met Lord Gambler 
 in the old Carthusian Convent at Ghent, both sides smart- 
 ing under humiliation, and signed at long last a treaty 
 which left open more questions than it settled, especially 
 the right of search at sea. 
 
 Our ruling classes of that time despised the young Re- 
 public. They believed it would soon break up, just as 
 Gladstone, Russell, and Derby did at a later day, when 
 Lincoln was at his wits' end to save the Union from dis- 
 ruption. The Treaty of Ghent left bad blood between 
 the two nations, and it was a sullen affair in the making. 
 After four months of obstinate haggling, it was only popu- 
 lar pressure on both sides which forced the Commission- 
 ers to sign a covenant of peace. On our part we declined 
 to grant the United States the privilege of trade with the 
 British- American colonies. Canada's haunting fear was 
 not yet laid with regard to her neighbour's territorial 
 designs. 
 
 On her side America resented British ''arrogance" with 
 Jeffersonian warmth, and rejoiced that she had for the 
 second time humbled the haughty mistress of the seas. 
 Then in the ''roaring forties" — a period of expansion and 
 pioneering to the South and West — there were boundary 
 disputes and border incidents in Oregon and Maine which 
 once more threatened Anglo-American relations. There 
 were quarrels over Mexico and the Isthmus, and over the 
 steps which our officers took to repress the slave trade. 
 The Civil War saw latent antagonism flame up afresh. 
 Rupture was very near when the Confederate envoys, Sli- 
 dell and Mason, were seized at sea on an English ship and 
 carried off as prisoners to Fort Warren by Captain Wilkes. 
 Palmerston demanded an "instant apology for a violation 
 
400 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 of international law." Troops were despatched, war was 
 declared inevitable, and prayers were offered in the Wash- 
 ington Senate. It was one of those occasions when Amer- 
 ica mourned her impotence at sea, and wished she had a 
 navy capable of curbing ''the sway of an arbitrary tri- 
 dent." 
 
 From the very first a peculiar touchiness is discernible 
 in the State Department's dealings with Great Britain: a 
 liability to sudden anger with little provocation, as Cleve- 
 land's Message showed in 1895 over the Orinoco swamps 
 of Venezuela, to which British Guiana laid claim. This 
 alleged infringement of the Monroe Doctrine was declared 
 in the Message to be ''a wilful aggression upon the rights 
 and interests of the United States." American protests 
 to Great Britain, by the way, are seldom couched in the 
 suavest terms — even those received after 1914, over the 
 hold-up of American mails, our ''hovering" cruisers, the 
 Black List of traders, the status of "merchant" subma- 
 rines like the Deutschland^ and lastly our "so-called" Block- 
 ade, which was dealt with in a Note of quite forcible lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Yet for a hundred years Anglo-American peace has re- 
 mained unbroken, thanks to the sound sense of both de- 
 mocracies, who insisted upon finding a way out before 
 extremes were reached. 
 
 During the American Civil War our neutrality was of a 
 kind that vexed both belligerents and left us with few 
 friends at the close, either in the North or the South. 
 This irritation grew more intense when the struggle was 
 over, thanks to unscrupulous angling for the Irish vote, 
 and partly through the growth of American imperialism. 
 The Irish question, I may say at once, has always lamed 
 our relations with the Republic. Since 1914 German 
 propaganda has made damaging use of it, pointing to the 
 gulf between Britain's precept and practice in her treat- 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 401 
 
 ment of the weaker nations. Ireland, Egypt, and India 
 are specifically named in pamphlets and speeches addressed 
 to people who have little or no knowledge of the facts. 
 In America the Irish have a political power out of all 
 proportion to their numbers. And having joined forces 
 with disloyal German elements in the early days, they 
 were able to hinder America's war-will, adding to the con- 
 fusion of her neutral time. 
 
 At home and abroad Irish hostility has been unwaver- 
 ing, and it cropped up in each Anglo-American dispute. 
 As leader of the Nationalist Party, Mr. John Redmond 
 sent the following message to New York at the time of 
 Grover Cleveland's threat over the Venezuelan affair: "If 
 war results from the reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, 
 Irish national sentiment will be solid on the side of Amer- 
 ica. For with Home Rule rejected, Ireland can have no 
 feeling of friendliness for Great Britain.'* 
 
 It were absurd to deny that such seeds as these fell 
 upon stony ground in the United States, whose very 
 founder threw off the ''despotism" of a British king who, 
 with his hireling soldiers, was accused of "cruelty and 
 perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, 
 and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation." 
 Nor did George Washington acquit the British people of 
 a share in "these usurpations" when he wrote his wrath- 
 ful Declaration. "We have appealed to their native jus- 
 tice and magnanimity," he said, "and we have conjured 
 them by the ties of our common kindred. . . . They, too, 
 have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity." 
 
 Here we see the root of an Anglophobia which lasted a 
 hundred and forty-one years. It coloured all intercourse, 
 social, economic, and political ; and as America grew, it 
 was kept alive by the most assertive aliens in her midst. 
 Dislike of England hampered the ablest and sanest of 
 State Secretaries — men who had vision enough to put prej- 
 
402 AMERICANS DAY 
 
 iidice away, as Jefferson did, and were willing to '* marry 
 ourselves to the British fleet and nation" whose cham- 
 pionship America had already known in serious crises. 
 
 John Hay's Anglo-Saxon policy received no support; 
 the cry of *' Subservience to England" spoiled his sagacious 
 drift, especially during the Boer War. Hay gives us many 
 hints of the strong currents against him at this time. 
 *'That we should be compelled," he mourns, ''to refuse the 
 assistance of the greatest Power in the world in carrying 
 out our own policy, because all Irishmen are Democrats 
 and some Germans are fools, is enough to drive a man 
 mad!" Already the hyphenate problem was acute, clog- 
 ging American statecraft, and renewing the ancient bitter- 
 ness every Fourth of July with hymns of hate which did 
 more harm than the fireworks: and they were very deadly 
 indeed, as every American knows. Writers in our news- 
 papers who took the ''cousinship" line appeared to ignore 
 the fact that America's greatest holiday was an orgy of 
 Anglophobia. The sight of a British flag on ' ' The Fourth ' ' 
 could and did provoke a serious riot. Anglo-American 
 history in the schools recalled heroic deeds of the minute- 
 men and farmers against the red-coats, whom England's 
 German King sent ''to complete the works of death, deso- 
 lation, and tyranny" in his own long-suffering Colonies. 
 
 Speaking at Plymouth ("where the Mayflower last left 
 land"), Ambassador Page alluded to this fallacious teach- 
 ing and the mischief it wrought. "On the American side," 
 Dr. Page was glad to say, "the disproportion and wrong 
 temper of these books is fast disappearing. Newer texts 
 are correcting this old fault." The Ambassador also pro- 
 posed for British schools a modern book about the United 
 States ; its foremost men, its social structure, and ideal aims 
 for the betterment of humanity. In short, a work which 
 should be to children -what Lord Bryce's American Com- 
 monwealth is to students of a more mature age. 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 403 
 
 There is no gainsaying the need for this restatement on 
 both sides, and particularly the part which Great Britain 
 played as America's friend during the German intrigues of 
 1898. Cleveland's ringing renewal of the Monroe Doctrine 
 was resented by the Central Powers ; and when the quarrel 
 with Spain developed, Von HoUeben and Hengelmiiller — 
 the Bernstorff and Dumba of their day — were soon urging 
 intervention upon the whole Diplomatic Corps in Washing- 
 ton. America knew that Germany had designs of her own 
 in the Caribbean; she was nevertheless determined to lib- 
 erate Cuba and vindicate her own claim to the hegemony 
 of the New World. In the critical weeks that followed the 
 sinking of the Maine, German overtures were made to 
 France and England with a view to thwarting American 
 aims. John Hay was then Ambassador at our Court; he 
 was presently able to inform his Government that Britain, 
 far from being a party to the plot, took a sturdy stand by 
 the side of the United States. 
 
 Of course if Germany had had her way nothing could 
 have saved America from humiliation. For with three of 
 the greatest fleets barring the Cuban coast, she could never 
 have approached the island, much less landed an army 
 there. The war with Spain must have ended ignomini- 
 ously, for resistance could only have brought about dis- 
 aster. The Atlantic seaboard would have been at the 
 mercy of a new Triple Alliance; all the cities from East- 
 port down to Charleston la}^ open to attack and occupation, 
 with possible indemnities and national abasemeut. 
 
 John Hay persevered with his Anglo-Saxon scheme, and 
 found a staunch friend in Joseph Chamberlain, whose 
 speech at Birmingham on May 11, 1898, is now widely 
 quoted in the United States. "What is our next duty?" 
 Mr. Chamberlain asked. ''It is to establish and maintain 
 bonds of permanent amity with our kinsmen across the 
 Atlantic. For there is a powerful and a generous nation. 
 
404 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 They speak our language, they are bred of our race. . . . 
 I don't know what the future has in store for us; I don't 
 know what arrangements may be possible. But this I do 
 know and feel — that the closer, the more cordial and fuller 
 and definite these arrangements are, with the consent of 
 both peoples, the better it will be for us both and for the 
 world. I will even go so far as to say that, terrible as 
 war may be, war itself would be cheaply purchased if, in 
 a great and noble cause, the Stars and Stripes and the 
 Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon 
 alliance." 
 
 Writing to Senator Lodge from London, Ambassador 
 Hay referred to '' Chamberlain 's startling speech": '*It 
 was partly due to a conversation I had with him, in which 
 I hoped he would not let the Opposition have a monopoly 
 of goodwill expressions for America." This goodwill took 
 a dramatic turn in Manila Bay. Here the truculent Ger- 
 man commander. Von Diederichs, assumed a threatening 
 attitude towards Admiral Dewey, who was greatly per- 
 plexed thereat. That veteran sailor told the story to the 
 late Earl Grey at a Senatorial banquet in Washington 
 in 1905, and Lord Grey repeated it in the House of Lords: 
 
 ''Admiral Dewey told me that the presence of German 
 cruisers of heavier displacement than his own caused him 
 to realize the danger menacing his country in the event 
 of those ships taking hostile action; and of this he had 
 reason to be apprehensive. He described how the Amer- 
 ican Fleet watched in silent anxiety the visit of the Ger- 
 man Admiral to Captain Chichester's ship, and the intense 
 relief with which they saw, shortly after Von Diederichs' 
 return, the two British cruisers, Immortalite and Iphigenia, 
 hoist their anchors and move to a position which placed 
 them in the direct line of fire between the German and 
 American vessels. No action has ever done more to pro- 
 mote the friendly feelings of one nation for another than 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 405 
 
 this of Captain Chichester, which is well known to every 
 officer in the United States Navy. ' ' 
 
 ' Yet outside that Service the old dislike of England per- 
 sisted, greatly to the disappointment of John Hay. lie 
 was now America's Foreign Minister. "All I've ever done 
 with Britain," he wrote in plaintive key to his predecessor 
 in that high office, "is to wring concessions from her with 
 no compensation. And yet these idiots say I'm no Amer- 
 ican, because I don't cry 'To hell with the Queen/ at every 
 breath!" 
 
 Ilay was abused as an Anglomaniac, as Lowell had been, 
 and by the same Irish irreconcilables. Even close friends 
 of his, like Lodge, were afraid there was something in the 
 air of St. James's which turned the sturdiest Yankee into 
 a bit of a courtier, with undue leanings to the English 
 side. 
 
 I have said that Germany was esteemed by the Ameri- 
 can people, and that dislike of England was a persistent 
 tradition. The reversal of these sentiments is a curious 
 study in national psychology, and the cause can be traced 
 to reasons of American safety. Quite apart from the fact 
 that Germany was a very good customer, taking $235,000,- 
 000 worth of cotton and copper alone each year, she had 
 come to be regarded as the post-graduate schoolhouse of 
 the United States. Every ambitious youth who could af- 
 ford it took a course at a German university, because this 
 gave him a better send-off in a career than any diploma 
 from an American technical school. And hyphenate pro- 
 fessors, like the late Hugo Miinsterburg of Harvard, w^orked 
 hard to heighten the prestige of the only Kultur which was 
 one day destined to improve with guns God's moulding of 
 the world. 
 
 Miinsterburg 's Psychology and Industrial Efficiency is 
 something of an American classic. It was William James 
 who invited this scholar from Freiburg, and at the same 
 
406 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 time Von Hoist, on the strength of his American history, 
 was called to the newly-founded University of Chicago. 
 These imported high-brows soon saw ''the failures and 
 deficiencies of American civilization, ' ' and set about mend- 
 ing them with characteristic zeal. According to Miinster- 
 burg, they were due to ''a lack of that social idealism 
 which gives meaning to our German life"; and in the 
 summer of 1898 he confided to Ambassador von Holleben 
 his plan of foisting the true Fichtean brand of Kultur on 
 the United States. 
 
 Germany's "official contact'* was promptly secured for 
 this missionary work, first for Harvard and then for 
 Chicago. At length Miinsterburg was able to chant his 
 triumph, for on March 6, 1902, the Kaiser's brother, under 
 that hyphenate roof in Ware Street, Cambridge, handed 
 over the documents and gifts of the Germanic Museum at 
 Harvard. ' ' The official Americans, ' ' the Professor tells us, 
 "were led by David Jayne Hill, who was later on Ambas- 
 sador in Berlin. Towering over the German group stood 
 one of the mildest-looking of men, Alfred von Tirpitz, 
 and next to him. Admiral Robley D. Evans. Many other 
 Americans and Germans of renown listened to the speeches, 
 which culminated in Prince Henry's spontaneous plea that 
 the friendship between America and our Fatherland might 
 never be broken." 
 
 Debris de toiles d'arraignee que le vent emporte! 
 
 There was no talk in those days of Prussian militarism. 
 The thing was known, of course, but Americans laughed 
 at it as a peculiar hobby — a national aberration, marked 
 with schlager-slashes on the faces of students from Alte 
 Heidelberg. 
 
 But the German was thorough: he was a fellow of in- 
 eradicable purpose; a first-class stayer and timber-topper 
 in the long and tricky Grand National race, of which the 
 prize was^upremacy in the world of commerce. Compared 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 407 
 
 with this apostle of Die Thdtigkeit — the restless activity 
 which Goethe said proved the Man — his English rival cut 
 a poor figure, resting as he did upon his father's oars and 
 ** glorying in the name of Briton" — like George the Third 
 of obstinate and execrable memory. 
 
 The English (America thought) were the most insular 
 of peoples, and that in the narrowest, most irritating sense 
 of the word. ''They don't say much," as the French 
 statesman remarked when dealing with the notorious 
 morgue Britannique. *'And you can't tell them anything 
 at all!" 
 
 Such, then, were the estimates which America held of 
 the two foreign nations in which she was most interested. 
 This estimate held good in 1914; it was not greatly dis- 
 turbed during the "flush time," nor did the fulminations 
 of the Eastern press bring about any noticeable change. 
 Indeed, to speak frankly, there seemed to be one law for 
 Germany and another for Great Britain where dealings 
 with the State Department were concerned. The. mere 
 presence of our cruisers was a vexatious fact; yet a Ger- 
 man submarine (the U-53) could enter an American port, 
 collect information, and then sally forth to sink merchant 
 vessels, leaving the work of rescue to destroyers of the 
 Narragansett Bay station under Admiral Knight : this 
 was in October, 1916. Protest from four of the Allies, 
 including Japan, drew a sharp reply from Washington, 
 which expressed its ''surprise" at the implied dictation, 
 and "reserved its liberty of action in all respects." Mr. 
 Lansing's naval advisers told our Ambassador "there was 
 no reason for treating the submarine otherwise than is 
 customary in the case of an ordinary warship visiting a 
 foreign port. ' ' 
 
 It may seem ungracious to recall the American Notes 
 dealing with that thorny question, the "freedom of the 
 seas," which President Wilson put in the forefront of his 
 
408 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 fourteen proposals for an enduring peace after ''this, the 
 culminating and final war for human liberty." But those 
 Notes inflamed feeling against us, especially in the South- 
 ern States, where our declaration of cotton as contraband 
 of war came as a great blow. In both Houses of Congress 
 retaliatory embargoes were proposed upon commodities use- 
 ful to the Allies — first munitions of war, and then food- 
 stuffs. In the latter case rising prices made the masses 
 welcome that move as one likely to reduce the cost of liv- 
 ing, so it had a fleeting measure of popular support. 
 
 Then the Battle of Jutland was hailed in New York as a 
 German victory; the *' re-write man" of the Hearst jour- 
 nals used the word ''overwhelming," and was thereafter 
 denied the use of mails and cables by our Government for 
 systematic distortion of official news. No doubt our Ad- 
 miralty was in part to blame by reason of its maladroit 
 reports. For even the New York World, which never had 
 pro-German leanings, came out with a big cartoon showing 
 the British Lion emerging from the waves with a black eye 
 and a tin can tied to his tail. "In spite of conflicting re- 
 ports from Berlin and London," the World leader said, 
 "and a common suppression of details, it is plain that the 
 British Fleet was outmanoeuvred, outshot, and outfought by 
 its adversary." 
 
 In those early days Germanism swept the United States 
 with gusty ecstasies of all-pervasive tinge. Deutschheit 
 was backed by a propaganda which covered the continent 
 from sea to sea, and was aided by the Irish — ^by SinUv 
 Feiners and Clan-na-Gaelers, Ancient Hibernians, Irish 
 Leaguers, Friends of Freedom, and an Irish press so vin- 
 dictive that it was at last forbidden the mails by Post- 
 Master Burleson. Senators Martine and Phelan brought 
 forward extravagant motions, like the one requesting 
 President Wilson to intercede for Roger Casement and the 
 ' ' Irish Martyrs. ' ' Indiscretion of this kind did not prevent 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 109 
 
 America's leading men from sympathizing strongly with 
 the Irish cause. President Wilson himself accepted a 
 statue of Robert Emmett, and he received Mrs. Sheehy 
 Skeffington at the White House with unusual warmth. 
 
 So that, swayed with emotion from millions of her citizens, 
 it is not surprising that at one period America was inclined 
 to believe that the German would win the war and vindi- 
 cate his clamorous claim to super-manhood among the races. 
 Even the native humorist, friendly to our cause, was 
 afraid of the Kaiser's sledge-hammer strokes in East and 
 West. He described them in prize-ring jargon, such as 
 everybody understands. ''The Divine Right is working 
 like a piston," this wag was grieved to say. ''And unless 
 the Allies can put over a rib-roasting left, it's the sleep-act 
 for theirs, and a sad count over the champion that was!" 
 This detachment, with all its levity and unconcern, woke 
 angry remonstrance in England and France — especially 
 when it was known that Captain (now Admiral) Sowden 
 Sims had been asked to revise his professional report of the 
 Battle of Jutland, lest its eulogy of British tactics should 
 offend the German elements in the United States. 
 
 That those elements were able to influence policy is 
 beyond a doubt. German-American shippers and traders 
 were loudest of all in the outcry against our right of search 
 a,t sea; our seizure of neutral mails and contraband of 
 war, and lastly over the Black List — "an arbitrary and 
 sweeping practice," which the American Note was afraid 
 would have "harsh, even disastrous effects upon the com- 
 merce of the United States. ' ' We had a hostile press over 
 there at this time. 
 
 The severity of the saner papers became rabid abuse in 
 those of the Hearst chain, and the German language jour- 
 nals, from Sacramento to St. Louis, became extraordinarily 
 scurrilous. It was purely time to remind present-day 
 America of the historic part which the British Fleet has 
 
410 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 played; so Mr. Balfour begau with a dissertation on the 
 Freedom of the Seas. *' England and Holland fought for 
 it in times gone by," Mr. Balfour told our ruffled friends, 
 ''and to their success the United States may be said to owe 
 its very existence. For if, three hundred years ago, the 
 maritime claims of Spain and Portugal had been admitted, 
 whatever else North America might have been, it would not 
 have been English-speaking. It would neither have em- 
 ployed the language nor obeyed the laws, nor enjoyed the 
 institutions which, in the last analysis, are of British 
 origin. ' ' 
 
 America's stand over the right of search at sea is an 
 historic tradition ; it goes back to Benjamin Franklin, who 
 negotiated a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Prussia, 
 in which it was agreed that private property should not be 
 seized. Of course in those days the sea affair was mere 
 lunar politics to Prussia, seeing that she had no fleet worthy 
 of the name, nor any call for it until 1848, when Prince 
 Adalbert wrote his ''Memorandum Concerning the Estab- 
 lishment of a German Navy. ' ' It was mainly our right of 
 search at sea which caused the Anglo-American War of 
 1812. In 1856 the United States disagreed with the Dec- 
 laration of Paris, because the contracting Powers would 
 not admit her maritime view of "free ships and free 
 goods." 
 
 John Hay impressed this upon his delegates to The Hague 
 in 1899. "You are authorized to propose the principle 
 of extending to strictly private property at sea the im- 
 munity from destruction or capture by belligerents which 
 such property -already enjoys on land." This the State 
 Secretary thought "worthy of being incorporated in the 
 permanent law of civilized nations." Both McKinley (in 
 1898) and Roosevelt (in 1903) sent Messages to Congress 
 reaffirming this claim. It received national sanction by a 
 joint resolution of both Houses, passed on April 28, 1904. 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 411 
 
 And three years later Secretary Root armed America's 
 envoys again with the old sea-heresy, which they took with 
 them for the second time to The Hague. 
 
 In 1812, as in 1915-16, the British (and French) re- 
 straint of neutral trade had exasperated American opin- 
 ion. Yet in their own Civil AVar President Lincoln brought 
 sea-power to bear upon the Confederacy with crushing 
 effect. His Proclamation, dated April 19, 1861, deems it 
 *' advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within 
 the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United 
 States, and of the law of nations in such case provided." 
 
 We were grievous sufferers by this drastic step, which, 
 although it saved the Union, dislocated our trade and in- 
 flicted the direst misery upon our people. Lancashire drew 
 her cotton from the blockaded States, and when supplies 
 were cut off, thousands of mill-hands were thrown out of 
 work. Later on they were brought to the verge of starva- 
 tion, and their employers faced with downright ruin. Yet 
 from those famishing homes the Slave Emancipator got a 
 message of sturdy support for his cause. Lincoln replied 
 to this in a very moving letter to our Manchester hands. 
 "I cannot but regard your utterance," he wrote, "as an 
 instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been 
 surpassed in any age or any country. ... I do not doubt 
 that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained 
 by your great nation; and on the other hand, I ha.ve no 
 hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, 
 esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship 
 among the American people." 
 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that America's agitation for 
 the freedom of the seas died down before the parallel cases 
 we put to her, with modifications made necessary by the 
 great size of ships and the impossibility of adequate search 
 on the high seas. A Naval Board advised the American 
 Government that: ''No difference . . . can be seen be- 
 
412 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 tween the search of a ship of 1000 tons and one of 20,000 
 tons, except possibly a difference in time for the purpose 
 of establishing fully the character of her cargo and the 
 nature of her service and destination." The absurdity 
 of this contention was soon realized, and American jurists 
 of high repute upheld the British view. Thus Professor 
 S. B. Edmunds of St. Louis University, comparing our 
 blockade of Germany with that of the Confederate ports 
 during the Civil War, declared our action amply justified. 
 ''A sense of consistency should make us mute," concludes 
 this American authority on international law. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose, however, that the matter 
 is definitely settled; on the contrary, it has figured fre- 
 quently in Presidential utterance as the considered policy 
 of the United States. As Article II in Dr. Wilson's pro- 
 gram of the world 's peace, it follows the abolition of secret 
 diplomacy, and is thus phrased: ''Absolute freedom of 
 navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters, alike 
 in peace and in war, except as the. seas may be- closed, in 
 whole or in part, by international action for the enforce- 
 ment of international covenants.'^ 
 
 Thus it is evident that in any future conflict America 
 looks for co-operation, which has been denied her during 
 the most merciless of all wars. President Wilson did ap- 
 peal for neutral support, and appealed in vain, as he told 
 his people with regret. The non-belligerent nations were 
 all Sinn Feiners, all concerned with "Ourselves Alone," 
 and no doubt intimidated by ''frightful" German meth- 
 ods as carried out in Belgium — Jam proximus ardet Uca- 
 legon. Even German thinkers have commented upon this 
 Levite shrinking attitude. "The nations," says Rudolf 
 Eucken of Jena, "are no longer ruled by ideals, but by 
 interests ; they preach open egoism, and apply it with new 
 zeal to the practical philosophy of life." The Pope made 
 a moving appeal for peace — "Must the civilized world 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 413 
 
 become nothing but a field of death?" And, like Presi- 
 dent Wilson, His Holiness urged that "the moral force of 
 Right should take the place of the material force of arms. ' ' 
 But here, surely, is the crux of the tragedy. For in such 
 a war as this, all the belligerents believe they have Right 
 on their side. 
 
 Germany sees herself as der Hort des Friedens — the 
 Rock of Peace, assailed by floods of jealousy and fear. 
 Von Kirchholi", the Bavarian General facing the French 
 near Peronne, during the battles of the Somme, broke 
 down and cried before the American pressmen when he 
 recalled the Allied taunt of "Huns and barbarians," ap- 
 plied to the legions under him who were dying daily for 
 the Fatherland. "Justice, loyalty, and truth are fighting 
 on our side," the Emperor told his Brandenburg Grena- 
 diers on the Tagliamento plain. And in an Order to both 
 services, he declared that "the gallant exploits of our sub- 
 marines have secured to my Navy glory and admiration 
 for ever." What argument is possible with sentiments 
 like these? The fatal fact is that they are sincerely held, 
 and that the clash of Right 'against Might must make war 
 a condition of eternal recurrence. 
 
 America herself — the most peaceful of all democracies — 
 felt this in her Civil War, when North and South fought 
 with a furious conviction which became a religion. "The 
 men were in dead earnest," we learn from that scholarly 
 pacifist, David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford Univer- 
 sity. "Each believed that his view of State Rights and 
 national authority was founded on the solid rock of Right- 
 eousness and fair play." So it must be to the end, when 
 feeling runs high and there is hopeless divergence of 
 causes. 
 
 In peace proposals addressed to the Powers, Pope Bene- 
 dict would assure "the supremacy of Right" by simulta- 
 neous and reciprocal disarmament, and a system of arbi- 
 
414 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 tration backed by a League of Nations. This follows the 
 American plan. But the Pope as well as President Wil- 
 son contends for ''the true liberty and community of the 
 seas, which on the one hand would remove many causes 
 of conflict, and on the other would open to all new sources 
 of prosperity and progress." Now this aim strikes at the 
 very root of the British Empire and bids fair to be the 
 gravest of all the problems before the plenipotentiaries of 
 Peace. The German Government referred to it when re- 
 plying to the Pope's Note; it was among the "definite rules 
 and safeguards" which were to ensure "the fortifying 
 moral strength of Eight." Germany was ready to sup- 
 port "every proposal which is compatible with our vital 
 interests." The Imperial Chancellor was in ostentatioiis 
 agreement with President Wilson over the freedom of the 
 seas in war and peace. Was it not "also demanded by 
 Germany as one of the first and most important require- 
 ments of the future?" "There is, therefore," Count 
 Hertling continued, "no difference of opinion here." 
 
 But there is ambiguity everywhere in scope and defini- 
 tion of this aim. Few of its advocates are so frank as 
 Herr Dernburg who, as propagandist in New York, ex- 
 plained why sea-power should be hobbled and land-power 
 left free: why war should be banished from the element 
 in which Germany was weak, and left to ramp in the re- 
 gion of her proven strength. When the Lusitania was 
 destroyed, Von Jagow, who was then Foreign Minister in 
 Berlin, described that fearful crime as a blow for the 
 freedom of the seas, and consequently a service to the 
 whole world. But as these "services" multiplied, with 
 American victims drowned again and again, the logic of 
 the argument grew more than doubtful, even in the Amer- 
 ican West, whose moral indolence a German industrial 
 magnate like Walter Rathenau surveyed with grave amaze- 
 ment. 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 415 
 
 *'Tlie most important element in the freedom of the 
 seas/' declared Mr. Roosevelt bluntly, ''is freedom from 
 murder. And until our Government takes an effective 
 stand, its talk of freedom can only expose it to ridicule." 
 This view gained ground with each succeeding outrage, 
 and at the same time the ancient estimate- of Britain under- 
 went a profound change. Count Bernstorff's prompting 
 about British "navalism" was now coldly received — as 
 Mendoza's was long ago when he complained to Elizabeth 
 about the intrusion of her ships into the waters of the 
 Indies. American experts like Admiral Mahan were read 
 again, and sea-power began to loom in quite a new light. 
 
 It was now recalled that without a blockade, ruthlessly 
 enforced, the rebel States of the 'Sixties would never have 
 been subdued. The sale of their cotton would have bought 
 munitions of war, and America as we know it would surely 
 have broken up. Then there was Mahan 's testimony to 
 Britain's benitin use of her sovereignty at sea. He admits 
 that from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf, and from the At- 
 lantic to the Pacific, freedom has been maintained by cap- 
 tains of English breed, such as have for centuries im- 
 peached the would-be conqueror afloat. 
 
 "If it were not for this British mastery," mused the 
 Wall Street journal at last, ''where would our export trade 
 be today?" In other quarters the Monroe Doctrine was 
 historically reviewed, together with the opinions of it held 
 by reactionary statesmen of the Central Powers. Thus it 
 was to Metternich a calamitous consequence of free-footed 
 democracy. Bismarck called that doctrine "an interna- 
 tional impertinence." But Great Britain was behind it 
 throughout, and for this reason history itself took on new 
 meanings; Americans marvelled how that legacy of dislike 
 could ever have come down to them. 
 
 Why, it was German despotism which America fought in 
 her Revolutionary War! Two of the Georges were Ger- 
 
416 A:\IERICA 'S DAY 
 
 mans who hated England and barely spoke her tongue. 
 The Third of that line was brought up by a narrow- 
 minded German mother to be ''King,'' as she impressed 
 upon him. And he it was who steered the State into what 
 Goldwin Smith called **the most tragical disaster in Eng- 
 lish history." It was therefore a civil war, that of 1776, 
 with the liberties of all at stake, whether at home in Eng- 
 land, or in the American Colonies. Had not Chatham 
 withdrawn his son from the Army *'so that he might not 
 fight in the unhappy war with our fellow-subjects"? The 
 Earl of Effingham resigned his commission, and received 
 the civic thanks of London and Dublin for his action. 
 General Amherst also declined to serve; Sir "William Howe 
 was reluctant, but King George insisted, and the soldier 
 obeyed under tlie duress of his military oath. This is the 
 new English history, as taught today in the United States. 
 
 The late John Redmond took it down to 1910. Mr. T. P. 
 O'Connor brought the story to this present year: and the 
 result is a change of heart which may fairly be called epoch- 
 making. There were no signs of it in the Catholic press of 
 America which now scathed the ' ' AU-f or-Ireland " sabotage 
 and plots which the Department of Justice had discovered. 
 The Chicago Citizen mourned the fact that ''Irish names, 
 some of them prominent, have been tainted with disloyalty 
 and tarnished with German gold." 
 
 The Catholic Transcript of Hartford recalled the Pas- 
 toral Letter of Cardinal Logue dealing with Young Ire- 
 land's ''pursuit of a dream which no man in his sober 
 senses can hope to see realized — the establishment of an 
 Irish Republic . . . by hurling an unarmed people against 
 an Empire which has live millions of men under arms, fur- 
 nished with the most terrible engines of destruction which 
 human ingenuity could devise." 
 
 However, Irish-American citizens were less concerned 
 with folly in the Motherland than with treasonous action 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 417 
 
 against the Stars and Stripes — ''the flag which has given 
 asylum and liberty to so many millions of our race." These 
 loyalists formed a new party, and sent out an earnest ap- 
 peal to compatriots at home and abroad not to embarrass 
 the cause of the Allies by vindictive action against Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The German intrigue was far more formidable, and for 
 many reasons it kept the State Department in a state of 
 indecision. Large American supplies were reaching our 
 enemy through neutral ports. Thus in the early days, 
 when we held up cotton cargoes on their way to Sweden, 
 the quays and warehouses of Gothenburg were heaped high 
 with the staple, yet Swedish spinners were complaining 
 they had none for their own use. One significant contract 
 with a German firm came into our hands ; it was for 50,000 
 bales at double the price which cotton was fetching in any 
 other country. All of it was consigned to neutral ports, 
 and when we seized a shipment there was no trace in the 
 papers of enemy destination. Every device tluit guile 
 could suggest was employed in this nefarious traffic from 
 the United States. Thousands of tons of meat, documented 
 for a neutral port, were sent to non-existent firms. Other 
 consignments were addressed to lightermen or dock la- 
 bourers. Others again to a baker, an hotelkeeper, and a 
 maker of musical instruments. 
 
 In the three years prior to the war Sweden's average 
 import of lard from America was but 638 tons. In 1915 
 the figure leapt to 9029 tons. Norway's imports of pork 
 and bacon showed a similar bound; in 1916 she supplied 
 Germany with 868,500 tons of food. The Allies protested, 
 of course, but their demands were in various ways evaded, 
 as by the erection of canning factories at Hamburg for 
 Norwegian sardines and oil. As for Denmark, so late as 
 June, 1917, she was sending across the frontier seven 
 thousand head of cattle every week; and her American 
 
41B AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 imports of indispensable fats presented a glaring case. 
 Thus the intake of cottonseed oilcake was thirty times 
 greater in 1915 than in the preceding year. Sweden's 
 traffic was mainly in munitions of war. It was Holland's 
 popular boast that she was ''Germany's bread-basket"; 
 and when the Allies tried to stop the supplies of pork, 
 Richard von Kiihlmann, who was then German Minister at 
 The Hague, said he had no objection to offer, since "a, 
 Dutch pig was only American maize on four legs." 
 
 These facts were brought to the notice of the Washington 
 Cabinet, for the United States was regarded by these neu- 
 trals as an inexhaustible source upon which they might 
 draw after having sold to the Central Powers at enormous 
 profit. After declaring war President Wilson shut down 
 upon this traffic. He declared an embargo upon American 
 products in order that these might not be made "the occa- 
 sion of benefit to the enemy, either directly or indirectly." 
 Washington was soon filled with plaintive missions from 
 "the necessitous little nations." The envoys presented 
 specious documents, but America's Export Council was 
 inexorable. Fifteen Dutch ships were held up at Balti- 
 more, and fifty more at New York laden with millions of 
 bushels of wheat and maize, as well as oilcake, bacon and 
 lard. 
 
 Mynheer van den Wielen had a piteous tale of misery in 
 Holland; but the intelligence Bureau of the State Depart- 
 ment proved to him that Dutch food imports had shown 
 an excess over home consumption which was enough to 
 provision 1,200,000 soldiers for a year! The Norwegian 
 Mission, under Fritjof Nansen, was severely heckled by 
 caustic Americans. "You have it in your power to starve 
 us," the famous explorer said, "but we hope and believe 
 you will help us instead. A million tons of our merchant 
 fleet have been sunk, and six hundred of our seamen 
 drowned." America asked why Norway had fed her mur- 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 419 
 
 derous assailant, and even provided the nickel for the 
 German torpedoes which did the work ? Here is one of the 
 darkest problems of the war, and a fruitful theme for mis- 
 anthropy. 
 
 It will be seen that step by step the United States swung 
 into line with the British view of sea-power. We plied her 
 with precedents in her irritable time, quoting facts from 
 her own Civil War and the war with Spain. ''If the ship's 
 papers," American cruisers w^ere instructed in 1898, "in- 
 dicate the presence of contraband, the ship should be 
 seized." In Lincoln's day Secretary of State Seward said 
 he was very sorry for the distress in England occasioned 
 by the blockade; but who could expect him to sacrifice 
 the American Union for cotton? And therewith he baf- 
 fled the blockade-runners of neutral ports. Moreover, the 
 Supreme Court extended the doctrine of continuous voy- 
 age, so as to cover all cases of trickery intended to break 
 the blockade. This became more and more effective; until 
 Seward could say that, "Cotton commands four times the 
 price in Manchester and Rouen that it does in New Or- 
 leans." 
 
 These cogent arguments were working in the American 
 mind, and they served to offset the mischief -making efforts 
 of Germany, both directly from Berlin and also through the 
 Embassy in Washington, whose influence was at last on the 
 wane. In one of the Notes which Von Jagow handed to 
 Mr. Gerard — it was a reply to further protest against the 
 submarine — America was reminded that she had it in her 
 powder to confine the war to belligerent forces, had she been 
 "determined to insist against Great Britain, on incontest- 
 able rights to the freedom of the seas. ' ' As matters stood, 
 the German people saw only protests against the "illegal 
 methods" of their enemies, and an American demand that 
 Germany "who is struggling for existence, shall restrain 
 the use of her effective weapon. ' ' 
 
420 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 On our side surprise was expressed that Secretary of 
 State Lansing did not see eye to eye witli us about the new 
 status of the submarine, especially after the havoc wrought 
 by U-53 off Nantucket. But impulsive action is wholly 
 foreign to the tradition 'of the State Department. It is a 
 slow-moving Bureau, entirely undemocratic, and charged 
 with domestic as well as foreign duties — including the over- 
 sight of a Presidential election every four years. Amer- 
 ican vacillation in regard to armed merchant vessels and 
 submarines was due to representations from naval advisers 
 who were watching the development of the under-water 
 craft with a single eye to national needs of the future. A 
 j\Iemorandum was handed to Mr. Lansing pointing out the 
 enormous coast line of the United States, and the peculiari- 
 ties of many of its harbours, which might well make the 
 submarine a suitable weapon, alike for attack and defence. 
 
 The auxiliary cruiser, the strategists said, could work 
 havoc in war-time with American commerce, so it might 
 be well to avoid any policy which could be cited here- 
 after to hamper the free use of the invisible boat. So 
 defective were the coast defences, that it would be im- 
 possible to resist the landing of an army backed by pow- 
 erful warships unless the underwater weapon were given 
 the fullest play. 
 
 Moreover, to insist that a submarine should visit and 
 search a liner before attacking her might one day place 
 America at the mercy of an enemy with a large merchant 
 marine, and therefore able to equip raiders incomparably 
 more destructive than even the notorious Alabama. Alto- 
 gether the sea affair was fraught with perplexing possi- 
 bilities to a great democracy beset on every side and con- 
 sidering the future in the light of a lurid war-time day. 
 In the meantime America was suffering from a German 
 blockade. Her ships were held up in port ; tankers of the 
 Standard Oil had been recalled and added to the dock 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 421 
 
 congestion, which was already serious. At length there 
 was nothing for it but to put guns on board and to assume 
 that armed neutrality which is the half-way house to war. 
 For this purpose a hundred million dollars was voted by 
 Congress, and the liner St. Louis set forth as a pioneer 
 equipped for any encounter. 
 
 So at long last the warnings against British Seeherr- 
 schaft and maritime tyranny recoiled upon Germany: she 
 was soon to figure as the * 'furious and brutal Power" in 
 a Presidential Note, ''whose word we cannot take as a 
 guarantee of anything that is to endure." American 
 travellers began to ask what complaint had Germany to 
 make about the freedom of the seas before she made her 
 pounce in 1914? "I sat on the club verandah at Singa- 
 pore," Mr. Poultney Bigelow testified, '.'and counted 
 twenty-seven funnels of a single German line. Then I 
 crossed to North Borneo, also on a German line which 
 carried the British mails. Later on I went to Siam — 
 likewise on a German line. After that to Australia, to 
 Java and the Eastern Archipelago. And always in ships 
 of that same concern." 
 
 New York newspapers published the large-scale maps 
 which the Hamburg-Amerika and Norddeutscher Lloyd 
 Steamship Lines used to display so proudly in their London 
 windows, showing every known sea-lane traversed by 
 them, from China to Peru. "Absolute freedom," as de- 
 fined by Germany, means the abolition of blockade 
 (Absperrung) except within the limits of territorial waters; 
 and this modern weapons have made impracticable. It 
 forbids the right of search for enemy goods or munitions 
 of war. Contraband is not to be seized. German mari- 
 time trade should therefore swarm unchecked, leaving the 
 naval preponderance of the Allies a helpless nullity in the 
 greatest of all wars. These contentions looked absurd to 
 America — though she was hurried into war without having 
 
422 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 decided the question to her entire satisfaction. For this 
 reason she regards the freedom of the seas as only in abey- 
 ance; we shall no doubt see her envoys, for the third and 
 last time, take a decisive stand upon the subject at the Con- 
 ference of Peace. 
 
 It is well to remember that America wishes to keep a 
 free hand in her war against the German autocracy. 
 President Wilson's deputy, Colonel E. M. House, made 
 this quite clear at Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay. 
 For the old mistrust of entangling alliances is still strong, 
 and the devious statecraft of Europe can never be agree- 
 able to the United States, whose distaste for expedients 
 is almost prudish when these conflict with her standards 
 and ideals. This was seen in her reluctance to give formal 
 assent to Japan's move in Eastern Siberia, with Vladivostok 
 as a base and the railway junction of Harbin as an ob- 
 jective of high importance in the preservation of Far 
 Eastern peace. In American eyes such an invasion was 
 morally indefensible without a direct mandate from the 
 Russian people: and no foreign guarantees could take the 
 place of this national sanction. 
 
 It is America's pride that she went to war for no ma- 
 terial gain, but through love of liberty and sympathy 
 with the struggles of all the peoples, both great and small. 
 For this reason a typical English statesman like Arthur 
 Balfour called the Day of her entry "one of the most 
 important in the annals of mankind." Mr. Asquith, in the 
 historic debate of felicitation in our Parliament, ventured 
 to doubt ''whether even now the World realizes the full 
 significance of the step which America has taken." France 
 weighed the wealth of her sister Republic; the man-power 
 and material resources, allotting her at last the supreme 
 role of a decisive factor in the war. 
 
 But no sign was so significant as the drawing together 
 of Great Britain and the United States, of which the 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 423 
 
 symbol was the Stars and Stripes floating from the Victoria 
 Tower of Westminster — the first foreign flag ever dis- 
 played by the Mother of Parliaments. The periodical lit- 
 erature of America soon teemed with tribute to the effort 
 and purpose of Great Britain. Our new armies were 
 praised; our Navy's shield over all the seas, our genius 
 for colonizing, and a commercial policy throughout the 
 Empire which was a standing marvel to our German rivals 
 in the old days. University Presidents dwelt on the eth- 
 ical side of English rule in India, Egypt, and the Africas. 
 The Britain of toda.y was presented in glowing propaganda, 
 and the pceans of Emerson recalled — he was afraid that if 
 he lingered too long among us his patriotism would suffer ! 
 
 ''Mother of nations," wrote the pink-thinking Sage of 
 Concord, in his apostrophe to England, "Mother of heroes, 
 with strength still equal to the time; still wise to enter- 
 tain, and swift to execute the policy which the mind and 
 heart of mankind reciuire at the present hour!" These 
 transports passed, of course, and left the idealist with a 
 considered verdict upon the Englishman, whose ''stuff or 
 substance seems to be the best in the world. I forgive 
 him all his pride. My respect is the more generous in that 
 I have no sympathy with him, onl}^ an admiration." 
 
 But the martial spirit of our race in the gravest trial, 
 and its achievement in the three elements of war since 
 1914 have aroused more than admiration in the United 
 States. Her ablest writers, together with historians, la- 
 bour leaders, and members of Congress, were sent over 
 to report this unsuspected psyche, and with it the indus- 
 trial surge which has turned our country into an arsenal, 
 and so quickened its productive power as to make the 
 Britain of tomorrow the keenest of all commercial rivals 
 in the fields of peace. 
 
 How mistaken was even so able an observer as John 
 Hay, when he lamented the "degeneracy" of England in 
 
424 AMERICA'S DAY 
 
 1900. This was the burden of many messages which Amer- 
 ica received, with a wealth of detail that woke the read- 
 er's wonder and warmed him to enthusiasm at last. After 
 all, he mused, there must be something in Hegel's claim 
 that ''wars invigorate humanity, just as storm preserves 
 the sea from putrescence." America had but to look at 
 home to see the shock of war working out her people's 
 destiny. For the first time duty and sacrifice were put 
 above the dollar, alike by the rich and the obscure, in mat- 
 ters of great moment and in -trifles too. Here was the boy 
 soldier in Lorraine advising his mother to "quit sending 
 candy." "It tastes fine," he agreed in a wistful letter 
 home. "But it seems we're short of ships, and we want 
 all the space we can get for cartridges." 
 
 And, stripping to the \ fight, America shed her old illu- 
 sions and traditions. Her prescient statesmen and think- 
 ers now openly urged her to join hands with Great Britain 
 as "the conscious and leagued custodians of the world's 
 peace"; I quote from the Plj^mouth speech of Ambas- 
 sador Page. ' ' To undertake this, ' ' he pursued, ' ' our com- 
 radeship must be perpetual, and our task is to see that it be 
 not broken, nor even strained . . . for we are laying new 
 foundations of human freedom." With profound feel- 
 ing the senior American diplomat vowed himself to this 
 work: "Whatever years remain of my working life I 
 propose to devote to this and nothing else — to the bring- 
 ing about of a closer fundamental and lasting acquaintance 
 between the people of this Empire and those of the United 
 States. . . . We understand each other better than any 
 two great nations, so let both turn to the task. For upon 
 our united shoulders henceforth and for ever, so far as 
 we can see, the peace of the world must rest. ' ' 
 
 Surely these earnest words, and the dangers that loom 
 ahead, foreshadow an Anglo-American Alliance? For this 
 was the "marriage" which that famous democrat, Thomas 
 
NEW ANGLO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING 425 
 
 Jefferson, found the most natural of all when he looked 
 across the seas for a partner to share America's peril. 
 Nearly fifty years before that crisis came, Jefferson had 
 drafted the historic Declaration of Independence. He was 
 later on President Washington's Secretary of State; and 
 in his long career he had moulded the young Republic, and 
 held every office in its gift, retiring at last laden with 
 honour and prestige, to direct and advise his successor at 
 the White House. Naturally, then, it was to Jefferson that 
 President Monroe turned for counsel when Richard Rush, 
 U. S. Minister in London, sent over the two letters of 
 Canning which offered the support of England against the 
 New- World designs of Mettemich and the Holy Alliance. 
 *'With Great Britain on our side," Jefferson told Monroe, 
 "we need not fear the whole world!" 
 
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