It is Ambassador Gerard's opinion that when the German government issued its final insult to the United States, all the Kaiser's advisers were convinced that no provocation would make the American people fight. President Wilson, they argued, had just been re-elected on a peace platform. They counted, it was evident, upon the influence of the millions of German-Americans to frustrate hostilities, and Herr Zimmermann of the Foreign Office openly threatened the revolt of 500,000 German reservists in America if the United States dared "to do anything against Germany." The Western States were reported to be indifferent to the technicalities of the submarine dispute. The East was described as interested in the submarine sinkings only because they interfered with the traffic in munitions and the profits therefrom. The whole country was supposedly averse to war, unwilling to enter into European entanglements, and devoted solely to peaceful industry and money-grubbing.
Yet within a year afterwards, America had accepted conscription and raised an armed force of two million men. It had contributed billions of dollars to the war through government loans that were more popularly subscribed than even the German or the English loans. Government control had been accepted without question in every sort of private activity. Food regulations, fuel regulations, the regulation of industry, shipping, labor and transportation, voluntary censorship of the press, military censorship of the cables and the telegraph and the mails, prohibition of distilling, the enforcement of price-fixing, the curtailment of profits and the levying of confiscatory taxes had all been submitted to without a murmur. It had come to be a byword in Washington that "the people could not be asked to do enough"; that the fund of patriotism was so great it was difficult to find channels for it; that no war in the history of the nation had ever been supported so unanimously.
What explanation is there for the miracle of that change? Washington believes that it is chiefly due to one man. It believes that President Wilson, by his patient efforts to maintain peace, convinced the whole nation of the impossibility of avoiding war before he gave voice to that conviction. It realizes that, even then, a great mass of the people were loyal but unenthusiastic, until he outlined the country's war aims in his famous messages, and at once lifted the conflict to a higher level of purpose and gathered to his fervent support every sentiment and hope of democracy in the land.
Washington is now convinced that the war can have but one issue. There is no question of the outcome. The leaders of the nation are aware that the United States is "in the ring to stay." As the Secretary of War has said: "The American people were slow to rouse to this war. They will be as slow to cool. They wished peace. They still wish it. But they have learned that there is but one way to obtain peace, and they propose to obtain it that way. They know what they are fighting for, and they will fight till they achieve it."
HARVEY O'HIGGINS.
