CHAPTER LXV

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A STATE OF WAR

Armed neutrality proved to be a passing phase in a rapidly developing situation. When the President on March 9, 1917, called on the new Congress to assemble on April 16, his course was solely dictated by existing conditions, which required legislative support, by the passage of adequate appropriations, for carrying out the defensive measures decided upon. But armed neutrality never became a reality. As a certain foretoken of war it could not be sustained. Not a naval gun had found its way on to the bow or stern of a merchant ship before the depredations of Germany forced the United States to reconsider its predetermined course of defensive armament.

"We make absolutely no distinction in sinking neutral ships within the war zone," Herr Zimmermann had warned. "Our determination is unshakable since that is the only way to end the war."

This was an intimation that American vessels, like those of other neutrals, must comply with the U-boat rulings or take the consequences. Hence more American vessels were sunk, Germany pursuing her evil way regardless of the American attitude.

On March 12, 1917, the unarmed steamer Algonquin, with a crew of twenty-seven, of whom ten were Americans, was shelled and sunk without warning by a German submarine. The crew succeeded in escaping.

A few days later the sinking of three unarmed American vessels, the City of Memphis, Illinois, and Vigilancia, was announced. The first and second named ships were returning to the United States in ballast; hence their destruction could not be justified on the ground that they were carrying freight for the Allies. The City of Memphis was first shelled and then torpedoed off the Irish coast on March 17, 1917. Her crew of fifty-seven escaped in five boats and were picked up by a steamer. The Illinois was torpedoed the next day. The Vigilancia was similarly sunk on March 16, 1917, by a submarine which did not appear on the surface. Fifteen of the crew, including five Americans, were lost.

These sinkings occasioned gratification in Germany. Count Reventlow, a notable German publicist, thus welcomed them in the "Deutsche Tageszeitung":

"It is good that American ships have been obliged to learn that the German prohibition is effective, and that there is no question of distinctive treatment for the United States. In view of such losses, there is only one policy for the United States, as for the small European maritime powers, namely, to retain their ships in their own ports as long as the war lasts."

Another German press comment was that the sinkings were certain to produce special satisfaction throughout the empire.

German contempt for American feeling could no further go. A cabinet meeting held on March 20, 1917, disclosed that the President's colleagues, even reputed pacifists like Secretaries Daniels and Baker, were a unit in regarding a state of armed neutrality as inadequate to meet the serious situation. The President was confronted with the necessity of immediately taking more drastic action rather than continuing to pursue measures of passive defense against the submarine peril represented by arming ships. The cabinet's demand was for an earlier convocation of Congress and a declaration that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany. The President listened, and that evening attended a theater supposedly to divert and prepare his mind for coping with the gravest of problems. Events proved that he had already determined his course.

Armed neutrality was a delusive phrase and misrepresented actual conditions; it merely glozed over a state of undeclared hostility and deceived no one. Yet it had its adherents; they wanted to give it a fair trial before discarding the pretense that it existed. The Government, they said, should wait and see how armed ships fared at the hands of German submarines. If they proved equal to encounters with U-boats, or, better still, if the U-boats did not dare to attack them, there would be no occasion for further action. The proposal would not bear scrutiny since it was now known that Germany regarded armed merchantmen as ships of war and their crews as combatants.

The next day, March 21, 1917, the President issued a proclamation calling upon Congress to assemble on April 2, instead of April 16, "to receive a communication concerning grave matters of national policy." The national emergency which had been in existence since Germany began sinking American ships in pursuance of her unrestricted submarine policy was now acknowledged. It would be the function of Congress, if the President so advised, to declare that a state of war existed between the Government of the United States and that of the German Empire. And a waiting and willing nation was left in no doubt that war there would be. The cabinet had become a war cabinet and the country warlike, goaded to retaliatory action by the wanton deeds of the most cruel government of this or any other age.

As the spokesman of an imperialistic rÉgime preserving its accustomed rÔle of a wolf in sheep's clothing, the German Chancellor addressed the Reichstag on March 29, 1917, and took cognizance of the critical situation in the United States in these terms:

"Within the next few days the directors of the American nation will be convened by President Wilson for an extraordinary session of Congress in order to decide the question of war or peace between the American and German nations.

"Germany never had the slightest intention of attacking the United States of America, and does not have such intention now. It never desired war against the United States of America, and does not desire it to-day. How did these things develop?

"Why, England declined to raise her blockade, which had been called illegal and indefensible even by President Wilson and Secretary Lansing," said the Chancellor. "Worse than that, she had intensified it. Worse than all, she had rejected Germany's 'peace' offers and proclaimed her war objects, which aimed at the annihilation of the Teutonic Powers. Hence unrestricted sea warfare followed. "If the American nation considers this," concluded the Chancellor, "a cause for which to declare war against the German nation, with which it has lived in peace for more than one hundred years, if this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the responsibility for it. The German nation, which feels neither hatred nor hostility against the United States of America, shall also bear and overcome this."

The march of events went on irresistibly. At 8.35 o'clock on the evening of Monday, April 2, 1917, President Wilson appeared before a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives. He had addressed the Congress in person several times during his terms of office, but never under circumstances or in a setting more dramatic. The streets leading to the Capitol were packed with vast throngs. White searchlights etched the dome and the pillars against the sky, revealing the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze on the flagstaff above the dome. Two troops of United States cavalry in dress uniform, with sabers drawn, formed a guard round the House approaches. Hundreds of police, in uniform and in plain clothes, were scattered along the route followed by the President's automobile from the White House. Inside the House, which had been in almost continuous session all day, the members assembled to receive the President. The senators appeared carrying little American flags. The Diplomatic Corps, the whole Supreme Court—in fact, the entire personnel of the Government, legislative, judicial, and executive—gathered to hear the head of the American nation present its indictment against the Imperial Government of Germany.

The President was visibly nervous. He was pale. His voice was neither strong nor clear. He appeared to be deeply affected by the epochal and awesome character of his task. His distinguished audience listened in profound silence as he stated America's case without bluster and without rancor. The burden of his address was a request that the House and Senate recognize that Germany had been making war on the United States and that they agree to his recommendations, which included a declaration that a state of war existed, that universal military service be instituted, that a preliminary army of 500,000 be raised, and that the United States at once cooperate with the Allied Powers as a belligerent in every way that would operate to effect the defeat of Germany as a disturber of the world's peace.

In adopting ruthless submarine warfare, the President told Congress, Germany had swept every restriction aside:

"Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

"It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination.

"The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it."

Here the President referred to the short-lived expedient of armed neutrality adopted to meet the challenge:

"When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.

"The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making; we will not choose the path of submission—"

The President's audience had listened in silence up to this point. There was more of the sentence; but Congress did not wait to hear it. At the word "submission," Chief Justice White of the Supreme Court raised his hands in a resounding clap, which was the signal for a deafening roar of approval alike from congressmen, senators, and the occupants of the crowded galleries.

"We will not choose the path of submission," repeated the President, "and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life."

Then came the presentation of the only alternate course the United States could take:

"With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States, that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war."

Now what did this involve? The President thus answered the question: "It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs.

"It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible.

"It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines.

"It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States, already provided for by law in case of war, of at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training.

"It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation."

The President asked his countrymen to undertake a herculean task. But it was a necessary task—he deemed it an imperative one, and he knew it would be borne by willing shoulders. Without any object of gain, it was to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world as against selfish and autocratic power.

Neutrality was no longer feasible when the menace to the world's peace and freedom lay in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force and controlled solely by their own will, not by the will of their peoples. The United States had seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. The age demanded that the standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done which were respected by individual citizens of civilized states should also be observed among nations and their governments.

He acquitted the German people of blame. The United States had no quarrel with them. They were the pawns and tools of their autocratic rulers.

"Self-governed nations," said the President, "do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions."

What hope was there of a steadfast concert of peace with an autocratic government which could not be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants? The President pointed out the futility of looking for any enduring concord with Germany as she was now governed:

"One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities, and even our offices of government, with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

"The selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing," continued the President, "have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that government entertains no real friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence."

The President then delivered the most striking passage of an oration that will rank as one of the greatest ever addressed to a listening world:

"We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations, great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them."

The following morning, April 3, 1917, the Foreign Affairs Committees of both houses met at 10 o'clock to consider war resolutions introduced the previous evening in the House and Senate immediately after the President's address. They were identical in form and were submitted to textual alterations by the committees. That adopted by the Senate committee, and accepted by the House leaders, read as follows:

"Whereas, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America, therefore be it "Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States."

Senator Stone, chairman of the Senate committee, alone opposed its adoption. It was at once reported to the Senate, only to meet objection from Senator La Follette, who demanded the "regular order," that is, that the resolution, under the rule any member could invoke in order to postpone the consideration of important legislation, be withheld for one day. His objection came when Senator Hitchcock, who was in charge of the resolution, asked for unanimous consent to a suspension of the rules for its immediate consideration. The Senate was obliged to submit to the Wisconsin senator's obstructive tactics; but Senator Martin, the Senate Democratic leader, rather than permit any other business to be transacted, promptly obtained an adjournment till the next day. It was determined that the Senate, on reassembling, should sit without rest, recess or intermission, and without considering any other matter until the war resolution was passed. Senator La Follette and other pro-German pacifists in the chamber were barred from interposing further obstacles, especially as the new cloture rule was now operative.

The Senate assembled on April 4, 1917, in serious mien to carry out its task of passing the resolution before it could adjourn. It was a day of speechmaking and of historic utterances characterized by a moving earnestness of conviction. Orators of patriotic fervor came from senators who had before condemned any declaration of war as the greatest blunder the United States could commit. Others recounted the crimes of Germany against civilization, and, in face of these deeds, condemned any national unwillingness and cowardice to retaliate as showing a national degeneracy that was much worse than war.

The debate ended shortly after 11 o'clock that night, having lasted thirteen hours. The resolution was thereupon put to the vote and passed by 82 to 6. The actual alignment was 90 to 6, as eight absent senators favored the resolution. The six opponents were Senators La Follette of Wisconsin, Gronna of North Dakota, Norris of Nebraska, Stone of Missouri, Lane of Oregon, and Vardaman of Mississippi. They all belonged to the group of twelve who had prevented a vote on the Armed-Ship Bill. Three of this group, Senators O'Gorman, Clapp, and Works, had already retired into private life. The remaining three, chastened by the contumely their attitude had occasioned, deserted the pacifists and voted for the resolution.

The House had been waiting for the Senate's action and immediately proceeded to debate the resolution when it came before it on April 5, 1917, at 10 o'clock a. m. Following the Senate's example, it resolved to remain in session without any interval until a vote was taken. There was a strong band of pacifists in the House, some with pronounced pro-German sympathies, and they occupied much of the day with their outgivings. The House floor leader, Representative Kitchin of North Carolina, was one of their number. The debate extended through the night without cessation until 3.15 the next morning, April 6, 1917, when, after a wearisome discussion exceeding seventeen hours, the resolution passed amid resounding cheers by the overwhelming vote of 373 to 50.

The President signed the resolution in the afternoon of the same day, at the same time issuing a proclamation notifying the world that a state of war existed between the United States and the Imperial Government of Germany, and outlining regulations for the conduct of "alien enemies" resident within American jurisdiction.

American relations with Germany's allies—Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria—remained to be determined. In his war address to Congress the President made this allusion to them:

"I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany, because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare, adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it, because there are no other means of defending our right."

Under German dictation, however, Austria-Hungary and Turkey broke relations with the United States on April 9 and April 21, 1917, respectively. Bulgaria took no action. The American war declaration thus solely applied to Germany.[Back to Contents]

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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