WHY WE WENT TO WAR MEMORIES OF BEAUTIFUL FRANCE—WHY I WAS NOT ACCEPTED AS CONSUL TO GERMANY BY HON. JAMES MARTIN MILLER FORMER UNITED STATES CONSUL IN FRANCE

To have lived on the principal battle ground of the world war was a privilege the author did not appreciate at the time. As representative of the United States Government in the Consular district of France that includes the departments of the Aisne, Ardennes, Marne, Aube, Meuse, Vosges, Haute-Marne and Meurthe-et-Moselle, he lived and had his headquarters at Reims, some years before the war. Reims is (or rather was) a beautiful city of 112,000 people. The story of the city goes back to the days of the Roman empire, and bears the mark of many Gallic insurrections. In comparatively later times Joan of Arc caused Charles VII to be crowned in the great Cathedral there—one of the most glorious and stately in all Europe, now a ruin. A history of the eight departments (or small states) mentioned above would include a history of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, and of the greatest and most desperate of all wars, the one just brought to a close.

My Consular district bordered on Belgium, Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine. The Marne, the Aisne, the Vesle, and other streams whose names adorn with sad pride so many of America's battle-flags, flow through it. After 1914 Belgium saw very little fighting; but this district saw almost four years of continuous and enormous battle. It was overrun time and again. Neither Belgium nor any other country suffered such devastation, nor such material destruction. Today it is a vast graveyard. Hundreds of thousands of men dyed its soil with their lifeblood. All America and all the world knows about Chateau Thierry and St. Mihiel, and the gallantry of American troops in those two brilliant and significant actions. It is difficult to realize the stupendous tragedy that through all those years hung over that beautiful country, whose fields were once as familiar to me as any fields of home. I look back to that time with affection, in the glow of happy memories.

Americans before this war had held the Monroe Doctrine in high reverence. Presidents had strengthened it in their messages. Candidates for office for more than half a century had argued as a campaign issue that the United States must never be drawn into foreign entanglements; that no European nation ever would be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the American continents. This doctrine was so deeply rooted that objectors everywhere rose up when we began to talk of "preparedness" against the ultimate day when we could no longer keep out of the fight. Many declared it would be "unconstitutional" for the United States to send troops to Europe. The war lords of Germany took advantage of this traditional sentiment among our people and felt sure that the United States never would come in, no matter how many American lives nor how much American property Germany might destroy, nor how many of our ships German pirates might sink at sea, without warning. The German government had built up a propaganda in this country that at one time threatened to poison the minds of all our people. There were some among us who hated England, and wanted to see Germany win for no other reason than that. Others hated Russia, and so desired Germany to win. Germany's secret intrigues in Mexico came near to getting us into a war with that country. In the face of all these things there was a strong sentiment among our people and even in Congress favorable to Germany. It is easy now to say that we should have gone to war when the Lusitania was sunk, but pro-German feeling was so noisy and so strong, even though it was held by a minority, that the Congress itself was affected and withheld its hand.

Public sentiment had to be crystalized so that it would stand back of the administration. With our lack of a secret service capable of coping with the German agents who were busy everywhere and all the time, we were at a disadvantage in gathering evidence to convince our people that the Germans were menacing our very existence. Even after the secret service was built up it took many months of hard work and several thousand government men to uncover and stamp out their organizations and their ruthless plots. The slimy tracks of the German ambassador at Washington had to be followed through devious underground channels that no one had suspected. The embassy had filled the country with German poison gas, and backed the German campaign of wholesale arson. Germans living here, many of them American born, were busily counteracting public opinion as the evidences accumulated.

Democracies are always at a disadvantage in dealing with monarchies; in the initial stages of war at least. We have seen it demonstrated that a democracy must become autocratic if it is to carry on a war successfully. But an American autocracy takes the shape of a temporary delegation of unusual power in conditions that cannot wait for the slow action of ordinary times; and those who exercise it are put in power by the people themselves, to do the people's will. It was necessary to consolidate not only the direction of the nation itself, but of our military affairs abroad. We soon got the home situation in hand, and then the President of the United States threw his influence, backed by all the American people, toward bringing the allied armies and those of the United States under one head in the person of General Foch as Field Marshal. This was not accomplished until after the great Italian disaster, when it looked as though the Austro-Hungarian armies would crush Italy. The same may be said of the threatened disaster to the British army early in 1918, when von Hindenburg began his great drive toward Calais and Paris. Here were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, four monarchies dominated by the German government, fighting nearly all the democracies of the world, not considering Russia, which dropped out shortly before the United States effectively entered the war.

We will not consider Japan's position as a nominal member of the entente, except for her action at the beginning of the war in capturing Kiauchau, China, the German fortified port and naval base in the Orient, and sweeping Germany out of the Pacific by taking the Marshall islands. Beyond this, Japan sent soldiers to Eastern Siberia to help in police duty, and in guarding the great stores of supplies accumulated by the Russians at Vladivostok. These stores had been bought largely upon the credit extended to Russia by the United States.

With Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary gone as monarchies, Japan is the greatest of the remaining imperial states. We have seen more than a dozen kings, emperors, princes and grand dukes pass into the discard as a result of a war which they themselves brought on.

France tried to discard kings and princes in 1798. The sovereignty of the people was proclaimed in that war, but the governments which have ruled France since have been many, and presented wide differences. In this present age, no doubt it will be much easier to establish a stable democracy upon the wreck of a monarchy than it could have been a century ago. Still, the construction of a democracy is a difficult ordeal for people who have always been imperialists. The several monarchies, big and little, that have fallen in this war, present most perplexing problems. There are boundary and racial disputes of the most bitter kind between some of their peoples. But the great democracies of the world that won this war are taking the part of "big brothers" to these, and are seeing to it that their petty quarrels and internal differences are held in check. Each of these countries, even though they establish democracies, will have strong royalist parties that will constitute a standing threat. France even to this day has a royalist group of considerable strength. Their persistent claim is that France will again be a monarchy. The United States is really the only democracy without such a party. It is the only republic that was not founded on the ruin of a monarchy.

WHY I WAS NOT ACCEPTED AS CONSUL TO GERMANY

I have had some personal experience with the late German Imperial Government. As a war correspondent it was my duty to give to the world an account of the forcible deportation of King Mataafa from Samoa to the Marshall Islands, where he was kept in exile six years. The Germans had shoved him aside to make room for Malieto, an imbecile and a German figurehead. I was there again when Mataafa, at the end of those six years, returned to Samoa, to the great joy of his people.

A few years later I discovered that Germany's policy was to "mark" any individual who wrote or spoke in criticism of anything German.

I was appointed United States Consul to Aix la Chapelle, Germany, four years after those articles appeared. My appointment came from President Roosevelt, and was confirmed by the United States Senate. When I arrived in Germany I found I was United States Consul so far as the United States Government was concerned, but I was put off in the matter of my exequatur (certificate of authority) from the government to which I was accredited; and without an exequatur, I could not act. I was kept cooling my heels in the consulate several months before I found out what was the matter. My newspaper articles describing what the Germans had done in Samoa, published four years earlier, were being held against me. My presence in Germany was not desired.

I had crossed the Atlantic with Prince Henry, the Kaiser's brother and Admiral of the German Navy, in February, 1901, when the Prince brought his party of a dozen or so militarists to this country to "further cement the amity and good will" existing between the great republic and the great empire. It later developed that this was a well planned operation in German propaganda. As a representative of the Associated Press, I had written of it. That was just after I had written the Samoan articles.

Speck von Sternberg was the German Ambassador to Washington. He was in Paris. I went there to see him and ascertain, if I could, why my exequatur was withheld. The Government at Washington could get no information on the subject. The whole affair was clothed in mystery.

After some conversation I suggested to Ambassador von Sternberg that perhaps the foreign office at Berlin was withholding the document because of my writings on German colonial matters. Then it came out—my guess was true. Some underlings in the foreign office had the case in charge. The Ambassador suggested that as I knew Prince Henry, I would better write him at Kiel. I did this, with the result that the obstacle was removed and the exequatur issued.