Congress demanding a reconsideration of national defense. "For a dozen years," declared Gardner, of Massachusetts, who led in the preparedness movement, "I have sat here like a coward in silence and listened while men have told us how the United States can safely depend on the state militia and the naval reserve. All the time I knew that it was not true." The fight for preparedness was waged on the floor of Congress, in the press, and by means of propagandist societies. The National Security League, organized in December, 1914, took up a work that the Navy League had been pressing with little response for a dozen years. In August, 1915, the more intense members of this society broke away from it to organize the American Defense Society because the National Security League was unwilling to denounce members of the Democratic Administration for failures in preparedness. The American Rights Committee, formed in December, 1915, was still more extreme and demanded instant warfare. The National Administration was unwilling in the session of 1914-15 to destroy the effect of its stand for neutrality by making the menace of warlike preparations. The advocates of preparedness were denounced variously by proGermans, by pacifists, and by Americans who saw in preparedness only another aspect of the conspiracy of big busiDenunciations of the manufacturers of munitions were used by this last group to meet arguments for national defense. The Administration stood aloof from the actual controversy until the discussion of the Lusitania was over. Thereafter it led the movement. In January, 1916, President Wilson took to the stump to urge his policies of preparedness. ness. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE W. H. Hobbs, The World War and its Consequences (1919), is one of the most outspoken summaries of the period of neutrality, is strongly antiWilson, and bears a lavish endorsement from Colonel Roosevelt. James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany (1917), was published serially in the newspapers, and acquired great popularity as a war tract. John Bach McMaster, The United States in the World War (1918), gives a detailed study of the forces at play upon public opinion. Roland G. Usher, The Story of the Great War (1920), is a popular summary of the whole conflict, as is C. J. H. Hayes, A Brief History of the Great War (1920). Constance Gardner, Some Letters of Augustus Peabody Gardner (1920), is the record of an early and consistent advocate of preparedness. CHAPTER XLV THE ELECTION OF 1916 THE debate over preparedness, beginning in the autumn of 1914, extended through the following year as its implications came to be understood, until at last it Pacifist constituted one of the greatest struggles for the movements control of American public opinion. The preparedness societies that took the lead in presenting the case were followed by propagandist organizations of diverse opinions, · working sometimes in secret and sometimes in the open. The need for preparedness came as a shock to the bulk of American opinion, whose pacific tendencies prejudiced it against the use of force. An American League to Limit Armaments was organized in December, 1914, under the leadership of anti-militarists and non-resistants. A year later the American Union Against Militarism appeared under much the same leadership, but more completely under the control of Socialists and pacifists. The Women's Peace Party, formed in Washington in January, 1915, with Jane Addams as its head, conducted an active campaign for theoretical peace, and dispatched its leader to Europe at the head of a women's delegation to try to stop the war. Individual leaders of these movements gained access to the well-known motor manufacturer, Henry Ford, with the result that on December 4, 1915, the Oscar II, chartered by this philanthropist, sailed for Copenhagen with a great delegation of peace advocates aboard, "to try to get the boys out of the trenches and back to their homes by Christmas day." League to By the end of 1915 these pacifist societies were left in the control of Socialists and non-resistants, while the more constructive members who had started in with them switched their support to a different pro- Enforce gram, which was launched in Independence Hall in Philadelphia on June 17, 1915. In preceding months Peace groups of statesmen in England and America worked over rough drafts for a league of nations which should produce peace by preventing war, and by providing a substitute for war as a means of settling international disputes. It was peace backed by force that the League to Enforce Peace proposed. Among its leaders were ex-President Taft, A. Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, and Hamilton Holt, editor of the Independent. The Independence Hall conference issued "a declaration of interdependence" that was widely accepted during the ensuing months. A year later, when the league held its annual meeting in Washington, its general program received the support of President Wilson. Before the end of 1916 the leaders of all the responsible belligerents had accepted the principle of a league of nations. Munitions embargoes The bitter debate between peace and preparedness was made more difficult to follow by the open propaganda of German sympathizers and secret intrigue ema nating from the German Embassy at Washington The former group, adhering to the cause of Germany from the opening of the war, denounced "perfidious Albion" and devoted themselves particularly to the attack upon the conditions produced by the British naval power. Save for a handful of submarines and an occasional raider, German vessels were swept from the oceans of the world. The imports of food and munitions were cut off by a rigorous blockade that could neither be broken nor evaded. Unable to avail itself of the right conferred by international law to buy munitions in neutral countries subject to the right of the other belligerent to intercept them, Germany advanced the novel claim that it was unneutral for neutral countries to sell such munitions to the other belligerent. To GermanAmericans this statement appeared conclusive. It was accepted by a considerable number of pacifists and by many of the old Progressives who had schooled themselves to a consistent attack upon the agencies of big business, and who saw in the munitions trade only the great profits derived from manufactures from the fact of war. Congress was under continuous pressure not only to compel England to accept the American view of international law, but to establish an embargo upon shipments to Great Britain to accomplish this, or to place that country upon an equality of opportunity with Germany. On January 20, 1915, Secretary Bryan in a long letter to W. J. Stone, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, defended the neutrality of the American Government and pointed out that to refuse to permit the Allies to buy munitions in America would involve participation by the United States on the side of Germany, and would be quite as unneutral as the course complained of. He pointed out, moreover, the sound basis for the lawfulness of trade in munitions, not only in international law, but also in the fact that otherwise the smaller nations, unable to manufacture their own supplies, would be completely at the mercy of the military powers. At the end of January a group of embargo advocates, summoned by Bartholdt, of Missouri, a former Congressman and an active worker for peace, held a conference in Washington and organized there the American Independence Union. An active part was taken in the movement by editors of German and Irish papers, and the enterprise was described by The Fatherland as a great movement “to organize the German-American element and all German and Austro-Hungarian sympathizers." In Congress the friends of the embargo movement urged their resolutions, while citizens outside flooded members with form letters and telegrams demanding that they support such action. In June, 1915, the Friends of Peace induced Bryan, who had now left the Cabinet, to denounce preparedness, and at the same time Labor's National Peace Council was floated upon funds that were later shown to have originated in the German Government. The secret intrigues by which Germany and Austria sought to prevent the development of an adverse Amer- German ican opinion were increased after the sinking of secret intrigue the Lusitania had shown how precarious the situation was, The New York Evening Mail was secretly |