America and the World War. Theodore Roosevelt
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and intelligence among the nations themselves. For a hundred years peace has obtained between us and Great Britain. No frontier in Europe is as long as the frontier between Canada and ourselves, and yet there is not a fort, nor an armed force worthy of being called such, upon it. This does not result from any arbitration treaty or any other treaty. Such treaties as those now existing are as a rule observed only when they serve to make a record of conditions that already exist and which they do not create. The fact simply is that there has been such growth of good feeling and intelligence that war between us and the British Empire is literally an impossibility, and there is no more chance of military movements across the Canadian border than there is of such movement between New York and New Hampshire or Quebec and Ontario. Slowly but surely, I believe, such feelings will grow, until war between the Englishman and the German, or the Russian, or the Frenchman, or between any of them and the American, will be as unthinkable as now between the Englishman or Canadian and the American.
But something can be done to hasten this day by wise action. It may not be possible at once to have this action as drastic as would be ultimately necessary; but we should keep our purpose in view. The utter weakness of the Hague court, and the worthlessness when strain is put upon them of most treaties, spring from the fact that at present there is no means of enforcing the carrying out of the treaty or enforcing the decision of the court. Under such circumstances recommendations for universal disarmament stand on an intellectual par with recommendations to establish “peace” in New York City by doing away with the police. Disarmament of the free and liberty-loving nations would merely mean insuring the triumph of some barbarism or despotism, and if logically applied would mean the extinction of liberty and of all that makes civilization worth having throughout the world. But in view of what has occurred in this war, surely the time ought to be ripe for the nations to consider a great world agreement among all the civilized military powers to back righteousness by force. Such an agreement would establish an efficient world league for the peace of righteousness.
CHAPTER III
UNWISE PEACE TREATIES A MENACE TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
In studying certain lessons which should be taught the United States by this terrible world war, it is not necessary for us to try exactly to assess or apportion the blame. There are plenty of previous instances of violation of treaties to be credited to almost all the nations engaged on one side or the other. We need not try to puzzle out why Italy and Japan seemingly construed similar treaties of alliance in diametrically opposite ways; nor need we decide which was justified or whether both were justified. It is quite immaterial to us, as regards certain of the lessons taught, whether the treaties alleged to be violated affect Luxembourg on the one hand or Bosnia on the other, whether it is the neutrality of China or the neutrality of Belgium that is violated.
Yet again, we need always to keep in mind that, although it is culpable to break a treaty, it may be even worse recklessly to make a treaty which cannot be kept. Recklessness in making promises is the surest way in which to secure the discredit attaching to the breaking of promises. A treaty at present usually represents merely promise, not performance; and it is wicked to promise what will not or cannot be performed. Genuine good can even now be accomplished by narrowly limited and defined arbitration treaties which are not all-inclusive, if they deal with subjects on which arbitration can be accepted. This nation has repeatedly acted in obedience to such treaties; and great good has come from arbitrations in such cases as, for example, the Dogger Bank incident, when the Russian fleet fired on British trawlers during the Russo-Japanese war. But no good whatever has come from treaties that represented a sham; and under existing conditions it is hypocritical for a nation to announce that it will arbitrate questions of honor or vital interest, and folly to think that opponents will abide by such treaties. Bad although it is to negotiate such a treaty, it would be worse to abide by it.
Under these conditions it is mischievous to a degree for a nation to trust to any treaty of the type now existing to protect it in great crises. Take the case of China as a living and present-day example. China has shown herself utterly impotent to defend her neutrality. Again and again she made this evident in the past. Order was not well kept at home and above all she was powerless to defend herself from outside attack. She has not prepared for war. She has kept utterly unprepared for war. Yet she has suffered more from war, in our own time, than any military power in the world during the same period. She has fulfilled exactly the conditions advocated by these well-meaning persons who for the last five months have been saying in speeches, editorials, articles for syndicates, and the like that the United States ought not to keep up battle-ships and ought not to trust to fortifications nor in any way to be ready or prepared to defend herself against hostile attack, but should endeavor to secure peace by being so inoffensive and helpless as not to arouse fear in others. The well-meaning people who write these editorials and make these speeches ought to understand that though it is a bad thing for a nation to arouse fear it is an infinitely worse thing to excite contempt; and every editor or writer or public man who tells us that we ought not to have battle-ships and that we ought to trust entirely to well-intentioned foolish all-inclusive arbitration treaties and abandon fortifications and not keep prepared, is merely doing his best to bring contempt upon the United States and to insure disaster in the future.
Nor is China the only case in point. Luxembourg is a case in point. Korea is a case in point. Korea was utterly inoffensive and helpless. It neither took nor was capable of taking the smallest aggressive action against any one. It had no forts, no war-ships, no army worthy of the name. It excited no fear and no anger. But it did excite measureless contempt, and therefore it invited aggression.
The point I wish to make is, first, the extreme unwisdom and impropriety of making promises that cannot be kept, and, second, the utter futility of expecting that in any save exceptional cases a strong power will keep a promise which it finds to its disadvantage, unless there is some way of putting force back of the demand that the treaty be observed.
America has no claim whatever to superior virtue in this matter. We have shown an appalling recklessness in making treaties, especially all-inclusive arbitration treaties and the like, which in time of stress would not and could not be observed. When such a treaty is not observed the blame really rests upon the unwise persons who made the treaty. Unfortunately, however, this apportionment of blame cannot be made by outsiders. All they can say is that the country concerned—and I speak of the United States—does not keep faith. The responsibility for breaking an improper promise really rests with those who make it; but the penalty is paid by the whole country.
There are certain respects in which I think the United States can fairly claim to stand ahead of most nations in its regard for international morality. For example, last spring when we took Vera Cruz, there were individuals within the city who fired at our troops in exactly the same fashion as that which is alleged to have taken place in Louvain. But it never for one moment entered the heads of our people to destroy Vera Cruz. In the same way, when we promised freedom to Cuba, we kept our promise, and after establishing an orderly government in Cuba withdrew our army and left her as an independent power; performing an act which, as far as I know, is entirely without parallel in the dealings of stronger with weaker nations.
In the same way our action in San Domingo, when we took and administered her customs houses, represented a substantial and efficient achievement in the cause of international peace which stands high in the very honorable but scanty list of such actions by great nations in dealing with their less fortunate sisters. In the same way our handling of the Panama situation, both in the acquisition of the canal, in its construction, and in the attitude we have taken toward the dwellers on the Isthmus and all the nations of mankind, has been such as to reflect signal honor on our people. In the same way we returned the Chinese indemnity, because we deemed it excessive, just as previously we had returned a money indemnity to Japan. Similarly the disinterestedness with which we have administered the Philippines for the good of the Philippine people is something upon which we have a right to pride ourselves and shows the harm that would have been done had we not taken possession of the Philippines.
But, unfortunately, in dealing with schemes