CHAPTER I

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