“This explanation of the great decision is an absurd mistake, but the pacifists have had some excuses for making it.  They have seen a great democratic nation gradually forced into war, in spite of the manifest indifference or reluctance of the majority of its population; and they have rightly attributed the successful pressure to the ability of a small but influential minority to impose its will on the rest of the country.  But the numerically insignificant class whose influence has been successfully exerted in favour of American participation does not consist of the bankers and the capitalists.  Neither will they be the chief beneficiaries of American participation.  The bankers and the capitalists have favoured war, but they have favoured it without realising the extent to which it would injure their own interests, and their support has been one of the most formidable political obstacles to American participation.  The effective and decisive work on behalf of war has been accomplished by an entirely different class—­a class which must be comprehensively but loosely described as the ‘intellectuals.’

“The American nation is entering this war under the influence of a moral verdict reached, after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community.  They gradually came to a decision that the attack made by Germany on the international order was sufficiently flagrant and dangerous to justify this country in abandoning its cherished isolation and in using its resources to bring about German defeat.  But these thoughtful people were always a small minority.  They were able to impose their will upon a reluctant or indifferent majority partly because the increasingly offensive nature of German military and diplomatic policy made plausible opposition to American participation very difficult, but still more because of the overwhelming preponderance of pro-Ally conviction in the intellectual life of the country.  If the several important professional and social groups could have voted separately on the question of war and peace, the list of college professors would probably have yielded the largest majority in favour of war, except perhaps that contained in the Social Register.  A fighting anti-German spirit was more general among physicians, lawyers and clergymen than it was among business men—­except those with Wall Street and banking connections.  Finally, it was not less general among writers on magazines and in the newspapers.  They popularised what the college professors had been thinking.  Owing to this consensus of influences opposition to pro-Ally orthodoxy became intellectually somewhat disreputable, and when a final decision had to be made this factor counted with unprecedented and overwhelming force.  College professors headed by a President who had himself been a college professor contributed more effectively to the decision in favour of war than did the farmers, the business men or the politicians.