II

If America had started to prepare when Belgium was invaded, had entered the war when the Lusitania was sunk, Germany might by now have been defeated, hundreds of thousands of lives might have been spared.  All this may be admitted.  Yet, looking backward, it is easy to read the reason for our hesitancy in our national character and traditions.  We were pacifists, yes, but pacifists of a peculiar kind.  One of our greatest American prophets, William James, knew that there was an issue for which we were ready to fight, for which we were willing to make the extreme sacrifice,—­and that issue he defined as “war against war.”  It remained for America to make the issue.

Peoples do not rush to arms unless their national existence is threatened.  It is what may be called the environmental cause that drives nations quickly into war.  It drove the Entente nations into war, though incidentally they were struggling for certain democratic institutions, for international justice.  But in the case of America, the environmental cause was absent.  Whether or not our national existence was or is actually threatened, the average American does not believe that it is.  He was called upon to abandon his tradition, to mingle in a European conflict, to fight for an idea alone.  Ideas require time to develop, to seize the imagination of masses.  And it must be remembered that in 1914 the great issue had not been defined.  Curiously enough, now that it is defined, it proves to be an American issue—­a logical and positive projection of our Washingtonian tradition and Monroe doctrine.  These had for their object the preservation and development of democracy, the banishment from the Western Hemisphere of European imperialistic conflict and war.  We are now, with the help of our allies, striving to banish these things from the face of the earth.  It is undoubtedly the greatest idea for which man has been summoned to make the supreme sacrifice.

Its evolution has been traced.  Democracy was the issue in the Spanish War, when we fought a weak nation.  We have followed its broader application to Mexico, when we were willing to ignore the taunts and insults of another weak nation, even the loss of “prestige,” for the sake of the larger good.  And we have now the clue to the President’s interpretation of the nation’s mind during the first three years of the present war.  We were willing to bear the taunts and insults of Germany so long as it appeared that a future world peace night best be brought about by the preservation of neutrality, by turning the weight of the impartial public opinion of our democracy and that of other neutrals against militarism and imperialism.  Our national aim was ever consistent with the ideal of William James, to advance democracy and put an end to the evil of war.

The only sufficient reason for the abandonment of the Washingtonian policy is the furtherance of the object for which it was inaugurated, the advance of democracy.  And we had established the precedent, with Spain and Mexico, that the Republic shall engage in no war of imperialistic conquest.  We war only in behalf of, or in defence of, democracy.