Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.

by Cleveland Moffett

  TO MY FELLOW AMERICANS

  The purpose of this story is to give an idea of what might happen toAmerica, being defenceless as at present, if she should be attacked, sayat the close of the great European war, by a mighty and victorious powerlike Germany. It is a plea for military preparedness in the UnitedStates.

  As justifying this plea let us consider briefly and in a fair-mindedspirit the arguments of our pacifist friends who, being sincerely opposedto military preparedness, would bring us to their way of thinking.

  On June 10, 1915, in a statement to the American people, following hisresignation as Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan said:

  Some nation must lead the world out of the black night of war into thelight of that day when "swords shall be beaten into plow-shares." Why notmake that honour ours? Some day--why not now?--the nations will learnthat enduring peace cannot be built upon fear--that good-will does notgrow upon the stalk of violence. Some day the nations will place theirtrust in love, the weapon for which there is no shield; in love, thatsuffereth long and is kind; in love, that is not easily provoked, thatbeareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth allthings; in love, which, though despised as weakness by the worshippers ofMars, abideth when all else fails.

  These are noble words. They thrill and inspire us as they have thrilledand inspired millions before us, yet how little the world has seen of theactual carrying out of their beautiful message! The average individual inAmerica still clings to whatever he has of material possessions with allthe strength that law and custom give him. He keeps what he has and takeswhat he can honourably get, unconcerned by the fact that millions of hisfellow men are in distress or by the knowledge that many of the rich whomhe envies or honours may have gained their fortunes, privilege or powerby unfair or dishonest means.

  In every land there are similar extremes of poverty and riches, but thesecould not exist in a world governed by the law of love or ready to be sogoverned, since love would destroy the ugly train of hatreds, arrogances,miseries, injustices and crimes that spread before us everywhere in theexisting social order and that only fail to shock us because we areaccustomed to a regime in which self-interest rather than love or justiceis paramount.

  My point is that if individuals are thus universally, or almostuniversally, selfish, nations must also be selfish, since nations areonly aggregations of individuals. If individuals all over the worldto-day place the laws of possession and privilege and power above the lawof love, then nations will inevitably do the same. If there is constantjealousy and rivalry and disagreement among individuals there will surelybe the same among nations, and it is idle for Mr. Bryan to talk aboutputting our trust in love collectively when we do nothing of the sortindividually. Would Mr. Bryan put his trust in love if he felt himselfthe victim of injustice or dishonesty?

  Once in a century some Tolstoy tries to practise literally the law oflove and non-resistance with results that are distressing to his familyand friends, and that are of doubtful value to the community. We may besure the nations of the world will never practise this beautiful law oflove until average citizens of the world practise it, and that time hasnot come.

  Of course, Mr. Bryan's peace plan recognises the inevitability ofquarrels or disagreements among nations, but proposes to have thesesettled by arbitration or by the decisions of an international tribunal,which tribunal may be given adequate police power in the form of aninternational army and navy.

  It goes without saying that such a plan of world federation and worldarbitration involves universal disarmament, all armies and all naviesmust be reduced to a merely nominal strength, to a force sufficient forpolice protection, but does any one believe that this plan can really becarried out? Is there the slightest chance that Russia or Germany willdisarm? Is there the slightest chance that England will send her fleet tothe scrap heap and leave her empire defenceless in order to join thisworld federation? Is there the slightest chance that Japan, with herdreams of Asiatic sovereignty, will disarm?

  And if the thing were conceivable, what a grim federation this would beof jealousies, grievances, treacheries, hatreds, conflicting patriotismsand ambitions--Russia wanting Constantinople, France Alsace-Lorraine,Germany Calais, Spain Gibraltar, Denmark her ravished provinces, Polandher national integrity and so on. Who would keep order among theinternational delegates? Who would decide when the international judgesdisagreed? Who would force the international policemen to act againsttheir convictions? Could any world tribunal induce the United States tolimit her forces for the prevention of a yellow immigration from Asia?

  General Homer Lea in "The Valour of Ignorance" says:

  Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime andhypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities andnations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregateof his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as theseconstitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control theacts of nations.

  Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard University andtrustee of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, makes this admission in _TheArmy and Navy Journal:_

  I regret to say that international or national disarmament is not takenseriously by the leaders and thinking men of the more important peoples,and I fear that for one reason or another neither the classes nor themasses have much admiration for the idea or would be willing to do theirshare to bring it about.

  Here is the crux of the question, the earth has so much surface andto-day this is divided up in a certain way by international frontiers.Yesterday it was divided up in a different way. To-morrow it will againbe divided up in a new way, unless some world federation steps in andsays: "Stop! There are to be no more wars. The present frontiers of theexisting fifty-three nations are to be considered as righteously andpermanently established. After this no act of violence shall changethem."

  Think what that would mean! It would mean that nations like Russia, GreatBritain and the United States, which happened to possess vast dominionswhen this world federation peace plan was adopted would continue topossess vast dominions, while other nations like Italy, Greece, Turkey,Holland, Sweden, France, Spain (all great empires once), Germany andJapan, whose present share of the earth's surface might be only one-tenthor one-fiftieth or one-five-hundredth as great as Russia's share or GreatBritain's share, would be expected to remain content with that smallportion.

  Impossible! These less fortunate, but not less aspiring nations wouldnever agree to such a policy of national stagnation, to such a stiflingof their legitimate longings for a "greater place in the sun." They wouldpoint to the pages of history and show how small nations have becomegreat and how empires have fallen. What was the mighty United States ofAmerica but yesterday? A handful of feeble colonies far weaker than theBalkan States to-day.

  "Why should this particular moment be chosen," they would protest, "torender immovable international frontiers that have always been shifting?Why should the maps of the world be now finally crystallised so as togive England millions of square miles in every quarter of the globe,Canada, Australia, India, Egypt, while we possess so little? Did God makeEngland so much better than he made us? Why should the Russian Empiresweep across two continents while our territory is crowded into a cornerof one? Is Russia so supremely deserving? And why should the UnitedStates possess as much of the earth's surface as Germany, France, Italy,Belgium, Holland, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria,Roumania, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Japan all together and, besides that,claim authority to say, through the Monroe Doctrine, what shall happen orshall not happen in South America, Mexico, the West Indies and thePacific? How did the United States get this authority and this vastterritory? How did Russia get her vast territory? How did England get hervast territory?"

  The late Professor J. A. Cramb, an Englishman himself, gives us oneanswer in his powerful and illuminating book, "Germany and England," andshows us how England, in the view of many, got _her_ possessions:


  England! The successful burglar, who, an immense fortune amassed, hasretired from business, and having broken every law, human and divine,violated every instinct of honour and fidelity on every sea and on everycontinent, desires now the protection of the police!... So long asEngland, the great robber-state, retains her booty, the spoils of aworld, what right has she to expect peace from the nations?

  In reply to Mr. Bryan's peace exhortations, some of the smaller but moreefficient world powers, certainly Germany and Japan, would recall similarcynical teachings of history and would smilingly answer: "We approve ofyour beautiful international peace plan, of your admirable world policeplan, but before putting it into execution, we prefer to wait a fewhundred years and see if we also, in the ups and downs of nations, cannotwin for ourselves, by conquest or cunning or other means not provided forin the law of love, a great empire covering a vast portion of the earth'ssurface."

  The force and justice of this argument will be appreciated, to use ahomely comparison, by those who have studied the psychology of pokergames and observed the unvarying willingness of heavy winners to end thestruggle after a certain time, while the losers insist upon playinglonger.

  It will be the same in this international struggle for world supremacy,the only nations willing to stop fighting will be the ones that are farahead of the game, like Great Britain, Russia and the United States.

  We may be sure that wars will continue on the earth. War may be abiological necessity in the development of the human race--God'shousecleaning, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox calls it. War may be a great soulstimulant meant to purge mankind of evils greater than itself, evils ofbaseness and world degeneration. We know there are blighted forests thatmust be swept clean by fire. Let us not scoff at such a theory until weunderstand the immeasurable mysteries of life and death. We know that,through the ages, two terrific and devastating racial impulses have madethemselves felt among men and have never been restrained, sex attractionand war. Perhaps they were not meant to be restrained.

  Listen to John Ruskin, apostle of art and spirituality:

  All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war. No great artever rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers. There is no great artpossible to a nation but that which is based on battle. When I tell youthat war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is thefoundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was verystrange for me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to bequite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues ofcivil life flourished together I found to be utterly untenable. We talkof peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilisation;but I found that these are not the words that the Muse of History coupledtogether; that on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, peace andselfishness, peace and death. I found in brief that all great nationslearned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that theywere nourished in war and wasted in peace; taught by war and deceived bypeace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they wereborn in war and expired in peace.

  We know Bernhardi's remorseless views taken from Treitschke and adoptedby the whole German nation:

  "War is a fiery crucible, a terrible training school through which theworld has grown better."

  In his impressive work, "The Game of Empires," Edward S. Van Zile quotesMajor General von Disfurth, a distinguished retired officer of the Germanarmy, who chants so fierce a glorification of war for the German idea,war for German Kultur, war at all costs and with any consequences thatone reads with a shudder of amazement:

  Germany stands as the supreme arbiter of her own methods. It is of noconsequence whatever if all the monuments ever created, all the picturesever painted, and all the buildings ever erected by the great architectsof the world be destroyed, if by their destruction we promote Germany'svictory over her enemies. The commonest, ugliest stone that marks theburial place of a German grenadier is a more glorious and venerablemonument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together. They call usbarbarians. What of it? We scorn them and their abuse. For my part, Ihope that in this war we have merited the title of barbarians. Letneutral peoples and our enemies cease their empty chatter, which may wellbe compared to the twitter of birds. Let them cease to talk of thecathedral of Rheims and of all the churches and all the castles in Francewhich have shared its fate. These things do not interest us. Our troopsmust achieve victory. What else matters?

  Obviously there are cases where every noble sentiment would impel anation to go to war. A solemn promise broken, a deliberate insultto the flag, an act of intolerable bullying, some wicked purpose ofself-aggrandisement at the expense of weaker nations, anything, in short,that flaunted the national honour or imperilled the national integritywould be a call to war that must be heeded by valiant and high-souledcitizens, in all lands. Nor can we have any surety against such wantoninternational acts, so long as the fate of nations is left in the handsof small autocracies or military and diplomatic cliques empowered to actwithout either the knowledge or approval of the people. Wars will neverbe abolished until the war-making power is taken from the few andjealously guarded by the whole people, and only exercised after publicdiscussion of the matters at issue and a public understanding ofinevitable consequences. At present it is evident that the pride, greed,madness of one irresponsible King, Emperor, Czar, Mikado or President mayplunge the whole world into war-misery that will last for generations.

  There are other cases where war is not only inevitable, but actuallydesirable from a standpoint of world advantage. Imagine a highlycivilised and progressive nation, a strong prosperous nation, wisely andefficiently governed, as may be true, some day, of the United States ofAmerica. Let us suppose this nation to be surrounded by a number of weakand unenlightened states, always quarrelling, badly and corruptlymanaged, like Mexico and some of the Central American republics. Would itnot be better for the world if this strong, enlightened nation tookpossession of its backward neighbours, even by force of arms, and taughtthem how to live and how to make the best of their neglected resourcesand possibilities? Would not these weak nations be more prosperous andhappier after incorporation with the strong nation? Is not Egypt betteroff and happier since the British occupation? Were not the wars thatcreated united Italy and united Germany justified? Does any one regretour civil war? It was necessary, was it not?

  Similarly it is better for the world that we fought and conquered theAmerican Indians and took their land to use it, in accordance with ourhigher destiny, for greater and nobler purposes than they could eitherconceive of or execute. It is better for the world that by a revolution(even a disingenuous one) we took Panama from incompetent Colombiansand, by our intelligence, our courage and our vast resources, changed afever-ridden strip of jungle into a waterway that now joins two oceansand will save untold billions for the commerce of the earth.

  Carrying a step farther this idea of world efficiency through war, it isprobable that future generations will be grateful to some South Americannation, perhaps Brazil, or Chile or the Argentine Republic, that shallone day be wise and strong enough to lay the foundations on the field ofbattle (Mr. Bryan may think this could be accomplished by peacefulnegotiations, but he is mistaken) for the United States of South America.

  And why not ultimately the United States of Europe, the United States ofAsia, the United States of Africa, all created by useful and progressivewars? Consider the increased efficiency, prosperity and happiness thatmust come through such unions of small nations now trying separately andineffectively to carry on multiple activities that could be far bettercarried on collectively. Our American Union, born of war, proves this,does it not?

  "United we stand, divided we fall," applies not merely to states,counties and townships, but to nations, to empires, to continents.Continents will be the last to join hands across the seas (having firstwaged vast inter-continental wars) and then, after the rise and fall ofmany sovereignties, there will be established on the earth the last greatgovernme
nt, the United States of the World!

  That is the logical limit of human activities. Are we not all citizens ofthe earth, descended from the same parents, born with the same needs andcapacities? Why should there be fifty-three barriers dividing men intofifty-three nations? Why should there be any other patriotism than worldpatriotism? Or any other government than one world government?

  When this splendid ultimate consummation has been achieved, after ages ofpainful evolution (we must remember that the human race is still in itsinfancy) our remote descendants, united in language, religion andcustoms, with a great world representative government finally establishedand the law of love prevailing, may begin preparations for a grand worldcelebration of the last war. Say, in the year A.D. 2921!

  But not until then!

  If this reasoning is sound, if war must be regarded, for centuries tocome, as an inevitable part of human existence, then let us, as loyalAmericans, realise that, hate war as we may, there is only way in whichthe United States can be insured against the horrors of armed invasion,with the shame of disastrous defeat and possible dismemberment, and thatis by developing the strength and valiance to meet all probableassailants on land or sea.

  Whether we like it or not we are a great world power, fated to become fargreater, unless we throw away our advantages; we must either accept theaverage world standards, which call for military preparedness, or imposenew standards upon a world which concedes no rights to nations that havenot the might to guard and enforce those rights.

  Why should we Americans hesitate to pay the trifling cost of insuranceagainst war? Trifling? Yes. The annual cost of providing and maintainingan adequate army and navy would be far less than we spend every year ontobacco and alcohol. Less than fifty cents a month from every citizenwould be sufficient. That amount, wisely expended, would enormouslylessen the probability of war and would allow the United States, if warcame, to face its enemies with absolute serenity. The Germans are willingto pay the cost of preparedness. So are the French, the Italians, theJapanese, the Swiss, the Balkan peoples, the Turks. Do we love ourcountry less than they do? Do we think our institutions, our freedom lessworthy than theirs of being guarded for posterity?

  Why should we not adopt a system of military training something like theone that has given such excellent results in Switzerland? Why not ceaseto depend upon our absurd little standing army which, for its strengthand organisation, is frightfully expensive and absolutely inadequate, anddepend instead upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms, with apermanent body of competent officers, at least 50,000, whose lives wouldbe spent in giving one year military training to the young men of thisnation, all of them, say between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three,so that these young men could serve their country efficiently, if theneed arose? Why not accept the fact that it is neither courageous nordemocratic for us to depend upon hired soldiers to defend our country?

  Does any one doubt that a year of such military training would be oflasting benefit to the men of America? Would it not school them inmuch-needed habits of discipline and self-control, habits which must belearned sooner or later if a man is to succeed? Would not the open airlife, the physical exercise, the regularity of hours tend to improvetheir health and make them better citizens?

  Suppose that once every five years all American men up to fifty wererequired to go into military camp and freshen up on their defence dutiesfor twenty or thirty days. Would that do them any harm? On the contrary,it would do them immense good.

  And even if war never came, is it not evident that America would benefitin numberless ways by such a development of the general manhood spirit?Who can say how much of Germany's greatness in business and commerce, inthe arts and sciences, is due to the fact that _all_ her men, throughmilitary schooling, have learned precious lessons in self-control andobedience?

  The pacifists tell us that after the present European war, we shall havenothing to fear for many years from exhausted Europe, but let us not betoo sure of that. History teaches that long and costly wars do notnecessarily exhaust a nation or lessen its readiness to undertake newwars. On the contrary, the habit of fighting leads easily to morefighting. The Napoleonic wars lasted over twenty years. At the close ofour civil war we had great generals and a formidable army of veteransoldiers and would have been willing and able immediately to engage in afresh war against France had she not yielded to our demand and withdrawnMaximilian from Mexico. Bulgaria recently fought two wars within a year,the second leaving her exhausted and prostrate; yet within two years shewas able to enter upon a third war stronger than ever.

  If Germany wins in the present great conflict she may quite conceivablyturn to America for the vast money indemnity that she will be unable toexact from her depleted enemies in Europe; and if Germany loses or halfloses she may decide to retrieve her desperate fortunes in this temptingand undefended field. With her African empire hopelessly lost to her,where more naturally than to facile America will she turn for her covetedplace in the sun?

  And if not Germany, it may well be some other great nation that willattack us. Perhaps Great Britain! Especially if our growing merchantmarine threatens her commercial supremacy of the sea, which is her life.Perhaps Japan! whose attack on Germany in 1914 shows plainly that shemerely awaits favourable opportunity to dispose of any of her rivals inthe Orient. Let us bear in mind that, in the opinion of the world'sgreatest authorities, we Americans are to-day totally unprepared todefend ourselves against a first-class foreign power. My story aims toshow this, and high officers in our army and navy, who have assisted mein the preparation of this book and to whom I am grateful, assure me thatI have set forth the main facts touching our military defencelessnesswithout exaggeration. C. M.

  WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, 1916.