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CHAPTER IV

STRICT NEUTRALITY

N the wars of the European Powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so." These words in President Monroe's historic message of December 2, 1823, had become by 1914 a national habit of thought. It was inevitable, therefore, that when the Powers of Europe were declaring war upon each other we should have taken our stand on the basis of old principles. We were bewildered and confused. The affairs in the Balkans had interested us but little. There had, to be sure, been rumors of war, but we had not believed that war would really come. We were too little acquainted with the new Prussia, and too much under the spell of the old Germany to be able to believe that any nation in these days would deliberately provoke war. To us it seemed at first like a force of nature, a cata

clysm. It is with nations as with individuals; in a sudden crisis they decide on the principle of their former reiterated decisions-on their precedents. Accordingly, on August 4, 1914, President Wilson proclaimed America neutral in the war between Austria and Serbia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. Similar proclamations of neutrality were to be made as other nations entered the war, and the word "neutrality" was to characterize our attitude to the date of our own entrance into the conflict.

Our policy was, therefore, in every sense in full accord with our history. We had promptly assumed the attitude which Washington and his advisers had formulated in the wars of the French Revolution. "This policy of 1793," in the opinion of a distinguished English authority, "constitutes an epoch in the development of the usages of neutrality." It represents the most advanced existing opinions of what neutral obligations were, and "in some points it went further than authoritative international custom has up to the present time advanced." *

* Hall's "International Law," 4th edition, 1895, p. 616; quoted by James Brown Scott, "A Survey of International Relations Between the United States and Germany," p. 45.

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The Monroe Doctrine made it natural that we should revert to this policy, and our neutrality was, therefore, not something new, strange, or unfamiliar to the nations. It was the conscientious policy of Washington, with such additions as subsequent experience had suggested. It was, as James Scott Brown clearly describes it, "the neutrality which recognized belligerent duties as well as neutral rights, and which, by apt laws, sought to prevent assaults upon neutral rights and to compel the performance of neutral duties.” *

Yet it was not to be a purely passive neutrality. It was to be, if we dare put it paradoxically, a neutrality benevolent to both sides. For we imagined that, like ourselves, the belligerents, too, looked upon war as a great calamity and that all parties would welcome serious effort on our part to bring back peace and justice. Until we ourselves were forced into the conflict, this was to be the aim of our government. The proposal for a world peace offered by President Wilson on January 22, 1917, was the last act in a policy which he had doubtless had in

* J. B. Scott, "A Survey of International Relations Between the United States and Germany," p. 45.

mind from the outset. For this reason, on August 19, 1914, he issued to the American people the following proclamation:

"My fellow countrymen: I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself, during these last troubled weeks, what influence the European War may exert upon the United States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us will be, and to urge very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the nation against distress and disaster.

"The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on the street.

"The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard to

the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action.

"Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.

"I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men's souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.

"My thought is of America. I am speaking,