The Confessions Of A Reformer
Frederic C. Howe
[Part 9 of 11]
CHAPTER 27 / HYSTERIA
The administration of Ellis Island was confused by by-products of
the war. The three islands isolated in New York harbor and capable
of accommodating several thousand people, were demanded by the War
Department and Navy Department for emergency purposes. They were
admirably situated as a place of detention for war suspects. The
Department of Justice and hastily organized espionage agencies made
them a dumping-ground of aliens under suspicion, while the Bureau of
Immigration launched a crusade against one type of immigrant after
another, and brought them to Ellis Island for deportation. No one
was concerned over our facilities for caring for the warring groups
deposited upon us. The buildings were unsuited for permanent
residence; the floors were of cement, the corridors were chill, the
islands were storm-swept, and soon the ordinary functions of the
island became submerged in war activities. Eighteen hundred Germans
were dumped on us at three o'clock one morning, following the
sequestration of the German ships lying in New York harbor. ...each
day brought a contingent of German, Hungarian, Austrian suspects,
while incoming trains from the West added quotas of immoral men and
women, prostitutes, procurers, and alleged white-slavers arrested
under the hue and cry started early in the war, with the passage of
the Mann White Slave Act and the hysterical propaganda that was
carried on by moralistic agencies all over the country.[pp.266.267]
I was the custodian of all these groups. Each group had to be
isolated. I became a jailer instead of a commissioner of
immigration; a jailer not of convicted offenders but of suspected
persons who had been arrested and railroaded to Ellis Island as the
most available dumping-ground under the successive waves of hysteria
which swept the country.
...In the case of the thousands of suspects I was merely a
custodian; those aliens that had been tried at all, had been tried
by drum-head court martials, and such evidence as there might be was
not on the island. The justice or injustice of their conviction was
no affair of mine; I had no authority to examine the evidence, to
concern myself with their stories, to do other than carry out
orders, which were to deport aliens when directed to do so, quite
irrespective of their guilt. But the testimony on which men and
women were held was so flimsy, so emotional, so unlegal in procedure
that my judicial sense revolted against the orders which I received.
I quarreled with the Commissioner-General of Immigration, who was
working hand in glove with the Department of Justice; I harassed the
Secretary of Labor with protests against the injustice that was
being done. I refused to believe that we were a hysterical people;
that civil liberties should be thrown to the winds. But in this
struggle there was no one to lean on; there was no support from
Washington, no interest on the part of the press. The whole country
was swept by emotional excesses that followed one another with
confusing swiftness from 1916 to 1920.[p.267]
In time this hysteria came to an end. Official raids were
discontinued. The press ceased to feature the subject. But as a
result of arrests I became the custodian of hundreds of men and
women, mostly from southern and central Europe, who could not be
deported because of the war and could not be held at Ellis Island
because it was not fitted for permanent detention. That I was bound
to execute the laws was evident. That I should use my official power
to get rid of people without evidence, and because some individual
or group said they were undesirable, was abhorrent to my ideas of
legal ethics and my sense of responsibility to my oath of office. I
listened to the personal stories of the arrested men and women. Many
said they had never had a hearing. Others insisted that there had
been no interpreter to translate their testimony. Many were arrested
under suspicious circumstances, due to the close living of
immigrants in tenement-houses, while others were gathered in to
satisfy some labor controversy, or in connection with a conspiracy
by one alien to get possession of the property or business of
another. ...[p.269]
...I proposed to the Secretary of Labor that casual offenders
whose offense did not involve the commission of a crime should be
paroled. Responsible persons or organizations would report on their
conduct until they could be deported at the close of the war. The
plan was approved, partly because of its humanity and partly because
it was becoming impossible to carry on the work of the island in its
crowded condition. Hundreds of men and women were paroled. They
reported to me in person or through the parole officer, and careful
records were kept of their behavior. The great majority of them made
good. Some of them married. Before leaving the island I asked for a
report of these cases from the legal department, and was advised
that not more than a dozen had been rearrested, and that the vast
majority were responding to the consideration that had been shown
them.[pp.271-272]
Hysteria over the immoral alien was followed by a two-year panic
over the "Hun." Again inspectors, particularly
civilian secret-service agents, were given carte blanche to make
arrests on suspicion. Again Ellis Island was turned into a prison,
and I had to protect men and women from a hue and cry that was but
little concerned over guilt or innocence. During these years
thousands of Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians were taken without
trial from their homes and brought to Ellis Island. Nearly two
thousand officers and seamen from sequestered German ships were
placed in my care. Many of them had married American wives. They
conducted themselves decently and well. They were obedient to
discipline. They accepted the situation and they gave practically no
trouble. They were typical of the alien enemies the country over
that were arrested under the hysteria that was organized and
developed into a hate that lingers on to this day.[p.272]
Again I had either to drift with the tide or assume the burden of
seeing that as little injustice as possible was done. I realized
that under war conditions convincing evidence could not be demanded.
I accepted that fact, but not the assumption that "the Hun
should be put against the wall and shot." From our entrance
into the war until after the armistice my life was a
nightmare.[p.272]
...On the island I had to stand between the official insistence
that the German should be treated as a criminal and the admitted
fact that the great majority of them had been arrested by persons
with little concern about their innocence or guilt and with but
little if any evidence to support the detention.
Within a short time I was branded as pro-German. I had to war with
the local staff to secure decent treatment for the aliens, and with
the army of secret service agents to prevent the island from being
filled with persons against whom some one or other had filed a
suspicious inquiry.
It is a marvelous tribute to the millions of Germans, Austrians,
and Hungarians in this country that, despite the injustices to which
they were subjected and the espionage under which they lived,
scarcely an Americanized alien of these races was found guilty of
any act of disloyalty of which the entire German-American population
was suspected or accused.
The final outbreak of hysteria was directed against the "Reds"
the winter of 1918-I9. It started in the State of Washington in the
lumber camps, and was directed against members of the I.W.W.
organization which had superseded the more conservative craft unions
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. There was a
concerted determination on the part of employers to bring wages back
to pre-war conditions and to break the power of organized labor.
This movement against alien labor leaders had the support of the
Department of Justice. Private detective agencies and
strike-breakers acted with assurance that in any outrages they would
be supported by the government itself. The press joined in the cry
of "Red revolution," and frightened the country with scare
head-lines of an army of organized terrorists who were determined to
usher in revolution by force. The government borrowed the agent
provocateur from old Russia; it turned loose innumerable private
spies. For two Years we were in a panic of fear over the Red
revolutionists, anarchists, and enemies of the Republic who were
said to be ready to overthrow the government.[pp.273-274]
For a third time I had to stand against the current. Men and women
were herded into Ellis Island. They were brought under guards and in
special trains with instructions to get them away from the country
with as little delay as possible. Most of the aliens had been picked
up in raids on labor headquarters; they had been given a drum-head
trial by an inspector with no chance for defense; they were held
incommunicado and often were not permitted to see either friends or
attorneys, before being shipped to Ellis Island. In these
proceedings the inspector who made the arrest was prosecutor,
witness, judge, jailer, and executioner. He was clerk and
interpreter as well. This was all the trial the alien could demand
under the law. In many instances the inspector hoped that he would
be put in charge of his victim for a trip to New York and possibly
to Europe at the expense of the government. Backed by the press of
his city and by the hue and cry of the pack, he had every inducement
to find the alien guilty and arrange for his speedy deportation.
I was advised by the Commissioner-General to mind my own business
and carry out orders, no matter what they might be. Yet such obvious
injustice was being done that I could not sit quiet. Moreover, I was
an appointee of the President, and felt that I owed responsibility
to him whose words at least I was exemplifying in my actions. My
word carried no weight with my superior officials, who were
intoxicated with the prominence they enjoyed and the publicity which
they received from the press. ...[pp.274-275]
...Members of Congress were swept from their moorings by an
organized business propaganda, and demanded that I be dismissed
because I refused to railroad aliens to boats made ready for their
deportation. I took the position from which I would not be driven,
that the alien should not be held incommunicado, and should enjoy
the right of a writ of habeas corpus in the United States courts,
which was the only semblance of legal proceedings open to him under
the law.[p.275]
In maintaining this position I had to quarrel with my superiors
and the official force at the island. I faced a continuous barrage
from members of Congress, from the press, from business
organizations, and prosecuting attorneys. Yet day by day aliens,
many of whom had been held in prison for months, came before the
court; and the judge, after examining the testimony, unwillingly
informed the immigration authorities that there was not a scintilla
of evidence to support the arrest. ...[p.275]
...I had released aliens, but in each case I had been ordered to
do so by the courts or the bureau. I had observed the law when
organized hysteria demanded that it be swept aside. I had seen to it
that men and women enjoyed their legal rights, but evidently this
was the worst offense I could have committed. A congressional
committee came to Ellis Island and held protracted hearings. It
listened to disaffected officials, it created scare head-lines for
the press, it did everything in its power to convince the country
that we were on the verge of a nation-wide revolution, of which the
most hard-boiled inspectors sent out by the bureau had reported they
could not find a trace. When I went to the hearings and demanded the
right to be present, to cross-examine witnesses and see the records,
when I demanded that I be put on the witness-stand myself, the
committee ordered the sergeant-at-arms to eject me from the
rooms.[p.276]
As I look back over these years, my outstanding memories are not
of the immigrant. They are rather of my own people. Things that were
done forced one almost to despair of the mind, to distrust the
political state. Shreds were left of our courage, our reverence. The
Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and Congress not
only failed to protest against hysteria, they encouraged these
excesses; the state not only abandoned the liberty which it should
have protected, it lent itself to the stamping out of individualism
and freedom. It used the agent provocateur, it permitted private
agencies to usurp government powers, turned over the administration
of justice to detective agencies, card-indexed liberals and
progressives. It became frankly an agency of employing and business
interests at a time when humanity -- the masses, the poor -- were
making the supreme sacrifice of their lives.[pp.276-277]
I had fondly imagined that we prized individual liberty; I had
believed that to Anglo-Saxons human rights were sacred and they
would be protected at any cost.
Latin peoples might be temperamental, given to hysteria; but we
were hard-headed, we stood for individuality. But I found that we
were lawless, emotional, given to mob action. We cared little for
freedom of conscience, for the rights of men to their opinions.
Government was a convenience of business. Discussion of war
profiteers was not to be permitted. The Department of Justice lent
itself to the suppression of those who felt that war should involve
equal sacrifice. Civil liberties were under the ban. Their
subversion was not, however, an isolated thing; it was an incident
in the ascendancy of business privileges and profits acquired during
the war -- an ascendancy that could not bear scrutiny or brook the
free discussion which is the only safe basis of orderly popular
government.[p.277]
CHAPTER 28 / LIBERALS AND THE WAR
I Do not know why I suffered so much from this particular hysteria
and the cruelties incident to it. It was partly traceable to the
treatment I had personally received, partly to an instinctive love
of liberty and the rights of individuals to their opinions. These
rights were essentially Anglo-Saxon rights. I assumed they were
prized by everybody. But I think it was the indignities suffered by
friends that aroused me most. ...Few people know of the state of
terror that prevailed during these years, few would believe the
extent to which private hates and prejudices were permitted to usurp
government powers. It was quite apparent that the alleged offenses
for which people were being persecuted were not the real offenses.
The prosecution was directed against liberals, radicals, persons who
had been identified with municipal-ownership fights, with labor
movements, with forums, with liberal papers which were under the
ban. Many of them were young people, many were college men and
women.[p.278] I was part of this liberal movement. To me it was a
renaissance of America rising from the orgy of commercialism. And I
could not reconcile myself to its destruction, to its voice being
stilled, its integrity assailed, its patriotism questioned,
especially by a war that promised to give these democratic ideals to
the world. I saw this youth movement driven under cover; like
children when first punished, it did not understand. It was
subjected to strain, to espionage; it found itself oppressed by a
government that it loved far more fervently than did the secret
agents that spied upon it. These young liberals felt that they had
done no wrong, so far as America was concerned they would do no
wrong. Some of them lived with indictments hanging over them; all
felt a sentence suspended over their enthusiasms, their beliefs,
their innermost thoughts. They had stood for variety, for
individuality, for freedom. They discovered a political state that
seemed to hate these things; it wanted a servile society, a society
that accepted authority, so long as it was respectable authority,
without protest.[p.279]
The crushing of this movement and the men responsible for it made
me hate in a way that was new to me. I hated the Department of
Justice, the ignorant secret-service men who had been intrusted with
man-hunting powers; I hated the new state that had arisen, hated its
brutalities, its ignorance, its unpatriotic patriotism, that made
profit from our sacrifices and used its power to suppress criticism
of its acts. I hated the suggestion of disloyalty of myself and my
friends; suggestions that were directed against liberals, never
against profiteers. I wanted to protest against the destruction of
my government, my democracy, my America. I hated the new
manifestation of power far more than I had hated the spoils men, the
ward heeler, the politicians, or even the corruptionists who had
destroyed my hope of democracy in Cleveland. I had cherished a free
city, but I cherished a free people more.[pp.279-280]
I did not question but that war necessitated the subordination of
the individual to the state, but felt that we could have waged war
quite as successfully if we had taken a stand like that taken in
England, where men were allowed greater freedom of opinion. In
England those who questioned were respected in their right to
question. I prized liberty at home more than I feared danger from
abroad, and felt that our own citizens could be safeguarded without
our liberties being destroyed.
And I was officially part of the system. I was part of this
government, very much a part, for I was the custodian of hundreds of
persons whom I knew to be innocent. That I was shielding them as
individuals did not satisfy that part of me that wanted to protest
against the wrongs that were being done. This was the personal
problem that weighed most heavily on my mind. I was fighting a
battle new to me -- a moral battle that went to the bottom of
things. ...I had rarely lost a night's sleep in my life; now I could
not sleep. And I began to be afraid. The telephone became to me an
evil thing. I felt a sense of oppression in that I was not doing
what the crowd demanded; the fact that I was aiding men and women in
their legal rights in an orderly way gave me little comfort.[p.280]
For months I lived in a state of fear. I feared something
impending, something mysterious that hung over me. ...A congressman
from New York came to me and said that the Rules Committee of the
House was framing up charges against me. They were false, but he saw
no reason for opposing them. "I had never done anything for
him," he said. And the charges were serious. I brooded over
these fears, over the hostility of the bureau, of the island, of the
press. I had never encountered anything like it before.[pp.280-281]
My attitude toward the state was changed as a result of these
experiences. I have never been able to bring it back. I became
distrustful of the state. It seemed to want to hurt people; it
showed no concern for innocence; it aggrandized itself and protected
its power by unscrupulous means. It was not my America, it was
something else. And I think I lost interest in it, just as did
thousands of other persons, whose love of country was questioned,
and who were turned from love into fear of the state and all that it
signified. Possibly the falling off in the number of voters,
numbered by millions, is in some way related to this
disillusionment, this fear of the state which came into existence
during these hysterical years.[p.282]
CHAPTER 29 / PARIS AND THE WORLD
My contacts with the President during the war had mainly to do
with the prosecution of liberals, who had delayed their approval of
his war declarations, assuming as a matter of course the right to
question. His acquiescence in the suppression of opposing opinions
was incomprehensible to me, as was his apparent approval of private
agencies identified with the Department of Justice, and his assent
to the indiscriminate inhumanity that fell under my notice at Ellis
Island. Nor could I understand the appointment to positions of high
trust of the kind of men whom he had vehemently denounced in his "New
Freedom"; his turning departmental activities over to business
men of the exploiting Wall Street type, who were even, in many
instances, his known enemies.
...By taking the initiative he protected himself from divergent
views, from discussion of questions that he had settled. ...I would
go away with a feeling that there was nothing more to be said; the
subject was closed, it could not be debated. But I was confused and
unconvinced by this new aspect of the President, aware that I had
come up against a stone wall; he understood the cases of arrested
liberals, but he seemed determined that there should be no
questioning of his will. I felt that he was eager for the punishment
of men who differed from him, that there was something vindictive in
his eyes as he spoke. And I could not understand his apparent hatred
of men who persisted in their belief in his own liberal opinions of
1916. At the same time he wrote me letters breathing his old belief
in freedom. That was the Woodrow Wilson that I knew, my model of the
university statesman; the new intolerant one was a product of the
war.[p,284]
Early in the war I wrote to the President about the Near East.
...I did not want Germany to take the place of England and America
in their dominance of the world. I did not believe the war
propaganda, did not accept the singleness of German guilt. Still
something within me was aroused at the thought of German ascendancy
in the world. The thought of America seemed to be fixed on the
western front; our minds were being filled with hatred and desire
for revenge. Vistas of permanent security and peace that the
President's eloquence painted were unrealizable, to my mind, unless
the problems of the Near East were taken into account. Here was the
tinder-box of Europe, the source of repeated modern wars. Over its
control Russia, England, and France had warred and negotiated from
the time of Napoleon. The Kaiser had bent his energies to the
control of Turkey, Asia Minor, and the eastern Mediterranean, with
the object of splitting the Franco-Russian Alliance and breaking up
the British Empire through outposts menacing the Suez Canal and the
Indian Ocean. This was the military objective of the Bagdad Railway
and the German Drangnach Osten.[pp.284-285]
I was full of the subject and urged it repeatedly on President
Wilson's attention, in long letters to which his replies were far
more satisfactory than any talks I ever had with him. ...[p.285]
In correspondence with the President I urged on him my conviction
of the economic causes of the war; that it was not the Kaiser, nor
the Czar, but imperialistic adventurers who had driven their
countries into conflict. Secret diplomacy, the conflict of bankers,
the activity of munition-makers, exploiters, and concessionaires in
the Mediterranean, in Morocco, in south and central Africa, had
brought on the cataclysm; glacial-like aggregations of capital and
credit were responsible for the war. His vision of peace was only
possible with imperialism ended and the world freed from the
struggle over the control of backward countries, embroiling now one
country, now another. Permanent peace meant that Gibraltar, the Suez
Canal, and the Dardanelles should be internationalized; the Bagdad
Railway completed by an international consortium, so that Asiatic
Turkey might again become as in ancient days a great granary and
storehouse of wheat and cotton. I pictured the territory of the old
Roman Empire freed from imperialism and developed by international
arrangement, with Constantinople a free port and great cosmopolis,
serving as the distributing centre of three continents.[p.287]
When the armistice was signed I felt that the international
millennium was at hand. The President's idealism had carried the
world; his Fourteen Points had been accepted; armies were to be
disbanded, armaments scrapped, imperialism ended. Self-determination
was to be extended to all peoples, hates were to be assuaged, and
peace to reign.[p.287]
I was ready to embrace a league of nations, even a league to
enforce peace. Any international arrangement that would prevent war
was worth while. I believed that the negotiators at Paris wanted
peace and were willing to make any sacrifices for it; that war was
going to be forever ended on the earth.[pp.287-288]
Such facts as did not fit in with my enthusiastic vision, I
suppressed. I found an explanation for wrongs that had been done at
home in the end to be attained. America had almost lost her own
liberties -- that was part of our sacrifice. Surely the President
had covenanted for his ideals in exchange for what we had lost. His
suppression of liberalism still raised unsatisfied questioning, but
of a new dispensation for the world I did not permit myself to
doubt. The men in Europe would be of one mind with him; war had all
but destroyed civilization, war should not happen again. I was
captivated by the President's eloquence and thoroughly believed in
his programme. And I wanted to have a part in it; a share in the
settlement of the Near Eastern problems. I wanted to be around when
the hand of the Western world should be lifted from the peoples of
the Near East, the glories of whose ancient civilization I dreamed
of seeing restored.[p.288]
George Creel, of the Committee on Public Information,
...organized a propaganda agency, and was largely responsible for
Wilson's prestige in the popular mind in Europe. ...Creel knew about
my interest in the Near East and my pre-war knowledge of Germany.
...George Creel urged on the President an unofficial appointment
that would enable me to go to the Peace Conference. One day he said
to me: "The President wants you to go to Paris." There was
something more about passport, funds, an assignment to be made when
I should arrive. It was not very clear, but it meant definitely to
me an opportunity to press my ideas about the Mediterranean. That
was what I wanted.[pp.289-290]
The American mission carried with it vanloads of reports. Colonel
House had a group of experts gathered from the universities, many of
whom had worked for two years on special details. Each was convinced
of the supreme importance of his own assignment. ...Questions of
personal importance took precedence of idealistic visions. I went
with Lincoln Steffens, whose assignment also came from the
President, to the old Hotel Chatham. Together we spent much of our
time in a splendid palace on the Champs Elysees, placed by the
French Government at the disposal of newspaper men. Here we made
acquaintances, dined, and talked over events with men of all
nations. They were mostly cynical, many of them had been through the
war; they knew more than the American mission about the political
psychology of Europe and the methods of the men told off to make
peace. Most of the Americans represented papers hostile to President
Wilson.[pp.290-291]
Shortly after my arrival, Colonel House sent for me and said that
the President planned to send a mission to Syria to ascertain the
wishes of the Syrians themselves in regard to a mandatory. He
desired me to familiarize myself with all the treaties and
engagements of the allied powers relating to the Near East, and to
hold myself in readiness to leave for Syria at a moment's notice.
...
The assignment called for much preliminary work. I reread the
pre-war investigations of the Germans on the Near East. The secret
treaties were placed at my disposal by Colonel House and the English
authorities, who seemingly approved of the mission. There was no
help to be had from the French, who did not want the inquiry made.
These secret treaties, like others, had been kept from President
Wilson; it was claimed he knew nothing about them until his arrival.
They furnished astounding revelations. Our allies, like Germany,
scrapped treaties -- not with traditional enemies, but solemn
agreements with friends and with each other. The documents showed
that England and France had pleaded with the King of the Hedjas to
throw the Arab forces in with the allied cause, and drive the Turks
from Arabia. The Arabs were promised their freedom in exchange;
England would get out of Mesopotamia, France would get out of Syria;
the whole of Arabia was to be divided into three parts, to be ruled
by the three sons of the King of the Hedjas – one of whom, Emir
Feisal, was in Paris. Dignified, meditative, richly turbaned, he was
there to see that the compact was lived up to. But France and
England were unwilling to give up this rich territory. Scarcely was
the ink dry on their compact with the Arabs when they negotiated
with each other the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty, under whose terms
England was to retain Mesopotamia, France was to keep Syria, and
Russia take Armenia. Then the Jews asked for Palestine, and Balfour,
the gentleman-statesman, agreed on behalf of England that they
should have it, although Palestine had already been promised to the
Arabs and given to the French. And England, I soon found, was
reluctant to hand over Syria to France.[pp.291-292]
My vision of a free world was clouding. Self-determination for
peoples began to ring like an empty phrase. Still I believed that
President Wilson had guaranties that would permit him to turn a
trick at the proper time and restore the situation. I would not
believe that we were going back to the old order; would not credit
what I saw about me.[pp.294-295]
One evening a number of young Englishmen visited me at the Hotel
Chatham. They were Oxford and Cambridge men, brilliant, friendly,
amiable. A few days later I was invited to breakfast with them.
Arriving, I found that I was at the house of Lloyd George; that
Philip Kerr, my host, was Lloyd George's secretary. He and his
associates, Lionel Curtis, Arnold Toynbee, and others, were known as
"Lord Milner's men." They were editors of the periodical
known as The Round Table, and had organized an imperial conference
in each of the British colonies. We talked about the Near East.
They, too, were interested in the subject. I took it for granted
that they were interested in self-determination for peoples; that
they understood, as a matter of course, the crimes committed by
imperialistic adventurers in Egypt, Persia, Africa. I talked about
my discoveries of conflicting treaties, about the activities of
British oil interests in Mesopotamia and Persia. I warmed to the
theme of financial imperialism and the necessity of being rid of
imperialistic exploiters in order to have permanent peace. I felt
that they would help in solving the Near Eastern problem.
It astounded me to find that they scarcely knew the meaning of the
words economic imperialism. Imperialism was not economic, it
was a white man's burden. A sacred trust, undertaken for the
well-being of peoples unfitted for self-government. The war was in
no way related to the conflict of financial interests. Unfortunate
things were done sometimes by business bounders -- true -- but they
did not influence the Foreign Office. The flag followed the
investor, perhaps, but only because the investor was a British
citizen who was sacred wherever he ventured. This imperialism, which
was not imperialism, must be carried to the end. It must be carried
by Anglo-Saxons, and England was no longer able to carry it alone.
She had lost much of her best blood in the trenches; Oxford and
Cambridge, which recruited the Foreign Office, had been depleted of
a generation of talent. The only country which could be trusted to
share the white man's burden was America; America must help.
...[pp.295-296]
" It looks to me as if America is to be asked to carry the
bag; to police Europe and remove from England and France the burden
of protecting imperialistic ventures. You are asking us to assume
the biggest, most dangerous, and costliest job of all."
The young men admitted the danger. They felt, as all Englishmen
whom I met seemed to feel, that America owed a debt to England, much
as did Canada, Australia, and other colonies. We ought to be proud
to pay our debt to the empire. That America was a colonial
dependence, not yet a sovereign nation, seemed to be their fixed
idea.[p.296]
I had seen British university men of this type at Ellis Island,
had met them in Washington and at the clubs in New York. But I
understood them better in Paris. The civil service of which they are
a part is one of the marvelous things about England. Made up of
Oxford and Cambridge men who enter the Foreign Office after the
hardest kind of competitive examinations, it forms them into
servants devoted, like Jesuits, to the empire. Before the war these
men, especially the Lord Milner group, had gone to Canada,
Australia, and South Africa. They gave up home, companionship, and
everything to which they had been accustomed; they often lived
isolated lives in distant places of the world. They mobilized
opinion for imperialistic ends. Conservatives or Liberals, the
empire was their passion. It was to be served, strengthened, carried
on. Where the empire was in question they were impervious to facts,
blind to obvious evils, untouched by argument. As administrators
they were intelligent and kindly -- conceded nothing to
self-government, nothing to the aspirations of other people for
liberty. England and the empire were one; British citizenship a
distinction, like Roman citizenship; to question the empire was to
question centuries of sacrifice, the renown of England's most
distinguished men. This extraordinarily efficient organization knew
everything except the suppressed wants of subject peoples; granted
everything to subject peoples except political liberty. It was not
willing to dignify by discussion the questionings of others as to
the sanctity of England's imperial trust.[pp.296-297]
As I talked with these young men I reflected on the nature of
English gentlemen and Oxford scholars -- their unwillingness,
perfected by long practice into inability, to recognize issues that
touched their economic interests. India, Egypt, Africa, Mesopotamia
provided careers for the younger sons of the aristocracy; England
was crowded, trade undesirable, the service of the state was their
opportunity. To end imperialism was to end jobs, opportunities for
preferment. It was like suggesting abolishing the church to the
clergy, the army to the military caste, the navy to marines. Men
receive unwillingly ideas that destroy a livelihood; and vocal
England is a unit in the protection of its privileged sons -- they
would be left to starve if the colonial service were ended, they
would have to compromise their dignity in trade or emigrate as
workers.[pp.297-298]
Another interest touched them in a way they refused to see.
England exploited her dependencies; billions of pounds were invested
in backward countries, in bonds, in oil, in diamond and gold mines,
in rubber plantations. The landed aristocracy was the investing
class. It kept aloof from things economic at home; business was
vulgar, outside of recognized interests. The bombardment of
Alexandria or the Boer War was not in any admissible way related to
loans, to gold and diamond-mine owners. Yet when the British purse
was touched the investing class felt the hurt. Then the press spoke,
the Foreign Office responded, Britain bristled, gunboats were
despatched; the cry was that the rights of British citizens were in
danger. In reality British pounds sterling were affected. Economic
reasons for imperialism were consistently ignored. Even the Labor
Party had a confused veneration for the empire, a veneration
springing from tradition. Oxford young men wanted our dough-boys to
do their policing, to help protect economic interests that they
dignified as sacred. ...America's duty was always being held before
my eyes.[p.298]
Representatives of French interests talked no bunk. They were
always realistic. They were opposed to our mission to Syria. Syria
was French in influence; France claimed it from the time of the
Crusades. She had contracts with the British for exclusive control
that were exhausting to Syria. France had the prior right to own and
exploit everything. Every business concession had first to be
offered to her before it could be offered to others. I talked with
men from the Sorbonne, with military men and experts. They saw
nothing wrong in the contracts, even though the Syrians had not been
consulted. France must take and keep all that she could get. She
used her possessions for business exploitation -- true; as
recruiting-grounds for military power -- it was obvious. I recalled
her exploitation of Algiers and Tunis, the conquest of Morocco by
French bankers, and inquired about the Sykes-Picot Treaty. The
French shrugged their shoulders. Great Britain had gotten her
territory; France would take hers. The only regret was that Great
Britain had the most valuable spots. The French treated the blacks
with consideration -- they were needed for the protection of the
republic, and their land and markets were needed for French
business. The French point of view was straightforward. It embodied
complete historical realism. France could only protect herself by
force. President Wilson was a dreamer, his ideals were foolish or
worse. France would prepare in every possible way for war that was
inevitable; imperialist possessions where black troops were
recruited was one important way.[pp.298-299]
About the Turks, whom the Allies had promised to drive into Asia,
the French were equally succinct:
"They owe us money," was their summary of the
Turkish question -- "huge debts contracted before the war.
If we drive out the Turks and take Constantinople, there will be no
Turks left to pay our debts. The Turks must keep Constantinople."
France took Syria, England Mesopotamia. Palestine went to the
Jews. The Arabs had driven back the Turks and had perhaps saved the
British Empire. Their sacrifices were ignored; agreements were
thrown to the winds and betraying friends took possession of their
ancient towns and countryside. The Arabs rebelled; their rebellion
was crushed by the same friends with aeroplanes and machine-guns.
Emir Feisal, son of the desert was exiled to Switzerland. A free
Mediterranean was the idlest of dreams.[p.302]
One by one other men despaired. Lincoln Steffens was interested in
Russia; President Wilson had spoken generously of Russia's right to
have revolutions if she saw fit. Lenin talked Wilson's language as
to self-determination and ending imperialism. The Prinkipo
Conference was organized as a friendly overture to Russia. It
failed. One day Steffens and I were with William Bullitt a liaison
official whose business it was to keep the American mission informed
as to what was going on. Bullitt had an engaging personality. He
knew Europe, had been connected with the State Department during the
war. Steffens suggested a mission to Russia, a mission that
understood the Bolshevik point of view that could talk its language.
Bullitt liked the idea and dictated a memorandum about it to Colonel
House. Two days later Bullitt asked Steffens if he would go to
Russia with him; if so, could he be ready immediately? The plan had
been approved by Colonel House; it was only necessary to get the
sanction of Lloyd George. The next day that had been secured. I saw
Bullitt and Steffens off. They went to London; from London by
British aid they reached Russia. They were sympathetically received
by Lenin, and returned to Paris to make their report. The mission
had been successful. The Russians had acceded to the allied
memorandum; a rapprochement seemed established; Russia was to come
back into the family of nations. Bullitt and Steffens were elated. A
great advance had been made toward international amity. For some
reason or another they could not see the President. Lloyd George
received Bullitt and the report, but later denied that he knew of
the mission or had given his consent to it. No explanation for his
change of front was ever offered. That Lloyd George had approved of
the mission was obvious to all. It could not have left France, could
not have landed in England, could not have secured conveyance to
Russia but for British aid and approval.[pp.302-303]
Truth meant little at Paris. Paris did not expect men to tell the
truth. The President worked in a net of duplicity; he was surprised
when apparently satisfactory agreements turned into betrayals of his
position. His tasks were cruelly difficult; he attempted them for
the most part alone. Aided only by memoranda on a sheet of paper, he
went into conference with men who knew personally every detail of
the subjects under discussion. The American experts who furnished
the President's data were competent; they did thorough work, but
they were like an army which was not facing its enemy.[p.303]
...Officially Paris was not interested in things economic. Tt was
fixing boundaries, agreeing on reparations. The President was not
interested. Nor were Balfour, Lloyd George, or Clemenceau --
ostensibly. Rut economic forces moved the conference, like players
about a chess-board. Boundary-lines were shifted to include harbors,
copper, oil, mineral resources. Races were split, natural
demarcations ignored. The imperialist interests that had kept the
world on edge for thirty years before the war were making a killing;
they would end the old controversies; would sanction their loot by
treaty agreements; perhaps rivet them by the League of Nations. The
British Admiralty wanted oil; it had talked oil for years. British
maritime prescience saw that oil was the fuel of to-morrow. The
French steel trust wanted a grip on coal and iron ore, to gain
command of the Continent and strip Germany of her war-making power.
Munition-makers were busy. They were getting ready for the next
war.[p.304]
...One evening at dinner a friend of President Wilson's, a man
thoroughly conversant with the conference, said despondently:
"It is impossible to tell yet whether the peace is being
drafted by the international bankers or the munition-makers. It is
not being drafted by America."
America had no business at Paris. That was the outstanding thing
about which we almost all agreed. President Wilson should have
stayed at home. We were amateurs, amateurs seeking to right the
world by moralistic appeals; we had fought as religious crusaders,
and, like Joshua, had expected the old world to fall at a
trumpet-blast. Our emotions were honest, the sacrifice genuine,
whole-hearted, but Europe only smiled at our naivete. The
righteousness of Wilson was one of the Allies' greatest assets.
Confronted with the realism of old Europe, it was almost childish.
It was the morality of the church seeking to function against
alarmist war lords, ministries tenacious of power, lords of finance
-- all moved by elemental motives of individual, class, and
nationalistic aggrandizement. The evangelism of Wilson had turned
America from her traditions; it made no impression on the realism of
the old world.[pp.305-306]
My Still-born vision of the Near East was the child of kindly
American ignorance. It partook of our righteousness; possibly it was
the idlest dream of all. Only a Europe dedicated to renunciation
would have considered it. And old Europe was thinking of spoils and
the next war.[p.306]
