Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

"V

RUSSIA AND

ICTORY in Defeat "1 is the title of a new book on the war which is different from the ordinary run of war books. Its author, Mr. Stanley Washburn, correspondent of the London "Times" with the Russian army from October 1, 1914, to November 1, 1915, has probably seen more of the fighting on the Russian front than any other American, with the possible exception of our recent military attaché to Russia, Lieutenant Sherman Miles, who shared Mr. Washburn's automobile during the Warsaw campaign.

It is true that a good deal of the book deals with military movements of which other correspondents have written, although none of them have had so much first-hand information as Mr. Washburn here presents. But what makes this book different is the philosophy and the spiritual insight that it contains. It is the chronicle of a nation finding itself. It is the story of the development of national character.

Mr. Washburn is different from other war correspondents in that he goes deeper. He sees what is going on in the soul of the soldier who, to the casual observer, is only a bloody, grimy animal, fighting with an animal's fury. The author of this volume has caught Russia's spirit with the quick sympathy of a poet, and he sees Russia's future with the clear vision of a prophet.

"There are many assets in war, as there are in peace," says Mr. Washburn, "and the greatest among these is character. Efficiency, preparation, and science have their innings at the beginning of a conflict, but the one enduring asset which a nation has is the character of its people. If time be given for this to develop, then the end is certain. The great crisis in Russia was during that period when the psychology of the nation was crystallizing, and when this had taken place the danger to Russia was largely passed. tainly I would in no way minimize the strength, fortitude, and patriotism of the Germans, which have been extraordinary from the beginning of the war, but I am still of the opinion that the greatest test of character is not in victory, but in defeat. It has seemed to me that the world has not appreciated the fact that there can be victory in defeat; but this is none the less true,

Cer

Victory in Defeat By Stanley Washburn. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $1.

AMERICA

when, as has happened in Russia, reverses have provided time in which the character of the nation has asserted itself and the Empire has been able to repair its lack of vision before the war by preparing itself after the blow has fallen. . . . I believe that the Rus-1 sian reverses have been so costly and demoralizing to their victors that history will judge them as the greatest single source of the German downfall which is, in my opinion, inevitable, whether it be in six months or in two years."

There is a valuable chapter on America's commercial opportunity in Russia, pointing out that with Germany's commercial grip on Russia broken it should be easy for the United States to build up a vast trade with this country of 8,507,950 square miles and a population of more than 170,000,000.

It is encouraging to see that American business men are beginning to clutch at this opportunity which Mr. Washburn and other American experts on Russian affairs have long been urging them to seize. The farthest and most practicable step which has been taken in this direction has been the formation of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, with headquarters at 60 Broadway, New York City. Among the officers and directors of the organization are representatives of such large and influential firms and corporations as the National City Bank of New York, the New York Life Insurance Company, the Guaranty Trust Company, Chase National Bank, First National Bank, and Harris, Forbes & Co., all of New York; First National Bank of Boston; Lee, Higginson & Co. and Kidder, Peabody & Co., of Boston and New York.

So bitter is the feeling against Germany in Russia that if other nations see their chance and take it Germany will never recover her tremendous trade with the Czar's Empire, which before the war was greater than the trade of any other four nations combined. Russia wants our trade. Her statesmen have said so. The recent formation in Russia of organizations like the Society for Promoting Mutual Friendly Relations Between Russia and America and the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, of Moscow and Petrograd, is incontrovertible proof. The first of the two above-mentioned organizations, which is headed by Baron Rosen, former Ambassador to the United States, came into existence last

THE PRE-NOMINATION CAMPAIGN

autumn for the promotion of friendly relations-business and social-between Russia and the United States." With the above object, the society has been holding lectures in Petrograd on the United States, the programme ranging as widely as from "General Geography of America" to "The Mill and Factory Industry in the United States."

The American-Russian Chamber of Commerce of New York will co-operate with the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce of Moscow. Any corporation or individual with present or prospective connections in Russia can secure, through membership in the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, advantages which can be obtained in no other way. Such members will be able to get information in regard to the Russian markets and introductions to the business men of Muscovy. They will have access to the "complete library of information" on Russia which is being collected by the Chamber.

Such a commercial entente between Russia and America is bound to bring the two countries into a greater social intimacy. The first step to trade relations with Russia is the negotiation of a new trade treaty. But the consummation of that desired step will be made easier by the growing sympathy and

177

interest which Americans and Russians are feeling for each other. The apparent growth of liberalism in Russia, which is indicated by recent reports from the Czar's country, also ought to make the adoption of a treaty easier. Newspaper reports indicate that the session of the Duma, brought to a close at the Easter holidays, has done much to reduce the bad feeling which existed between the people and their Government early in the winter. It is reported that the Duma passed legislation which has already resulted in the great increase of Russia's transportation facilities by the construction of new side-tracks and switches. This report comes from the correspondents of American newspapers in Russia, and we have not yet received the Russian newspapers which may contain verification of it. But if this is true it ought to aid greatly in reducing the food shortage which the large cities have been facing. Another report has it that co-operative soci- | eties have been made legal on a much greater scale than ever before, a step that is expected to make for industrial efficiency and the lower cost of living. On the whole, there seems to be a more roseate flush rising over the Russian sky than has been visible in that quarter since the time of the reforms of 1905.

THE PRE-NOMINATION CAMPAIGN THE LIGHT BREAKING OVER STAND-PAT INDIANA

STAFF CORRESPONDENCE BY FREDERICK M. DAVENPORT

Mr. Davenport for the last week or two has been in the West, talking with all sorts of people, seeking to determine at first hand the currents of opinion, particularly in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, a section which recently has been giving the politicians as well as the advocates of National preparation some concern. The present article is upon the pivotal State of Indiana, which by its situation and tradition has in many campaigns been the center of despairing scrutiny by professional party managers.-THE EDItors.

B

ACK in the East among the thought

ful, and in other more or less enlightened sections of the United States,

dear old stand-pat Indiana has politically ong been held in disesteem. And that is And that is putting it mildly. To tell it as it is, Indiana has the reputation politically of being sodden, mediocre, deeply satisfied with things as they are provided they are bad enough. Some of Its leading party managers, when they have not seemed to be unpatriotic and cunning, have certainly given the impression of being fat, insipid, and platitudinous. Indiana is

the original lair of the stand-patter in the United States.

I have several times before shot through the corner of the State on the way Farther West, going to sleep in the Pullman with the impression that I ought to be sure to tell the porter not to wake me up until I got over the boundary of the Hoosier commonwealth. But I have never had the opportunity of going somewhat leisurely through large sections of Indiana and getting in touch with all sorts of plain and prominent people until now.

I thought perhaps something might be

to Indiana first in the Middle West. I think you can read the real controlling mind of the Republican rank and file better in Indiana than in Mr. Barnes's territory or on the Pacific coast. You can put the acid test to stand-pat Indiana and get a truer reaction than almost anywhere else.

Fair

Take Fairbanks. Of course you don't have to unless you want to. But what I mean is that Fairbanks is really typical of stand-patism, not only of the better sort in the political organization, but as it exists in the mind of a large section of the Republican masses. And that is the kind of a man who will probably, under present conditions, have to go on the National ticket if a pronounced liberal is named for the Presidency. banks has few enemies, is well liked in his State, has had a large public experience, was eight years United States Senator and four years a Vice-President, is conciliatory and, above all things, cautious. One of the representative men of Indianapolis told me again that legendary story which I have heard before of how Mr. Fairbanks was stopping at a hotel out in the sheep country. And in the morning at breakfast he sat at the table with another man who ventured to say, "It is a fine morning." And Fairbanks, after looking carefully out of the window and observing that the sun was shining brightly, replied, "It is." And a little later the other man further remarked, "Why, those seem to be sheep off towards the horizon." And Mr. Fairbanks took a little more time to examine closely, but finally admitted, "They are." And the other man said, "Why, those sheep are sheared!" And Mr. Fairbanks, after a much longer period of scrutiny than before, at last answered. "Well, they do appear to be sheared on one side." This story may be apocryphal, but it is unquestionably descriptive with a nicety of the supposedly eternal necessities of Indiana stand-pat politics. Normally, the vote of the State hangs by a hair. Any misstep may be fatal to the party, and it is best not to take any chance! Moreover, the Fairbanks temperament represents in an exaggerated form the point of view of many citizens of the United States who have grown in the habit of casting a Republican ballot. All the more for that reason the speech which the Indiana candidate for the Presidency delivered in Indianapolis a day or two ago is significant of the issue which is forcing itself upon the Republican party at Chicago. I have never read so strongly

out-and-out a speech from Mr. Fairbanks during his whole career. A powerful navy which shall command respect for our diplomacy, the guarantee of our own peace and of the protection of the lawful rights of American citizens, National safety to be preserved against all comers, firmness and certainty, a self-respecting and straightforward policy—if Indiana and Fairbanks thus speak, I can see what the National Republican Convention must say.

And my talks with many citizens of Indiana, the plain and the prominent, confirm me in the conviction that, even from the standpoint of the Middle West, nothing will do but a profoundly National declaration of the most positive sort, and that no candidate for the Presidency can possibly be put across by the Republican party who is not known to be a thoroughly positive character and one of the best of his kind. I shall have opportunity in my next letter to state an opinion as to how far it seems to me the Middle West is alive to the duties and dangers of the hour. There are multitudes of people who are not yet thinking at all. But more of them are thinking every day. And while they think cautiously out here of the present issue and are inclined to believe that the East is hysterical and that the dangers are overdrawn, nothing but genuine Americanism satisfies them when they wake up.

As I write this Saturday afternoon of the 13th of May, I read in an Associated Press despatch that the great citizen throng which in New York is marching up Fifth Avenue is forced to face a banner flung across the street bearing an inscription to the effect that 500,000 mine-workers and organized labor in America are opposed to what they are marching f r. Day before yesterday in Indianapolis, in the National offices of the United Mine Workers, I talked with a man who probably knows as much about the inner thought of the rank and file of that organization as any man in America. He said to me: "It is the Socialist section of labor which has the wrong view of preparedness. To be sure, all labor wants to keep out of war and sincerely desires peace. The effect of war would be disastrous to labor unions, perhaps cutting their membership in two. And we think that the preparedness business is overdone. We want a strong navy and strong coast defenses, but not a large standing army. But we are Americans, and we are troubled about the Republic. We don't think things are going

1916

THE PRE-NOMINATION CAMPAIGN

right. There is not solidarity enough. Our labor unions, in developing co-operation and brotherhood among great masses of men of different races and nationalities, are doing something that the whole country needs to have done by a real government, and that cannot be done too soon.”

I shall have something more to say later about the general attitude of the Middle West German, but 'one of them, a strongly Republican German from Cincinnati whom I fell in with in Indiana, and who bitterly denounced England, said to me when I asked him if the Germans would stand for a strong programme of preparedness in the Republican platform: "Why, of course; Germany was prepared; wasn't she?" "But," I said, "would the Ohio Germans stand for an attack on Germany in the Republican platform?" "Yes, they would, I think," he said, "if England were included. They are Americans. But they don't like to have Wilson, and they wouldn't like to have the Republicans, kowtow to the English. They don't like the way Wilson is willing to stand for the starving of the Germans. When a man's children are in danger, he will take any means, submarines or anything else, to avert it." He was for Hughes for President.

But the response was not always so clear and unequivocal. I have a record of other kinds in my note-book. In the smoker of the Pullman going into Indiana I talked with a leading representative of the warehouse industry who is brought into close touch with producers in the Middle West. "West of the Alleghanies," said he, "the people never were so contented. They are not cowards, and they will fight if they have to, and fight hard, and they are willing to be reasonably ready for it. But they have boys of their own, and they have sickened at the sight of this European blood-letting in the last eighteen months. Most of the danger of our getting into the war is the result of a stubborn commercialism. Why, a friend of mine in Cincinnati and his wife went down on the Lusitania. He was worth three-quarters of a million. He had nobody but himself and his wife. He was going across to get some of the European business. He didn't need it. I have had a chance to get some of it, too. But I don't want it. There is enough at home." My German friend mentioned above, with whom I fell in some days after, told me that the man just referred to, who with his wife went down on the Lusitania,

181

lived next door to him in Cincinnati, and had had seven separate warnings not to sail.

But in various parts of Indiana and the Middle West the fire is beginning to burn, and communities are beginning to be aroused. Americanism is not dead, but sleeping. I did not hear of a single community in which discussions favorable to National discipline and preparation have recently been held that had not been stirred to patriotic feeling and action. Roosevelt tore up Chicago by the roots. A man who was at the banquet of the Illinois Bar Association told me that the first fifteen or twenty minutes were cool and formal. And then, not the eloquence of Roosevelt, but the idea which he drove home with such power, got hold of the best brain and heart of Chicago. And it was a scene, he said, never to be forgotten.

Richmond, Indiana, is the seat of a Quaker college, Earlham, whose President is an active pacifist, and many leaders of public opinion are of the Quaker faith. At a meeting the other night to indorse the resolutions of the National Chamber of Commerce upon the subject of preparation, Timothy Nicholson, a prominent Quaker, characterized the whole programme as only a method of Prussianization. And he had strong support. But William Dudley Foulke and others called to remembrance our fate during the Civil War -that before the war closed Indiana alone sent between two and three hundred thousand volunteers to the field, that many thousands unnecessarily and miserably died, and that we had to prepare ourselves by a succession of defeats before we learned how to gain the victory. And Quaker Richmond voted two to one for National preparation.

The light is breaking over stand-pat Indiana. The most conclusive evidence of this that I found is in the beginnings of altered conduct on the part of the Fairbanks machine. The returning Progressives have been welcomed not only with generosity but with an appreciation of the valuable chastening which has been bestowed upon the Republican party by the revolution. One of the Big Four delegation to Chicago is a former chairman of the Progressives in the State. One of the two men who argued the Roosevelt cases before the National Committee in 1912, and who was one of the founders of the Progressive party, was the permanent chairman of the recent Republican State Convention. Former Progressive candidates appear on the Republican State ticket

this year, and all down the line through the local tickets. In point of fact, because of the stiffness of the old-line rank-and-file Republicans, who generally went out to the primaries in greater numbers than the rccently returned Progressives, not so many of the leading Progressives appear on the final ticket as the Republican managers themselves greatly desired. There is no silly talk, such as you hear sometimes in the East, about the necessity of the Progressives returning through the back door. There is very little of the supercilious and arrogant or pinheaded attitude. The control of the Fairbanks machine itself is passing into the hands of young and more forward-looking men. This has been accomplished, not by ostentatiously repudiating the Bourbon element, but by quietly relegating it to the rear. The younger and more virile Republicans who stood by Taft, and the younger and more virile Progressives who stood by Roosevelt, are many of them working shoulder to shoulder in Indiana within the Republican organization. this has the cordial co-operation of Fairbanks and some others of the elder statesmen. Of course there is an immense amount of selfinterest about it, because Indiana will never be Republican again except after an eighty or ninety per cent amalgamation of Republicans and Progressives. Indiana Republicanism was hard hit in 1912 and has so remained. But enlightened self-interest and the spirit of conciliation work wonders together. And the Indiana idea will have to be extended deep into the National conclave at Chicago and throughout the borders of Republicanism before anything like permanent party success is assured.

And all

But the new idea has taken hold of Republican Indiana. The narrow arrogance of the Bourbon inner circle is much less prominent. The fine young chairman of the State Central Committee is sounding across the State the slogan that the right of participation in party affairs by the membership of the party shall be and remain equally sacred and sacredly equal. The leading Progressives are by no means all reconciled, and some of them are waiting for a little more evidence of real

return to the faith once delivered to Lincoln. But man after man of the younger Fairbanks organization assured me that the whole plan was necessarily as well as happily on the level. We are tired, said they, of the longtime prostitution of party government by the union of the Taggart element and the Bourbon Republican element. The old idea of the party control in the hands of a few, for the sole purpose of holding office and keeping up a perfunctory government with special privileges for the few, has maintained itself too long. I am using almost the exact language of more than one of them. Government, said these young men, is a social function as well as a recording and policing device. And it has got to be used more and more for the good of all the people and to make a real country. Roosevelt talked about it in 1912, and he is talking about it now. We know that some of our old stagers around here have been deficient in morality. We want government to be a vital force for the wellbeing of the country. We won't accept the term "social justice," because it has been through the mire, but that's what we mean. Roosevelt went at it with a bludgeon. Perhaps that was the only way to get it started. But we are going to see if we cannot work it out by a process of healing without spectacular methods. The last thing we want is a return of the old crowd and the old methods. But we need the element which is behind them in order to win, and so we are not needlessly antagonizing them. You cannot do anything without party organization, but all through the country the ser timent against a man's carrying a State to Chicago with him in his pocket is as strong as ever. Look at Penrose and his delegation-split in two. And New York and its delegation-split in two. And Massachusetts and its delegationsplit in two. The Republicans of Indiana as well as in other parts of the country are not going to stand much longer for what they have stood for in the past.

But I shall have to let my Indiana friends make the rest of their speech to the Republican National Committee at Chicago.

Indianapolis, May 13, 1916

« AnteriorContinuar »