Rhodes’ Secret Will and Scholarships, Carnegie Peace Fund and Other Pan-Anglican Influences.—It is a well-established principle of strategy as practiced by diplomatists to arouse public attention to a supposed danger in order to divert it from a real one. Long antedating our association with England, secret plans were laid by far-seeing Englishmen, and sedulously fostered by their friends in the United States, to reclaim “the lost colonies” as a part of the United Kingdom. While the so-called German propaganda at best was directed toward keeping the United States out of the war, a subtle and deceptive propaganda was being conducted to enmesh us in European entanglements to such extent that retreat from a closer political union with England should become impossible.
In order to arrive at a clear understanding of the sources from which such influences are proceeding, it is necessary to call the reader’s attention to the secret will of Cecil Rhodes. This will is printed on pp. 68 and 69, Vol. I, Chapter VI, of “The Life of the Rt. Hon. Cecil Rhodes,” by Sir Lewis Mitchell, and reads as follows:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a secret society, the true aim of which and object whereof shall be the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization of British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Canadia; the whole of South America and the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire; the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament, which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.
Fourteen years later, in a letter to William T. Stead, dated August 19 and September 3, 1891, Rhodes wrote as follows:
What an awful thought it is that if we had not lost America, or if even now we could arrange with the present members of the United States Assembly and our own House of Commons, the peace of the world is secured for all eternity. We could hold your federal parliament five years at Washington and five years at London. (“The Pan-Angles,” by Sinclair Kennedy; published by Longmans, Green and Co., London and New York.)
Mr. Kennedy writes further on this subject as follows:
Not alone the federation of the Britannic nations, but the federation of the whole Pan-Angle people is the end to be sought. Behind Rhodes’ “greater union in Imperial matters” lay his vision of a common government over all English-speaking people. If we are to preserve our civilization and its benefits to an individual civilizazzzz, we must avoid friction among ourselves and take a united stand before the world. Only a common government will insure this.
These words have a remarkable resemblance to a declaration made by the late American Ambassador to Great Britain, the Hon. Whitelaw Reid, in a speech delivered in London, July 17, 1902, when, speaking of Anglo-American relations, he employed these significant words:
The time does visibly draw near when solidarity of race, if not of government, is to prevail.
The similarity of sentiments expressed by two persons of different race and speaking at an interval of twelve years must strike anyone as deeply significant. We have here an agreement in that respect between Cecil Rhodes, Sinclair Kennedy and Whitelaw Reid. All three want a common government over the Britannic nations and the United States.
It is known that the millions left by Cecil Rhodes for the express object of the “ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire,” have been invested in such a manner as to carry out as secretly as possible the purpose for which they were designed. Men may well stand appalled at the working of the Rhodes poison in the veins of American life.
To its fatal operation may be attributed the rise of societies to promote Anglo-Saxon brotherhood, Pilgrim societies, movements to celebrate the centenary of English and American friendship (farcical as that pretension is), the formation of peace treaties nominally most inclusive, but in reality designed to benefit Great Britain, and the gradual elimination from our public school books of all reference to the part played by England in our history, English designs against this country and savagery against its citizens, as well as all unpleasant diplomatic events between us and England that have been of such frequent recurrence. To this influence may be attributed the movement to ignore the Fourth of July and substitute the Signing of the Magna Charta to be celebrated by American youths as the true origin of our independence, as proposed by Andrew Carnegie in placards which did, and possibly do yet adorn the walls of his free libraries. In the June number of the “North American Review” for 1893, Mr. Carnegie employed the following significant words:
Let men say what they will; I say that as surely as the sun in the heavens once shone upon Britain and America united, so surely is it one morning to rise, shine upon and greet again the reunited States—the British-American Union.
Let us recall that it was Lord Bryce, the former British Ambassador to the United States, who advocated:
“The recognition of a common citizenship, securing to the citizen of each, in the country of the other, certain rights not enjoyed by others.”
And that Lord Haldane, in a speech in Canada some years ago, broadly hinted at an ultimate union of the two countries.
We find in “The Pan-Angles” of Mr. Kennedy a map of the world in which Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States are represented in a uniform color, to illustrate their solidarity. In the minds of the Pan-Angles the vision of the great Cecil Rhodes, backed by his countless millions, is approaching its realization. Rhodes held that “divine ideals, on which the progress of mankind depended, were for the most part the moving influence, if not the exclusive possession, of the Anglo-Saxon race, of which Great Britain is the head.” (“The Right Hon. Cecil Rhodes,” by Sir Thos. E. Fuller, p. 243.)
Rhodes’ published will of July 1, 1899, has a broad provision for his American propaganda in paragraph 16: “And whereas I also desire to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the English-speaking people throughout the world, and to encourage in the students from the United States of North America who will benefit from the American Scholarships to be established at the University of Oxford under my Will, an attachment to the country from which they have sprung,” etc.
The effect of the Rhodes American scholarship scheme was clearly set forth in the “Saturday Evening Post” of July 13, 1912, wherein the writer says:
“Twenty years hence and forever afterward there will be between two and three thousand men (Rhodes graduates) in the prime of life scattered over the English-speaking world, each of whom will have had impressed upon his mind at the most susceptible period the dreams of a union of our people.”
In the “North American Review” for June, 1893, Mr. Carnegie already advocated the subordination of our fiscal policy to that of England. He said:
“I do not shut my eyes to the fact that reunion, bringing free entrance of British products, would cause serious disturbance to many manufacturing interests near the Atlantic Coast which have been built up under the protective tariff system. Judging from my knowledge of the American manufacturers, there are few who would not gladly make the necessary pecuniary sacrifices to bring about a reunion of the old home and the new.”
In a like manner Mr. Carnegie spoke at Dundee, in 1890, and in the “North American Review” he candidly stated: “National patriotism or pride cannot prove a serious obstacle in the way of reunion.... The new nation would dominate the world.”
The war has blinded us to many issues that affect our political future. With Lord Northcliffe admittedly in control of many important American papers, there has been printed only what was approved in London, and suppressed whatever menaced the peaceful pursuit of the policy of the proposed merger. It cropped out in the draft of the League of Nations, rejected by the United States Senate, which provided for six votes for Great Britain and her colonies and only one vote for the United States on all questions to be decided. Only a few Senators were alive to the danger, and the misguided public was so reluctant to hear the truth that Senator Reed of Missouri, one of the first to protest, was for a time repudiated by the leaders of his party in his own State, and assailed on the platform when he attempted to speak in Oklahoma.
The movement to anglicise the United States is making rapid progress. It had its inception in London and is conducted in this country under the auspices of pronounced Anglophiles in the name of the “English-Speaking Union,” headed by former President Taft, with the following persons as vice presidents: George Haven Putnam, chairman of the organization committee; Albert Shaw, Ellery Sedgwick, George Wharton Pepper, John A. Stewart, Otto H. Kahn, Charles C. Burlingham, Charles P. Howland, R. Harold Paget, Edward Harding, the Rev. Lyman P. Powell, E. H. Van Ingen, and Frank P. Glass. In London the organization is called the Anglo-American Society. At a meeting held in that city on June 26, 1919, presided over by Lord Bryce, an elaborate programme was agreed upon to carry the propaganda into the United States and England. To that end, Washington and the Puritan fathers, though the former headed the rebellion against England and the latter fled its shores to escape persecution, are to be employed as symbols of Anglo-American unity, and a great number of festivities and memorials are included in the program, which will develop in the course of the year. Preparations are now being made for the 300th anniversary celebration of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
A Sulgrave Institution has been organized—Sulgrave Manor being the ancestral home of George Washington—which has raised $125,000 in England and is raising a fund of $1,000,000 in this country. The use of the fund was explained by John A. Stewart, chairman of the board of governors, who said it was “to establish scholarships in English universities and later in this country, and also to refit Sulgrave Manor.” King George was one of the first contributors to the English campaign, he said.
On June 28, 1919, the King of England sent by cable a message to the President, in which he said:
Mr. President, it is on this day one of our happiest thoughts that the American and British people, brothers in arms, will continue forever to be brothers in peace. United before by language, traditions, kinship and ideals, there has been set upon our fellowship the sacred seal of common sacrifice.
During the Paris peace conference the New York “Times” of February 13, 1919, in a Paris correspondence, declared that there was complete Anglo-American concord, the program of the conference revealing a fundamental identity of aims and the understanding between English-speaking peoples being never so complete as today. Former Attorney General Wickersham took the lead in proposing to remit England’s enormous debt to us, explaining that we owe them that much for “holding back the Huns,” and the proposition has been received with great favor by many of the 18,000 additional millionaires created by the war, meaning, of course, that England’s burden shall be transferred to the shoulders of the American tax payers.
Among the advocates of the merger are General Pershing, Lord Balfour, Chauncey M. Depew, James M. Beck, Lord Grey and the American bankers and great industrials, like Charles M. Schwab. Surrounded by distinguished men of England, General Pershing, in the Military Committee room of the House of Commons, dwelt with special pathos on the proposed Anglo-Saxon brotherhood. “I feel that the discharged and demobilized soldiers will carry with them into private life,” he said, “the necessity for closer and firmer union, and that we may be united as peoples likewise forever.” Subsequently he was made a Knight of the Bath by King George.
At a meeting of the Pilgrim Society in New York, January 22, 1919, James M. Beck, recently made a “Bencher” in London, after reviewing England’s achievements in the war, said:
England’s triumphs are our triumphs, and our triumphs are England’s triumphs.
Lord Edward Grey, one of the principal figures in the events preceding and throughout the war, was sent as ambassador to the United States to foster the movement. Nominally, the movement is for the preservation of peace, which is represented as seriously imperiled from hour to hour unless the United States and England unite. To this end there is to be “an exchange of journalists” as well as scholars and professors.
“The Nation,” speaking of an address by Admiral Sims at the American Luncheon Club, on March 14, 1919, says:
Admiral Sims referred to his remarks at the Guildhall several years ago, when he declared that Great Britain and the United States would be found together in the next war. Further, he said that in 1910, while cruising in European waters, he submitted a secret report that in his opinion war could not be put off longer than four years. During the war a German diplomatic official stated that there was an understanding between Great Britain and the United States whereby they would stand together if either went to war with Germany. A similar statement recently came to light in this country from a Dutch source. Professor Roland G. Usher, in his “Pan-Germanism,” explicitly declares that, probably before the summer of the year 1897, “an understanding was reached that in case of a war begun by Germany or Austria for the purpose of executing Pan-Germanism, the United States would promptly declare in favor of England and France, and would do her utmost to assist them.” We do not attach too great importance to any of these statements; yet we should like to see this matter ventilated. If such an understanding was in force, did President Wilson know of it before Mr. Balfour and M. Viviani made their visit? Until three days before the war, the British Parliament knew nothing of a secret engagement that bound them hand and foot to France, and had been in force eight years; an engagement, moreover, that not only eight weeks before, they had been assured did not exist. Admiral Sims’s remark gains interest from the fact that the regular diplomatic technique of such engagements is by way of “conversations” between military and naval attachés of the coquetting governments. In his book called “How Diplomats Make War,” Mr. Francis Neilson, a member of the war-Parliament, traces the course of the military conversations authorized by the French and English Governments, and shows their binding effect upon foreign policy. We should be much interested in hearing from Admiral Sims again; and we believe that a healthy and vigorous public curiosity about this subject would by no means come amiss. (“Nation.”)
The Lord High Chancellor, Viscount Finlay, after saying that “a wholly new era has opened between England and America,” remarked that he was now at liberty to tell Ambassador Davis that it was he, as Attorney General, who had drafted all the British notes exchanged with the United States, and went on with a smile:
“Ambassador Page used to say to me, ‘My dear friend, don’t hurry with the notes; they are not pressing.’”—New York “Globe.”
How far has this alliance actually been realized by secret understandings? In an article in the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” in 1907, M. Andre Tardieu, the foreign editor of the Paris “Temps,” accusing President Roosevelt of partisanship for the German Emperor in the Algeciras conference, distinctly charged him with bad faith in this direction in view of the secret understanding between the United States and England.
A formal treaty has not so far been arranged, but we may ask: In how far are we involved in a policy looking to the abdication of our sovereignty as an independent republic in view of statements such as were made unchallenged by Prof. Roland G. Usher in his book, “Pan-Germanism:”
First, that in 1897 there was a secret understanding between this country, England, France, and Russia, that in case of war brought on by Germany the United States would do its best to assist its three allies.
Second, (page 151) that “certain events lead to the probability that the Spanish-American war was created in order to permit the United States to take possession of Spain’s colonial possessions.”
Third, that England possesses three immensely powerful allies—France, Russia, and the United States. These he constantly speaks of as the “Coalition.”
Fourth, that the United States was not permitted by England and France to build the Panama Canal until they were persuaded of the dangers of Pan-Germanism.
In an interview published in the St. Louis “Star” of May 2, 1915, Prof. Usher confirmed these statements by saying that a verbal alliance is in existence between this country and the Allies.
Material support of the charge is furnished by the late British Secretary of the Colonies, the Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, who, in a statement in Parliament during the Boer war, referred to the treaty of alliance as “an agreement, an understanding, a compact, if you please.” On November 30, 1899, Chamberlain delivered an epochal speech at Leicester against France for some unseemly cartooning of Queen Victoria. In his speech he threatened France with war and distinctly spoke of an Anglo-American union: “The union between England and America is a powerful factor for peace.” (N. Murrel Morris, “Joseph Chamberlain, The Rt. Hon.,” London, 1900, Hutchinson & Co., publishers.) Chamberlain further supported Prof. Usher in the latter’s assertion that the treaty was verbal, as a written treaty must have the official sanction of the Senate. In this same Leicester speech, Mr. Chamberlain declared:
To me it seems to matter little whether you have an alliance which is committed to paper, or whether you have an understanding which exists in the minds of the statesmen of the respective countries. An understanding perhaps is better than an alliance, which may stereotype arrangements, which cannot be accepted as permanent, in view of the changing circumstances from day to day. (Morris.)
Cornelia Steketee Hulst, in her pamphlet, “Our Secret Alliance,” quotes from a speech of Chamberlain as follows:
I can go as far as to say that, terrible as war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased if in a great and noble cause the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack should wave together in an Anglo-Saxon alliance.
Already the thought of a merger and the loss of our identity as a republic is coursing in a dangerous form through the minds of the people. It has been said that if a question is harped upon continuously for a sufficient period that people will go to war for the mere sake of putting the question out of their minds, and even now among the high and the low there is manifest a supine, an ominous spirit of submission to the surrender of their political independence rather than fight it as a form of open sedition.
The Rhodes trust fund and the Carnegie peace fund have their priests and priestesses, witness the statement of Mrs. John Astor, chairman of the American Red Cross in England, quoted in the New York “Times” of March 5, 1915: “An alliance of the English-speaking nations would be the greatest ideal toward which to work.” George Beer anticipated Mrs. Astor in the “Forum” for May, 1915:
The only practical method is to embody the existing cordial feeling between the United States and England in a more or less formal alliance, so that the two countries can bring their joint influence and pressure to bear whenever their common interests and political principles may be jeopardized.
In January, 1916, the late Joseph H. Choate, former ambassador to Great Britain, drank his memorable toast at a banquet of the Pilgrim Society: “I now ask you to all rise and drink a good old loyal toast to the President and the King.”
The prevalence of such sentiments gives us something to ponder. The war has been conducive to the propagation of seditious thought; we were kept too busy hunting down pro-Germans and imaginary spies to take heed of the intrigue being prosecuted under the Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes. That great constructive statesman was too practical to pursue an ignis fatuus; Mr. Carnegie was too much like him in that respect to create an enormous fund nominally for the preservation of peace, the interest on which, something like $500,000 annually, is available to propagate the cause of Pan-Anglicism, while in the meantime the Rhodes scholarships are filling American homes with the apostles of his creed. Their tracks are easily found, and they will become more frequent with the progress of time. Philipp Jourdan (John Lane Company, New York, 1911) speaks of 100 scholarships for the United States “to arouse love for England,” and “to encourage in the students from the United States an attachment for the country from which they sprung.” (pp. 75 and 328.)
What is good for Englishmen may seem good to Italians, French, Germans and Russians. In 1914 many laughed at the thought that Uncle Sam could be drawn into the European war and send several million American boys over to fight in order to make the world safe for democracy, but Colonial Secretary Chamberlain, had he lived his normal span of years, would have seen the “Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack” waving over something very near akin to his cherished Anglo-Saxon alliance. (See “Propaganda.”)
Canada is being used to a great extent as a means of carrying out insidious projects against the United States. For a number of years special inducements have been offered Americans to settle in Canada, and large areas of farm land are in the hands of American immigrants. During the war many of these were compelled, in order to hold their property, to forswear their American citizenship, and many more served in the Canadian army as part of the British colonial forces. They were treated as colonials subject to British jurisdiction.
A project of more far-reaching extent is embodied in the movement to divert western traffic from New York to Montreal. The Canadian government has shown a tenacious purpose in this enterprise and is enthusiastically supported by the West and Northwest. It has promised to make seaports of the cities of the Great Lakes, from which vessels can go direct to Montreal and from there find an outlet to the Atlantic without reloading their cargoes. The object is to be accomplished by improving the Welland Canal and the cutting of a 30-foot channel in the St. Lawrence River. The Welland Canal connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, and its locks are to be increased 800 feet in length, 80 feet in breadth and 30 in depth. Those of our own barge canal are only 30 feet deep. The western chambers of commerce are enthusiastically in favor of the Canadian project, in view of the commercial advantage to be gained from this enterprise for a large area of western territory. It is probable that it will go into effect, and Americans will build up Canada at the expense of their own country.
Ringling, Al.—One of the most successful of American circus managers, who died at his home in Baraboo, Wis., in the early part of 1916, was the son of German immigrants, who started as a musician, became a juggler and in 1888 organized the famous circus known by the name of himself and four brothers, “The Ringling Brothers’ Circus.” His circus far eclipsed any ever organized by P. T. Barnum and his illness dated from superhuman efforts made by him to save his property from destruction by fire. Before his death at the age of 63 he presented his native town, Baraboo, with a theatre.
Rittenhouse, David.—The first noted American scientist, born of a poor Pennsylvania German, son of a farmer, at Germantown, April 8, 1732. Owing to a feeble constitution was apprenticed to a clock and mechanical instrument-maker, where he followed the bent of his mechanical and mathematical genius, though too poor to keep informed concerning the progress of science in Europe. While Newton and Leibnitz were warmly disputing the honor of first discoverer of Fluxion, writes Lossing, Rittenhouse, entirely ignorant of what they had done, became the inventor of that remarkable feature of algebraical analysis. Applying the knowledge which he derived from study and reflection to the mechanic arts, he produced a planetarium, or an exhibition of the movements of the solar system by machinery. That work of art is in possession of the College of New Jersey at Princeton. It gave him a great reputation, and in 1770 he went to Philadelphia, where he met members of the Philosophical Society to whom he had two years before communicated that he had calculated with great exactitude the transit of Venus which occurred June 3, 1769. Rittenhouse was one of those whom the society appointed to observe it. Only three times before, in the whole range of human observation, had mortal vision beheld the orb of Venus pass across the disc of the sun. Upon the exactitude of the performance according to calculations depended many astronomical problems, and the hour was looked forward to by philosophers with intense interest. As the moment approached, according to his calculations, Rittenhouse became greatly excited. When the discs of the planets touched at the expected moment the philosopher fainted. His highest hopes were realized and on November 9th following he was blessed with a sight of the transit of Mercury. When Benjamin Franklin died Rittenhouse was appointed president of the American Philosophical Society to fill his place. His fame now was world wide and many official honors awaited his acceptance. He held the office of treasurer of Pennsylvania for many years, and in 1792 he was appointed director of the Mint. Died 1797, aged 64.
Of the origin of the first great American scientist we get an interesting amount of data from the pages of Pennypacker’s “The Settlement of Germantown, Pa., and the Beginning of German Emigration to North America.” According to this authority, his ancestor, William Rittenhouse (Rittinghausen), was born in the year 1664, in the principality of Broich, near the city of Muhlheim on the Ruhr, where his brother Heinrich Nicholaus, and his mother, Maria Hagerhoffs, were living in 1678. At this time he was a resident of Amsterdam. We are told that his ancestors had long been manufacturers of paper at Arnheim. However this may be, it is certain that this was the business to which he was trained, because when he took the oath of citizenship in Amsterdam, June 23, 1678, he was described as a paper maker from Muhlheim.
He emigrated to New York, but since there was no printing in that city, and no opportunity, therefore, for carrying on his business of making paper, in 1688, together with his sons, Gerhard and Klaus, and his daughter Elizabeth, who subsequently married Heivert Papen, he came to Germantown. There, in 1690, upon a little stream flowing into the Wissahickon, he erected the first paper mill in America, an event which must ever preserve his memory in the recollection of men. “He was the founder of a family which in the person of David Rittenhouse, the astronomer, philosopher and statesman, reached the very highest intellectual rank.”
“Here dwelt a printer, and I find
That he can both print books and bind;
He wants not paper, ink nor skill;
He’s owner of a paper mill.”
—John Holme, 1696.
Roebling, John August.—One of the greatest engineers and America’s leading bridge builder. Among his famous achievements are the Pennsylvania Canal Aqueduct, across the Alleghany River (1842), Niagara Suspension Bridge (1852), the Cincinnati-Covington bridge, with a span of 1,200 feet, and the famous Brooklyn Bridge across the East River, completed by his son, Washington, upon the death of its designer. Roebling was born June 12, 1806, at Muehlhausen, Thuringia, and learned engineering at Erfurt and Berlin.
Rassieur, Leo.—The only German ever elected Commander of the G. A. R. Served as major throughout the Civil War.
Roosevelt, Col. Theodore.—Ex-President Roosevelt’s early position on the war has never been cleared up satisfactorily. For more than two months after the outbreak of the war, August, 1914, he held that we were not called upon to interfere on account of the invasion of Belgium. During this time he was not only accounted neutral, but rather friendly to the German side, as was generally understood. He had been cordially received by the Kaiser, whom he allotted the chief credit for his success in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan, and during his term of President one of his most intimate friends was Baron Speck von Sternburg, the German ambassador. He was publicly charged by Mr. Andre Tardieu, the French editor, with trying to influence the Algeciras convention of the powers to favor Germany’s claims in Morocco, although, as M. Tardieu intimated in an article, he must have known of the secret understanding between this government and Great Britain. At all events, in the fall of 1914, Col. Roosevelt wrote in the Outlook Magazine that we had no concern with the invasion of Belgium. In September, 1914, the great war then being in its second month, Col. Roosevelt wrote:
It is certainly desirable that we should remain entirely neutral, and nothing but urgent need would warrant breaking our neutrality and taking sides one way or other.
Still later Col. Roosevelt wrote:
I am not passing judgment on Germany’s action.... I admire and respect the German people. I am proud of the German blood in my veins. When a nation feels that the issue of a contest in which, from whatever reason, it finds itself engaged will be national life or death, it is inevitable that it should act so as to save itself from death and to perpetuate its life.... What has been done in Belgium has been done in accordance with what the Germans unquestionably sincerely believed to be the course of conduct necessitated by Germany’s struggle for life.
Col. Roosevelt’s neutrality was a subject of newspaper comment, as indicated by an article in the New York “Times” of September 14, 1914, headed: “Roosevelt Neutral—Confers with Oscar Straus Again, Presumably about Mediation—Is the Kaiser’s Friend.” The lines gave the import of a dispatch from Oyster Bay, Roosevelt’s place of residence, and related that “Mr. Straus’s talks with Roosevelt, coupled with the diplomatic activity of Mr. Straus in diplomatic circles in Washington and New York, have given rise to rumors that Roosevelt’s aid is being sought by those who are endeavoring to pave the way for a settlement of the war.”
The true import of Mr. Straus’s mission to Oyster Bay in September, 1914, has not yet been made public, though it precludes the suggestion that it was to persuade Roosevelt to pave the way to a settlement of the war, since Mr. Straus soon revealed himself as one of the most active partisans of the Allies in America. It was within a short time after that visit that Roosevelt reversed himself, and from an avowed neutral became a pronounced militant in the cause of the allied powers, denouncing the invasion of Belgium as an act that compelled the United States legally and morally to take up arms against Germany. Although his contention was persistently opposed by papers like the New York “Sun” and “World,” which showed that the article of the Hague convention which guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium had never been signed by England or France, and therefore was inoperative as to all other signatories.
Col. Roosevelt’s view of the invasion seems to have been that of the British government at the beginning. The official English White Book, (edited September 28, 1914), Article 6 of the Preface, is contained in “The Diplomatic History of the War,” by M. P. Price, p. vii (“Great Britain and the European Crises”), Charles Scribner’s Sons. It says:
Germany’s position must be understood. She has fulfilled her treaty obligations in the past; her action now was not wanton. Belgium was of supreme importance in a war with France. If such a war occurred it would be one of life and death. Germany feared that if she did not occupy Belgium, France might do so. In the face of this suspicion there was only one thing to do.
Col. Roosevelt’s ultimate extremely indignant attitude, in which he identified himself with every form of violent anti-German invective then current, even turning against his former most loyal supporters, professed to be primarily based upon Germany’s invasion of Belgium; yet had he lived a little longer he would have been apprised by subsequent revelations that England, about 1886, offered to let Germany invade Belgium in an attack on France. On November 7, 1914, he wrote a long letter to Dr. Edmund von Mach, an extract from which seems well placed here. He said:
As regards all the great nations involved, I can perfectly understand each feeling with the utmost sincerity that its cause is just and its action demanded by vital consideration.... I have German, French and English blood in my veins. On the whole, I think that I admire Germany more than any other nation, and most certainly it is the nation from which I think the United States has most to learn. On the whole, I think that of all the elements that have come here during the past century, the Germans have on the average represented the highest type. I do not say this publicly, for I do not think it well to make comparisons which may cause ill will among the various strains that go to make up our population.... I should feel it a world calamity if the German Empire were shattered or dismembered.
Roosevelt and Taft Praise the Kaiser as an Agent of Peace.—Theodore Roosevelt in 1913: “The one man outside this country from whom I obtained help in bringing about the Peace of Portsmouth was His Majesty William II. From no other nation did I receive any assistance, but the Emperor personally and through his Ambassador in St. Petersburg, was of real aid in helping induce Russia to face the accomplished fact and come to an agreement with Japan. This was a real help to the cause of international peace, a contribution that outweighed any amount of mere talk about it in the abstract.”
William H. Taft, 1913: “The truth of history requires the verdict that, considering the critically important part which has been his among the nations, he has been, for the last quarter of a century, the greatest single individual force in the practical maintenance of peace in the world.”
“Scraps of Paper.”—The frequency with which England has accused us of the violation of solemn treaties was shown in a light not flattering to the accuser by the late Major John Bigelow, U. S. A., in his last book, “Breaches of Anglo-American Treaties” (Sturgis & Walton Company).
Only a few years ago, incidentally to the public discussion of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, the United States was arraigned by the British press as lacking in the sense of honor that holds a nation to its promise. The “Saturday Review” could not expect “to find President Taft acting like a gentleman.” “To imagine,” it said, “that American politicians would be bound by any feeling of honor or respect for treaties, if it would pay to violate them, was to delude ourselves. The whole course of history proves this.”
The London “Morning Post” charged the United States with various infractions of the Treaty and said: “That is surely a record even in American foreign policy; but the whole treatment of this matter serves to remind us that we had a long series of similar incidents in our relations with the United States. Americans might ask themselves if it is really a good foreign policy to lower the value of their written word in such a way as to make negotiations with other powers difficult or impossible. The ultimate loss may be greater than the immediate gain. There might come a time when the United States might desire to establish a certain position by treaty, and might find her past conduct a serious difficulty in the way.” More recently, and presumably with more deliberation, a British author (Sir Harry Johnston, “Common Sense in Foreign Policy,” p. 89), says: “Treaties, in fact, only bind the United States as long as they are convenient. They are not really worth the labor they entail or the paper they are written on. It is well that this position should be realized, as it may save a great deal of fuss and disappointment in the future.”
The most remarkable chapter in the book deals with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. Major Bigelow shows how the British Ambassador spirited a spurious document into the files of the State Department. This spurious document has had an important bearing on the interpretation of our treaty with England affecting the Panama Canal.
Schleswig-Holstein.—The case of Schleswig-Holstein, though one of the most complicated problems for statesmen of the last century, is perfectly clear as to the vital factors involved. Some centuries ago the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein—which may be described as the original seat of the Anglo-Saxons who peopled Britain—conquered Denmark and was proclaimed King of Denmark. As Duke of Schleswig-Holstein the duchies became attached to the crown of Denmark, but were never incorporated as parts of the Danish State. The relationship was similar to that of the early Georges, who were kings of Hanover, a distinctly German State, but which was never considered belonging to Great Britain for all that.
The two German duchies were given a charter that they were “one and indivisible,” and this held good for centuries. Early in 1840, a quarrel ensued between the government of Denmark and the German duchies. King Frederick VII had no children; the succession was about to descend to the female line of the family. The duchies protested. Their charter provided distinctly for a male line of rulers, and they would maintain their rights as well as the provision guaranteeing their unity. Accordingly, they rejected (January 28, 1848) the new constitution of the government embracing every section of the monarchy and stood out for their constitutional guarantees.
Underlying these constitutional questions was the stronger racial impulse to be united with their kindred of Germany, where the desire for national unity was making itself felt in revolutionary demonstrations. The first note of discord in the German national parliament was occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein question. In order to prevent the incorporation of the duchies in the Danish State, the communities elected a provisional government and appealed to the German parliament to be admitted into the German confederation; at the same time the provisional government appealed to the King of Prussia for aid. The same men who have been pronounced the most ardent German revolutionists of 1848 were equally ardent in their desire to rescue two sister States from being absorbed by a government of alien blood and sympathy.
The Prussian general, Wrangel, led a force into the duchies, drove out the Danes and occupied Jutland. Before any further blows were struck, Russia, England and Sweden intervened, and Prussia withdrew her troops in accordance with an armistice provision signed August 26. All public measures proclaimed by the provisional government were thereupon nullified, and a common government for the duchies was created, partly by Denmark and partly by the German Confederation, and the Schleswig troops were separated from those of Holstein.
This decision was regarded in Schleswig-Holstein as a betrayal of its cause and was never accepted by a considerable minority of the German parliament. In 1849 revolt in the duchies broke out afresh, and gained many adherents in Germany. A stadtholder was appointed for the duchies, and an army composed of mixed German troops was sent to support the revolutionists under command of Gen. Bonin. An attack of the Danes at Eckernfoerde was repelled, the fortifications of Duppel were taken by storm and Kolding was captured. But the Schleswig-Holstein army was beaten by the Danes in a sortie from Fredericia, and Prussia, again under pressure from Russia and England, was compelled to abandon the Schleswig-Holsteiners and sign the armistice of July 10, 1849, with Denmark.
By this agreement Schleswig was abandoned to Denmark, but not Holstein. The Schleswig-Holstein government, however, refused to recognize this treaty of peace and placed a new army in the field under General Willisen. It was defeated at Idstedt, and in conformity with the treaty of Olmutz, Holstein was occupied by Austrian and Prussian troops, while Schleswig was abandoned to the Danes, under the London protocol, which recognized Prince Christian of Glucksberg as the future king of the monarchy.
This, however, did not dispose of the question. In 1863 King Christian signed the new constitution which incorporated Schleswig in the Danish State and separated it from Holstein, contrary to the ancient charter of the two duchies. This action also conflicted with the London protocol and vitiated the treaty as well for those who signed it (Prussia and Austria) as for those who did not, the two duchies and the German Confederation, in so far as the recognition of King Christian as duke of Schleswig-Holstein was concerned. The duchies thereupon declared for the Prince of Augustenburg as their rightful ruler, who had been unjustly put aside in the London protocol, and appealed to the German Confederation for help.
In order to protect Holstein as part of the German Confederation, the latter sent 12,000 Saxons and Hanoverians into the duchy. The Danes fell back across the Eider river, and the Prince of Augustenburg, proclaimed the rightful ruler, took up his residence in Kiel. Prussia recognized King Christian, but with the distinct reservation that he adhere to the London protocol and surrender his claim to Schleswig. Under the belief that he would receive help from other sources, King Christian rejected the offer, and Prussia, in conjunction with Austria, decided to settle the Schleswig-Holstein question in conformity with the wishes of its people, and German national interests. This brought on the war of 1864, in which Denmark formally renounced her claims to the two duchies.
This brief summary goes to show that the popular notion that Schleswig-Holstein was wrested from poor little Denmark by brutal force against the will of the people is erroneous. McCarthy, in his “History of Our Own Times,” says: “Put into plain words, the dispute was between Denmark, which wanted to make the duchies Danish, and Germany, which wanted to make them German. The arrangement which bound them up with Denmark was purely diplomatic and artificial. Any one who would look realities in the face must have seen that some day or other the Germans would carry their point, and that the principle of nationalities would have its way in that case as in so many others.” This view was held by eminent English statesmen at that time. McCarthy tells us that Lord Russell “had never countenanced or encouraged any of the acts which tended to the enforced absorption of the German population into the Danish system.”
The people of the duchies fought for their own cause. When King Frederick VII, in March, 1848, called the leaders of the Eider-Dane party—the party which desired the Eider river to constitute the dividing line between Denmark and Germany, thus converting Schleswig into a Danish province and abandoning Holstein—to take the reins of government, the issue was clearly drawn, and the result was revolution. The troops joined the people; the revolution spread over the provinces and the struggle for the ending of the Danish rule began. A representative of the threatened duchies applied to the Bundesrath at Frankfort and was seated. Volunteers from all parts of Germany flocked to the northern border. Prussia was commissioned to defend the German duchies, and Emerson, in his “History of the Nineteenth Century Year by Year,” tells us that before Gen. Wrangel could arrive to take command, “the untrained volunteer army of Schleswig-Holsteiners suffered defeat at Bau, and a corps of students from the University of Kiel was all but annihilated.” When Jutland was occupied, the historian informs us, it was “in conjunction with the volunteers of Schleswig-Holstein.” Again he says: “On July 5 the Danes made a sortie from Fredericia and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Schleswig-Holsteiners, capturing 28 guns and 1,500 prisoners.” The loss was nearly 3,000 men in dead and wounded.
Heine, one of the ministers of the present German government, speaking at Tondern, Schleswig, during the fall of 1919, said:
Here is the cradle of the purest Germanism. From here the richest of German blood was transfused throughout our fatherland. Fan-like, its streams coursed from West to East. Here was laid the original foundation of the German people. Here were born the men who have wrought great deeds in German history.
Among the distinguished men born in Schleswig-Holstein may be noted von Weber, the great composer; Friedrich Hebbel, next to Goethe and Schiller, Germany’s most famous dramatist; several distinguished novelists and poets, such as Joachim Maehl, Gustav Frensen and Emanuel Geibel, one of the most appealing of the German poets, who sang:
Wir wollen keine Danen sein;
Wir wollen Deutsche bleiben.
(We refuse to become Danes;
We intend to remain Germans.)
The total Danish-speaking population of the German Empire innbsp;1900, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, edition of 1910, was only 141,061, about 10,000 more than Paterson, N. J., representing in part the irreconcilables along the Danish border, and it is proposed to let this minority decide the fate of the northernmost duchy, ostensibly under the plebiscite, but under a plebiscite of which the Danish government itself entertained the most serious apprehensions, for it repeatedly entered vigorous protests which were sent to Versailles. This plebiscite is being exercised under the guns of British warships.
A dispatch of May 11 last, from Copenhagen, speaks of dissatisfaction “reflected in the newspapers which declare the population of the district is composed of Germans, whom Denmark does not desire, as their presence within the country would lead to a future racial conflict.” Although “entirely Germanized,” as one correspondent expresses it, “the population possibly would vote to adhere to Denmark to escape German taxation.”
This is the sort of self-determination that is to determine the future boundaries of the States adjacent to the new German republic.