Secretary Lansing on War Themes

Why the United States Is at War

Robert Lansing, Secretary of State of the United States, delivered an address in New York on May 23, 1918, in honor of the third anniversary of Italy's entrance into the war. He said in part:

Oh, you of the blood of a people who have given so much to civilization, no greater task has ever fallen upon you, no greater duty has ever been the lot of the Italian race, than that which is yours today. You are called forth to defend the land which is enshrined in the hearts of the world as the cradle of justice and liberty. Fail you cannot, fail you must not, fail you will not in such a cause and such a crisis.

This is no time to measure the price which must be paid in blood and treasure. No price is too large, no sacrifice too great for the protection of your sacred heritage from the invaders.

Today, America, youngest of the great powers of the earth, is proud to cross the seas and to stand side by side with the most ancient power of Europe in upholding the standard of democracy, and to unite in proclaiming to the nations tortured by war that peace must be won and will be won by the might of liberty-loving men, a glorious peace which will endure throughout the ages because it is written in the book of destiny that freedom will rise triumphant from the ashes of this desolated world.

To gallant Italy, to our loyal associate and friend, we of America extend greetings on this day of reconsecration to a noble cause, on this day when the Italian people renew their solemn pledge to resist to the uttermost the accursed ambitions of the military rulers of Germany and Austria.

Italy's decision was the decision of a people who preferred the horrors of war to dishonor, who preferred to die rather than to be enslaved by Prussian masters or by Prussia's vassals. It breathed anew the valor of Rome.

United with you of the Latin race are we who could desire no prouder title than "the Romans of the West." A citizen of this young Republic could crave no higher public virtue nor covet a more devoted patriotism than that which inspired a dweller on the Seven Hills in the brave days of the old Roman Republic.

My friends of America and of Italy, we will win this war. It may be on the wasted fields of Flanders and Picardy; it may be in the valley of the Piave and the snow-crowned peaks of the Alps; or it may be on German lands beyond the Rhine. Somewhere and somehow and some time we will win. It cannot be otherwise, for we fight for justice, for liberty, and for humanity.

AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Secretary Lansing delivered another address in New York on June 5 at the commencement exercises of Columbia University. In accepting an honorary degree from that institution he said:

Today this Republic stands with the democracies of the earth arrayed in battle against the most relentless enemy of human liberty which the ages have produced. To save this country of ours and to save the civilized world from Prussianism has become the supreme duty of the American people and of all other peoples who love justice and freedom.

In this titanic struggle we are joined not only with France, our historic ally, but also with Great Britain, our ancient foe. On the blood-stained fields of France we three, together with Italy, Belgium, and Portugal, are standing shoulder to shoulder against the plunderers. Our traditional friendship for France, which can never be forgotten, and our traditional enmity for Great Britain, which is forgotten, are swallowed up in this supreme crisis of liberty, our common heritage. The grave perils to our lives as nations unite us with bonds of steel as our armies face the foe of all mankind.

I am proud that in these terrible days we are associated with the tenacious warriors of Britain; I am proud that with our blood we can on French soil prove the affection which we cherish for the French people; I am proud that Italy, superb in her determined resistance, is our partner in this conflict, and that the indomitable spirit of the Belgians and Serbs is a living inspiration to gallant deeds and noble sacrifice. I am proud, as I know every American is proud, to be thus united with the nations which hate Prussianism and loathe the evil desires which it engenders in the hearts of men.

Prussianism has appealed to the sword, and by the sword Prussianism must fall. It is the divine law of retribution which we as the instruments of justice must enforce so that the world may be forever rid of this abomination. * * *

Let us understand that a Prussian-made peace would not be the end; that it would only postpone the final struggle. Now that this war has come upon us we must carry it through to a decision. We must not transmit to future generations the germs of militarism. From the spirit of despotism, which has caused this awful tragedy, this war must free the world. We have suffered enough. The nations must never endure such black days of agony as those in which we are living.

It is the supreme task of civilization to put an end to Prussianism. To listen to proposals for a Prussian peace, to compromise with the butchers of individuals and of nations so that they would by agreement gain a benefit from their crimes would be to compound an international felony, which this Republic will never do.

Force is the one way to end Prussianism, for it is the only thing which the Prussian respects. This war for democracy must be waged to a successful conclusion to make liberty and justice supreme on the earth. It will be a bitter struggle, with lights and shadows, for the foe is strong and stubborn; but in the end we shall triumph, for we must triumph or abandon all that is worth while in this world. May every American so live and so serve that when the day of victory over the Prussians dawns, as it will dawn, he may, by right of faithful service, share in the glory.

To that bright hour let us look forward with confidence, for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe could not decree otherwise. He has imposed upon us and our brave comrades in arms the task of freeing mankind from the curse of avarice and inhumanity which besets us. He has put upon us the burden of making this world a fit dwelling place for civilized men. Let us not shrink from the task or seek to avoid the burden. Convinced of the righteousness of our cause and of our destiny let us make war with all our energy. Let us keep our banners unfurled and our trumpets sounding to battle until victory is achieved.

Prussia wickedly sought war and Prussia shall have war and more war and more war until the very thought of war is abhorrent to the Prussian mind. So I read the spirit of America. So I read the supreme purpose of the Allies. Victory lies before us and beyond victory a just and enduring peace. Until that peace is sure America cannot and will not put aside the sword.

ITALIAN AMBASSADOR'S SPEECH

Count Mocchi di Cellere, the Italian Ambassador to the United States, in his address at the Italian anniversary celebration, said:

Literally speaking, this is the third anniversary of Italy's formal entry into the war. But perhaps I need not remind you, gentlemen, that our struggle against the enemy goes back to the time when, some twenty centuries ago, on those selfsame fields and mountains that are now a part of our common allied front, the Roman eagle was already waging that fight against the barbarians in which the American eagle has more recently joined us.

The struggle of today is to us Italians the rounding-out of a tremendous cycle of world history, in which, alone of all civilized nations, Italy was in at the beginning and is in at the finish. Since the time when Roman law laid the foundations for the international intercourse of the world, the struggle has gone on against Teutonic brutality. We are in it as a nation with all the traditions and survivals of centuries, with all the memories of the race, with all the influences of obscure ancestral heredities.

One verse of our national hymn reminds us that no Teuton stick ever curbed Italy, and that the children of Rome do not bow their necks to a yoke. That was the blunder of the enemy—he did not realize that to a liberty-loving people the spirit of freedom is like the breathing of pure air, an essential of life. Sometimes a man does not know how essential it is until some one tries to take it from him. Then he must die or revolt. Italy revolted. * * *

Whatever the enemy may have to say or may desire others to believe about it, Italy is not in this war for any base and selfish motives of conquest, imperial or unlawful territorial aggrandizement. While in fact fighting for the liberation of mankind threatened with oppression and slavery, Italy is aiming at the liberation of her oppressed sons within and beyond the boundary imposed upon her by an iniquitous treaty.

For the freedom of our country we need security on land and sea; a security which nature herself had assured us with well defined geographic boundaries and which the violence of oppressive and barbarous nations has too long stolen from us. Now we see our duty clear; and faithful to our duty, we will not lay down our arms until the freedom of mankind, which implies the freedom of our oppressed brothers, and the security of our land, is attained.

Secretary Lansing delivered the chief address at the commencement exercises of Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., June 10. He said in part:

It is hardly open to debate, in the light of subsequent events, that the philosophical and political ideas which have been taught for years from the university platforms, from the pulpits, and through the printed word to young and old in Germany, excited in them an insolent pride of blood and infused into their national being an all-absorbing ambition to prove themselves supermen chosen by natural superiority and by Divine mandate to be rulers of the earth. Not only in Germany, but among those of German descent in other lands, has this pernicious belief spread, linking Germans everywhere to the Fatherland in the hope that they would be considered worthy to share in the future glory of the masters of the world. * * *

A decade before the war Reiner, inspired with the imperialism of Prussia, announced: "It is precisely our craving for expansion which drives us into the paths of conquest, in view of which all chatter about peace and humanity can and must remain nothing but chatter."

Not less ominous to liberty are the words of Professor Meinecke: "We want to become a world people. Let us remind ourselves that the belief in our mission as a world people has arisen from our originally purely spiritual impulse to absorb the world into ourselves."

Observe that extraordinary phrase, "to absorb the world into ourselves." To conceive such a national destiny is to resurrect the dead ambitions of an Alexander or a Caesar; to teach it as a right to young men is to sow in their minds an egotism which breeds distorted conceptions of individual honor and justice, and gives to them an utterly false standard of national life.

Not alone from the lecturer and the essayist came this idea that the Germans are a superior race set apart to rule the world. It was preached in the pulpits as a Divine truth by those who even had the effrontery to support their assertions by references to the Holy Scriptures. Listen to some of the thoughts proclaimed by ordained ministers of Christ to their German congregations:

"It may sound proud, my friends, but we are conscious that it is also in all humbleness that we say it; the German soul is God's soul; it shall and will rule over mankind."

May we be spared the consequences of a German "humbleness" which fairly struts and swaggers, and which finds further expression in the words of another Doctor of Divinity when he declares: "Verily the Bible is our book. It was given and assigned to us, and in it we read the original text of our destiny, which proclaims to mankind salvation or disaster as we will it."

"As we will it!" There in four words is the whole story of the Prussian doctrine of the "superman," of a "place in the sun."

Paganism, tinctured with modern materialism and a degenerate type of Christianity, broods today over Germany. Christian ministers have proclaimed Jehovah to be the national deity of the empire, a monopolized German God, who relies on the physical might of His people to destroy those who oppose His will as that will is interpreted by His chosen race. Thus the Prussian leaders would harmonize modern thought with their ancient religion of physical strength through brutalizing Christianity.

In view of the spirit of hypocrisy and bad faith manifesting an entire lack of conscience, we ought not to be astonished that the Berlin Foreign Office never permitted a promise or a treaty engagement to stand in the way of a course of action which the German Government deemed expedient. I need not cite as proof of this fact the flagrant violations of the treaty neutralizing Belgium—and the recent treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This discreditable characteristic of the German foreign policy was accepted by German diplomats as a matter of course and as a natural if not a praiseworthy method of dealing with other Governments.

Frederick the Great, with cynical frankness, once said: "If there is anything to be gained by it, we will be honest. If deception is necessary, let us be cheats." That is in brief the immoral principle which has controlled the foreign relations of Prussia for over 150 years.

It is a fact not generally known that within six weeks after the Imperial Government had, in the case of the Sussex, given to this Government its solemn promise that it would cease ruthless slaughter on the high seas, Count Bernstorff, appreciating the worthlessness of the promise, asked the Berlin Foreign Office to advise him in ample time before the campaign of submarine murder was renewed, in order that he might notify the German merchant ships in American ports to destroy their machinery because he anticipated that the renewal of that method of warfare would in all probability bring the United States into the war.

How well the Ambassador knew the character of his Government, and how perfectly frank he was! He asked for the information without apology or indirection. The very bluntness of his message shows that he was sure that his superiors would not take offense at the assumption that their word was valueless and had only been given to gain time, and that, when an increase of Germany's submarine fleet warranted, the promise would be broken without hesitation or compunction. What a commentary on Bernstorff's estimate of the sense of honor and good faith of his own Government!

We must go on with the war. There is no other way. This task must not be left half done. We must not transmit to posterity a legacy of blood and misery. We may in this great conflict go down into the Valley of Shadows, because our foe is powerful and inured to war. We must be prepared to meet disappointment and temporary reverse, but we must, with American spirit, rise above them; with courageous hearts we must go forward until this war is won.