THE DIARY OF A NATION.•
IN calling attention to this inspiriting and aptly named volume we may recall what we said of the previous reprint of articles from New York Life. They stand Ica; fyise.of editorial comment for which there is no parallel in British journalism—unconventional, colloquial, Mit trenchant and often intensely serious, though appearing in what is nominally a comic paper. But this has always been a feature of the best American humour. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain were alike in their occasional but impressive lapses into deadly earnestness, just. as Lincoln, the greatest of all Americans, and a man' liable to fits of deep melancholy, used to season Cabinet discusaions of the weightiest State affairs with ludicrous anecdote. '
Tho scope of these observations is faithfully defined in the Preface. "They are concerned with the war in Europe and with American politics as affected by it," and they help us to trace " by what processes of sympathy and indignation, through what vicissi- tudes of diplomacy, delay, and almost despair, we came after two years and a half to the brooking-point with Germany." Mr. Martin, so far as we can judge, has not revised his articles in the light of subsequent events, and some of his anticipations have naturally been falsified ; but when all allowance has been made on this score, wo cannot fail to recognize the clarity of his vision and the remarkable accuracy of many of his predictions ; for example, as to the development of the food and finance problems, and the ultimate attitude of Mr. Ford. Above all, we may note his early realization of the fact that America could not keep out of the war. He starts with no animosity against the Germans. Tho unanimity of sentiment in the States against Germany, he declares in October, 1914, "is not anti-German and it is not pro-English. AS a people we have come in the last fifty years to be almost as near kin:to the Germans as to the English. We respect tho German ability and value German friendship." It is the German " manage- ment "that is wrong and out of date. There is no racial distrust or antipathy. "But we do distrust the leading that Germany has had since 1870. We do consider that her people have been trained to follow a false ideal. We do consider that the policy of Bismarck corrupted her moral sense. . . . Germany as wo see it now is not the Germany of Goethe or Schiller, of the democrats of 1848; it is the Germany of Bismarck, and of intense commercialism, and of success at any price." He is sorry for the German people ; he makes all possible excuses for the Kaiser ; it is only after several months of the war that he finds, alongside of immense efficiency, courage, aggressiveness, and capacity to suffer,' an entire absence of nobility in the modern German eharacter. And oven in the early stages of the war he never fails to recognise the lessons which it reads to America on the need of immediate preparedness. The fall of Liege sets him thinking on the defences of the -Panama Canal. The defencelessness of his country causes him to suggest that the soft-shell crab should be substituted for the good old eagle on its seal and coins. The war is "senseless, brutal, and unnecessary," but that does not prevent him from recognizing in Germany the " great doctor of Europe," regenerating France and England by her cry of " Obey, or fight for freedom ! " On the question of Belgium's resistance he quotes Emerson's immortal and unanswerable quotation inscribed on the Harvard monument :— " Though love repine, and reason chafe,
• The Diary of a Nation : the War and how ire gel into it.By Edward B. Martin, of Now Tack Life. New York: Doubleday. Page, and Co. •
There came a voice without reply
"Tie man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die."'
Even when Mr. Wilson's policy was most violently assailed, Mr. Martin frankly admits that there was a better quality of political hope in him than in any one else then visible in either party. He predicted the possibility of Mr. Wilson's re-election as far back as January, 1915, and offers the best defence for his retention of Mr. Bryan as Secretary of State that wo have yet:soon. There it a notable saying in the article of April 29th, 1915, to the effect that " Germany may easily get better terms when thoroughly thrashed than when half thrashed, since not until there are plain signs that the nonsense has been pounded out of her will her neighbours dare to trust her with the power for future mischief." On May 8th Mr. Martin records the saying of one of a group of young men at a dinner in New York " Look around this table. I am willing to bet you that within five years half of us here will be killed in a war brought on by our feeble foreign policy." This was on the eve of the `Lusitania ' disaster, which moved Mr. Martin, while saddling the Kaiser with the crime, to write these memorable words
Of all the live, that have been poured out in the Great War, none, we are confident, will prove to have been expended to more
fruitful purpose than those of the six-score Americans who died when the 'Lusitania' went down. . . . This is the greatest disaster that has befallen the German arms since the retreat from Paris last September. Not one of those thirteen. hundred lives—not a baby, not a woman, not a stoker, not a millionaire—will be wasted. It is sad about them, but at least these non-combatants—and especially the forty babies—have done a feat of great military value. By their death, they have shocked the moral sense of a nation that needed a shock of terrific penetration to jolt it into action."
How the sequel justified these words is already ancient history. Mr. Martin never doubted that America ought to come in, though nearly two months later he observes that " war seems to us Ameri- cans so foolish that in spite of all object-lessons we can't believe that we are going to got into it." His criticisms of Mr. Wilson. though never bitter, betray a certain impatience. Ho applauds the President's zeal for National Defence, but finds him " somewhat furtive," though "good and able." Yet in January, 1918, he writes: " What we shall think of him a year from next March, Heaven knows, but it is entirely possible that his policy of watchful waiting —if he sticks to it—will be is good deal more popular then than it is now." And again : " Did we elect Mr. Wilson President with the notion that he was going to behave like Genghis Khan or like W. Wilson? We expected him to behave like Wilson. If he had behaved like some one else—say Col. Roosevelt—he would not have been playing fair with us. We had a chance to re-elect Mr. Roosevelt, and declined, and chose Mr. Wilson. All we had
right to expect of Mr. Wilson was that he should be true to him- self. If he seriously does his best for the country, that is all we can ask of him'. If his best is not good enough, that is our misfortune." Here there are some reserves, but there are none in the really noble article, " Maid" on, John Bull," from the " John Bull " number of Life (January 27th, 1910). Taking as his text the complaint of the pro-German newspaper Fatherland that " Mr. Wilson is practically an Englishman," Mr. Martin enlarges on the essential unity of the British Isles and the United States: " Nature is not to be balked by mere polities. Deep ealleth unto deep and like to like. Race is race, though seas divide and interests conflict. . . . The backbone of the United States is made of precisely the same materials as the backbone of the British Empire. It is English, Scotch and Irish. The language, literature and political ideals of the United States are of the same derivation. That is why in this world crisis we have seen things as we have. . . . To us of the English stock the Great War seems to bring a summons to wear our English derivation with somewhat more assertion. The Irish love Ireland openly and are not expected to apologize ; American Scots show an open kindness for Scotland ; Germans love 'their fatherland under any sun. Is it only to be England that men sprung from her loins may not care for 7 Who says that ? Surely not we whose English derivation is all the root wo have, who are lawful heirs of a tradition and literature the greatest, all counted, since Rome and Greece. We hare been too modest. Poll us in these States and wo are a greater company by much-than all the rest, the longest planted here, and surely not the least powerful or least worthy. Who is the anchor at the end of the Allies' rope in the great tug of war ? Who but our blood cousin, John Bull ! There he stands, with planted feet, sweating and sore beset ; his muscles lame, but holding on. Hold on, John Bull, hold on ! There are those across the seas who care for you ; who hold with you now in daylight and in dark so far as yet they may, and will gladly hold with von in face of all corners when Fate permits it. Hold on, John bun !"
How Fate permitted it, and Germany willed it, is told in the articles that follow. As Mr. Martin puts it in a homely but wonderfully expressive phrase written a few weeks before tho President'. Message of April 2nd, 1917: " It was hard to get 119 into the war," but "anyway "—thanks to Germany—" so we got where we belong. The best way to get into a war is the way that makes most people glad to be in. That was the thorough, German way," But before that point was reached much had to happen, and a month earlier American apathy caused Mr. Martin to imagine an astonished archangel muttering to himself " Is it impossible to start anything in this country ? " and to compare his countrymen to a fire that is going out, leaving nearly all the fuel unburned. This article, published on January 25th, 1917, marks the midwinter of his discontent, but even here lie does not lose hope. "At least we are dry fuel charred in places already, and the easier, for that., to start." There is hardly a page which does not invite quotation, but we must confine ourselves to three more brief extracts :-
" The war in its present phase is largely between Germany and Great Britain. But it is to the advantage of civilization that it is not wholly so. Germany hoe swallowed her allies. If she should win, her will would dominate them all. But England has not swallowed her allies, and cannot, nor would if she could, and her will will not dominate them."—(January 18th, 1917.) " Being in this war, we are in it for all we are worth, and, with all our defects, we are as well qualified to devise means to accomplith the impossible as any people implicated in the present troubles." —(April 12th, 1917.) "Never was war so abhorred es this war is abhorred, and tine people who hate it worst are to be found among those who are fighting in it and have dedicated themselves to fighting it through. They see in it a war against war, and they feel that they must win it or perish."—(April 19th, 1917.)
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