The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 1/America and Germany's Allies

America and Germany’s Allies.

The splendid success of the Second Liberty Loan furnishes abundant proof, if any more were needed, that the people of the United States support with enthusiasm and earnestness their government in its determination to make war on Germany with all the great resources of the country, so as to bring it as speedily as possible to a victorious conclusion. No compromise with the kaiser, no peace except peace with victory—such is now the universal sentiment all over the United States. A million and a half men are under arms and seventeen billion dollars have been appropriated for the first year of the war. America has staked everything on complete victory.

There is, however, one phase of the great struggle as to which the United States has taken an ambiguous, illogical stand. That is our relation to Germany’s partners in iniquity. It is seven months since we declared war on Germany, and we are yet at peace with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey. In fact Stephen Panaretoff, minister of the German czar of Bulgaria, remains in Washington accredited to our government as the representative of a friendly state. We loan France and England hundreds of millions of dollars, some part of which no doubt is used to keep in the field the Saloniki army fighting the Bulgarians; and we furnish Italy money and supplies with which to carry on the fight against Italy’s principal enemy, the Dual Monarchy, while all the time the United States is at peace with Emperor Charles. We are told emphatically over and over again that this is a fight of democracy against autocracy, of justice against tyranny, of humanity against barbarity. But the allies of Germany are tainted with autocracy, tyranny and barbarity fully as much as their dominant partner. They are as guilty as Germany; they only happen to be smaller and less efficient, and therefore less dangerous.

If this country is in earnest in its declaration that it fights for principles and not for expediency, it ought to make war upon Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey with the same fiery spirit as upon Germany. The realm of the kaiser is held constantly before us as the stronghold of autocracy, the last bastion of medieval principles, diametrically opposed to the political ideals of which this country is the foremost champion. But what about Austria-Hungary? In Hungary, it is true, King Charles is a constitutional monarch; that is to say, he is obliged to comply to a great extent with the wishes of the Magyar feudal aristocracy which controls elections to the Budapest parliament. Autocracy in Hungary is carried on in the name of the king by a small minority of the Magyar people, who in their turn are a minority of the people of Hungary. The people of Hungary have far less to say about the way they are governed than the people of Germany. In the Austrian half of his dominions Emperor Charles is a far more despotic ruler than Emperor William. The German kaiser governs in accordance with the wishes of the majority of his subjects; up to the present time, at least, the German people have willingly followed their emperor in his mad policy of conquest and bloodshed. But Charles, like his predecessor, Francis Joseph, drives his unwilling subjects by force to fight for a cause which they detest, for a monarch whom they hate. And what about Turkey? The sultan himself may not be much of an autocrat, but the clique of adventurers who are in control of the government at Constantinople have surely nothing in common with democracy, as that word is understood in the United States of America.

We have heard much of the unspeakably barbarous, cruel, murderous deeds committed by Germany since the invasion of Belgium. Earnest, eloquent men who have visited Europe go from city to city telling of the crimes of Germany and submitting positive proofs of horrible atrocities committed in the name of the Kultur. Fresh evidence reaches us every day of the Teuton black heart—ships sunk without warning, and sailors and passengers shelled in the life boats, bombs placed on neutral ships, while other neutral ships are sunk without trace. America swears solemnly that such horrible crimes shall not remain unavenged. And yet nothing that the Germans have done has exceeded in horror the massacres of Armenia, committed by the good friends and allies of the kaiser, the Young Turks. The closest approach to this wholesale extermination of an entire nation is the policy adopted by the Bulgarians toward the unfortunate Serbs who did not die in battle. Macedonia and the Nish valley have been almost completely cleared of the Serbs and given a Bulgarian appearance by the simple expedient of provoking the remnants of the people into revolt and then shooting the old men and the little children, and deporting the women into Asia Minor, where the Turks will take of them. The charges made by the Serbian government are as fully substantiated by evidence as the reports of the commission on Belgian atrocities. Of the Teutonic allies Austria-Hungary has attracted least notice in so far as charges of inhumanity are concerned. It is because its victims have been largely its own subjects who have no government of their own and no allies to take their part before the world. Up to the end of 1916 four thousand persons have been hanged in Austria because of “crimes against the state”, this according to Austrian official statistics, and no one can say how many more thousands have died in Austrian and Hungarian prisons of hunger. All the Central Powers are guilty of the blackest crimes against humanity. Practical considerations also strongly urge the wisdom of declaring a state of war to exist between America and the allies of Germany. Last April, as soon as we have become enemies of the kaiser, all the enemies of our enemy became our friends. We spoke of them as our allies, we welcomed their war missions, and knowing that their soldiers are fighting our battles we gave them money and allowed them to recruit in this country. But we did not go far enough. The enemies of Germany became our allies, but the allies of Germany did not become our enemies; they did in reality, of course, but not officially. We know that the struggle is one, and it little matters where Germany is defeated, whether on the west front or the eastern front, in the Carso or Mesopotamia. And yet we act as if there were several distinct wars, as if our own particular quarrel were with Germany only. It is illogical, it is wrong, it is foolish. When the Italians were winning victories against the Austrians, we rejoiced, even though Austria was not at war with us. Germany had far less reason to fight Italy than we have to fight Austria. But when Austria needed help, the kaiser promptly sent his soldiers against the Italians and inflicted a severe defeat up on them. We may not assist Italy with soldiers or guns, for we are not at war with her chief enemy. All we can do is to lend her a little more money or ship her some coal, and should submarines sink our ships in the Mediterranean, we will charge it to Germany’s account, even though the submarines have been outfitted in an Austrian base. It is all so illogical, and it complicates uselessly the clear issue of. why we fight. Take the Trading with the Enemy Act; there Congress puts the enemy and the enemy’s allies on the same plane. But some how our government lacks the spirit—or is it merely the occasion—to declare plainly that all the Central Powers are enemies of the United States.

A conference of all the states fighting Germany will be held in Paris in the middle of this month. After some hesitation the government of this country has decided to be represented there, instead of standing aside and taking an attitude of aloofness in common concerns. No doubt one of the great questions will be the co-ordination of the resources of the allies, so as to make them count to the last ounce, as Germany makes her comparatively small resources count, and in particular the necessity of furnishing aid to the brave Italian army whose costly successes are now endangered by a joint Austro-German attack. Will the United States say at this conference that it cannot help Italy, because that would be making war on Austria? Is it not a fact that if Austria and Germany succeed in defeating Italy so seriously that internal discontent and socialist agitation would compel King Victor Emmanuel to conclude peace, then the burden carried by the United States would become so much heavier? For every Italian soldier put out of action by an Austrian gun America must furnish one of her own sons, if she is to win the war in which she is engaged against Germany.

Col. Roosevelt who possesses a clear vision and the courage of his convictions sums up in the Kansas City Star the arguments for war on all the Central Powers in these words: “The world will not and cannot be made safe for democracy until the Armenians, the Syrian Christians and the Arabs are freed from Turkish tyranny, and until the Poles, Bohemians and southern Slavs, now under the Austrian yoke, are made into separate, independent nations, and until the Italians of southwest Austria are restored to Italy and the Roumanians of eastern Hungary to Roumania.

“Unless we propose in good faith to carry out this program, we have been guilty of a rhetorical sham when we pledged ourselves to make the world safe for democracy. The United States must not make promises which it has no intention of performing; we are breaking this promise and incidentally are acting absurdly every day chat we continue a nominal peace with Germany’s fellow tyrants and subject allies, Austria, and Turkey.”

We have hope that when the representatives of the United States return from the Paris conference, President Wilson will go before Congress with the request that a state of war be declared to exist between this country and the allies of Germany.