Page:Ian Hay - The New America - The Times - 1917-07-18.jpg



The re-election of Mr. Wilson made him sure of his ground. He was more: he was supreme. Since the dethronement of the Tsar of Russia the President of the United States is probably the only real autocrat left in the world. We who live under a monarchical system, where a popular vote can turn out a Government overnight and set up another in its stead, can have little conception what it means to be a citizen of a great democracy—in a country where the functions of King and Prime Minister are combined in the person of one man, who can usually enforce his will upon the Legislature, is responsible to no one for his actions, and cannot be removed from office by anything but death or a conviction for high treason for at least four years.

The President, having recaptured his disputed trenches, and having reconsolidated the same, was now in a position to undertake his Spring Offensive. Soon his opportunity came. Germany, falling into the error of all bullies, and mistaking patience for cowardice, took that one step further which is inevitable and fatal in such cases. On the First of February, 1917, she announced her programme of ruthless submarine warfare against the Allies. To injury to American trade was added insult in the shape of a farcical decree permitting America to dispatch one ship, painted with broad black and white stripes, to Falmouth once a week. That proclamation unified America as nothing else had done. Public indignation rose to fever heat. One newspaper truly summed up the situation when it retorted, in the terse vernacular of the country, that the Kaiser was at liberty to paint, himself pink all over and dispatch himself to Hades, not upon one but upon all seven days of the week.

Things now began to move. The President, confident of universal support, promptly bundled back to Germany. This, naturally, was the beginning of the end. The change did not come instantaneously. The voice of the pro-German was no longer heard in the land, but the voice—surprisingly similar in intonation and timbre—of the Pacifist began to be uplifted instead. But no matter. America was awake, and, best of all, united. The President, with his uncanny instinct for gauging the diversified points of view of his countrymen, had judged aright. The national pulse was beginning to stir into something like a regular beat.

Two months later came the end. The outrageous document in which suggested to Japan and Mexico that they should band themselves with the Central Powers and make war upon America fell into the hands of the United States Government, and the last shreds of doubt and disunion were swept away. The people of Texas, who took no burning interest in the American Atlantic trade, and had seen no particular reason to involve the country in war because ships from New York were foolish enough to get sunk in German minefields, suddenly assumed a genuine interest in national unity upon learning that their State had been offered by Germany as a douceur to Mexico. The States of the West, such as California, ever conscious of the so-called Yellow Peril, were roused by the news to a burst, of passionate resentment against German intrigue. And so President Wilson, justified in his policy of watchful waiting if ever a man was, stepped boldly across the Rubicon of War, and took the whole of the American people (if we except the inevitable residue of cranks, faddists, and paid obstructionists) with him. To those familiar with conditions in America, as they were a year ago, his feat was marvellous..