(5 of 5)
Heroes? Villains? The three-year tal of how the U. S. slowly drifted into war may have had no hero, but it had man; a protagonist. To Author Millis, all of them are life-size or less. William Jennings Bryan, Wilson's first Secretary o State, who resigned rather than concur in a policy that threatened U. S. peace, was a failure, says Millis. but his "failure enshrines him in one of the more honorable niches of our history." At the outbreak of the War Bryan prevented U. S. Bankers (notably J. P. Morgan & Co.) fror lending money to any belligerent, but wit Bryan out of the way there was a flood of U. S. loans to the Allied governments. The fiasco of Henry Ford's ''Peace Ship," the Oscar 11, Author Millis calls "one of the few really generous and rational impulses of those insane years . . . snuffed out with a cruelty and levity which are appalling. Today the joke is less enjoyable, and posterity will remember that it was not the fault of Mr. Ford that his crusade was a catastrophe." Woodrow Wilson, who knew better than such firebreathers as Theodore Roosevelt the futility of force, lost his big peace-making chance in 1916, from then on fought a hopeless battle against the mounting war fever.
But when war finally came the sentiment, even in Congress, was not unanimous. Led by Wisconsin's late La Follette, who drew national obloquy on himself for a one-man filibuster that delayed the Senate vote by a day, 56 Senators and Representatives voted to stay out of war. Cried Nebraska's Norris: "We are going into war upon the command of gold. . . . I know that I am powerless to stop it. I know that this war madness has taken possession of the financial and political powers of our country. ... I feel that we are committing a sin against humanity and against our countrymen. I would like to say to this war god. You shall not coin into gold the lifeblood of my brethren. ... I feel that we are about to put the dollar sign upon the American flag." The West and Midwest did not want war; Representative Fred A. Britten (Illinois) announced publicly: "The truth of the matter is that 90% of your people and mine do not want this declaration of war. . . ." But Senator Lodge voiced the official view: "This war is a war, as I see it, against barbarism. . . ." Significance. As readers follow this month-by-month, week-by-week record of the fluctuations in U. S. sentiment, the diplomatic charivari, the jitters of the press, the broken cries of great men, their Wartime values will undergo a transvaluation. Whether he thinks the War could have been prevented, whether any war can be prevented, Author Millis does not say; but the implication is strong that U. S. clear thinking might have untangled the muddle before it became a worldwide mess. Too simple for diplomats to accept, his verdict that the War was an evil that was allowed to go on too long, and for no good reason, will appeal to men of good will everywhere: "The question of what, in fact, all that agony was about would not down. Started in an accident, it was simply running upon its own momentum; the peoples were continuing to fight because their ideas and their institutions had provided them with no means of stopping."