USA > California > Addresses delivered before the California Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, 1917 > Part 2
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But this is to be noticed, this is to be recognized for it: It did keep the peace of Europe; it did preserve the peace of the Balkans for more than thirty years. Then first one state and then another violated the great instrument that came out of the Congress of Berlin, and its spell was broken.
I think we are not passing swift judgment when we say that Aus- tria was the first to violate the agreement of 1878, when, following the revolution of Turkey and the expectation that the Young Turk in the Ottoman Empire, might re-establish Turkish pretensions over the Balkans, Austria declared the annexation to herself of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She had done much for those provinces, she had reformed their administration, and carried them forward in well- being. But she was the trustee of the great powers and of Europe for those provinces, and she violated her trusteeship when she an- nexed them, and gave to the Concert of Europe, to the great agree- ment of 1878, its first shock. And then Italy repeated the blow when she annexed Tripoli and waged war against the Ottoman em- pire for the annexation of that coveted African Province, because the Concert of Europe and the Congress of Berlin of 1878 had guaranteed the preservation of the Ottoman Empire, and Italy was one of the signatory powers. Then this was followed by act after act, of minor consequence, perhaps, but all indicating that the old agreement, the old understanding between the powers of Europe which had weathered the war of 1870 and 1871, was at an end; that there was a new school of diplomats, there were new policies in the world, there were new alignments of great powers, there was a new disposition to treat with disrespect those solemn agreements into which the powers had formally entered.
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There is another thing that has gone, another great force, which, for many years, was a guarded and apparently potent thing, and that is the Triple Alliance. You all know the extraordinary statesman- ship with which Bismarck created that alliance of Germany and Aus- tria and Italy. If you want to read the intimate history of how this great union of defensive strength was brought about, you can read it in Bismarck's own legacy to the German people, his "Gedanken und Errinnnerungen," his Thoughts and Recollections, which he left as a record of his policy and as a statement of his political belief. And you will appreciate from his own narrative the difficulties he had to overcome to bring Austria and Germany together. Fortunately, his statesmanship had made it possible for Austria to forget the bit- terness of her defeat in 1866, and to unite with Germany in an al- liance of defense. But how did he ever bring Italy into that Triple Alliance? How was it that Italy was ever induced to join in de- fensive league with her old inveterate enemy, Austria, a country that had kept her northern provinces in subjection for so long? The memories of that intolerable subjection were very fresh in Italian minds in 1879, when the Dual Alliance was formed. The battles of Magenta and Solfeino had been fought just a little while before. Their veterans were still alive and Italy still had her old grudge against Austria, there was still under Austrian power, Italian soil and Italian population, "Italia Irredenta." How, then, was Italy brought into this Triple Alliance? It is explained by one of the cleverest strokes of Bismarckian diplomacy, whereby he was able to create antagonism between Italy and France, to encourage France in the occupation of Tunisia, to destroy Italy's expectations of ever gaining that portion of Africa which she regarded as her own logical inheri- tance, which had become the home of countless Italians who had emigrated there-this, and the natural antagonism which springs between two countries with a rivalry for the dominance of the Medit- erranean-was sufficient to create such an animosity between France and Italy that she was brought to ally herself with Austria, her in- veterate enemy, and with the new Empire of Germany.
That Triple Alliance has endured many years, a great thing in men's imaginations, a great force in European politics. It was re- newed no longer ago than 1911, and yet today it is paralyzed, if it is not dead. Italy has seen that her interest does not lie in that direction. The last few years have demonstrated to her, if she did not see it clearly before, that her unavoidable enemy is Austria, that their rivalry for the Adriatic is the great issue in her foreign rela- tions. Italy's attack upon the Ottoman Empire, long the object of
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German friendship, and the seizure of Tripoli weakened, if it did not disintegrate, this Triple Alliance, so that today I think we can say it is no more. It may not be true, that newspaper dispatch of not so many nights ago, that quoted the German Emperor as sending a message to the King of Italy, "Conquerer or conquered, I will never forget your treachery"-that may not be true, but there probably is an unforgivable difference today between Italy and her former ally. And if she is to be found fighting in this war, there is every pre- sumption that it will be against her former partners in the Triple Alliance.
There is another very striking thing in this situation. It is the strength that has been brought together against Germany herself; the not quite complete isolation of Germany, because Austria and Germany stand very strongly together, but the "encirclement," as the Germans themselves called it, of those two peoples by the other powers. It was a cardinal principle of Bismarck's diplomacy that Germany should never have more than one enemy at a time. All of his great ability was devoted to that end, that there should not be more than one serious antagonism nurtured between Germany and an- other power at once. He dreaded a coalition. His efforts were de- voted to defeating every coalition. And as long as he remained at the head of German statesmanship, he was able to prevent any coali- tion against Germany. But he retired in 1890. The German ship of state lost its pilot. And in 1891, Ribot, the French diplomat, was able to conclude a dual alliance which brought a new political force into the world. That dual alliance did not distress German suscepti- bilities for a time, because there was an understanding between Ger- many and Russia that it was only a defensive arrangement. And furthermore, Russia, during the years following this dual alliance, was turning eastward. Russian expectations of great power were in the Orient. The pressure was off of Europe. Russia was struggling to carry her power out onto the Pacific, and make of herself a great Pacific power at Vladivostok and at Port Arthur. That was the Russian imperial ambition down to 1905, and, so long as that was Russia's ambition, she had the full encouragement of Germany, and German statesmanship believed that it was secure against the rest- lessness and imperial spirit of Russia.
But Russia's defeat in 1905 changed the aspect of things. The aspirations that Russia had held were defeated. If France suffered by reason of the humiliation of her ally, German susceptibilities were again aroused by the fact that Russia turned her gaze from the
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east back onto Europe, and recommenced to make herself formidable upon the frontiers of Germany and of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She renewed her interest in the solution of the Balkan question, she revived her ambition to secure the Dardanelles, and, by the success- ful reorganization of her military forces, she became formidable to the German Empire, and seems to have been the one great clement of dread which moved Germany to her part in this war.
Now, it is very easy for us to condemn Germany. We are disposed to do it, most of us. But we must remember this fact about Germany, that she lies in a position which is not naturally defensive. She has no strong defensive frontiers on any side. She has no Alps, no Pyrenees guarding her, she has no British Channel protecting her from attack. On west and east and all sides, there are enemies which she dreads. And the basal principle of German statesmanship, that she can only preserve her freedom, and her independence by a com- plete military organization and remaining constantly in a position of defense and of great strength, is a sound one because essential to her very existence, and to the free and independent action of her people. And if we can understand and excuse British dread at the rise of Germany's imperial navy, we can certainly understand Ger- man fear when it saw Russia again formidable upon her eastern frontier, and France pursuing, as the Germans believed, her long- cherished expectation of revenge.
There is another great change that has come about in the last thirty or forty years, and that is the great triumph of French diplo- macy, in raising France out of a position of isolation, weak and menaced on all sides, into a position fortified by friendly understand- ing and by alliances with great and formidable powers.
So far as Russia is concerned, I have already spoken of the Dual Alliance. But the other essential element in French strength, lay in an understanding with Great Britain. And that achievement, one of the great achievements of diplomacy, it seems to me, in modern times, was very largely the work of that great diplomat and states- man, Théophile Delcassé, a man who, at the outbreak of this war, was recalled into the French cabinet, to his old position as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Down to 1898 France was not only a country menaced by the possibility of fresh war with Germany, a war which Bismarck, in a terrible phrase, said would last until "France was bled white"-not only was she menaced by that fearful possibility, but she had old outstanding grievances with Great Britain that
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menaced her peace. For Great Britain and France were rivals in many parts of the world, and they were traditional enemies, for who can say how many centuries.
Now, Delcassé, who came to the head of the French Foreign Office in 1898, was a young man, but he had a definite policy, and that policy was agreement and adjustment of differences with England. And he made the statement when he took that portfolio, that he would not relinquish it until every difficulty with England was adjusted. He kept at it through seven years, through successive administrations, and achieved all that he said he would, a complete settlement of dif- ferences with England. The Fashoda crisis was safely weathered, an agreement reached in regard to their position in the Far East, Burmah and Indo-China; a settlement of the Madagascar dispute; difficulty after difficulty was solved, until finally, in 1904, France and Eng- land concluded a treaty which solved the last of the great outstanding rivalries whereby France accorded to England a free hand in Egypt, and England gave to France complete freedom in her policy of penetration in Morocco. That great adjustment of difficulties made possible a cordial understanding between those two nations, and made it possible for them to come together as allies in this war.
Now, there is another great change to be noted, and that is the change in Great Britain's position. You go back a few decades, and England was alone, without formal alliance on any hand. She prided herself upon her "splendid isolation," and upon the tremendous naval power and imperial power which enabled her to stand alone in the world, powerful and unassailable. That has altered in recent years. Great Britain has abandoned her position of isolation for a position of friendly understanding and of alliances. Why has she done this ? She has done it, it seems to me, because of the growing feeling of enmity and difference between herself and Germany within the last fifteen years. This is a new force in the world, this bitterness and antagonism between Englishmen and Germans; a new factor in world politics. It did not exist two decades ago, except in the minds of a few men. One such man was the German professor, von Treitschke, who denounced England all his long life. Such a strong imperialist paper as the "London Spectator," as long ago as twenty years, be- gan to preach the danger of German power to the British Empire. But down to the end of the last century, there was no strong indica- tion of the terrible hostility and bitterness which separate those two peoples today. They heretofore have been allied and friends. Their soldiers fought together at Waterloo, and in the campaigns of Fred-
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erick the Great. There did not seem to be reasons why they should be hostile. The traditional hostility of England was that directed against France. And while it may be hard to fully explain this present enmity, it seems to have sprung out of the German desire for a larger place in the sun, for a great colonial empire commensurate with her military strength, her power, her discipline as a nation, and her need of commerce. That was Germany's position. And Germany found herself thwarted in many parts of the world by British diplomacy and by the better position which England occupied in the diplomatic defense of her commerce and of her interests. A series of episodes culminated about the year 1900 when the British defeated German plans whereby they expected to finance the Bagdad Railway and get a port in the Persian Gulf, which England anticipated them in securing. It was that very year that the German Reichstag passed the great naval bill of Germany, the bill which started this intense rivalry for naval power, this building of dreadnaughts and super- dreadnaughts, a bill which laid down a program which, in a short space of years, would make Germany formidable upon the sea, and which had a prelude, which reads that it was Germany's need and intention to possess a sufficient battle fleet so strong that not the greatest power on the water would attack her with impunity or with- out anticipation of defeat.
That was a note of alarm to England, and it changed British for- eign policies. Great Britain concluded her alliance with Japan, she effected an understanding with France, that released her own fleet from the Mediterranean, and what was more, and so far as we are concerned of greater interest, she reached a complete understanding with the United States, and yielded to the United States her own position of predominance in the Caribbean. Down to the end of the century Great Britain was the predominant power in the waters of the Caribbean. She had and still has important possessions there, although their economic importance has diminished. And she had a long traditional policy of tolerating no first-class power at the Isth- mus of Darien, any more than she would tolerate one at the Straits of Gibraltar or of Aden. She surrendered all of that in 1902, when, for the sake of peace with the United States, for the sake of support here, she yielded to us and gave us the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, can- celled the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty that tied our hands, and relin- quished to us that position of predominance in the Caribbean which she had effectively held so long. Following the Hay-Pauncefote treaty she dismantled her naval stations in the Caribbean, at Port Royal and Santa Lucia, and removed her fleet. Two or three years
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ago I went to Port Royal, the old naval base of Great Britain, on the Island of Jamaica, a very famous and romantic old place, a place that was for years frequented by the buccaneers. There was a time when it was the greatest slave mart in the world, and then Eng- land fortified it, and spent millions of pounds and thousands of lives in making it one of the great strategical points of her imperial power. You can go there today and see the great concrete masonry fortifications, standing out across the channel. There are long lines of disused barracks on the shore. You walk along the sands, and see the figureheads of the prows of old ships that at one time were proud elements in the British navy. But British power is gone. Across on the other shore, at Santiago de la Vega, there is a great statute of Rodney, the English admiral who won the great victory that gave Britain the command of the ocean. This figure of Rodney looks out across the Bay of Kingston toward the lesser Antilles, where his triumph was won, but it looks out upon waters and islands where Great Britain has relinquished her predominance to another power.
England did this-it is obvious today-withdrawing her fleet from the Caribbean, withdrawing her fleet from the Far East under her agreement with Japan, and from the Mediterranean in agreement with France, in order to concentrate all her naval power in the British channel, where it was at the outbreak of this war. In 1905 she reorganized her whole naval programme in the great act of Lord John Fisher, and reorganized primarily to meet the growing naval power of Germany.
I do not care to go on with these matters further. I indicate them to you simply as factors in the great change that has come over European politics in the last twenty-five or thirty years. Bring Disraeli to the scene today, bring back Gortchakoff or Bismarck him- self, and they would look on a field of diplomacy and of international relationship which they could no longer recognize. Bismarck, who dreaded the combination of any two powers against Germany, what would he say today to find Germany fighting seven at once? It is a new spirit, certainly, behind German diplomacy and German poli- tics, that has permitted this great war. It is not the far-sighted, re- strained, moderate policy of Bismarck.
Finally, perhaps, I might venture an opinion as to the effect that this war will have upon our own politics and our own relations. No one can say, I think, at this hour, whether it is going to make us more warlike 'or less, whether we are going to abandon our expecta-
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tions of general disarmament and fortify and arm, or whether the reaction against war is going to be so profound that we, in common with other peoples of the world, will insist upon some form of under- standing that will be a more secure guaranty of peace than the past has seen. But in some respects, I think it is going to modify our policy, or intensify it, and alter our feeling. In the first place, I think it will strengthen the long traditional policy which the United States has held, sometimes understandingly, sometimes instinctively, but nevertheless, a national policy, that we will not tolerate European interference with the politics of the new world. I believe we are resolved as a people, as we never have been resolved before, that American differences on either continent shall not be submitted to a Concert of Europe, or be taken in conference to London, Al- gerias or Berlin. We appreciate, as never before, our immense ad- vantage in keeping American affairs distinct from those of Europe and the Mediterranean. That is the first thing. And whether we call this the Monroe Doctrine, or whether we call it something greater and more comprehensive than the Monroe Doctrine, the American Doctrine, it is going to remain the fundamental basis of our whole foreign policy. And I think we are going to see ourselves more ready to secure the peace of this western hemisphere by the assumption of greater responsibility. I believe we are going to see the Senate rati- fying that treaty with Nicaragua, which has lain unratified now for some years, giving to us a naval base, which, to my mind we greatly need, in the Gulf of Fonseca. I think it is going to end the advocacy of certain projects, for instance, the project to neutralize the Philip- pine Islands. That has been a policy which has had its advocates on the floor of Congress, and in private circles, that we can somehow solve the whole responsibility for the Philippines by securing an in- ternational supervision of those turbulent and difficult islands. I don't think we will hear that argued again. Our confidence in that sort of diffused responsibility is gone. We realize that such ar- rangement, no matter how solemnly entered into, no matter if sancti- fied in the name of the Most High, as was the case with Belgium, does not stand in the exigencies that confront nations on the verge of war.
I believe, too, that it is going to change, somewhat, our national attitude. I have the feeling that we have grown over-optimistic in our confidence in human nature, that we have trusted mankind to act sensibly and rationally and in accordance with its apparent interest, and the dictates of reason. Now, men do not act that way, they never have acted that way. Men act, traditionally and historically, on the
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basis of their powerful prejudices and their passions, not according to reason. And we may, I think, understand that fact better than we have understood it in the past. You can't count on reason to keep the peace of the world. I think this war is going to dissolve a good many of our expectations of the perfectability of mankind, and generally bring us down to more positive ground, less idealistic, per- haps, less optimistic, perhaps, as to the future of the race, but closer to the facts than we have been for some time in the field of political affairs.
Finally, I hope and believe that all that has taken place in Europe will increase our disposition as a freer nation, though not necessarily a better, to set a higher example in the field of diplomacy to the world. I don't know that I could fully support the words I am going to read to you, but this certainly is a very high and noble statement of what the foreign policy of a powerful nation, a free nation, a nation which, in the language of Burke, because it is so powerful, can offer peace with honor, may be. But I am going to read the language of two great Americans, John Hay and Elihu Root. At the dinner of the Chamber of Commerce in 1901, John Hay, in speaking of American diplomacy, used these words: "The best expression of our foreign policy is the Monroe Doctrine and the Golden Rule. With this simple chart we cannot go far wrong." And these words of Elihu Root, spoken at the last conference at Rio de Janeiro in 1906:
"We wish for no victories but those of peace, no territory except our own, no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire, and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom and in spirit. But our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others, to profit by their ruin, but to help all others to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we all may become greater and stronger together."
Ladies and gentlemen, as I reflect on those words, and as I reflect upon this situation today, and upon the responsibility which we bear as a nation, able, by reason of its freedom, to keep its word, I am glad again with a new gladness that we kept our word and gave in- dependence to Cuba, and that our Congress in recent months set aside the Panama Canal tolls.
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OUR FLAG
By Newell B. Woodworth of Syracuse N. Y., President General of National Society S. A. R., at the Banquet Given the Adjourned National Congress at the Palace Hotel.
San Francisco, July 23, 1915.
Mr. President, Past President General, Honorary Vice-President of the Daughters of the American Revolution, fellow American Citi- zens and Compatriots :
I assure you it is a pleasure for me to be here with you, and I know I voice the sentiment of all those from the East in stating to you that we have enjoyed the hospitality you have extended. You have greeted us in a way that has made us feel at home-you have extended the hand of friendship with that cordial, heartfelt gracious- ness that has made us feel that you were really glad to see us, and we are certainly glad to see you.
I think it is very fortunate that this Congress met west of the Rocky Mountains. It has brought us all closer together, and I believe with a closer association our Society will be capable of greater work. Tonight it is particularly gratifying to have with us the founder of this organization, Dr. James Lafayette Cogswell. I consider it a high privilege to be able to extend to him my personal congratulations on his inspiration that led to the formation of this Society, as well as my great personal pleasure at his presence with us this evening. In- deed those Sons of Revolutionary Sires sowed a greater harvest of patriotism than they could have foreseen. As President General of 1915, I pay my respects to the President of 1875.
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