Art. 11.-CONGRESS AND THE WAR.

Congressional Record. Sixty-Fourth Congress, First Session. Vol. LIII, Nos 1 to 86. Government Printing Bureau, Washington, D. C., 1916.

ONLY by a plebiscite could it be determined how the men and women of the United States stand on the war. Small hazard, however, would be incurred in making the statement that ninety or ninety-five per cent. of those who are of American stock, and of English or Scottish ancestry, are whole-hearted in their sympathy with the Allies. Despite this fact it cannot be said that the official reports of proceedings in Congress on questions raised directly or indirectly by the war are pleasant reading for sympathisers with the Allies. In the first part of the first session of the Sixty-Fourth Congressin the period from Dec. 6, 1915, to the end of March 1916 -the questions arising out of the war that had come before the Senate and the House of Representatives were the proposed embargo on the export of munitions, the British blockade, the censorship of mails exercised by the British Government, and Germany's threat of Feb. 10, 1916, that she would treat all armed enemy merchantmen as war vessels, and torpedo them without warning. In the discussion of these questions there were singularly few expressions of sympathy with the Allies; and, as was obvious in the discussions and divisions on the Gore and McLemore resolutions, there were, in both the Senate and the House, large groups of members who readily associated themselves with a movement which, had it succeeded, would unmistakably have been to the advantage of Germany in her submarine warfare, and with two or three other movements that, whatever may have been the domestic reasons for their origin, would greatly have hampered the Allies in equipping their forces, and hindered Great Britain in the blockade of Germany.

President Wilson's neutrality proclamation of Aug. 20, 1914, sufficiently explains the fewness and the guarded character of expressions of sympathy with the Allies in the Senate and the House. The President, it will be recalled, urged that the citizens of the United States, 'drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations

now at war,' must be impartial in thought as well as in action; that they must put a curb on their sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before the other. In the unprecedented conditions of the war, the President's proclamation, so far as the people of the United States are concerned, was a counsel of perfection. After twenty-one months of war, it cannot be asserted, either as regards the press or the platform, that there has ever been anything approaching a general acceptance of the counsel offered to the American people from the White House. Neither sympathisers with the Allies nor pro-Germans have found it possible to follow the President's advice. The German propaganda has been continuous in one form or another since the autumn of 1914. On the other hand, organisations have come into existence in recent months avowedly hostile to Germany. One of these is the American Rights Committee of New York, which advocates the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany. Another, the Citizens' League for America and the Allies, insists that 'our political ideals and our national safety are bound up with the cause of the Allies; that their defeat would mean moral and material disaster to our country'; and adds that therefore this league is formed to use all lawful means to put this nation in a position of definite sympathy with the Allies, and in an equally definite position of moral disapprobation of the central Teutonic powers.' * There is, moreover, at least one instance in which a great iron and steel manufacturing company made it a condition in contracts for partly-finished material, that none of this material, and no finished materials made from it, should be exported to any European country except the United Kingdom, France, Italy or Russia, with a further condition that it should not be exported to any countries outside Europe or Canada without written notice of such shipments to the British Consul General at New York.†

Senators and Representatives who sympathise with the Allies in general heeded the President's advice in their utterances in Congress. But there are eight million people of German origin in the United States; and the

* Cong. Rec.', March 4, vol. liii, No. 62, p. 4091.

† Ib. p. 4092.

pro-German propaganda, at least that part of it which is addressed to German-Americans, has gone on continuously since August 1914. The division of it that was aimed at Americans-the division of which Dr Dernburg was in charge until the 'Lusitania' outrage made an abrupt end to his mission-was much less active after his departure. The other division, which is carried on among German-Americans, increased its activity as the war dragged on; and its leaders were particularly alert in organising petitions to Congress for an embargo on munitions, for the prohibition of travel by American citizens on armed merchant ships, for the prohibition of war-loans in the United States, against the British blockade, and in opposition to any action by Congress with a view to 'preparedness.'

German-Americans are scattered all over the United States. They are most numerous in the states of New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, New Jersey, California, Nebraska, Kansas, and North and South Dakota. It is asserted by men who are active in the pro-German movement-a movement that has the support of eight hundred daily and weekly newspapers printed in the German language -that in these fifteen states there are 1,860,000 voters of German birth or descent; * and none of the foreign-born citizens of the United States are to-day or ever were as well organised or as closely held together by race, language and interest as the German-Americans. The sympathies of many Swedish-Americans, Irish-Americans and JewishAmericans are also with Germany. Moreover, there is in the cotton-growing states much irritation at the blockade, which has kept American cotton out of Germany, and curtailed the supplies of fertilisers that are used by the cotton-growers of the South. These conditions account for the fact that in both Houses of Congress, but particularly in the House of Representatives, there are many members who, in discussions on the embargo, on the blockade, and on the German demand that merchantmen shall not be armed, made speeches which, while not openly conflicting with the President's desire for neutrality, were evidently intended to ingratiate

* Frank Retort of a pro-German,' 'N. Y. Times,' May 18, 1916.

them with the pro-Germans in their constituencies. Senators and Congressmen were reminded almost daily in the earlier part of the session of the organisation and activity of German-Americans in all parts of the country. Petitions in favour of movements in Congress which, if they had succeeded, would have been to the advantage of Germany, were numerous and largely signed. One petition against the export of munitions, promoted by the Organisation of American Women for Strict Neutrality, was fifteen and a half miles long, and the Senate was assured that it contained over a million signatures.

Only a few petitions, and these only against an embargo on munitions, emanated from sympathisers with the Allies, Americans who were derisively described by a Congressman from Missouri as Tories, the name given to those who remained loyal to Great Britain in the Revolution of 1776. Consideration for the GermanAmerican vote was shown in many speeches in the House defending German-Americans from the charge made by President Wilson in a message to Congress, that there were citizens of the United States,

'born under other flags, but welcomed here under our generous naturalisation laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life, who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our government into contempt, to destroy our industries . . . and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue.'

All this consideration for the German-American vote did not go without condemnation in Congress. Mr J. S. Williams, in the Senate, described the Senator or Representative who was looking behind him at some racial vote of some sort,' not only as an unpatriotic American, but as a poor judge of human nature, and even a poor practical politician.* In the House, in the debate on the McLemore resolution, Mr S. Beakes, of Michigan, in whose home-county half the voters are either of German birth or descent, declared that, if the resolution, which not only warned American citizens off belligerent merchant ships but also told the world that the United

* 6 Cong. Rec.', vol, liii, p. 3906.

States would not protect American rights on the high seas, was not a futile bid for the German vote, then it must have been for the ignoble purpose of securing peace by abdicating in advance American rights on the seas.' *

No

The first discussion of the proposed embargo on the export of munitions was in the House of Representatives on Jan. 7, 1916, about the time when petitions were beginning to be received from the pacifists and the proGermans urging that belligerents should no longer be permitted to obtain munitions in the United States. bill or resolution had been introduced; but Mr Gardner, a Republican from Massachusetts, obtained leave to address the House on the letter of Mr Lansing, Secretary of State, to the Austrian Government (dated Aug. 12, 1915), in which that Government was informed that

'the principles of International Law, the practice of nations, the national safety of the United States and other nations without great military and naval establishments, the prevention of increased armies and navies, the adoption of peaceful methods for the adjustment of international differences, and finally, neutrality itself, are opposed to the prohibition by a neutral nation of the export of arms, ammunition or other munitions of war to belligerent powers during the progress of a war.'

Mr Gardner, who is one of those Representatives who have never been careful to conceal where their sympathies lie, described Mr Lansing's letter as 'a good stout statement' of the position of the United States Government on the question of an embargo on munitions. He asked whether anything had happened to change the situation on this question in the five months since Mr Lansing's note was communicated to the Austrian Government. 'Yes, indeed,' he answered, 'Congress has assembled, and three groups of men are demanding the enactment of a law to stop the export of war material.' These groups, as described by Mr Gardner, are (1) the German-Americans, who demanded an embargo out of love for their fatherland; (2) the cotton kings, who joined in the chorus out of love for Mammon; and (3) the pacifist