Out To Win by Coningsby Dawson

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Few people guessed that America would fling her weight so utterly into
the winning of the Allied cause. Those who knew her best thought it
scarcely possible. Germany, who believed she knew her, thought it
least of all. German statesmen argued that America had too much to
lose by such a decision--too little to gain; the task of transporting
men and materials across three thousand miles of ocean seemed
insuperable; the differing traditions of her population would make it
impossible for her to concentrate her will in so unusual a direction.
Basing their arguments on a knowledge of the deep-seated selfishness
of human nature, Hun statesmen were of the fixed opinion that no
amount of insult would compel America to take up the sword.

Two and a half years before, those same statesmen made the same
mistake with regard to Great Britain and her Dominions. The British
were a race of shop-keepers; no matter how chivalrous the call,
nothing would persuade them to jeopardise their money-bags. If they
did for once leap across their counters to become Sir Galahads, then
the Dominions would seize that opportunity to secure their own base
safety and to fling the Mother Country out of doors. The British gave
these students of selfishness a surprise from which their military
machine has never recovered, when the "Old Contemptibles" held up the
advance of the Hun legions and won for Europe a breathing-space. The
Dominions gave them a second lesson in magnanimity when Canada's lads
built a wall with their bodies to block the drive at Ypres. America
refuted them for the third time, when she proved her love of
world-liberty greater than her affection for the dollar, bugling
across the Atlantic her shrill challenge to mailed bestiality. Germany
has made the grave mistake of estimating human nature at its lowest
worth as she sees it reflected in her own face. In every case, in
her judgment of the two great Anglo-Saxon races, she has been at
fault through over-emphasising their capacity for baseness and
under-estimating their capacity to respond to an ideal. It was an
ideal that led the Pilgrim Fathers westward; after more than two
hundred years it is an ideal which pilots their sons home again,
racing through danger zones in their steel-built greyhounds that they
may lay down their lives in France.

In view of the monumental stupidity of her diplomacy Germany has found
it necessary to invent explanations. The form these have taken as
regards America has been the attributing of fresh low motives. Her
object at first was to prove to the world at large how very little
difference America's participation in hostilities would make. When
America tacitly negatived this theory by the energy with which she
raised billions and mobilised her industries, Hun propagandists, by
an ingenious casuistry, spread abroad the opinion that these mighty
preparations were a colossal bluff which would redound to Germany's
advantage. They said that President Wilson had bided his time so that
his country might strut as a belligerent for only the last six months,
and so obtain a voice in the peace negotiations. He did not intend
that America should fight, and was only getting his armies ready that
they might enforce peace when the Allies were exhausted and already
counting on Americans manning their trenches. Inasmuch as his country
would neither have sacrificed nor died, he would be willing to give
Germany better terms; therefore America's apparent joining of the
Allies was a camouflage which would turn out an advantage to Germany.
This lie, with variations, has spread beyond the Rhine and gained
currency in certain of the neutral nations.

Four days after President Wilson's declaration of war the Canadians
captured Vimy Ridge. As the Hun prisoners came running like scared
rabbits through the shell-fire, we used to question them as to
conditions on their side of the line. Almost the first question that
was asked was, "What do you think about the United States?" By far the
most frequent reply was, "We have submarines; the United States will
make no difference." The answer was so often in the same formula that
it was evident the men had been schooled in the opinion. It was only
the rare man of education who said, "It is bad--very bad; the worst
mistake we have made."

We, in the front-line, were very far from appreciating America's
decision at its full value. For a year we had had the upper-hand of
the Hun. To use the language of the trenches, we knew that we could go
across No Man's Land and "beat him up" any time we liked. To tell the
truth, many of us felt a little jealous that when, after two years of
punishment, we had at last become top-dog, we should be called upon
to share the glory of victory with soldiers of the eleventh hour. We
believed that we were entirely capable of finishing the job without
further aid. My own feeling, as an Englishman living in New York, was
merely one of relief--that now, when war was ended, I should be able
to return to friends of whom I need not be ashamed. To what extent
America's earnestness has changed that sentiment is shown by the
expressed desire of every Canadian, that if Americans are anywhere on
the Western Front, they ought to be next to us in the line. "They are
of our blood," we say; "they will carry on our record." Only those
who have had the honour to serve with the Canadian Corps and know its
dogged adhesion to heroic traditions, can estimate the value of this
compliment.

I should say that in the eyes of the combatant, after President
Wilson, Mr. Ford has done more than any other one man to interpret the
spirit of his nation; our altered attitude towards him typifies our
altered attitude towards America. Mr. Ford, the impassioned pacifist,
sailing to Europe in his ark of peace, staggered our amazement.
Mr. Ford, still the impassioned pacifist, whose aeroplane engines
will help to bomb the Hun's conscience into wakefulness, staggers
our amazement but commands our admiration. We do not attempt to
understand or reconcile his two extremes of conduct, but as fighters
we appreciate the courage of soul that made him "about turn" to
search for his ideal in a painful direction when the old friendly
direction had failed. Here again it is significant that both with
regard to individuals and nations, Germany's sternest foes are
war-haters--war-haters to such an extent that their principles at
times have almost shipwrecked their careers. In England our example is
Lloyd George. Throughout the Anglo-Saxon world the slumbering spirit
of Cromwell's Ironsides has sprung to life, reminding the British
Empire and the United States of their common ancestry. After a hundred
and forty years of drifting apart, we stand side by side like our
forefathers, the fighting pacifists at Naseby; like them, having
failed to make men good with words, we will hew them into virtue with
the sword.

At the end of June I went back to Blighty wounded. One of my most
vivid recollections of the time that followed is an early morning
in July; it must have been among the first of the days that I was
allowed out of hospital. London was green and leafy. The tracks of
the tramways shone like silver in the sunlight. There was a spirit of
release and immense good humour abroad. My course followed the river
on the south side, all a-dance with wind and little waves. As I
crossed the bridge at Westminster I became aware of an atmosphere
of expectation. Subconsciously I must have been noticing it for some
time. Along Whitehall the pavements were lined with people, craning
their necks, joking and jostling, each trying to better his place.
Trafalgar Square was jammed with a dense mass of humanity, through
which mounted police pushed their way solemnly, like beadles in a vast
unroofed cathedral. Then for the first time I noticed what I ought
to have noticed long before, that the Stars and Stripes were
exceptionally prevalent. Upon inquiry I was informed that this was the
day on which the first of the American troops were to march. I picked
up with a young officer or the Dublin Fusiliers and together we
forced our way down Pall Mall to the office of The Cecil Rhodes Oxford
Scholars' Foundation. From here we could watch the line of march from
Trafalgar Square to Marlborough House. While we waited, I scanned the
group-photographs on the walls, some of which contained portraits of
German Rhodes Scholars with whom I had been acquainted. I remembered
how they had always spent their vacations in England, assiduously
bicycling to the most unexpected places. In the light of later
developments I thought I knew the reason.

Suddenly, far away bands struck up. We thronged the windows, leaning
out that we might miss nothing. Through the half mile of people
that stretched between us and the music a shudder of excitement was
running. Then came cheers--the deep-throated babel of men's voices and
the shrill staccato of women's. "They're coming," some one cried; then
I saw them.

I forget which regiment lead. The Coldstreams were there, the Scotch
and Welsh Guards, the Irish Guards with their saffron kilts and green
ribbons floating from their bag-pipes. A British regimental band
marched ahead of each American regiment to do it honour. Down the
sunlit canyon of Pall Mall they swung to the tremendous cheering
of the crowd. Quite respectable citizens had climbed lamp-posts and
railings, and were waving their hats. I caught the words that were
being shouted, "Are we downhearted?" Then, in a fierce roar of denial,
"No!" It was a wonderful ovation--far more wonderful than might have
been expected from a people who had grown accustomed to the sight of
troops during the last three years. The genuineness of the welcome
was patent; it was the voice of England that was thundering along the
pavements.

I was anxious to see the quality of the men which America had sent.
They drew near; then I saw them plainly. They were fine strapping
chaps, broad of shoulder and proudly independent. They were not
soldiers yet; they were civilians who had been rushed into khaki.
Their equipment was of every kind and sort and spoke eloquently of the
hurry in which they had been brought together. That meant much to us
in London-much more than if they had paraded with all the "spit and
polish" of the crack troops who led them. It meant to us that America
was doing her bit at the earliest date possible.

The other day, here in France, I met an officer of one of those
battalions; he told me the Americans' side of the story. They were
expert railroad troops, picked out of civilian life and packed off
to England without any pretence at military training. When they
were informed that they were to be the leading feature in a London
procession, many of them even lacked uniforms. With true American
democracy of spirit, the officers stripped their rank-badges from
their spare tunics and lent them to the privates, who otherwise could
not have marched.

"I'm satisfied," my friend said, "that there were Londoners so doggone
hoarse that night that they couldn't so much as whisper."

What impressed the men most of all was the King's friendly greeting of
them at Buckingham Palace. There were few of them who had ever seen
a king before. "Friendly--that's the word! From the King downwards
they were all so friendly. It was more like a family party than a
procession; and on the return journey, when we marched at ease, old
ladies broke up our formations to kiss us. Nice and grandmotherly of
them we thought."

This, as I say, I learnt later in France; at the time I only knew
that the advance-guard of millions was marching. As I watched them
my eyes grew misty. Troops who have already fought no longer stir
me; they have exchanged their dreams of glory for the reality of
sacrifice--they know to what they may look forward. But untried troops
have yet to be disillusioned; dreams of the pomp of war are still in
their eyes. They have not yet owned that they are merely going out to
die obscurely.

That day made history. It was then that England first vividly realised
that America was actually standing shoulder to shoulder at her side.
In making history it obliterated almost a century and a half of
misunderstanding. I believe I am correct in saying that the last
foreign troops to march through London were the Hessians, who fought
against America in the Revolution, and that never before had foreign
volunteers marched through England save as conquerors.

On my recovery I was sent home on sick leave and spent a month in New
York. No one who has not been there since America joined the Allies
can at all realise the change that has taken place. It is a change
of soul, which no statistics of armaments can photograph. America
has come into the war not only with her factories, her billions
and her man-power, but with her heart shining in her eyes. All her
spread-eagleism is gone. All her aggressive industrial ruthlessness
has vanished. With these has been lost her youthful contempt for older
civilisations, whom she was apt to regard as decaying because they
sent her emigrants. She has exchanged her prejudices for admiration
and her grievances for kindness. Her "Hats off" attitude to France,
England, Belgium and to every nation that has shed blood for the cause
which now is hers, was a thing which I had scarcely expected; it was
amazing. As an example of how this attitude is being interpreted
into action, school-histories throughout the United States are being
re-written, so that American children of the future may be trained in
friendship for Great Britain, whereas formerly stress was laid on the
hostilities of the eighteenth century which produced the separation.
As a further example, many American boys, who for various reasons were
not accepted by the military authorities in their own country, have
gone up to Canada to join.

One such case is typical. Directly it became evident that America was
going into the war, one boy, with whom I am acquainted, made up his
mind to be prepared to join. He persuaded his father to allow him
to go to a Flying School to train as a pilot. Having obtained his
certificate, he presented himself for enlistment and was turned down
on the ground that he was lacking in a sense of equipoise. Being too
young for any other branch of the service, he persuaded his family to
allow him to try his luck in Canada. Somehow, by hook or by crook, he
had to get into the war. The Royal Flying Corps accepted him with the
proviso that he must take out his British naturalisation papers.
This changing of nationality was a most bitter pill for his family to
swallow. The boy had done his best to be a soldier; he was the eldest
son, and there they would willingly have had the matter rest. Moreover
they could compel the matter to rest there, for, being under age, he
could not change his nationality without his father's consent. It was
his last desperate argument that turned the decision in his favour,
"If it's a choice between my honour and my country, I choose my honour
every time." So now he's a Britisher, learning "spit and polish" and
expecting to bring down a Hun almost any day.

One noticed in almost the smallest details how deeply America had
committed her conscience to her new undertaking. While in England
we grumble about a food-control which is absolutely necessary to our
preservation, America is voluntarily restricting herself not for her
own sake, but for the sake of the Allies. They say that they are
being "Hooverized," thus coining a new word out of Mr. Hoover's name.
Sometimes these Hooverish practices produce contrasts which are rather
quaint. I went to stay with a friend who had just completed as his
home an exact reproduction of a palace in Florence. Whoever went
short, there was little that he could not afford. At our meals I
noticed that I was the only person who was served with butter and
sugar, and enquired why. "It's all right for you," I was told; "you're
a soldier; but if we eat butter and sugar, some of the Allies who
really need them will have to go short." A small illustration, but one
that is typical of a national, sacrificial, underlying thought.

Later I met with many instances of the various forms in which this
thought is taking shape. I was in America when the Liberty War Loan
was so amazingly over-subscribed. I saw buses, their roofs crowded
with bands and orators, doing the tour of street-corners. Every store
of any size, every railroad, every bank and financial corporation had
set for its employes and customers the ideal sum which it considered
that they personally ought to subscribe. This ideal sum was recorded
on the face of a clock, hung outside the building. As the gross
amount actually collected increased, the hands were seen to revolve.
Everything that eloquence and ingenuity could devise was done to
gather funds for the war. Big advertisers made a gift of their
newspaper space to the nation. There were certain public-spirited men
who took up blocks of war-bonds, making the request that no interest
should be paid. You went to a theatre; during the interval actors and
actresses sold war-certificates, harangued the audience and set the
example by their own purchases.

When the Liberty War Loan had been raised, the Red Cross started its
great national drive, apportioning the necessary grand total among all
the cities from sea-board to sea-board, according to their wealth and
population.

One heard endless stories of the variety of efforts being made.
America had committed her heart to the Allies with an abandon which it
is difficult to describe. Young society girls, who had been brought
up in luxury and protected from ugliness all their lives, were banding
themselves into units, supplying the money, hiring the experts, and
coming over themselves to France to look after refugees' babies.
Others were planning to do reconstruction work in the devastated
districts immediately behind the battle-line. I met a number of these
enthusiasts before they sailed; I have since seen them at work in
France. What struck me at the time was their rose-leaf frailness and
utter unsuitability for the task. I could guess the romantic visions
which tinted their souls to the colour of sacrifice; I also knew
what refugees and devastated districts look like. I feared that the
discrepancy between the dream and the reality would doom them to
disillusion.

During the month that I was in America I visited several of the camps.
The first draft army had been called. The first call gave the country
seven million men from which to select. I was surprised to find that
in many camps, before military training could commence, schools in
English had to be started to ensure the men's proper understanding of
commands. This threw a new light on the difficulties Mr. Wilson had
had to face in coming into the war.

The men of the draft army represent as many nationalities, dialects
and race-prejudices as there are in Europe. They are a Europe
expatriated. During their residence in America a great many of them
have lived in communities where their own language is spoken, and
their own customs are maintained. Frequently they have their own
newspapers, which foster their national exclusiveness, and reflect the
hatreds and affections of the country from which they emigrated. These
conditions set up a barrier between them and current American opinion
which it was difficult for the authorities at Washington to cross. The
people who represented neutral European nations naturally were anxious
for the neutrality of America. The people who represented the Central
Powers naturally were against America siding with the Allies. The only
way of re-directing their sympathies was by means of education and
propaganda; this took time, especially when they were separated from
the truth by the stumbling block of language. For three years they
had to be persuaded that they were no longer Poles, Swedes, Germans,
Finns, Norwegians, but first and last Americans. I mention this here,
in connection with the teaching of the draft army English, because it
affords one of the most vivid and comprehensible reasons for America's
long delay.

What brought America into the war? I have often been asked the
question; in answering it I always feel that I am giving only a
partial answer. On the one hand there is the record of her two and a
half years of procrastination, on the other the titanic upspringing
of her warrior-spirit, which happened almost in a day. How can one
reconcile the multitudinous pacific notes which issued from Washington
with the bugle-song to which the American boys march: "We've got four
years to do this job." The cleavage between the two attitudes is too
sharp for the comprehension of other nations.

The first answer which I shall give is entirely sane and will be
accepted by the rankest cynic. America came into the war at the moment
she realised that her own national life was endangered. Her leaders
realised this months before her masses could be persuaded. The
political machinery of the United States is such that no Government
would dare to commence hostilities unless it was assured that its
decision was the decision of the entire nation. That the Government
might have this assurance, Mr. Wilson had to maintain peace long after
the intellect of America had declared for war, while he educated
the cosmopolitan citizenship of his country into a knowledge of Hun
designs. The result was that he created the appearance of having been
pushed into hostilities by the weight of public opinion.

For many months the Secret Service agents of the States, aided by the
agents of other nations, were unravelling German plots and collecting
data of treachery so irrefutable that it had to be accepted. When all
was ready the first chapters of the story were divulged. They were
divulged almost in the form of a serial novel, so that the man who
read his paper to-day and said, "No doubt that isolated item is true,
but it doesn't incriminate the entire German nation," next day on
opening his paper, found further proof and was forced to retreat to
more ingenious excuses. One day he was informed of Germany's abuse of
neutral embassies and mail-bags; the next of the submarine bases in
Mexico, prepared as a threat against American shipping; the day after
that the whole infamous story of how Berlin had financed the Mexican
Revolution. Germany's efforts to provoke an American-Japanese war
leaked out, her attempts to spread disloyalty among German-Americans,
her conspiracies for setting fire to factories and powder-plants,
including the blowing up of bridges and the Welland Canal. Quietly,
circumstantially, without rancour, the details were published of
the criminal spider-web woven by the Dernburgs, Bernstorffs and Von
Papens, accredited creatures of the Kaiser, who with Machiavellian
smiles had professed friendship for those whom their hands itched to
slay and strangle. Gradually the camouflage of bovine geniality was
lifted from the face of Germany and the dripping fangs of the Blonde
Beast were displayed--the Minotaur countenance of one glutted
with human flesh, weary with rape and rapine, but still tragically
insatiable and lusting for the new sensation of hounding America to
destruction.

I have not placed these revelations in their proper sequence; some
were made after war had been declared. They had the effect of changing
every decent American into a self-appointed detective. The weight
of evidence put Germany's perfidy beyond dispute; clues to new and
endless chains of machinations were discovered daily. The Hun had come
as a guest into America's house with only one intent--to do murder as
soon as the lights were out.

The anger which these disclosures produced knew no bounds. Hun
apologists--the type of men who invariably believe that there is a
good deal to be said on both sides--quickly faded into patriots. There
had been those who had cried out for America's intervention from the
first day that Belgium's neutrality had been violated. Many of these,
losing patience, had either enlisted in Canada or were already in
France on some errand of mercy. Their cry had reached Washington at
first only as a whisper, very faint and distant. Little by little that
cry had swelled, till it became the nation's voice, angry, insistent,
not to be disregarded. The most convinced humanitarian, together with
the sincerest admirer of the old-fashioned kindly Hans, had to join in
that cry or brand himself a traitor by his silence.

America came into the war, as every country came, because her life was
threatened. She is not fighting for France, Great Britain, Belgium,
Serbia; she is fighting to save herself. I am glad to make this
point because I have heard camouflaged Pro-Germans and thoughtless
mischief-makers discriminating between the Allies. "We are not
fighting for Great Britain," they say, "but for plucky France." When I
was in New York last October a firm stand was being made against these
discriminators; some of them even found themselves in the hands of the
Secret Service men. The feeling was growing that not to be Pro-British
was not to be Pro-Ally, and that not to be Pro-Ally was to be
anti-American. This talk of fighting for somebody else is all lofty
twaddle. America is fighting for America. While the statement is
perfectly true, Americans have a right to resent it.

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