CHAPTER V

HOW THE UNITED STATES WENT INTO WAR

One hundred and thirty years before the great war of Europe came to the threshold of the United States a group of wise, far-sighted statesmen met in the city of Philadelphia to make a constitution for the governing of the Colonies whose independence had just been won. They desired, above all things, to establish a government which would stand the test of time and remain a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. For months they deliberated, bringing to the meetings all the wisdom, all the ideals, all the visioning they had acquired from long study, and from victorious, righteous warfare. Finally they--the fathers of our republic--completed a document that has governed the United States of America and become to the world a model of democratic government.

In this document, which was ratified by the States then existing and which became the law of those States which were admitted to the nation, its makers set down certain rules governing the making of war.

The Constitution divided the government into three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. In order that no one of them might have too much power, the duties of each were determined and divided. The executive, of which the President is chief, could do certain deeds and duties. The judicial had the final determination of the right of enacting certain laws, saying whether or not later laws, made by Congress, conformed to the original Constitution. But to the legislative, represented by two houses of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Constitution granted certain very clear powers.

Among these powers was the power to declare war. In autocracies monarchs declare war; but in a democracy such as ours it is right and just that the power of declaring war should rest with that body most directly responsive to the people of the nation. The Congress is such a body. The Constitution therefore gave to Congress the right of war declaration; and nothing better illustrates the difference between autocracy and democracy than the fact that the Emperor of Germany had thrust his country into war three days before the German _Reichstag_, which is the limited popular assembly of the empire, knew officially of its existence, while the President of the United States had to summon Congress into special session for consideration of the war problem.

On the second day of April, 1917, the President went before the Congress which he had summoned. Beneath the dome of the white Capitol in the city of Washington, while a world waited breathlessly for the verdict of the great nation, he read his message to the men who represent the people of the United States. In that message he set down the case of the United States against Germany. Only twice before in the history of America--at the beginning of the War of the Revolution and at the beginning of the war between the States--had there been so momentous an occasion. Upon the men assembled in the Senate and the House of Representatives depended the honor, the future of the nation, and the honor and the future of democracy.

“It is a war,” the President read to them, “against all nations.... The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feelings away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.”

In that spirit the Congress listened. In that spirit they heard the voice of the man who was speaking not for himself but for our United States, not for our generation alone but for the generations who have passed and the generations who will come, when he said:

[Illustration: _From a photograph by G. V. Buck, Underwood & Underwood._

President Wilson delivering his war message

On the second day of April, 1917 ... while a world waited breathlessly for the verdict of the great nation, President Wilson read his message to the men who represent the people of the United States]

“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquests, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensations for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.”

With the weight of the gravest responsibility an American Congress has ever raised falling upon their shoulders, they gave heed as the chief executive brought to them the issue:

“It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness, and the peace which she has treasured.

“God helping her, she can do no other.”

The Congress of the United States deliberated, through three days and three nights, while the world waited, upon the question of war. On the 2d of April, the very day of the President’s message, the war declaration passed the Senate with a vote of 82 yeas and 6 nays. On the 5th of April, it passed the House of Representatives with a vote of 373 yeas and 70 nays. America had spoken, and the voice of America thundered this message to Germany:

“Whereas the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it

“_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.”

The United States of America had gone into its greatest war.