I went from the French front back to America. The steamer slipped down the Gironde between green vineyards, past peaceful villages, a whole universe distant from that grim, gray trench-land where the French army was holding the invader in Titan grip, stole cautiously into the Bay of Biscay at nightfall to escape prowling submarines, and began to roll in the Atlantic surges, part of those "three thousand miles of cool sea-water" on which our President so complacently relies as a nonconductor of warfare. I was homeward bound to America, the land of Peace, after four months spent in "war-ridden Europe"--to that homeland stranger somehow than the war lands, where my countrymen were protesting to both belligerents and making money, manufacturing war supplies and blowing up factories, talking "peace" and "preparedness" in the same breath; also--and God be thanked for that!--helping to feed the starving Belgians, sending men, money, and sympathy to the French. As the old steamer settled into her fourteen-knot gait, the submarines ceased to be of more than conversational concern, and I began to ask myself,--"What does it all mean to us, this bloody sacrifice of world war,--to us, strong, rich, peaceful, confident Americans?"
For in spite of a curious indifference among many Americans to the outcome, so long as it did not get us into trouble with either party, betrayed by personal letters and press articles which I had received, I was profoundly convinced that the issues of the world tragedy were momentous to us too. "This European butchery means nothing," said one friend, who supplies editorial comment for a most widely read American weekly, "except a lot of poverty, a lot of cripples, and a lot of sodden hate in the hearts of the people engaged. Europe will not be changed appreciably as a result of the war!" Our pacifist ex-Secretary of State, I remember, wrote Baron d'Estournelles de Constant inquiring what the French were fighting for, implying that to the reasonable onlooker there was no clear issue involved in the whole business, merely the passions of misguided patriotism. The well-meaning agitation for peace, which as I write has been lifted into the grotesque by the Ford peace ship, is based largely on this inability to realize the reality of the issue between the belligerents. And there is our national attitude of strict neutrality, which fairly represents the evasive mind of many Americans. Happily, they seem to say to themselves, "This war is not our affair." We were warned by Washington to keep clear of European "quarrels," and wisely we covered our retreat at The Hague by inserting that little clause which relieved us from all real responsibility for the observance of the conventions. Excuse for cowardice and blindness of vision! Such Americans like to think that as a nation we have no more concern in the present war than a peaceable family in one house has with the domestic upheavals of an unfortunate family in the next house. The part of prudence is to ignore all evidences of unpleasantness, to profess good offices, and to keep on friendly terms with all the belligerents.