The Fiat

The Fiat

Unknown

WWP15511

1918 October 27

An editorial argues against an ceasefire with Germany.

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

English

“Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice.” It is the voice of justice pronouncing sentence on the criminals responsible for this war. President Wilson’s reply to the German Court is a verdict of condemnation for the Hohenzollerns and their miserable accomplices, and a grave warning for the German nation. It opens, as all who have watched the unfolding of President Wilson’s war policy knew, and all the civilized world hoped, it would open—with a stern rejection of the German appeal for a suspension of hostilities. The German idea that the appeal would deceive the President was an insult to both his intelligence and his sense of righteousness. It is as clear as noonday light that armistice now would benefit only the Germans at the expense of the Allies, that to declare a suspension of hositilites now would be to save the German hordes from the retribution that is closing upon them, to prolong the war indefinitely and cause, needlessly, incalulable bloodshed and sacrifices.

President Wilson’s penetrating gaze saw through the Germans’ subtle project; and he shattered their hopes with a declaration that will echo like a knell throughout Germany: “It must be clearly understood that the process of evacuation and the conditions of an armistice are matters which must be left to the judgment and advice of the military advisers of the Government of the United States and the Allied Governments... No arrangement can be accepted by the Government of the United States which does not provide absolutely satisfactory safeguards and guarantees of the maintenance of the present military supremacy of the armies of the United States and of the Allies in the field.”

The present military supremacy of the Allies! That calm, categorical statement of fact will enrage the Prussian Court and call forth indignant disclaimers from the Von Ardennes, and Salzmanns and Eglis and other apostles of German invincibility. But their verbal jugglery will be impotent to alter or conceal the truth, which is that Germany’s superiority, so pronounced at the beginning of the war, has vanished. At the outset the Germans’ confidence was not unreasonable. They possessed the most terrible instrument of death that the infernal ingenuity of soulless science could create. The Allies had only men. But what men! In years, in centuries to come, humanity will still, as at present, be paying homage to the heroic spirit of those great souls who in 1914 had only their dauntless valor to pit aganst the monstrous German war-machine, and who yet triumphed over it. Now the tide has turned; now the material as well as the moral advantage is on our side. We have both the men and the machine; and no German intriguing can wrest the advantage from us. No arrangement will be accepted that does not provde “absolutely satisfactory safeguards and guarantees” of the maintenance of our military supremacy. The word has gone forth, and it is in accordance not only with prudence, but also with equity.

Glancing at the infamous misdeeds that are accompanying the German retreat, the destruction and plunder of towns, the enslavement of hapless women and children, the perpetration of nameless atrocities on land and sea, who can refrain from applauding President Wilson’s declaration that the Allies will not agree to a cessation of arms “while acts of inhumanity, spoliation and desolation are being continued which they justly look upon with horror and with burning hearts?”

For these crimes the German ruling caste is directly responsible, and the whole civilized world must approve the Allies’ determination not to treat with the Hohenzollerns. That is the second point of vital importance in the President’s Reply. The choice lies with the German people: it must either repudiate the Hohenzollerns or fall with them. The Hohenzollerns, or their pagan ideas of semi-divinity and autrocratic irresponsiblity, have reduced Germany to a condition of material and spiritual servitude. The Germans can recover their human birthright only by the overthrow of their enslavers. What will be their choice? The military outlook for them is hopeless. The German press is hinting threateningly of a mass-levy, of the entire nation in arms. To defend what: the Hohenzollerns? That is precisely the question which President Wilson asks, and the German people must answer it.

Suppose it decides to rally round the Hohenzollerns, what is the prospect facing it? What mass-levy is possible in Germany now? Is not the enitre nation already in arms? What remains now of Germany’s manhood after the massacres of four years? The class of 1920 has already been flung into the fiery furnace. All that Germany could now marshal in a final mass-levy would be the halt and the maimed, the women and the aged of the Empire. The insatiate ambitions of the Hohenzollerns have turned happy Belgium and fair provinces of France into a desolate waste, and Germany itself into a ghastly hospital.

Against the only mass-levy of which Germany is now capable, we set the millions of our Western youths, inspired by love of liberty and upheld by the consciousness of fighting in a just cause. We look forward with unshakable confidence in the triumph of that cause. And there will be no cessation of hostilities until it has triumphed.

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