Germany, The Next Republic?Ackerman, Carl W. (Carl William)
History
Germany, The Next Republic?
Ackerman, Carl W. (Carl William)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany
everything seems to move and live because of the war. In New York and
throughout the country there are young men by the hundreds of
thousands. Germany and France have no young men outside the armies.
Here there are millions of automobiles and millions of people hurrying,
happy and contented, to and from their work. In Germany there are no
automobiles which are not in the service of the Government and rubber
tires are so nearly exhausted that practically all automobiles have
iron wheels.
Some Americans have lived for many years with the idea that only
certain sections of the United States were related to Europe. Many
people, especially those in the Middle West, have had the impression
that only the big shipping interests and exporters had direct interests
in affairs across the ocean. But when Germany began to take American
lives on the high seas, when German submarines began to treat American
ships like all other belligerent vessels, it began to dawn upon people
here that this country was very closely connected to Europe by blood
ties as well as by business bonds. It has taken the United States two
years to learn that Europe was not, after all, three thousand miles
away when it came to the vital moral issues of live international
policies. Before Congress declared war I found many Americans
criticising President Wilson for not declaring war two years ago.
While I do not know what the situation was during my absence still the
impression which Americans abroad had, even American officials, was
that President Wilson would not have had the support of a united people
which he has to-day had he entered the war before all question of doubt
regarding the moral issues had disappeared.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR'S CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE REICHSTAG ON APRIL
5TH, 1916.]
In the issue of April 14th of this year the _New Republic_, of New
York, in an editorial on "Who willed American participation?" cast an
interesting light upon the reasons for our intervention in the Great
War.
"Pacifist agitators who have been so courageously opposing, against
such heavy odds, American participation in the war have been the
victims of one natural but considerable mistake," says _The New
Republic_. "They have insisted that the chief beneficiaries of
American participation would be the munition-makers, bankers and in
general the capitalist class, that the chief sufferers would be the
petty business men and the wage-earners. They have consequently
considered the former classes to be conspiring in favour of war, and
now that war has come, they condemn it as the work of a small but
powerful group of profiteers. Senator Norris had some such meaning in
his head when he asserted that a declaration of war would be equivalent
to stamping the dollar mark on the American flag.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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