HISTORY ARTICLE SUMMARIES

War Is “a Blessing, Not a Curse”: The Case for Why

We Must Fight

In 1917, voices were raised outside Congress on both sides of the issue of American

involvement in the European war. Shortly before President Woodrow Wilson’s call for

war on April 2, 1917, the editors of a conservative magazine, the North American

Review, laid out the basic arguments for U.S. participation. Fundamentally, they saw the

war as a struggle between democracy and barbarism. Similar statements and speeches—

as well as more coercive measures—gradually captured the public discourse. Fairly

quickly, those who rejected the rationales for United States participation in the war found

themselves increasingly isolated. Liberals, intellectuals, and even many socialists soon

lined up behind American intervention.

Just as Thomas Jefferson experienced difficulty in compressing a multitude of complaints

against a German king of Britain into a modest “Declaration of Independence,” so will

President Wilson, when the time comes, find himself overwhelmed by a sense of the

grievances which this country has endured at the will of the madman of Prussia. We shall

await with grimmest zest his recital of treaties broken, of wrongs to be done, of lies told,

of treacheries bared, of insults borne, of murders committed, of all the most shameful

shocking, mean and low practices against civilization, humanity and common decency

recorded even in the history of barbarism, in the face of forbearance for the sake of peace

unprecedented in the chronicles of governing Powers. . . .

The issue is in doubt no longer. We know now, if we have not known before, what this

war is. It is the last of the great battles for Freedom and Democracy. America fought the

first a century and forty years ago. France followed through seas of blood and tears. But

lately the Great Charter has passed in its entirety from the barons to the people of

England. Japan has ceased to be a monarchy except in name. China as a Republic defies

the power of might. Portugal, freed by a bloodless revolution stands with the Allies.

Personal government has disappeared forever from every part of the Western hemisphere.

And now Russia, autocracy of autocracies, casts off the yoke and takes her place in the

sun of civilization. Can anyone doubt that the beginning of the end of absolutism is at

hand; that the thrones of Hapsburgs and Mahomeds are crumbling; that the whole clan

Hohenzollern, no less of Greece and Bulgaria than of Prussia, is doomed beyond recall;

that liberty for the patient German people is as certain as freedom for downtrodden

Hungary, for despoiled Serbia and for bleeding Armenia?

So mighty a change cannot be wrought in a month or likely in a year—and not at all

unless and until the rulers of Central Europe shall yield to a world of freemen. Wholly

aside, then, from the injuries and insults which America had endured at the hands of the

War Lord and which she is expected to advance as technical grounds for action, does not

America’s higher duty, her greater opportunity, lie along the path of the shot heard 'round

the world? Are we to permit others to finish the glorious work which we began,

according to even the infidel Allen, in the name of Almighty God? Shall we renounce our

own professed ideals so completely that, at the end of the war, we may not deny as a

matter of fitness and right, the transshipment of Liberty Enlightening the World from the

harbor of New York to that of Hong Kong or Vladivostock? Must even China be allowed

to forge ahead of America in defense of democracy?

We are for war; of course, we are; and for reasons good and plenty, to wit:

1. Because we have reached and passed the limit of forbearance in trying to maintain

amicable relations with a barbaric brute who has presumed so far upon our good intent as

to treat our most conciliatory and helpful suggestions with glaring contempt, who has

incited all manner of treasonable activities and damnable outrages within our borders, has

gloated over his avowed assassination of our innocent and harmless citizens of both sexes

and all ages upon the high seas and has missed no opportunity to deceive, to sneer at and

to lie to our constituted authorities; because to conserve our own self-respect we are

driven finally to the point where we must fight or forfeit the decent opinion of all

mankind; because we cannot even seem to condone the breaking of treaties, the burning

of villages to no purpose except to deprive the poor and helpless of shelter essential to

mere existence, the enslavement of men who alone could save their families from

destitution and death from starvation, the violating of women and young girls, the

bayoneting of little children, the approved indiscriminate slaughter by the unspeakable

Turks of thousands of helpless Christians in Armenia, and God only knows what else and

what more that has stamped the Hun for more than one generation to come as the

sublimated hero of the shambles of humanity; because, in a word, we cannot

acknowledge the supremacy of might and frightfulness over right and righteousness

without denying our faith in the living God.

2. Because we owe it to our forefathers who founded the Republic and to our fathers who

saved the Union to prove ourselves not merely worthy of the happiness which flows from

prosperity but eager and fearless in support of free life and full liberty the world over, to

the end that the noble example set by them may not be degraded in gluttonous realization

by us; because as a practical matter if spies and traitors infest our land now is the time to

smoke them out; if a few scattering undersea waifs can break down our defenses and

damage our cities, let them do their utmost that we may discover what might be

anticipated from a fleet and prepare accordingly; if our navy is lopsided and deficient, our

provision for a defensive army unfulfilled and unrealizable, our stores of ammunition

insufficient, our air-machines and submarines but samples, today when only negligible

harm can come to us is the day to acquaint ourselves with the facts; and if, as we are told,

so many of us are pro-this or pro-that and so many more are putting self above patriotism

and so many more should be feeding off our own fat instead of mulcting lean

Chautauquans, then what we need is a test—a test of body, of mind and of spirit—a

trying-out by fire while yet there is time to make America fit for any real emergency; yes,

and able, through universal service; because simply and finally, in such a case, war is

curative, not destructive, a blessing not a curse.

3. Because our going into the great conflict at this psychological moment would not only

complete the ring of democracies around the doomed autocracy and so render the

ultimate result certain to the dullest and the blindest, but also from that very fact would

infect all Germany, all Austria and all Hungary without the new spirit of Russia, and so

by surely shortening and perhaps quickly ending the war would save millions of precious

finer perceptions as a being altogether worthy of our worshipful lives, certain else to be

sacrificed to no purpose other than impoverishment of the human race for centuries to

come.

Source: "For Freedom and Democracy," North American Review 206 (March 30, 1917):

482–488.

See Also:The Zimmerman Telegram: Bringing America Closer to War

The War and the Intellectuals: Randolph Bourne Vents His Animus Against War

"I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier": Singing Against the War

Making the World "Safe for Democracy": Woodrow Wilson Asks for War

"It Has No Popular Support": Robert M. La Follette Votes Against a Declaration of War