THE DfcCE OF 1ULR IN AMERICA, 1891-1917* A STTJDI OF A LITERAHT THEME AND ITS CULTURAL ORIGINS AND ANALOGUES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosoply in the Oraduate School of The Ohio State Und.Tersi'tgr FRANK THOMAS fHIPPS, B JL ., MJL. The Ohio State UniTereiiy 1953 Approved by* * »V rr l e e e e ee eafeeeeeee***# 1 A d v iser "Aggression in tbs American character is seen as response rather than as primary behavior." llargaret Head, And Keep Your Powder Dry. 1?U3 "But to get the real thing!" cried Verna 11, the war-correspondent. "It seems impossible2 It is because war is neither magnificent nor squalid) it is simply life, and an expression of life can always evade us. We can never te ll life, one to another, although sometimes we think we can." Stephen Crane, Wounds in the Rain. 1900 i i CONTENTS Chapter One INTRODUCTION Chapter Two MARCHING AS TO WAR Chapter Three WAR OR PEACE* THE PUBLIC RESPONSE Chapter Four WAR AND SOCIAL THOUGHT Chapter Five WAR* FROM FACT TO FICTION Chapter Six WAR* A SUBJECT OF LITERATURE Chapter Seven WAR* A SUBSTANCE OF LITERATURE Chapter Eight CONCLUSION FOOTNOTES TO THE CHAPTERS BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED AND WORKS USED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS STUDY AUTOBIOGRAPHY - 1 - Chapter One INTRODUCTION In 1^08 President Theodore Roosevelt, criticising Jane Addams' new book Newer Ideals in Peace, based his attack on what he considered the idee fixe of the book—"the theory that antimilitarism [was] the solvent for all [the] troubles" then disturbing the world, lliss Addaas1 idea of militarism, said Roosevelt, was "preposterous"; but, he added, granting that it were right the fact would remain that militarism has no more to do with the ccrisis > of American society than, say, eating horseflesh in honor of Thor, The benefits and abuses of m ilitar­ ism are very real In the social and industrial life of the nations of continental Europe; but militarism has been a practically Imponderable element in pro­ ducing the social and industrial conditions of Eng­ land during the last ninety years, and has not been any element at a ll in the United States for the past forty years.l On the surface, at least, Roosevelt's distinction between the conditions of continental Europe and those of the United States was a valid one. Certainly one did not find in the United States in 1908 the general m ilitary atmosphere—marching troops in the streets, uni­ formed men in the railroad cars, and the like—that one found abroad. Sim ilarly, the problems faced by the protagonist in Henry James' Owen Wingrave In rebelling against a family tradition of soldiering that Footnotes to this Chapter w ill be found beginning page 2 3 8* spread over three centuries were very rarely the problems faced by young Americans of any class. The American tradition was a peaceful tradition, and since the Civil War, Americans had concentrated on such domestic problems as becoming established in the West, finding jobs in cities, and making a living in a society dominated by the Gos­ pel of Wealth. While it is true that many veterans of the Civil War were s till alive and maiy more younger men and women s till lived more or less in terms of the traditional memories of that war, the tendency among them was to view it as one of the great integrators of national sp irit, the producer of many heroes—even demi-gods—but not as the be­ ginning of any kind of m ilitary tradition, Americans, even in 18?8, generally assumed peace as normal and lived according to that assumption. This sense of peace and security, the lengthening tradition of isolation from the World's troubles and concentration on domestic ex­ perience, lay, perhaps, behind Roosevelt's statement concerning m ilitar­ ism and America, But it is Interesting to note that during this came period Roosevelt could assert to a friend* The Countzy that loses the capacity to hold its own in actual warfare with other nations, w ill ultimately show that it has lost everything. I abhor and despise the pseudo-humanitarlanism which treats advance in civilisation as necessarily sad rightfully implying a weakening of the fighting spirit and which therefore invites destruction to the advanced civilisation by seem less-advanced type,* Certainly this view indicates that militarism was a "ponderable ele­ ment" in America, as in the rest of the world, at the beginning of the twentieth century. And underlying Roosevelt's two statements, one finds an indication of a conflict which markedly characterised - 3 - American culture during this period—and gave the question of M ilita­ rism, and whether or not it existed as a force in America—a special significance for Roosevelt's contemporaries. One must study this American attitude towards peace and war— and all it might imply for the workings of the intellect and the im­ agination and for the establishing and expressing of a system of be­ lief—during periods of peace, since Americans have always, during periods of war, put aside their ostensible beliefs and attitudes and rallied both in word and action to support their country's cause. The 1890's—up to the Spanish-Amezican War in I 898—and the first sixteen years of the twentieth century may be classified as years of peace; there is abundant evidence, at least, to Indicate that the people who lived during those years felt, even celebrated the fact, that they were at peace with the world. As such, these years offer themselves as a special period for stu^y to the student interested in attitudes toward war and peace. As evidence one can cite the rapid and energetic growth of peace societies at the end of the century. There were 1*25 such societies in the world by 1900—15 of which were in the United States,3 And these years saw the founding, in 1897, of the Nobel Peace Prise, by Alfred Nobel; tire creation, in 1910, of the World Peace Foundation, by Edwin Ginn; and the establishment, also in 1910, of the Endowment for Inter­ national Peace, by Andrew Carnegie,U These actions by wealthy paci­ fists, narking a new kind of Interest in the question of World Peace, stimulated other groups—college students, econosdets, sociologists, politicians—to support the cause of Peace, Host notable were the Hague Conferences of 1899 end 1907, the first conferences of their kind to be convened in a period of peace, and the manor local conferences, such as those at lake Mohonk, which had as their goals the ultimate abolition of war in the world* Running the gamut from narrow, uncompromising pacifists to in­ telligent, progressive students of international politics and law, these societies flooded the country with pamphlets, books, and other documents* Alfred Love and the Universal Peace Union; Benjamin True- blood and the American Peace Society (with its publication the Advocate of Peace) i the extremely active New Tork Peace Society, beaded by Andrew Carnegie; James Brown Scott and the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes—these were among the sixty-three societies formally dedicating themselves to the cause of peace during the years before the first World War* And they were aided by such men as Andrew D* White, Nicholas Murray Butler, Iyman Abbott, William Jennings Bryan, Joseph Choate, Charles W* E liot, David Starr Jordan, Seth Low, Brender Matthews, Sllhu Hoot, and William W. Sloans* In the area of political action, also, Americans seemed to con­ centrate on ways to achieve Peace* The list during these years of America's contributions to international arbitration is longt In ad­ dition to the Hague Conferences, there were the Venezuela treaties, in 1899 and 1903; the Pan American Unions, in 1901-02, 1906, 1910, and Elibu Root's trip to South America, stressing the need for peace and security} the Alaska Boundary Settlement, in 1903} the fourteen Hay Ar­ bitration Treaties, modeled after the treaty prepared at the first Hague Conference; the twenty-five Root Treaties completed in 1907*1908 - 5 - between a ll the leading world powers except Germany; tbs General Act of Algeclraa, in 1906, signed under the guidance of President Roose­ velt; and the thirty Bryan Treaties, with all major powers except Ger­ many, which provided for "cooling off" periods to allow for investiga­ tions of difficulties between nations* Certainly America seemed to be fulfilling the hopes of former President Cleveland when he wrote to a friend in 1893* "The abolition of war, as a means of settling disputes among the nations, at first the dream of philanthropists, now seems to be getting every year nearer and nearer; and It is to be hoped that our nation w ill do much in the future to hasten the day when the desire for peace shall be more preva­ lent among the nations of the earth* Certainly one of the strongest forces aong the people of pre-war America was that which lay behind their expressed desire for World Peace* There were, however, other forces at work which vitiated the drive for peace and ultimately destroyed it in April, 1917* Behind the traditional and growing hold of nationalism, national honor, and nation­ al interests lay assumptions which accepted war as a means of protecting these essentially American Interests; and there were also traditions which we know as Manifest D estiiy, Social Darwinism, Christian Expan­ sionism, Economic Expansionism, and Anglo-Saxon Supremacy, which ac­ cepted war as a possible necessity in the achievement of their ends* By 1900 America, despite her traditional and declared isolationism, was a world power and was firmly set on her courses of Imperialism in the Pacific and the Caribbean and paternalism in South and Central America— courses which necessitated m ilitary and naval forces to protect her new - 6 - positLon among the nations of the world.