The Next War: An Appeal to Common Sense/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
THE TEMPTER
Now, my America, I will take you to an exceeding high mountain; I will show you all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.
What an opportunity we have in this year 1921! Here we sit in the midst of our Continent, great and rich as all Western Europe. Almost are we unscathed by the war, while the others which were Powers but six years ago struggle now with anarchy and bankruptcy. The power of Powers has been given into our hands.
The British navy once held mastership of the seas. We can now take mastership ourselves. Ships are made of steel; the great steel-producing nation may if it wishes be the great naval nation. And steel is made of coal and iron. While the British coal measures ever shrink, we have only begun to tap ours; while the British struggle for imported iron ore, we mine more than we need. And so clever are we at mass-production that we make more steel to the man and to the furnace than any other people of the world. Great Britain kept her navy stronger than that of any two other powers; we, with less effort, may keep ours stronger than that of all the other powers.
Think, too, of our military potentiality! We may, if we will, summon to the colors more soldiers than France, Germany and Belgium put together. And what soldiers! Beside our stalwart divisions, their comrades on the European battlefields looked scrawny. We have learned war, now; the American army has been brought up to date. We have at this instant more munitions, lying greased and ready in storage, than any other nation on earth. We have more manufacturing power for new munitions than any other two nations. Back of it all, we have the American ingenuity which gave the world so many of its industrial inventions in the nineteenth century. We, of all, will know best how to keep ahead of the new warfare. Did we not invent Lewisite gas? Did we not show how aeroplane engines, hitherto manufactured painfully by hand, could be poured out by machine processes, like Ford cars?
South from our borders to the isthmus runs a succession of undeveloped countries, as rich and nearly as large as our own national domain. They need capital; we are exporting capital faster and faster. Here lies much profit for us all—if we can keep the field exclusive. Our diplomacy, if backed by the unprecedented military power we have at command, can keep it exclusive. Then, some day when we hold a tight financial grip on Mexico, Guatemala and the rest, there may follow—incidents. We may find it necessary to go down and take these countries over—as a means of defending Americans and American capital abroad. Why not? Is not our civilization better than that of Mexico and Guatemala? Will not the inhabitants be higher and better if we take over their responsibilities and make them Americans?
Canada lies to our North; very rich in resources, less developed than we are; inhabited by people with the same language as ours, of very much the same habits of thought. When we have the dominant navy, perhaps the British Empire may break up; perhaps Canada may wish to throw in her lot with us, either as a member of our Confederation or as a close ally. Wrest of us lies the Pacific; with our dominant fleet, we may make it an American lake.
What national greatness, what glory! “Dominion over palm and pine”—why, we shall hold dominion over Arctic tundra and tropical jungle. No empire, whether it be Rome of the second century or Spain of the sixteenth or Great Britain of the nineteenth, ever held complete, undisputed mastery of its own continent. But we shall. The old Spain of the Philips called the Mediterranean “Mare Nostrum”—our sea—the little Mediterranean! Our sea will be the Pacific, mightiest of all oceans. With what a thrill may the schoolboy of 1950 salute our flag, symbol of such power and glory as never was since history began!
So was Germany led to an exceeding high mountain. Germany listened to the tempter and chose the kingdoms of the world. And Germany in 1921 . . .
Ah, but the tempter never lets you read to the end of the chapter; never shows you the whole picture. Behind these gorgeous visions floating in rosy mist lurk death . . . poverty . . . starvation . . . despair . . . a civilization become offal and ashes. He does not show you these; he knows that he is at war with the purposes of eternity.
THE END