VII
AT THE AUDITORIUM, CHICAGO
FRIDAY, MAY 4TH
AS I came in, to the burning strains of the Marseillaise, which was the war song of our forefathers that bore them on to victory after victory, and also to the strains of the American National Hymn which carries echoes of past and future victories; as I came into this vast hall in which the grace of the women gathered together here and the virility of the men give us an image of the greatness and beauty of the American people; as I came in, I saw and heard your acclamations rising toward us as we heard them rise on our arrival in this seething city, this magnificent capital of the Middle West, it was impossible for us to suppress the pride and emotion that swelled up in our hearts.
And when a few moments ago we heard your orators, Mr. Bancroft; the Mayor of Chicago, whom I thank for the splendid welcome we received this morning; and the Governor of Illinois, who spoke in the name of the State, I said to myself (and I think you will not accuse our just pride of sinking to the level of base vanity) that you were indeed right in loving, in admiring France, for no country more than she deserves all praise. What constitutes her greatness in the world, is that she has not only laboured and suffered for herself, but that throughout her long history her eyes have been fixed on all mankind; it is to all mankind her thoughts have ever gone. She it was that accomplished the French Revolution and who, through that Revolution, has enlightened the whole world; she it is who in the nineteenth century educated the other peoples in her ideals, and held in her grasp the banner of emancipation toward which from all the corners of the earth the oppressed look longingly. And if, in 1871, by a decree of fate, her glory seemed to suffer eclipse, if she has known defeat, after defeat she has sought and found fresh vigour in the labours of peace. She had forgotten nothing; she gazed with broken heart and streaming eyes at her violated frontier, at Alsace-Lorraine, which shall be ours once more to-morrow, not by conquest, but by right, because it is ours, and shall be by right restored to us.
And meanwhile she gathered fresh strength; she rose once more in the esteem of all nations; she was so profoundly attached to peace that she sent the children who might have defended her away to colonize other lands. And yet for ten years she has been systematically brow-beaten and blackmailed. First came Tangier, then Casablanca, then Agadir: by turns she was hectored and insulted; and yet remained pacific and unmoved, until in 1914 she was summoned to break her written treaties, bow her head, humiliate her national honour. But as Mr. Bancroft so truly said, no country can be asked to despise itself. The supreme end of life is not peace; it is honour for men, and for nations their independence.
And then what a spectacle did France offer the world! Oh, doubtless German slanders had represented her as corrupt and dissolute: it was a mere jest to march against so frivolous a nation which would capitulate at the first shock of battle: Germany dreamt that in a few hours, a few days at most, the souls of Frenchmen and the power of France would be beaten to the ground. And because they had come to study France in certain haunts of amusement where Frenchmen were never seen; because they knew not the real France, the France of our factories, the France of our soil, the France of intellectual labour; because, even through this transparent veil, the true France was hidden from them, they wantonly entered into this war with the full assurance conquest would be a matter of a few months, and victory secured.
And then what did you see? However far removed you may be in distance from our land, it is not possible that so admirable a spectacle, the greatest France has ever given, should not have been revealed to all your eyes. Frenchmen, divided into hostile groups, and political sets for ever at war. Frenchmen who were said never to be able to agree, to a man rose under the Flag of France; and as children who have quarrelled erstwhile at once answer the call of their mother, all the children of France answered the call of their country.
From you we have nothing to conceal. The first shock was a fearful one. I do not think that in all history a single people ever remained more resolute and dauntless under the tempest of steel and fire that was unchained against us. We stood undaunted: but our hearts felt the impact of an avalanche of two millions of men. The German machine was well organized: for forty years no cog was lacking in it; and in that machine that knew not the rule of the individual, in which a man counted for nothing, in which the machine was all, in that machine all was ready. And you know what happened. Serbia trampled under foot, murdered, simply because it was weak; Belgium summoned to throw open her frontiers to her invader and refusing, hurling herself in spite of her material weakness, in the full splendour of moral greatness and strength, because she would leave no stain on the pages of her history, offering up the blood of her children to save her honour. And England, unshakeable as we were, because her signature was on a treaty and she would not betray her faith, she also rose with us. But in the early days of the campaign we, the children of France, almost alone bore the onset of the avalanche. We do not pretend not to have yielded physically for a short space—Yes, ever fighting, struggling against overwhelming odds, scattering the corpses of our sons on the roads we retreated along, we retreated tactically until the day when, under my Premiership, the Marshal, who was then a General only, warned us, as early as the 23rd of August, that his battle plan was fixed, and that he had communicated it to his Generals: until the 4th of September (and by one of those happy coincidences of history that date was the birthday of the Third Republic) when our troops received the order to march forward, to march forward against the enemy, the invaders of our territory. And then our poor soldiers, worn out by twenty consecutive days and nights of fighting, exhausted, without sleep, without proper food, after fighting day and night for all that period, answered the call of their chief; they rallied to his call and with smiling lips and radiant eyes along the fighting line, to the sound of the drum and clarion, marched against the enemy; and in the space of a few days fifty kilometres of French territory were freed.
Perhaps the details of that great historic battle are not familiar to you; they were concealed from you: the Germans kept them to themselves, so long as it was possible to conceal them from the rest of the world. But the power of truth is too great; it is impossible that that glorious battle, the greatest France ever fought, should be all unknown to you. In that battle we remained faithful to the mission of France. And do you know why the soldiers of the Marne fought as they did? It is because they were the soldiers of a democratic army, in which the most capable man can climb to the top of the hierarchy, in which the highest officers are the friends and comrades of their soldiers. And if they fought thus it was, let me tell you, because all the history of France was behind them, and was familiar to them, because they were the descendants of the soldiers of Valmy who under the French Revolution had already saved France and the liberty of the world; because they were also the descendants of Charles Martel's soldiers who in the Plains of Poitiers stayed the avalanche of the Barbarians, and thus fulfilled the historic mission of France.
And they vanquished. And then you came to us; you came to us from the first. And I seek in vain words to tell our infinite gratitude for the moral support you gave us. You came to us with full hearts, smiling. I still see in my mind's eye, in the Paris ambulances, and in the ambulances on the front, those American women who bent over the beds of our dying and wounded men and calmed the anguish of their livid brows by the sweetness of their beauty. I see your doctors listening at the call of our doctors to shower their benefits, without reward, on the sufferings of our wounded. I yet hear the orphans of France appealing to the Government of the Republic to thank the Americans who showered kindness on their poor, fair, young heads, their innocent heads. And I thank you, citizens of Chicago, men and women, for what from the first hour on you have never ceased to do. We know of your admirable Bazaar, which through your devotion brought in an enormous sum. I thank those who subscribed to the fifty-four ambulances which we have received and who to-morrow, at the call of their friends, will subscribe yet more to increase the number. I thank the Press of Chicago which, by helping us to make the truth known, has fought disinterestedly for the cause of truth and justice and rendered the greatest service to France and her allies. But that was not enough to content you. Not only by material benefits have you shown your good will: you have shown it in ways more moving yet. And I cannot do better than repeat the words which just now rose in my heart and were said by the orators of your nation—We have been received in the name of the State like brothers, in the name of the City like brothers, in the name of your organizing committee like brothers. You came to us! Why? In the first place why did you come with full hands to bring all these benefits to our country? Moved by your kind hearts, undoubtedly. But let me say that however glowing were your hearts, that was not the only reason. It was not possible even when you were chained down to the duties of neutrality, that your reason should not speak, and that your approval of France's cause should not arise from your outraged consciences. It was not possible you should not recognize the justice of our cause, not see that France was not only fighting to defend its rights, but to defend those of all peoples, the liberty of man. And all this was clearly manifest when under the guidance of your illustrious President you entered this war.
Just now Mr. Bancroft was enumerating the causes of the war and, in flaming words, he said what were its deeper causes, and that it was sufficient to question your own history to discover them. Doubtless, like ourselves, you entered this war under the sting of German insults, in order that the honour of the nation formed by Washington should suffer no humiliation, in order to avenge your dead and dying, the children and the women murdered on the desolate, bleak, high seas, at night, in winter, by the criminal hands of those we are fighting against together. You went into this war for that. But not for that alone. Was it possible for you to see through the immense distances that separate us the frightful spectacle which unchained Europe shows? Possible to see all the blood spilt; so many martyrs falling in a sacred cause: possible to count the thousands of dead, wounded, and sick: possible to count the mourning women whose pride and sorrow are hidden under their black veils: possible to count one by one all our orphans: possible to contemplate such sights without deep emotion and a revolt of your souls: possible to see the Marne, the Yser, the Somme, Verdun, where a fraction of the French Army held back a million men: and see, from far away, the lightnings of the tremendous battle rise above the immortal city to form the luminous beacon-light which illuminates the whole world; was it possible, I say, to see all this and not feel your hearts thrill and burn? No; it was not possible. And for months past I have been saying to myself that it was not possible. When French democracy, which made the French Revolution, which gave directing thoughts to all Europe, which long ago sent its flags, its generals and its soldiers to fight for independence; when that democracy was struggling for its life, could you stand aloof? No; that was the one thing impossible.
No: You understand the deeper meaning of this war. The allied peoples are not fighting for territories: they are not fighting to satisfy some morbid ambition! No. The stake is a greater one; it is the fate of the whole world we now bear in our hands. In them are the fate of free men, of democracy. And it is because you felt that this contest between democracy and autocracy must be fought to its bitter end: it is because you felt that so long as the peoples do not possess, as you and we do, governing assemblies, responsible governments, war might again be let loose: because you felt that, so long as there are forces of aggression in the world, no democracy can live in peace, that you rallied to our side at the call of your President and the call of democracy all the world over.
Come to us then: come as brothers to the fight we are fighting for right and truth and justice. But remember well that out of this war must come the great lesson it holds. I have already said it is an empty and deadly dream for democracies to imagine they can live under purely ideal conditions and that they are threatened by no evil or perverse powers. If the democracies do not arm themselves for their defence; if they do not possess free men ready to seize the sword, not for conquest, but for the defence of their native land; sooner or later the imperial eagle will swoop down on them at an hour when it will be too late to organize resistance.
Consider our example. We are a people of forty millions of men. What are forty millions in comparison with the one hundred millions of the American people? But we were organized; but we had a national force; but we had officers, generals; but we had a chief; all was ready, so far at least as any democracy can be ready: and notwithstanding, by a fatality, for some days it seemed as if we might be annihilated. Therefore, let democracies arm in their own defence so long as in the wide world there remains a threatening autocracy. But it shall not long threaten. It is not to be believed that with all our coalized forces we cannot crush an autocracy at which we have in these last years struck such powerful blows: it is not possible that the absolute monarchs who, in the Central Empires, by their bloody whims dispose of the destinies of the world, should be allowed to continue. We will reach them: we will carry to their ears the cry of oppressed peoples: we shall declare that it is unthinkable that the strong should forever oppress the weak: we shall exact peace for all, liberty for all, equality for all. And when we have won the victory of Democracy, when as a free people we have brought our labours to full consummation, then all our thoughts will turn to the victims of this war. Together we will go to lay the palms of justice on the tombs of our children; and you in your pilgrimage will repair to Mount Vernon to ask the great soul of Washington: Founder of the Republic; Father of your country, have we done well in doing this? Are you well pleased with your children? Have they rightly understood the glorious tradition you inscribed on our flag? And, rest assured, his great shade will arise to thank you, and to bless you.