the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
The propaganda machinery invented by President Woodrow Wilson and his Committee on Public Information had drawn Americans into the war with exaggerated and fictional tales of German atrocities in Belgium, posters depicting Jesus Christ in khaki sighting down a gun barrel, and promises of selfless devotion to making the world safe for democracy. The extent of the casualties was hidden from the public as much as possible during the course of the war, but by the time it was over many had learned something of war’s reality. And many had come to resent the manipulation of noble emotions that had pulled an independent nation into overseas barbarity.
Eddy resented the World War I propaganda and saw war as requiring propaganda: “We cannot successfully run a modern war if we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We must always carefully repress two sets of facts: all generous statements about the foe and all unfavorable reports about ourselves and ‘our glorious Allies.’”
However, the propaganda that motivated the fighting was not immediately erased from people’s minds. A war to end wars and make the world safe for democracy cannot end without some lingering demand for peace and justice, or at least for something more valuable than the flu and prohibition. Even those rejecting the idea that the war could in any way help advance the cause of peace aligned with all those wanting to avoid all future wars — a group that probably encompassed most of the U.S. population.
Some of the blame for the start of the World War was place on secretly made treaties and alliances. President Wilson backed the ideal of public treaties, if not necessarily publicly negotiated treaties. He made this the first of his famous 14 points in his January 8, 1918, speech to Congress:
Open covenants of peace must be arrived at, after which there will surely be no private international action or rulings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
Wilson had come to see popular opinion as something to use, rather than avoid. But he had learned to manipulate it with skillful propaganda, as through his successful sales pitch for U.S. entry into the war in 1917. Nonetheless, it appeared true then, and it appears true now, that greater dangers lie in government secrecy than in governance controlled by public opinion.
A MOVEMENT BUT NO PEACE
Following the war, many in the United States, disillusioned with the war’s promises, came to distrust European peace efforts, since European entanglements had created the war. When the Treaty of Versailles, on June 28, 1919, imposed a cruel victors’ justice on Germany, Wilson was seen as having betrayed his word and the armistice agreement. When Wilson promised that the League of Nations would right all the wrongs of that treaty, many were skeptical, particularly as the League bore some resemblance to the sort of alliances that had produced the World War in the first place.
Both jingoistic isolationists and internationalist peace activists with a vision of Outlawry that shunned the use of force even to punish war rejected the League, as did the United States Senate, dealing a major blow to those peace advocates who believed the League was not only advantageous but also the reward due after so much suffering in the war. Efforts to bring the United States in as a member of the World Court failed as well. A Naval Disarmament Conference in Washington in 1921-1922 did perhaps more harm than good. And in 1923 and 1924 respectively, the members of the League of Nations in Europe failed to ratify a Draft Pact for Mutual Assistance and an agreement called the Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, both of which had adopted some of the language of the U.S. Outlawry movement to somewhat different purposes.
Remarkably, these set-backs did not halt the momentum of the peace movement in the United States or around the world. The institutional funding and structure of the peace movement was enough to make any early twenty-first century peace activist drool with envy, as was the openness of the mass media of the day, namely newspapers, to promoting peace. Leading intellectuals, politicians, robber barons, and other public figures poured their resources into the cause. A defeat or two, or 10, might discourage some individuals, but it was not about to derail the movement. Neither was political partisanship, as peace groups pressured Democrats and Republicans alike, and both responded. It was during the relatively peaceful Republican interlude of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, in between the extreme Democratic war making of Wilson and Roosevelt, that the peace movement reached its height.
After the turn of century, the World Peace Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had been created, adding energy to existing peace societies in the United States and developing a new concept: pacifism. Andrew Carnegie sought to “hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.” In 1913 he funded a Peace Palace at The Hague as a home for the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a court of which the United States was and still is a member, but a court that provided dispute resolution services as opposed to ruling on the violation of laws.
Early in the 20th century Congressman Richard Barthold proposed a Union of Nations with decisions not to be enforced militarily. In 1910, the World Peace Foundation opposed the whole system of war. Anna Eckstein promoted a petition for a proposal at the Third Hague Conference to pledge the use of only peaceful means, to be enforced by economic boycott and a court of arbitration. The idea that you could not end war by lining up allies who would punish an aggressor through the use of . . . war was American wisdom, less shared in Europe.
Yet, in 1910 Theodore Roosevelt in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech spoke for those who thought war should indeed be used to enforce peace. Roosevelt himself, of course, used the U.S. military for far different purposes, but his Nobel speech exemplified the thinking that would later support the League of Nations, and later still the United Nations:
[I]t would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others.
Then, in 1914, war came to Europe, and U.S. peace groups opposed it. A new National Peace Federation was created. Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt created the Woman’s Peace Party. A 1915 convention in Philadelphia created a League to Enforce Peace. Henry Ford chartered a ship and took peace delegates to Europe, President Wilson having rejected Ford’s offer to include official government delegates.
Wilson was reelected in 1916 on peace slogans, including “He kept us out of war.” Wilson admitted in 1916 that “force will not accomplish anything that is permanent,” but in 1917 he demanded “force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force that shall make right the law of the world.” Such is the fate of campaign promises. But that language (“make right the law of the world”) would come back to bite the forces of militarism, just as Wilson’s democratic rhetoric was turned against him on the banners of the suffragettes protesting at the White House, enduring abuse and
