by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

In 1914 the opinions of the people mattered to the Oregon Statesman and there was no word limit on the length of letters, as this three column letter signed by “American” and entitled, “War, Booze and Americanism:”

War rages fiercely and it appears to be a difficult matter for the neutral person to determine the underlying cause and the aggressor.

If we are to believe the statements of the local German society the Slavs are barbarians, the French are worse, and the English – why, God pity them – the poor deluded Britisher has gone mad.

[See September 16, 1914 entry for the letter to which the writer is replying]

It is not possible for one part of a country to understand and appreciate the difficulties of another, as witness the Jap question in California: Eastern people think the Californians are fools to risk a war with Japan over the land ownership question while the former are absolutely sure they are in the right (and most western people agree with them). How much greater, then, is the difficulty if we attempt to judge an entirely foreign country on matters of which we know little? I may be wrong, then, in expressing myself in favor of the allies, but any sensible person can distinguish black from white and the known truth from untruth.

President Wilson has wisely declared our neutrality and so far as the nation is concerned it should be followed to the letter, but this does not prevent the individual from thinking as he will.

One would think that Germany had certainly corralled all the culture laying around loose in the world (quoted from any pro-German) and was industriously spreading it by means of their Krupp guns.

The letter of the sixteenth of September to which the writer is responding, relied heavily on the concept of, and superiority of, German culture in defense of German actions in invading Belgium. The writer continues:

If the assertions of the Belgians are to be given any credit the Germans are merely living up to their traditional reputation, for was it not Blucher who swore to hang Napoleon if he could catch him? We know that a descent upon a small, inoffensive, neutral country has been committed, regardless of treaties or, to use the German definition, “scraps of paper.” Louvain with its priceless architectural beauties laid to waste and the only excuse given is “the exigencies of war” and the “word of a gentlemen that it would be rectified.” If this be culture, then let us rather have Slavic or Franc barbarism.

A country born under the Bismarckian motto of “blood and iron” will likely perish by the same slogan.

I have known personally two Alsatians; from their geographical position they should have been Germans, but when questioned they were found to be French to the core. As one of them remarked, “It is a typically German characteristic that what is German is all right and what is not is all wrong.” “Conditions,” he says, “in Alsace are similar to the middle ages.”

The attempt of any one to belittle the standing of the French people in matters relating to human progress or culture is only pitiful to any one who reads history or keeps abreast of the times. In scientific research, literature, the drama and art, the French are the foremost nation of modern times and they neither need apology nor commendation – their works speak for themselves.

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The only difference between the kaiser’s armies and those of Napoleon are that the common soldier fighting for the latter frequently “carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack,” whereas, if the German private had any such weapon concealed on his person and it came to the notice of some “non-com” the poor private would likely get a couple of black eyes or a broken jaw for his presumption. A soldier, being human, will work and fight better if he knows his valor and fighting qualities will be duly and substantially rewarded.

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The backbone of our nation, the settlers of the thirteen original states, were mainly English, Scotch and Irish, a sprinkling of French in the south and Dutch in New York. Our ideas of government as a whole were derived from English standards; the only difference was that we aimed to give the individual more liberty in matters of speech, thought and religion. With this sturdy population the warlike Indians of the eastern and middle states were subdued, the reins of England were thrown off and the nation emerged. It is readily seen that England is not a particularly bosom friend of the average American, yet what is basic in us was certainly derived from her – she is the mother country, and while we were willing to have a family row with her we are not quite ready to see her wiped off the map by an autocratic and alleged military power.

“American” identifies what should have concerned Germany – had Great Britain remained neutral, the United States might well have remained neutral as well. With Britain part of the Triple Entente it would be highly unlikely that the United States would long remain neutral, unless the war ended quickly.

“American” praised the immigrant stock that, he writes, set the standards by which we live. “American,” though, is a prohibitionist. Prohibition was a significant political issue at the time and was on the ballot for the coming November election. Not content with his (?) prohibitionist stance, he identifies the evils of drink with later immigrants, with whom he has no sympathy:

Now, mark you today: this great land of liberty and freedom which offers the poorest European peasant or working man, no matter what his previous condition, his religious or political opinions, an equal right to work, achieve fame, riches, raise and educate his family and finally live as a human being should – I say this country has no greater detractor than the immigrant who has come over in the last fifty years. Look around you at the semi-anarchists, disreputable dive keepers, saloon men and brewers: they do not know the meaning of law, and if they do, it is the least of their worries to obey it. The great bulk of the above are either immigrants or their first descendants: likewise, you seldom hear a man mouth the wet cry of “personal liberty” but what he hails from a country where liberty of anything is unknown. The class of men who will endeavor to defeat the expressed will of the people by taking the matter into courts are certainly not American in spirit – they should be in the ranks of the kaiser’s forces, where they could “steam roll” to their hearts’ content – maybe.

It is no great hardship to obey the law, neither is it unreasonable to abide by majority rule. I smoke and take an occasional glass of beer, and I see no harm therein, yet if the majority of the people decide after due deliberation that my beer drinking and tobacco smoking be harmful to them. I will do without – thereby showing them that I am a good loyal American.

Our German citizens are taking this war very much to heart and resent forcefully the idea of anything but Germanic success, which is all very good so long as they don’t intrude on the rights of our other good citizens of French, English, Scotch or Irish extraction – in other words, some of them are too prone to think as my Alsatian friend accuses them: “If it is German it is right – otherwise it is wrong.”

In the Capital Journal the editor writes of “War and Weaklings.”

Social Darwinism and eugenics were influential forces in this country, from the 1870’s until the Second World War. The State Fair openly held eugenics-based contests to identify the best babies. The concept of the survival of the fittest, based upon the writings of Herbert Spencer, among others, conflated the writings of Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, and promoted the concept that the survival of modern society was threatened by programs that appeared to encourage the survival of people and cultures that were detrimental to the strength of a nation. The movement’s logical conclusion lay less than three decades in the future: Auschwitz.

There are apologists for the present war and for all wars who argue that “as soon as war ceases the higher evolution of man ceases, for the weaklings will never be killed off.”

But modern war seems to be of small utility in killing off weaklings. In our civil war the fighting men on both sides were of the best stock in the land. The weaklings stayed at home, and nobody killed them; neither did they starve to death. On the contrary, in the North at least, the absence of a considerable proportion of the stronger men at the front gave the weaklings a better chance than usual to make a living. The civil war put our country’s evolution back at least a generation. If it did the South any good, it was by humbling the strong, not by destroying the feeble.

These apologists underrate the efficiency of the process of killing off weaklings. Is not booze, for example, a very valuable agent in that process? Taking folks by and large, do we not see the more astute and self-controlled and strong and diligent of them getting the best of the competition?
A bullet has no discrimination. It will put out a strong man or a weak one, a good liver or a bad one, a wise man or a fool, without any regard to his qualities, but the natural forces of elimination, through their judgment is far from sure, do exercise a considerable measure of discrimination in destruction. People who have the intelligence to perceive and regard the great laws of nature have a better chance than stupider people to live out their time and leave descendants who will do the same.

Virtue has a lot of rewards besides itself. The scheme of nature, geared as we see it to the apparatus of society, is such an astonishingly able contrivance for the betterment of human being that we wonder men don’t improve a great deal faster than they do. Was there ever a contrivance with such spurs, checks, combinations, compensations – ever such a device for constraining sentient creatures to observe, think, reason, deduce and shape their conduct according to knowledge?