Needless to say, [Woodrow]
Wilson suffered from the Great American Malady, the belief that people all over
the world are "more alike than unlike," in other words, that they are
just inhibited, underdeveloped could-be Americans saddled with the misfortune
that they spoke another language.
Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse,
by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (EvKL)
EvKL examines the American left
and World War One; as can be seen from the above cited passage, one focus is on
that of the belief in the universal – and additionally messianic – nature of
the American democratic system.
He offers the well-understood
points of the prolonging of the war due to Wilson’s entry into the war; the
desire of the British left for the war to be extended via America’s entrance;
that it was also the American left that dove into the Second World
War. My focus, however, will be two-fold: the ideology of the left
that drove it (and still drives it) to war, and the drive to follow utopian
failure with the next utopian failure.
[Wilson] was working towards
a Djihad, a holy war to extend what he considered the American form
of government.
This was evident even earlier,
in Wilson’s dealings with Mexico, as seen in a statement made by Walter Hines
Page, Wilson’s ambassador. The context is a discussion with Sir
Edward Grey, Britain's Foreign Secretary, and Wilson’s desire to force Mexico
into a democracy. Page concludes:
The United States will be here
for 200 years and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they
learn to vote and rule themselves.
The only change in the last one
hundred years is that the intervention no longer occupies a “little space.”
World War One is pointed to by
EvKL as “a far more crucial historic event than most Americans think. …George
F. Kennan is perfectly right when he says, ‘All the lines of inquiry lead back
to World War I.’’’ I think this is right as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go
far enough. The Great War wasn’t born in a vacuum; the left that
drove the world into and through this war – with no acceptance of truce or a
less-than-total victory – did not come from nothing.
EvKL points to the
anti-monarchism and the anti-Catholicism of Wilson; one can say much the same
of the left since the time of the Enlightenment. There are roots
that produced the trees of the Great War; one does not commit suicide without
some cause, some history, some events of distress, some loss of foundation and
hope.
We are introduced to George
Davis Herron, Wilson’s “left hand (in every sense lefthand!).” EvKL
offers that Herron’s thinking, in every way, encompasses the thinking of the
progressive left of the time, and he is also perfectly aligned ideologically
with Wilson. Some background, from Wikipedia:
George Davis Herron (1862–1925)
was an American clergyman, lecturer, writer, and Christian socialist activist.
Herron is best remembered as a leading exponent of the so-called "Social
Gospel" movement and for his highly publicized divorce and remarriage to
the daughter of a wealthy benefactor which scandalized polite society of the
day.
Herron came to fame by
challenging the right of the wealthy to their possessions and preaching a
gospel of social redemption. This earned him an endowed position at
Iowa College, where he taught for six years beginning in 1893. It
was regarding the daughter of his benefactor to which the aforementioned
remarriage refers. The court awarded Herron’s now ex-wife (with whom
he had five children) the fortune of Herron’s new wife in the settlement!
Politically, he was a supporter
of the Socialist Labor Party of America during the 1890s. In 1904 he
delivered the nominating speech for Eugene Debs at the National Convention of
the Socialist Party.
During the war, he was in
Europe – having fled the US with his second wife to avoid the scandals of his
divorce and remarriage. While he saw the evils in England and France
as bad enough, these could be cured; it was in Germany where an incurable
disease existed.
Despite Wilson’s campaign
slogans to the contrary, Herron vocally predicted Wilson’s secret mission and
therefore his eventual actions; these all came true with America’s entry into
the war in 1917. He supplied intelligence garnered from his German
academic contacts to the Allies during the war.
EvKL describes Herron’s views
on the war:
This was a Holy War of all the
forces of progress, enlightenment, and tolerance against the most unholy
alliance of the Vatican, "Mother of Harlots," the Prussian Junkers,
the wicked Hapsburgs and the Lutheran gun manufacturers of the Ruhr Valley!
In April 1917, at the time when
a negotiated peace was still possible had not America joined the Allies, Herron
– “tortured by the fear of a compromise peace” – would write: "Darkness is
rising rapidly over the skies of the nations.” To which it was
replied by Romain Rolland: Herron was “a ‘virtuous hypocrite’ and a ‘gigantic
idiot.’”
His papers – covering only the
period from 1917 to 1924 – are held at the Hoover Institute.
Wading through this mass of
material one is simply terrified by the mixture of misinformation, naiveté,
hubris, and goodwill which characterize the activity of this fantastic person.
He and Wilson finally meet at
the Paris Peace Conference. However, Wilson was familiar with
Herron’s work – even writing a note of praise to the publisher of Herron’s book
which called for no end to the slaughter until total victory was achieved.
…[Wilson] said that he read the
book with “the deepest appreciation of Mr. Herron's singular insight into all
the elements of the complicated situation and into my own motives and
purposes.”
Soulmates, I guess you could
say. Herron was fearful of premature peace, writing that he would be
shattered (“sick unto death almost”) if such a thing were to come to pass.
Perhaps the meeting of critical
importance was one held on February 3-4, 1918 between Herron and Professor
Heinrich Lammasch on a confidential peace mission from Charles I, Emperor of
Austria. The proposal from Vienna was simple:
Lammasch described the
envisaged transformation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy into a federated
political body in which, entirely in keeping with one of Wilson's Fourteen
Points, the individual nations (ethnic groups) should be “accorded the freest
opportunity of autonomous development.”
Herron was tempted after the
first day, but overnight decided against supporting this
proposal. After all, peace now would leave in place a monarch – and
a Catholic!
Lammasch had been only an evil
tempter. No, the Hapsburg monarchy had to go because the Hapsburgs as such were
an obstacle to progress, democracy, and liberty. Lammasch returned to Austria a
broken man.
Broken due to the rejection, no
doubt; perhaps also broken because Herron thought it would be helpful
(inspiring?) after the meeting to give to Lammasch two of his books that he had
written against peace!
Regarding the meeting, Herron
wrote a negative report to Wilson, and on February 11 the president made a
speech regarding German and Austrian peace overtures. While Wilson
noted the somewhat more favorable response to his Fourteen Points by the
Austrians than the response from the Germans, he rejected the Austrian peace
overtures. You know the rest of the history.
It was Herron who proposed to
Wilson that Geneva (the home of Calvin and Rousseau, both of whom Herron
admired) should be the home of the proposed League of Nations – Geneva also
being Herron’s home during the war.
After the war [Herron] wrote
from Geneva to William Allen White, “I labored unceasingly to make America a
really messianic nation in this world crisis and to help the President in his
divinely appointed stature.”
Conclusion
Like all idealists and
utopians, he was disappointed with the results of his messianic dreams – he
greatly disapproved of the “Treaty of Versailles which made a ‘perjury’ of
official Allied war objectives.”
Herron's Umsturz und
Aufbau was published in German in 1920, since such a violent diatribe
against the Paris Treaties could not have been brought out in the United States
or in England.
Perhaps an inspiration to one
of the greatest rhetorician of the twentieth century? Speaking of
whom…
Hitler could not have been more
extreme in the denunciation of the Versailles Treaty whose "paragraphs
abounding in ferocity, lust of conquest, contempt for the law, and lack of
honor are as cruel, as shameless, as senseless, as vulgar...."
While not sure of the Bolsheviks,
he could still write that the “future civilization of Europe is coming out of
Russia and it will be at least an approach to the Kingdom of Heaven when it
comes.” When he saw that communism in Italy was failing to achieve
his utopia, he fervently supported the fascist Mussolini. Meet the
new left, same as the old left. Chasing one utopian dream after
another.
