World Affairs Institute

ARMISTICE DAY IN LONDONAuthor(s): JOHN W. OWENSSource: Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 88, No. 1 (JANUARY, 1926), pp. 50-51Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661133 .

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50 ADVOCATE OF PEACE January

asked Monroe as to its content.105 He

replied that he "was not in correspondence with Jay."'06 When some inkling was learned of the provisions of the treaty,

Monroe encouraged the French to look for a palliation of it by an incoming po litical party, an action which certainly was not in accord with his instructions.107

Shortly after this episode, Monroe was recalled and Charles Coatesworth Pinck ney named to succeed him.

In Conclusion

The United States emerged from the throes of the French Revolution baptized, it may be said, with one sentiment: absten tion from European affairs. It seemed at one time as though the country would be torn in half by sentiment for or against a foreign nation; but guided by firm and wise hands, it became united again and alive once more to its own interests.

American neutrality, as enunciated dur ing the French Revolution, was thus one of the most important facts in the history of American foreign policy, if not the most important. "It was the first attempt ever made on the part of a neutral nation to pronounce definitely that certain acts

would be considered by it a violation of neutrality," says Fenwick. This policy has exercised no little influence upon the existing system of international laws of neutrality.

The French Revolution gave rise to the Napoleonic wars, which, for the next twenty-five years, engrossed the energy of the chief powers of Europe. This enabled the United States, with very little danger, to settle its many difficulties, including frontier problems with England and

Spain. In this isolation from foreign affairs, furthermore, it was able to expand south and west, so that now only the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific limit it on the east and on the west. But the point of this paper is that the French Revolution was directly responsible for the

development of the American policy of neutrality.

105 C. R. Hill ; "Leading American Treaties," p. 62.

10 B. W. Bond : "The Monroe Mission to France," p. 31.

107C. E. Hill : "Leading American Treaties," p. 63.

ARMISTICE DAY IN LONDON

By JOHN W. OWENS

(From the London Bureau of the Balti more Sun. John W. Owens, one time assist ant editor of the ADVOCATE OF PEACE, has been

writing for a year a valuable and interpre tive series of articles under the heading "From a Window in Fleet Street." Novem ber 11, 1925, he wrote for his paper the fol

lowing.-EDIToR.)

IT

IS a commonplace that we of the

United States did not really feel the war. We talk that way when discussion turns to debts and taxes, and to all forms of material losses, and we talk that way when, as happens occasionally, discussion is guided into losses on the field. But, in

truth, hardly anyone at home understands and feels the tremendous difference be tween our experience and that of the na tions on this side of the seas.

To have a genuine, actual, living sense of the difference between our fate and that of these peoples of Europe, to have that sense really throb with life within your own being, one must have seen the Armis tice Day services, or rather the outward

expression of Armistice Day memories, that have been held here. The dispatches say there were reverent services and the two minutes' silence at home, and of course there was deep sincerity and truth in them. But those services could not have been like England's, or like the equiv alent in other European nations of either side in the war.

Here millions of people became molten in a single surge of sorrow-literally mil lions of them; and it was not a vague sor

row, not a passing melancholy, not the

suffering for a moment of dark clouds of

memory. There was poignant sorrow, so

individual and yet so universal as to call for the inspired imagery of some Psalmist of old, lamenting the woes of Israel. It was the revelation for a day of the wound that is permanent. In hundreds of thou sands of English, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish homes a light had failed. And seven years had not lifted the darkness. Rather, those years had extinguished the fitful, flicker ing gleams of light that victory and relief had brought in the first days after the war.

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1926 INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS 51

Never, I think, will memory lose the

picture of the humble men and women

passing the Cenotaph in Whitehall on this

day-a cold, bleak, gray day, meet for a

sorrowing world. The great of the land had been there earlier, and their tributes, none the less formal because sincere, had been paid. When they were gone the

ordinary men and women were allowed to

pass the memorial to the war dead. Formed in triple lines far up Whitehall and in one of the cross streets, they slowly made their way to the Cenotaph, halted a

moment, the men to bare their heads, the women often to place a few simple flowers, and then, still slowly, almost aimlessly, they wandered away. It seemed a cease

less procession of pain. Hours later, when the sun was fading,

I went back and the procession of the humble seemed exactly as when I had left. Still they were forming far up the street and still they were making their way, a

step at a time, toward the shrine, and still there were bareheaded men in the cold of a November evening and tired faced women with little bunches of flow ers. There were moments when it seemed

that the plain, stern Cenotaph was no

longer a thing of stone but a living spirit. Now and again, when one's eyes passed from the patient, sad people to the symbol they were seeking, it seemed that the sym bol was animate-that somehow the worn, simple souls of all these inarticulate

mourners had given it the breath of life. And there was a strange dignity about

everything. The pomp of the day was

long past, and the great traffic that sweeps down Whitehall halted for the early cere

monies, was again in full play. Busses and lorries and cabs rushed up and down the street, passing close to the triple line of mourners in the center. On the pave ments was the bustling crowd. But in some way the nobility of the day's thoughts governed the physical movement.

Lorry drivers, passing the Cenotaph, stood and lifted their caps with a certain noble

grace. And the nondescript crowd on the

top of a bus, standing with bared heads in the moment of passing, made that action, usually so awkward, a thing of grave beauty. On this one day of the year, at

least, mind reigned over body and made it a worthy agent of worthy thought.

INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS

PRESIDENT COOLIDGE ON OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS

(President Coolidge's message was read to

Congress December 8. The portions of this

message relating to foreign affairs follow.)

Foreign Relations

The policy of our foreign relations, cast

ing aside any suggestion of force, rests

solely on the foundation of peace, good-will,

and good works. We have sought, in our

intercourse with other nations, better under

standings through conference and exchange of views, as befits beings endowed with rea

son. The results have been the gradual

elimination of disputes, the settlement of

controversies, and the establishment of a

firmer friendship between America and the

rest of the world than has ever existed at any

previous time.

The example of this attitude has not been

without its influence upon other countries.

Acting upon it, an adjustment was made of

the difficult problem of reparations. This

was the second step toward peace in Europe. It paved the way for the agreements which

were drawn up at the Locarno Conference.

When ratified, these will represent the third

step toward peace. While they do not of

themselves provide an economic rehabilita

tion, which is necessary for the progress of

Europe, by strengthening the guarantees of

peace they diminish the need for great ar

maments. If the energy which now goes into military effort is transferred to produc tive endeavor, it will greatly assist economic

progress.

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