Again we have been told that the war was simply a war of autocracy against democracy, of mediævalism against modern life, of progress against stagnation, of militarism and war against peace, of the Napoleonic against the Christian spirit. Occasionally we hear more personal and subjective notes. Redier (30) says that France was fighting solely to retain mastery of her own genius, in order to draw from it noble joys and just profits.
The American point of view has been expressed in several forms by the President of the United States. For example, he has said that we are one of the champions of the rights of mankind. The world must be made safe for democracy. And again, that America is fighting for no selfish purpose, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the aggression of autocratic powers. This view that the war was remedial, that it was in the interest of progress, to prevent that which is belated in civilization from gaining the upper hand, and that it is on the part of America a war of participation and aid in a cause which though supremely good might otherwise be lost, is the prevailing idea. That this spirit of the championship of causes and of justice to other nations is a stronger motive in the Anglo-Saxon peoples than in others appears to be an opinion that history on the whole can confirm.
It is relatively easy to obtain the opinion of philosophers about the "causes" represented in the war; it would be of interest also to know what the millions of men in the field think. Data are not altogether wanting, but there appear to be no general studies. That many men, in more than one army, have no clear knowledge of any cause for which they have fought, except as these causes are nationalistic is certain. That there is ignorance even among the men of our own army in regard to the causes and purposes of the war has been made evident. Knowledge and enlightenment can hardly have been greater elsewhere. German soldiers are credited with believing that they are defending Germany from attack. The French soldier was fighting for France. The invasion of his country left him no doubt and no choice. The English soldier has often said that he was doing it for the women and the children, and one writer says that the deepest motive of two thirds of the British army was to make this war the last. The American soldier, from the nature of the circumstances under which he himself entered the war has been more conscious of a motive of helpfulness and of comradeship with other peoples who are in distress and danger. Probably the idea of America's honor, and the more abstract idea still of the cause of freedom, even though this idea has been, so to speak, our watchword, have not been the most influential motives in the mind of the individual. Germany was attacking people who were in distress, and the American soldier went over to make the scales turn in the direction of victory for the oppressed.